For a mobile game (all the ports are the same game in better frames), it’s good— and replayable since you never really run out of missions.

After that?

It’s just a game exploiting lonely otaku culture. You got a paycheck? Burnt on a character or weapon that isn’t GUARANTEED. Got mommy/daddy’s credit card? Ruin their credit. The characters are not charming or unique in anyway, and the voice acting (English mainly) sucks. It’s really just Breath of The Wild without much creativity.

Story? You lose your sister/brother (player determined) and you have to find them. Does any of the missions you do relate to that? Nah. Do a bunch of main missions that feel like side quests to get to know an irrelevant pair of characters that have nothing to do with that storyline.

People will swear and die on the hill that this is an amazing game. It’s mediocre.

If that’s your opinion, then it isn’t respectable. Jump off that hill.

(Seriously don’t jump off a hill just seek help. You have a gambling addiction)

Unos amigos irl me invitaron a jugarlo 3 veces.

Lo dropié 3 veces.

Me bloquearon cuando les dije que lo volví a desinstalar.

Así supe que me juntaba con malas influencias.

Quit the game over a year ago (February 2021)

The story, gameplay, and every aspect of the game is not worth your time in the slightest. Within the ~200 hours I sunk into this game I probably could've finished numerous other games. As one of the better gacha games I've played, it's just awful man. Please do not sink your time into playing this game.

At best the game is meh and while I do believe that it is a bit fun to play with friends for the love of god don't play this game solo (or at all really).

This game is the biggest example of a honeymoon phase wearing off because once it does, you realize that it fucking sucks and it has little to no remarkable things that other games in its genre have done better in terms of open worlds, gameplay, and especially Storytelling.

And now I have to live with the fact that it shows up among my most played games in PSN, this is god's punishment to me.

But the music is still phenomenal so thats why I'm giving it a star and a half.

I stopped playing Genshin a few months ago but I think some people are a bit too harsh on the game. The honeymoon period of this game is by far the best of any gacha game out there and I daresay is better than most other open world RPGs with its great visuals, exploration and genuinely interesting elemental combat system. The honeymoon period lasts until about AR 30 as well which is a good 50 hours or so of playtime, that is also completely free as long as you exercise even a modicum of self control and don't buy anything. I'd say Genshin Impact is worth at least trying out for that reason alone.

That said, the post-honeymoon grind is absolutely soul destroying and worse than most other gacha games. At least in other gacha games you can autobattle through the grinding but Genshin wants you to do the same boring domain fights over and over and over again for a miniscule chance of getting a single good artifact drop, which is just the tip of the iceberg of all of the effort that goes into making a good character build. It's just too much for me to care about. Most of the events are mediocre to outright bad as well.

The best thing I can really say about it is that I wish Hu Tao was in a better game.

There's potential for something genuinely good here. The open world has a lot to do, look at and get immersed in. Playable characters are animated extremely well and are often very nice to see in motion. Multiplayer is generally well implemented aside from the occasional puzzle just... disappearing when entering co-op mode - getting carried by higher levelled players illeviates a lot of the slowness of the game and I implore you to play with a higher levelled friend if you ever consider playing this in its entirety. If this was a 50 pound/dollar game with no microtransactions or gacha, I'd probably bump it up to 3 and a half stars, but christ I don't think I've ever played a video game that respects the player's time so little.

I've 100%ed the Monstadt, Liyue and Inazuma regions, and am getting started on Sumeru after several months' hiatus after presumed burnout. At the time, the game's issues were made clear to me, but I rubbed them off as having played too much. Needless to say my thoughts have not changed, and I have a lot to say about the game as a whole.

The combat, while looking flashy and complex on the surface, is monotonous and doesn't change at all in 100+ hours of gameplay, save for exclusive event or dungeon items, gimmicks or mechanics. Its really just: mash left mouse, occasionally hit e, q, or shift coupled with wasd to move, rinse repeat for the whole game. Couple this with basically mandatory, artificial grinding thanks to the world level scaling if you want to progress with the story and power up characters, and you have a slow, boring gameplay loop where, after you've explored everything excluding roadblocks, enemies are still spongy, and you do constant busywork to get dripfed primogems, level up, and ascencion materials to get new, stronger characters and power them up.

The gacha rates are pitifully low, far lower than other gacha centric games, and outside of events and doing everything you can, the currency required to make pulls is scarce. Doing daily commissions nets you 120 primogems, and you need 160 to take a single shot at the slots. That's not enough though, since characters can only be 4 or 5 star rarity, in a pool rife with 3 star weapons. Just getting a character is more reliable when relying on the gacha's "pity" system, where you're guaranteed something of four star rarity for every 10 pulls. Keyword, "something", because there's a good chance you'll just be getting a four star weapon that'll serves merely as upgrade fodder instead. Four star weapons are common enough if you're exploring and collecting materials, too, so its almost always a waste to only get a weapon out of your guaranteed 4 star drop, on top of the 9~ other 3 star weapons you got. 5 star drops are exceedingly rarer,with approx 70 pulls being deemed as reaching pity. Thankfully (at least in event banners, which you should only ever pull on anyway) these are reserved for characters. You have a 50/50 chance to get the 5 star character showcased on the banner or any 5 star character from the perma pool, being guaranteed the banner character for youd next 5 star pull if you get the latter result, which even carries over between banners - a rare example of respect for the player in this game. Naturally, you're incentivised to spend money to get these stronger, rarer, fanservicey banner characters whenever they become available, since their availability is on a timer before they're made unavailable for months again, and there's a good chance you aren't getting a lucky 5 star pull or going from 0 to 70 pity in a month.

The story is, for the most part, pretty by the numbers. There's your lost sibling, an ancient war, gods ruling the land, evil factions that are out to do evil things for the sake of being evil, etc. The inazuma story arc at least stood out, but I was disinterested for most of it, as there's an unreasonable amount of unskippable text, exposition and filler dialogue. That's right; the story is entirely unskippable, and parts of the world in this "open world exploration game" are locked behind it - you can't even mash through dialogue either, since there's a delay to it. I genuinely can't believe this game has been out for two years and it hasn't occurred to the devs that they should add a "skip dialogue" button, but that's the tip of the iceburg regarding poor game design on display here.

I think the worst offender, besides the monotony, grind, tedium, story gating and gacha, is the devs' assumed approach to enemy design, because it feels that whenever they made a new enemy or enemy type, they're made to be as obnoxious to the player as possible. From the Fatui and Abyss mages' obscene shield bars, or just stunlocking, a lot of enemies in this game absolutely suck to fight, and killing a single one often drags out for longer than it has any right to - long enough to the point where I often unintentionally drag enemies far enough from their spawn location for the game to decide "nope! this enemy is too far away! teleport him back with full health instead of continuing to fight the player!". Getting unfrozen or out of a bubble is miserable too - you're left for enemies to pile on you since you got stunlocked by near undodgeable attacks while you mash space bar and not left click, for some reason. Its such an uncomfortable button to mash too, and you can't rebind anything in this game.

To end on a somewhat positive note; the music is fantastic. And suits the mood and locales of the world wonderfully. Its a shame that some genuine talent and passion was wasted on what is essentially a glorified slot machine.

Great game when you start, then it goes downhill very, very fast, then it becomes just MID.

It's a gacha game with actual gameplay (rare) and a big interconnected open world, which is why it's praised so much. But it's really not that good beyond that. I love some of the character designs and their writing but their gameplay is limited to basic attacks and 2 skills, sometimes 3 if you count the HOLD skill which leaves a lot to be desired. It has a decently deep story going on, but with awful storytelling. Would be much better if there were more animated cutscenes and less talking with random NPCs no one cares about, they genuinely make watching paint dry seem more enjoyable.

I have to explain something very fundamental about this game, anything that pertains to the story is bad, comically bad, Genshin's likability outside of its combat and environments comes from its characters but some of them are just lifted from anime archetypes, archetypes I very much hate

Characters like Ayaka are genuinely just generic cookie-cutter waifubait for losers, her brother Ayato is somehow very influential in the political landscape but does not make him at all interesting or alluring of a character despite how committed his fans may be,

You pull up Xiao’s trailer and it’s just some dumb shounen emo MC bullshit, everything I dislike about the game is in its insistence to cater to the most rancid, acrid, putrid smelliest part of its fanbase,
Don’t even get me started on whatever they were doing with Shenhe

These however are a blip on the radar as there are plenty of endearing personalities in the game like Mona, Fischl, Keqing etc (this etc is doing overtime in this sentence because there’s like 70 billion characters).
The gacha factor that fuels enough revenue for each monthly update both ensures and bankrupts the game’s quality, Genshin genuinely markets one of the best trailers I’ve seen, with one of the best OST I’ve ever come across, I’ve listened to them till my ears have bled, with each update Genshin just does something that makes me come back and want to stick with it. It’s always experimenting, oh you hate climbing? Here’s electric totems in Inazuma you can zoom across in the air. Oh, that was a bit janky to use? Well in Sumeru we’ve made these golden symbols in the air that you can “grapple hook” onto so you can traverse the landscape much faster. It acknowledges it’s flaws and constantly reduces tedium and increases enjoyment, and having fixed updates month-wise really helps it increase its quality and potential,

But on the flip-side Genshin always wants to rush things, it can’t hold onto an interesting story beat for more than a hot minute, it’s too busy making flashy cutscenes it can showcase on YouTube, bigger shinier bosses that are cool to look at horrendous to fight just so it can be cooler to market it, and it does work, every single day I watch the Genshin Global group post a damn “Genshin Anime Opening!!!” with all of the most anime-tier shounen MC scenes the game loves pushing out, the audience it panders to really does reciprocate in full, especially the harem loving audience.
The combat is excellent and that’s all I have to say for it, it’s simple it’s responsive and plenty of room for experimentation all the time and the new Dendro element they’ve included really shows how they completely understand how their system functions and the most fun that can be extracted out of it.

All in all, with a bad story, good lore, good combat, hit or miss puzzles, ambitious environments as well as some insufferable ones, Genshin persists, and on the occasion it can truly blow your mind (like the Chinese Opera), or completely fail to meet any expectations whatsoever.

What if you
Wanted to explore the open world in this open world exploration game
But Genshin Impact said
Several minute long cutscene you can't skip time
I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE LIVES OF THESE LAME ASS ANIME DESIGNS JUST LET ME PLAY THE GAME