We haven't exactly gotten off on the greatest foot, now have we; Genshin Impact? When first I heard of this game I just concluded that it was just a transparent BOTW clone with anime character stand-ins; but now that it's out and has swept over 10 million players with it's frenzy... yeah, it still kinda is that. (But I retract a lot of the negative connotation that I attributed to that.) Yes, Genshin fever has hit and people are jumping into this light action-RPG experience with brimming excitement, such to the point where even I have dipped my toes in a bit. About 15 hours of dipping toes in fact. (It'd be more but I had my Persona 4 Golden to catch-up on in-between) So now with some actual time in the title I can offer a lot more knowledgeable feedback on what exactly this game is; time for a do over!
So have you ever been minding your own business when all of a sudden you get an advert for one of those bowser based money-sinks that somehow count as games? They're always full of obviously fake mock-up gameplay (that is often in no way representative of the game itself) and a truly terrible hired actor imposed ontop of it pretending that they are playing it. Every now and then you come across one of those adverts with an actual budget behind it and a couple of brain cells actually being shared in the animation department, and you'll see a mock-up that actually looks like a bit of fun. I mean sure, the actual game isn't anything like that, but at least they made it look pretend cool for a bit. Genshin Impact is basically that game. It's the lie that these cash-grab trashpiles try to hook people with. The personification of the collective fever dream that all these hack 'developers' (I loathe to even use that name for such people) wish they had the talent to create. And you know what? It's just as fun as it always looked!
Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action adventure RPG with heavy mobile themes in the way it handles weapons and characters. That means a lot of Gacha pulls and rarity tiers and upgrade materials and dailies and all that entails for a growing mobile game. Now whilst naturally that would all sound repulsive, something about the way Genshin is conceived makes me cut it a lot more slack than I normally would. First let me be clear, I am not immune to everyday Gacha games. Don't get me wrong, I typically don't throw a dime their way, (or ever, for that matter) but I enjoy the grind of completing regular tasks in a row and then rolling to see what kind of reward I can get. Maybe that love of dallies and grind was born back in my MMO days, but the Gacha spinning and rarity tiers is all mobile-influence. In fact, one such game was actually part of my daily routine for a good while now, several months actually, and I'm sure you've heard of it considering it was RAID: Shadow Legends. (I'll have a blog on that when I can face to objectively look at myself in the mirror again after all those wasted hours.)
But what makes Genshin different from all those 'games'? Gameplay. Nice and simple. Genshin actually has honest to goodness gameplay and it's literally like night and day compared to every other mobile dumpster fire out there. Whereas in games like RAID you spend hours grinding to unlock characters who you can then watch auto-battle; in Genshin you actually get to add those new characters to your party roster wherein you can play them yourself. They are all voiced, have their own stories to them, (I think) have unique elemental attacks, and are almost all fun to play. (Still coming to terms with mage gameplay, maybe I'll warm up to it.) As someone who just touched the mobile world I'm honestly quite chuffed at how much more interesting and fun this is whist mechanically being the same sort of set-up that RAID has, I can only imagine the actual religious moment that those who have only ever played mobile games are having.
Although before I lose myself to praise, let me make myself absolutely clear that the thing which makes Genshin such a welcome surprise is that it is free-to-play. The amount of value you get in this game without putting any money in is, as far as I can tell, practically uncapped in almost every fashion (with a few obvious exceptions) to the point where I'm already starting to subconsciously route for the miHoYo developers. They quite honestly made a complete-feeling game and then gave it away for free hoping that people would like it enough to pay the microtransactions, that's leagues more than you get out of most big-name game companies out there, who put so much into their product that they end up having to nickel and dime every step of the way to break even. For the 15 or so hours I've already spent in Teyvat I've had a bit of a blast without bumping into any paywalls. I mean sure, there is a grind wall but I expect that out of RPG games. (I've grown soft on F2Ps!)
Now I should probably go back to something I claimed in my initial look over of the game and mentioned again here; The BOTW clone accusations. I'm willing to walk that a bit back and call it heavily BOTW 'inspired', but you can just as easily see the inspiration of many other open world games on it's sleeve. I'd still argue that Zelda is the biggest archetype they draw from, however, as you can see it's DNA everywhere. The very art of the game looks like a different, less inspired, take on BOTW's endlessly picturesque smooth-shading; the stamina-based exploration actions, as well as the generally sprawling wilderness; the random puzzles dotted across the environment with rewards that benefit the feedback loop and simple combat that's easy to pick up but still fun to get to grips with. In fact, I'd even argue that Genshin's combat is even superior to Breath of the Wild's in some angles, (as scandalous as that is to say) although that is where the superiority ends.
The world itself is frightfully generic, with the land and it's people feeling like they've been stitched together out of every Isekai ever made; the story is fairly bare and standard with any twists or reveals being telegraphed from a mile away (I mean; it's entire continents better than RAID: Shadow Legend's story, but that's hardly an achievement) and the characters seem pretty two dimensions and paint-by-numbers; but for a game that's entirely free does that even really matter? Having to shell-out absolutely nothing does tend to put thing into perspective and makes it a lot easier to shrug and go along with the average aspects of the game. As it stands right now, I have very little I can really complain about with the game and that which I can complain about just seems petty. Maybe I've caught some kind of bug which is wasting away at my reasoning right now, but I'm totally okay with the average here. (Or maybe it's because I've got an absolutely extraordinary game to play in the meantime; it really balances out like that)
As the game is as of right now, at version 1.0 of the game, I feel absolutely comfortable recommending this game to those who want to have a little bit of RPG fun without feeling that constant pressure to whale out which most mobile games thrive off of. Of course, there's plenty of room for the game to dove tail into that abyss in the months to come, but I'm hoping that if the success of it's launch leads to a sustainable model than this game can continue being a remarkable haven in the Free-to-play landscape. A free-to-play game that's an actual game. (Disclaimer: I know there are other actually worthwhile F2Ps out there; I'm comparing this one to the vast majority) Don't expect this game to blow you away in really any regard, but maybe leaving satisfied is just enough. Keep on keeping on Genshin Impact; you're alright.
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