Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact
"エヘってなんだよ!? (What do you mean, ehe!?)" — Paimon
Protagonist(s): Traveler (Aether/Lumine) (both renameable) Genre(s): Action role-playing Platform(s): Android iOS Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Nintendo Switch Release: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Android, iOS September 28, 2020 PlayStation 5 April 28, 2021 Nintendo Switch TBA Engine: Unity Developer(s): miHoYo Publisher(s): WW: HoYoverse CHN: miHoYo Country: China

Genshin Impact (Chinese: 原神; pinyin: Yuánshén) is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed and published by miHoYo in mainland China and worldwide by Cognosphere, d/b/a HoYoverse for Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The game offers an action-based battle system and an anime-style open-world environment. The game is free-to-play and monetized through gacha game mechanics.

Gameplay

Genshin Impact is an open world action role-playing game that allows the player to control one of four interchangeable characters in a party. The playable characters can be changed quickly in combat, allowing the player to use several different skill and attack combinations. The strengths of characters can be improved by increasing the character's level and upgrading artifacts and weapons that the character equips. Apart from exploration, the player can attempt to complete various challenges for rewards. After completing challenges, the game allows the player to increase their Adventure Rank, which in turn unlocks new quests, new challenges and the World Level.

Why It’s Impactful

1. The graphics, as inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, look great. However, it is worth mentioning that this is a free product and the graphics in free games tend to follow a simple visuals. The game uses cel-shading, like almost every anime game, which saves the quality of graphics more.
2. The game has many beautifully designed characters, such as Mona, Fischl, Keqing, Venti, Zhongli, Collei, Hu Tao, Ayaka, Arataki Itto, Ganyu, Raiden Shogun, Yae Miko, Wanderer, Nahida, Neuvillette, and Furina.
3. Incredibly precise controls. Character controls are easy to learn and react very well to the fact that you are moving.
4. Decent story that harks back to any amount of fantasy anime titles. A traveler wandering around the world questioning the gods about his/her long lost sibling.
5. The game is completely free, even though the game doesn't even belong to the massively multiplayer online (MMO) genre. It is worth noting that there are microtransactions and loot boxes (banners), but it does not matter, you will get everything you want (the characters, the weapons, and more) after a long gameplay, being the absolute opposite of a pay-to-win game.
6. Although it can become repetitive at times, the gameplay is very fun to play, especially for an anime RPG. The game offers a large open world with a lot of content to explore.
7. The game offers an open world filled with mountains, buildings, magic, adventure, fantasy, all kinds of resources, and much more.
8. The voice acting is quite good whether you use the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or English voiceovers, in spite of the game's unfortunately poor lip syncing (see bad qualities number 7).
   • Many recognizable voice actors (Both Japanese and English) have made their way into Genshin Impact: Yuri Lowenthal (teenage Ben Tennyson from Ben 10 franchise, Protagonist/Makoto Yūki/Ryoji from Persona 3, Peter Parker/Spider-Man from various Spider-Man media, and Sasuke Uchiha from the Naruto series) as Dainsleif (the narrator from the trailer), Aoi Yūki (Madoka Kaname from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Futaba Sakura from Persona 5, Kurona Yasuhisa from Tokyo Ghoul, and Gwen Stacy/Spider-Gwen from the Japanese dub of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) as the female traveller/Lumine, Maaya Uchida (Rikka Takanashi from Love, Chuunibiyou and Other Delusions!, Rei Kuroki from Vividred Operation, and Katarina Class from My Next Life as a Villainess!) as Fischl, Chiwa Saito (Homura Akemi from Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Metis from Persona 3 FES) as Jean, both Todd Haberkorn (Ayato Kirishima from Tokyo Ghoul, Death the Kid from Soul Eater, and Natsu Dragneel from Fairy Tail) and Kōki Uchiyama (V from Devil May Cry 5, Shigaraki Tomura from My Hero Acadamia, and Gin from Hotarubi no Mori e) as Razor, Rie Takahashi (Mirai Asahina from Mahou Tsukai PreCureǃ, Megumin from KonoSuba!, Takagi from Master Teaser Takagi-San, Peni Parker from the Japanese dub of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) as Hu Tao, Kayli Mills (Alice Zuberg from Sword Art Online: Alicization and Emilia from Re:Zero) as Keqing, Laura Faye Smith (Rosalina from the Super Mario franchise) as Noelle, Keith Silverstein (Robert E. O. Speedwagon from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Masayoshi Shido from Persona 5) as Zhongli, Kimberley Anne Campbell (the titular character from Nagatoro-san) as Nahida, Anairis Quiñones (Echidna in Re:Zero) as Lynette, Amber Lee Connors (Shouko Komi from Komi Can't Communicate) as Furina, or Ryohei Kimura (Judar from Magi and Bumblebee from the Japanese dub of Bumblebee) as Tartaglia/Childe.
     • Surprisingly, both Aoi Koga (Paimon's VA) and Konomi Kohara (Mona's VA) have played both Kaguya Shinomiya and Chika Fujiwara from Kaguya-sama: Love is War, while Kensho Ono (Diluc's VA), Kosuke Toriumi (Kaeya's VA), and Soma Saito (Chongyun's VA) have played Giorno Giovanna, Guido Mista, and Vinegar Doppio respectively in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with Sean Chiplock (Mista's English VA) and Griffin Burns (Doppio's VA) also voicing Diluc and Tartaglia/Childe respectively.
     • This could be said the same to both voices of Hu Tao, since she is voiced by two characters from Re: Zero: both Rem (Brianna Knickerbocker) and Emilia (Rie Takanashi).
9. The music is pleasing to the ear, lending the atmosphere of the event, be it while fighting or exploring the world. On the one hand, it can be reassuring, on the other, it stimulates the fight.
10. The sound effects are great when they appear in the menu or during gameplay.
11. The combat system is incredibly satisfying, at least with stronger characters like Venti, Qiqi, Diluc, and much more.
12. The characters are easy to like, even the weakest in terms of skills like Amber, who looks attractive but also stands out in terms of personality.
13. Speaking of the characters, there's a truly sizable amount of them. And what's truly remarkable about them is that none of them feel like clones of other characters. They're all unique in both design and personality. From the shy and timid to the more abrasive and brash to the compassionate and caring, each character's personality is easy to grasp and different.
14. Unlike other RPGs, especially anime-like games, the game's HUD does not clutter most of the screen, but is nicely arranged for an adequate version of the game.
15. The moment you set your birthday, you get gifts in this case, which is a nice springboard and extremely rare in games.
16. This game has frequent updates with many new features.
    • Unfortunately, the closer the game is to a new nation being released, the less content there is in the new updates, as developers are spending most of their time creating content for the next nation release.

Bad Qualities

1. The gameplay and mechanics are somewhat similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild and its sequel, leading to allegations of plagiarism. However, there are some game elements that are different.
2. Enemies and monster have problems:
   • All enemies, like Hilichurl, walk in the exact direction your character went.
     • Hilichurls dance similarly to Indians in pre-colonial times in South America, and their skin is black. This caused a significant controversy in the Genshin Impact community with accusations of racism, though some people believed the dances were generic and that the game was being analyzed too deeply for an underlying meaning to generic enemies.
   • The designs and models of these hostile things and wildlife, although beautiful, pleasant, and some are even cute, It also has its problems:
     • Dusk Birds They look like a bird from the distant future, because the tail is long and curled like a chameleon.
     • Red Vulture looks like a non-avian dinosaur because the wings look like the skin is the wing.
     • Spinocrocodile It's just a rauisuchian, especially that he has a short snout and big paws.
     • Scorpion looks like it came from another planet, because it looks futuristic in appearance and even has four legs.
     • Flying Snake looks like an Eastern dragon without legs and arms, but smaller and doesn't breathe fire.
     • Desert Stumber Beast It's just a generic alien from the Lilo & Stitch universe.
     • Shaggy Sumpter Beast looks like James P. Sulliver.
     • Tent Tortoise looks like rejected Pokémon.
3. The PlayStation 4 version suffers from poor optimization.
   • It's also suffers on low range/some mid range phone, which also has the same issues.
4. The resin system is difficult to use as it take 8 minutes to get 1 resin and reward collection requires a minimum of 20 resin. Honkai: Star Rail, a game made by the same company, made major changes to their equivalent of the resin system (called Trailblazer Power) that resolved these problems.
   • While the new challenges don't need resin, it can feel like a chore to play at times due to the artifacts and lack of respawnable chests.
   • Speaking of which, you can still put in a lot of effort into fighting off the enemies and travelling, yet a lot of rewards feel underwhelming.
5. There was significant controversy during Genshin Impact's 1st Anniversary and Lantern Rite Festival 2024 (leading to the meme "Genshin could never", although this controversy only occurs in Mainland China).
6. Some events which contained significant story content, new gameplay, and rewards are no longer available to new players, as they were removed some time after being introduced. It's unclear why they are removed when they can easily be made replayable. Honkai: Star Rail makes most of its substantial events, like A Foxian Tale of the Haunted, playable.
7. The game only has lip-syncing for the Chinese voice over.
8. Paimon's voice acting is very high-pitched and she tends to repeat herself or re-explain things other characters just explained.
9. Archon Quest Chapter II: Omnipresence Over Mortals (especially Act III) is considered by players to be the weakest arc of the game.
10. Anachronism (there's no problem this bad quality):
    • There are robots in this game, although memory and battery storage never existed in this game, which is possibly set at the beginning of the 19th century.
      • Lasers never existed at that time until the year 1960.
      • Target pointing missiles only appeared in Word of War II.
    • At Fontaine, there are many mechanical things, although the era has never been as advanced as it is today.
11. Whenever the game updates, the storage size increases, which can be a problem for those who play on smartphones, as the app's size is huge, that it takes up almost the entire device's storage space. Therefore making it more difficult to play unless you free up space.
    • Unfortunately, phones, even on Premium ones, no longer use SD/MicroSD and people are forced to use cloud save.
    • Fortunately, you can reduce Genshin Impact's file size by deleting past quest files.
12. The main story involving the Traveler looking for their lost sibling has not been updated very frequently, which is unfortunate. However, the other stories can be interesting.

Reception

Genshin Impact received largely positive reviews by both critics and gamers alike. Critics mainly praised the open world direction, designs, voice acting and the combat, criticizing the monetization system. On Metacritic, the PC version received an 83/100 and the PlayStation 4 version an 80/100. Users, although still mostly favorable, the PC version received a 7.7/10, the PlayStation 4 version a 7.2/ 10, and iOS version a 6.5/10.

On OpenCritic, the game received a rating of "Strong", an average score of 81/100, and a 93% critics recommend, based on 14 reviews. Daniel Tack from Game Informer gave for Genshin Impact a 9.3/10, describing that the game is "whimsical, wondrous land dripping with unbridled charm and appeal, combining a ridiculously compelling reward loop with unfettered, continuous discovery. In this world I felt like a child visiting theme park for the first time — dazzled, mesmerized, and completely swept away. I only wish the shimmering glow wasn’t marred by a ghoulish monetization model, but that’s something I’m willing to overlook for my ticket to this fascinating realm."

Shubhankar Parijat from GamingBolt praised the visuals, an open world, the mechanics from the game, the creators of which they were inspired, and that monetization does not force the player to pay. However, he criticized the characters, mostly Paimon, which he found her annoying, and some technical issues. Ultimately he gave an 8/10, shortly describing "Genshin Impact is a game I can easily recommend. It would have been worth your time anyway, but given that it's free, it's even harder to miss."

Chris Carter from Destructoid gave a 7.5/10, saying "Genshin Impact could be a little more lively than it is when leveling, but the beauty of its world helps suck you in. You really can't beat free, so long as you resist the rather tame temptations to spend money."

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