Losing all my gamer cred by going to bat for a gacha game

I have a tendency to describe things as “confident” - it gets scrubbed out of a lot of early drafts of my reviews, one of those words I’ve gotta stop falling back on lest it lose meaning. It’s a shortcut to describing a more nebulous sensation - a potpourri of smaller factors coming together, instilling the notion that the creators genuinely enjoy what they’re making and don’t need any extra tricks to win over the audience.

Honkai: Star Rail is surprisingly confident.

I’m not sure if it’s the result of them being 4-5 games deep into the series (depends on who’s counting) or the result of their last game being bigger than God. Maybe it’s that the game is already such an obvious improvement over Genshin in so many ways.

Most obvious are the shifts in setting and plot structure - HSR trades a single, sprawling world for a planet-hopping space opera, and it’s clear that this works better with miHoYo’s style of storytelling. Genshin's scattershot subplots had a tendency to overplay their hand and lacked any real stakes, while HSR’s compartmentalization - assigning each planet its own story - allows for a more focused approach that lends plot beats much greater credibility. It’s almost certainly made easier due to the smaller “zones” comprising each planet in HSR: There’s no need to accommodate a Genshin player’s decision to fuck off and pick mushrooms on a different continent mid-climax if there’s nothing for them to forage. The broader plot is mostly miHoYo playing the hits authored by better works of fiction - sometimes, though, the tune is catchy enough that you don't mind the cover band.

miHoYo is still hooked on giving 1 page of character development for each 10 they devote to overexplaining very simple plot events, but that character development does a better job of placing each person within the world they inhabit. They still write the most annoying children on the planet, but there are good stories for the adults of HSR. Among the dry, white bread story beats Bronya gets during the main plot of the first world, it’s easy to skim right over characters like Natasha, the first character I’ve encountered from miHoYo that feels like they actually believe something. It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but it did catch me off guard - her story is one of planting trees whose shade you may never enjoy, and the whole thing is stained with regret in a way that made Midgar Jarilo-VI feel larger than the player's screen. It’s reflective of a shift towards “maybe character exploration shouldn’t be locked behind so much time and effort” that ends up making the cast of HSR a lot more interesting to listen to than Genshin’s 100-strong cadre of schmoozers. It’s not a perfect success - miHoYo still wants you to roll for these characters, so there’s a limit to their flexibility - but it’s a step in the right direction.

On top of trading out the open world, HSR also gives up Genshin’s real-time action for turn-based combat. You’re still matching elements to an enemy’s weakness, otherwise there’s very little in common with HSR’s older cousin. Playing this, it’s obvious that miHoYo has a much better understanding of how turn-based combat should work than they do for real-time action. Character abilities in Genshin long suffered from a lack of mechanical complexity, with “skill expression” for most team lineups taking the form of rotating through the characters and mashing their skills as quickly as possible before rotating back to your carry. The turn-based nature of HSR asks you to think much more carefully about how your party interacts with one another, because your enemies will get a turn and you will have to respond to them. The restriction of weapons (“Light Cones”) to certain archetypes limits creativity, but I’m not too bothered by that when there are so many other ways to change up your party. The character kits are fine, too, and efficient use requires some thought - there’s nothing on the level of playing baseball inside a fighting game but I’ve been having a lot of fun accompanying my tiny mahjong goblin on the road to nuking entire teams.

I’ve already spent too long talking about a gacha game, so let me sneak one last thing in before I wrap this up - “Trailblaze Power”. Genshin players know it as resin, it’s the currency that regenerates with time and is used to claim valuable rewards. The good news is that you’re no longer going to be sitting on your hands for three real-life days waiting for the right dungeon to come around just so you can farm the one item you need. Just roll up to whatever portal gives you the resource you need, and do it when you have the time, no need to wait for a specific weekday. The bad news is that you’ll probably feel short on currency far more frequently than you ever did before, since you’re never going to have that forced downtime. I think it’s a favorable change. I’m not going to schedule my life around Genshin dungeons.

I want to be clear and say that HSR is not the product of a completely new formula - many concepts, ideas, and even characters have been tried and tested in miHoYo’s previous games. If you developed a distaste for Genshin on a fundamental level, this is not going to win you over. But as someone whose complaints with Genshin were largely problems with the structure and ankle-deep plot, I’m pleased to say that I came into this game wearing my hater goggles and I’m drafting this review after hitting player level 31 in a single weekend, having found very little in the way of disappointments. I think it’s fine to find the style, gameplay, plot, or monetization off-putting, because it’s not top of the class in any of these fields. It’s an improvement in almost every way over its predecessor, though, and I won't lie - I can't help but smile at a pleasant surprise from the developer I was most skeptical of. Maybe I’ll come back later and find something to be sour about (especially as more content is added), but I want it to be known that I’m cautiously optimistic for now - high 6 to a low 7/10.

Edit: Did a lite review one year later, available here. In short, aside from some boring story beats in the Luofu and the occasional bad puzzle, it's improved in every way that matters

Played for about an hour, and it became immediately apparent that this is basically a sci-fi Genshin reskin. Down to the UI layout, cutscenes still being unskippable and the same shitty gacha system that seldom gives you actual characters. I know for a fact that this is a game that, like Genshin, will not respect anyone's time, asking you to spend days gathering space mushrooms or some bollocks just to be granted the privelege of being able to level up characters in a turn based RPG. Obviously, I don't know that last bit for sure, but seeing how derivative the game is of Genshin in the first hour, I don't think it's unfounded, and my patience has its limits.

This is typical gacha slop wherein the waifu slot machine was designed first, and then the game around it, made to get you addicted and waste as much of your time as possible. But people are going to eat it up anyway and act like this kind of game design is actually good and acceptable.

Addendum:

holy shit guys just please play any other turn based rpg I don't care if "you don't like turn based combat but this game is good!" there're infinitely better entry-level rpgs/rpgs that appeal to people who don't like the genre I'm on my knees

All you had to do to make turn based look "fun" and "something I would play" was to attach it to a gacha. In Star Rail's defense, the game looks good, animations are wonderfully made and it plays well enough to justify any kind of investment: characters have a lot of charm and it's not as dull as other similar experiences in the same macro-genre of games.

If I had to say something contrarian: I would love to have an actual space exploration and\or better navigation. Instead of putting animations at double speed I wish I could skip them entirely.

Yet I am still salty that when I played turn based games in 2008 I was a boomer and had weird tastes, now it's hip and cool! The audacity. I also stopped playing because "wow this game is awesome!" ads kept filling my youtube essay playlist and I've had enough. Genshin ads aren't as insufferable and make me want to play their game, Honkai Star Rail made me want to unistall it.

I was going to wait until I get to the endgame before saying anything, but my gacha addiction has been surprisingly numb, and I'm probably not going to get there anytime soon, so I'm just gonna say my piece right now.

I liked Genshin but I have a lot of annoyances with it, to the point that I consider it a guilty pleasure. That is something I cannot say for Star Rail. It's a much more entertaining, focused and leaner game in every way.

The combat system is slick, flashy, and has more than enough depth considering its mobile game nature. Only thing holding it back is the gacha systems, of course.

While the overall story and world lore seems just okay, the writing for the character dialogues and environmental interactions are quite well done, especially in regards to the absurd "zoomer" sense of humor. They also addressed one of my biggest complaints with Genshin, where older characters would just cease to exist in the game world until another event that involves them pops up. Now you can get messaged by them in game as a daily thing, which is very cool. Even if there's a limit to this, I still consider it a big W. The writing style is still very "trash", as in exaggerated and full of unnecessary flowery words, and it's not gonna be for everyone. But as a trash enjoyer, I consider this to be good trash.

As someone who is not the biggest fan of the BOTW approach on open worlds, I much prefer the detailed and tightly designed smaller spaces that Star Rail offers. I guess it's closer to something like DQXI, although it's not as good.

The one thing that disappointed me is the music/soundtrack. I remember playing Genshin back when it only had up until Liyue content, and even back then there's a lot of great music. Meanwhile in Star Rail, the only track that I would legitimately say is great is the main menu track. The battle tracks are good, but not listening-to-it-on-its-own good.

Lastly, Mihoyo are still the kings of character design in the anime gacha space. It's like they got the scientific formula perfected after making a deal with the devil.

All I'm saying is that Star Rail is an actual good game, very much worth trying out. Also, Himeko best girl.

”oh wow I like Kafka a ton already, I hope I get her in my first roll” was what I thought after starting the game

>she isn’t even playable again after the tutorial
>Breaking Bad S5EP14 “Ozymandias” 10:39

Edit: Kafka is now out and I’ve opened this game for the first time in months… the dream has been completed, she came home on my first roll and I can now delete the game

It’d be so easy for me to just give this a 0.5 star and have my review be “Haha, gacha game”. Nobody would care at all and 99% of people wouldn’t begrudge it.

That 1% is, unfortunately, me.

Look, I am Mihoyo’s foulest hater. I gave Honkai Impact 3rd a chance and hated it because, even putting aside a lot of the straight up barefaced plagiarism that game carries out, it was just a bad game that felt like someone trying to remember the combat parts of Crash of the Titans.
Genshin Impact was even worse, being the world’s first AAA skinner box that shamefully ripped off beats from Breath of the Wild to sell anime archetypes to children and teenagers. I hate, hate, hate Genshin Impact. Endlessly empty overworlds that occasionally reward you for self-harming by feeding you “storylines” that are just characters saying prophecies, politics and keywords ad nauseam were grotesquely fused with floaty, unpleasant gameplay where “player expression” caps out at smashing through your characters and hitting the skill and/or ultimate buttons until things die.
Any pretext of having ‘characters’ is also thrown out into the gutter, because outside of time-limited FOMO events you’ll be hard pressed to find a Genshin character with a real personality or even a goal. I wonder if people only remember Yae Miko because you can ‘get’ her character without playing an event that hasn’t been rerun since Covid quarantine.

So, you can imagine that I was extremely cynical about Honkai Star Rail. My view of it was that Mihoyo, not content to defile the character action and open world genres, had opted to shit out a turn-based game as well. And for the longest time, this game was my punching bag. Whenever it appeared during an event or festival I’d always say something like “more like honkai shit rail lmao” in my group chat, and whenever I saw fanart of the characters I’d gripe at how awful 90% of the designs are. Lastly, do you know how horrifying it was to find out HSR would be an interstellar adventure? From a studio that struggled to make me or anyone else give a shit about a single planet in Genshin? Madness. Utter madness.

But I was bored on Christmas day. Preternaturally bored. I don’t really know what came over me, but I got the urge to download this game.

And… I’m still playing it.

I’d even go out on a limb and say it’s good.

From here on out, I’m going to compare this game to Genshin almost every other sentence. Sorry, but there’s really no other way to highlight just how well this game does certain things without bringing up the studio’s awful last game.

Anyway, upon booting up HSR, two things immediately caught me off guard.

Number 1: The dub isn’t terrible. Genshin’s is infamously wooden and embodies every bad trend with English dubs. The women almost exclusively talk in either a Peppy Girl Voice, that same breathy detached voice that’s often only heard on amateur VA voice reels, or they’re using a flat Regal Voice that results in characters like Raiden Shogun and Rosaria - two ontological opposites - sounding identical. The men aren’t much better. Honkai’s dub, however, is surprisingly robust. I could probably tell you who each character is just from hearing a single line, because the direction being given to the VAs is phenomenal and it results in characters managing to shine through just voice alone. The nicest thing I can say about Honkai’s dubwork is that if a character sounds bored, I often assume it’s intentional.

Number 2: The characters are written - at all. Genshin’s characters have a bad habit of being the exact same template but copy-pasted over to another region. There’s really not much difference between Jean, Candace, Ningguang, and the Raiden Shogun when broken down to their base narrative components, and every region has a Cool Guy, a Sad Guy and a suspiciously forward underage girl. HSR has less characters overall, but it bothers to actually write them out and give them arcs.
Silver Wolf and Kafka only appear for 20 minutes in the intro before fucking off until a later patch, but their dynamic is excellent and they themselves have so much personality that I’m still thinking of them hours later.
Don’t get me wrong, HSR is not going to give you intricate Yakuza-esque plots, but I was gripped by the Jarilo-VI cast’s struggles to survive in a world that was entombed in multiple senses of the world, and the utter tragedy occurring between Hanya and Xueyi beats out some of dynamics I’ve seen in many actual JRPGs.

Both of these apply through the entire game (as at the time of writing), but that they’re immediately obvious from the prologue is what got me hooked.

Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not all perfect. The actual plots tend to be straightforward, and the game’s insistence on giving you 5 minute quests with 15 minute exposition dumps calls to mind Final Fantasy XIV in all the wrong ways, not to mention that who gets characterization and when often feels like it’s decided by dice roll.
I love Natasha, the caring but deeply exhausted leader of Jarilo-VI’s underground vigilante police force. In a cast of mostly younger adults she stands out as a tired middle-aged woman who initially keeps going because she thinks she has to in order to ensure there’s a world for the next generation to even inhabit, and she ends up feeling a bit aimless/overwhelmed when that mission ends up succeeding.
But she’s mostly ignored in favour of Bronya, Seele and Serval, all of whom I enjoy yet sadly sponge up most of the screen time. Bronya especially tends to have her character arc reiterated to the audience every other cutscene, though unlike Genshin characters or FFXIV’s Y’shtola, her arc actually resolves.

Towards the end of the first planet, it dawned on me that I was enjoying the writing because the writers had very clearly taken the right lessons from Genshin. Rather than force the player into an endless hamster wheel to maybe see the characters progress, the characters are just front and center in the story and they’re utilized extremely well.
Sure, I can cynically say that they only made the characters likeable to hype you up for their banner reruns, but at least I can tell the banner characters apart based on personality. I’ll pull for Seele because I like the headstrong, illiterate moron who is clearly in puppy love with Bronya. Not because I need a Quantum - The Hunt character.

The real star of the show, though, is the gameplay. I often scorn the idea of gacha games having “good gameplay” as the sentiment is often echoed by whales/longterm players who’re experiencing an entirely different game in practice, but HSR really caught me offguard on that front.
It’s all very simple: Enemies have big icons above their head stating which element they’re weak to, and you build teams to deplete their weakness gauge so you can stun them and do big damage. Each character has a basic attack, a skill (which costs a skill point), an ultimate attack and a passive - along with an overworld ability.
There’s a tendency in games like this to have earlier characters be incredibly simple and without any depth, which is a trend HSR bucks right out the gate. The protagonist, Dan Heng and March 7th (the first three freebies you get) all have their own mechanics and roles, so tightly designed that they’re perfectly usable in harder content with a standard level of investment. Power creep is still a thing of course - I got Ruan Mei, a very recent addition, in one of my first pulls and she can just take turns away from enemies - but so far the game avoids that nasty trend every other gacha has where early character skills are a single paragraph and later ones are entire pages.
Characters all have Paths, which is HSR for ‘Role’, but each character applies the concept of their path differently which thankfully avoids homogeny. Two of my main units, Sampo and Pela, are Nihility characters - debuff centric. Pela is focused on removing positive buffs and makes enemies infinitely more vulnerable to other debuffs like those conferred by her ult. Sampo, meanwhile, is a Damage Over Time character. All of his attacks have a chance to inflict a Wind DoT and his ult does less damage than others in exchange for massively cranking up the damage enemies take from the DoT effect.

Praise also has to be given to the game for lacking any duds as of the time of writing. I’ve frequently taken breaks from the story to get some leveling resources because every character I currently possess has a scenario in which I end up using them, and though I’ve yet to get the character I want from the permanent banner (which the game dumps tickets for on you), every character I have gotten from that banner has been used in a serious capacity since I got them.

Overall, though, the game leverages its extremely simple gameplay to put you through some absolute ringers. The core mechanics are simple so the fights can be… well, not? Bosses and even elite enemies come with mechanics that can throw careless players for a loop, some of which I’d even describe as MMO-esque. The earlier parts of the game can seem simple enough to just blitz with a high-damage team, but eventually enemies start using taunts/lock-ons/stuns and other debuffs to force you to think carefully. Really, it’s this variety in enemy mechanics that results in the above praise: Even Asta, a relatively boring character, has incredible mileage in any fight where making the party take turns faster is a boon.

If I had to illustrate the differences succinctly, I’d point to Healers. In Genshin they’re superfluous if you’re at all good at the game, because it’s trivially easy to avoid damage and infinitely better to just bring DPS characters that’ll help you end fights faster. That is not the case in HSR. You can delay turns with Ruan Mei and Asta all you like, but enemies are going to attack. You are going to take damage at some point, and the need to either dispel or negate these inevitabilities is the driving force behind much more indepth team building. I got through several arcs of Genshin just fine using the same team that only ever saw a change when Raiden Shogun dropped, but in HSR I have three separate teams that I’m still constantly tweaking.

As for the world, HSR completely dunks Genshin’s poor attempt at an open world out the airlock and trades it for comparatively linear pseudo-dungeons and slightly wider hub areas. It’s all very ascetic in comparison; Amber doesn’t appear to tell you to fuck off and gather wheat at all during the intro, you just hold Forward and hit things between cutscenes. This is all to its benefit though, both because it allows individual area plots to work at all (Genshin could never have done the Overworld/Underworld thing well) and it allows each area to have a very strong visual identity, which means I can actually tell areas apart. It’s impressive that both halves of Jarilo-VI feel like they belong on the same planet given that every continent on Tevyat feels like it fell out of a difference 4/10 gacha game.
Oh and the fucking music. I’ll give Genshin credit on one front: The boss music is stellar all the way through. HSR, being an actual interstellar experience, is similarly out of the world but on all fronts. I couldn’t tell you dick about Genshin’s overworld/dungeon music but I still hum the Jarilo Underworld theme even when far away from the game. To say nothing of the cheesy over the top vocal track that plays during Jarilo VI’s emotional climax.

I also haven't seen many people mention it, but the side material in this game is excellent. The protagonist is given plenty of time to shine, and while the writing cribs ideas from Disco Elysium it knows full well it's never going to be a masterwork and instead opts to tell good jokes and write good characters. I talked to a trash can once, and it was brilliant.

Looking back at all the praise I’ve given the game, I do feel the need to clarify one thing: This game isn’t really exceptional. It’s just good, and among gacha games that automatically makes it the best. I have a lot of fondness for the game, its world, its lore and especially its cast, but there isn’t anything here you can’t get elsewhere. Yakuza: Like a Dragon has it all and is a one time payment! Same with Dragon Quest 11.

If you’ve read this far you’re likely wondering how the actual gacha/live service elements are, and they’re … not bad. Not good, because they never can be, but among its peers this is one of the least egregious ones - not quite GBF or King’s Raid good, though. Tickets and pull currency are handed out willy nilly compared to Genshin’s equivalents and while there are dailies & a battle pass, actually filling them out is trivial work and can often be done in minutes.
Genshin’s Resin system returns as Trailblaze Power, but to this game’s credit all of the dungeons/boss refights/elite enemies/whatever are available on a permanent basis - though the boss refights are limited to 3 a day.
Which… does actually lead into my biggest complaint about the game, and the one that’ll probably influence whether I keep going in the future:

There’s not enough Trailblaze Power.

And- Look, alright, I’m not gonna be mad that a game is making me put it down, but you need so much Trailblaze Power to progress at a meaningful pace. The onboarding process and early tiers of the battle pass (which accrue naturally) will give you tons of refills, but that’s a well that began running dry after I beat Jarilo-VI and made me hesitant for the future. It’s not actually much of an issue in Genshin due to how few party members you ‘need’, but this game’s better combat intrinsically leads to more grinding, which you’ll hit walls in constantly due to lack of Trailblaze Power.

All in all, I'm thoroughly charmed by this little game. I’m probably going to keep playing it in the downtime between bigger games and bigger writing pieces, but this is still a Mihoyo gacha game. If you had issues with Genshin and they revolved around character availability and the like, this game doesn’t fix them at all. It’s best to stay away, and likewise if you have compulsive spending issues or an addictive personality absolutely stay away - this game pads out banners with junk weapons, and it knows what it’s doing.

I wish Natasha was real.

bro this game is garbage like you cant even jump you cant even do a backflip you also cant climb walls, can't believe this is a game made by the guys who game geshin impact 3D, like that game SO MUCH COOLER you don't have to wait your turn to attack lmao is this 1999????? update your game to have some REAL ACTION boomer devs, waste of time don't play this go play a real gacha like dragalia lost
FINAL VEREDICT: 1/10 who names their character a day of the year lmfaooooo march 7th more like april 1st this game is a joke 🤣🤣🤣

I am a firm believer that games, at heart, are an art form. They exist like all other art mediums not for any extrinsic value such as money or fame, but for the inherent beauty that they posess. Art, for the sake of art.

Yet, this "game", or rather I should call it, kitsch, goes against all of those values. Yes, the waifus are hot, which is why this gets more than a half star rating. But in terms of its design, it's clear that every aspect around this piece of kitsch revolves around making mihoyo money. And to be fair, there's nothing wrong with that. What I take offense to is the idea that this is somehow a game. Call it a digital experience, a interactive simulator, whatever, but don't call it a game. It lacks any sort of artistic merit or creative vision needed for pixels on the screen to be classified as a game by me.

The story, while better than genshit, is still hilariously bland and generic. Characters pop out of nowhere and are introduced with gaping holes in the plot and lopsided development, all for the sole reason so that they can later be sold as 5 stars a few months down the line. The environment and world, while beautiful, is hollow and static: there's no life to be found in the scenery here, only eye-candy setpieces and window-dressing that fades in the midst of time. For all the expansive set of characters and lore, there is nothing to keep me caring or invested in any of it due to the stylistically uneven and overly flowery writing and bad story. The gameplay, while passable (another reason why it doesn't get a 0.5/5 star rating), has almost zero connection to the story and feels forced in, like at a boardroom meeting a bunch of mihoyo executives looked at a chart and determined that the target audience wanted turn-based combat rather than considering whether said turn-based combat would work in the context of every other part of the game.

And really, that's my main concern with this game. Up until I abandoned it out of pure disgust, the entire game felt...constructed. Every single stylistic and gameplay choice made in this game felt formulaic and -- again -- made with the goal of monetization. Every single dialogue line felt forced and made with some ulterior goal or motivation rather than being spoken for the sake of speech itself.

If you want to play a "game", don't play this, because it simply is not one. It's a highly elaborate interactive gacha simulation with all the beauty, creativity, vision, and perspective that makes games one of my favorite artistic mediums ripped out and replaced with shady monetization and shameless sexualization.

Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)

One of the problems with discussing Honkai: Star Rail as a game and especially its issues is that any discussion will eventually end up seeming manufactured by what is discussed of the game. It's easy to criticize MHY's use of gacha, its general gameplay, the Trailblazer Level's existence, so on and so forth. These are valid complaints, but still lead to the same general conversation. Here's the thing, though: this becoming the same conversation ends up bringing light to what Star Rail's biggest issue is.

It's literally Genshin Impact again.

Like, okay sure same developers leads to some homogenization. Believing in auteur theory as I do means that there's fun to find the parallels and fingerprints that creatives have when discussing their works, and Mihoyo games are very similar with their constant recycling of characters in an attempt to make some sort of hints to a multiversal storyline. Even then, many of Star Rail's issues are Genshin's issues. There's some very surface level writing and clear appeal to make one attached to characters quickly and hope to roll them in the gacha, which also connects to Genshin and Star Rail's issues in that every banner is a limited banner. Genshin's character progress is ripped out and placed into Star Rail, while also having the same character structure of two main attacks and an ultimate. Someone more immersed into both Genshin and Star Rail could probably extract more; regardless, this also makes Star Rail a very derivative work, not just in how its constant recycled aspects in both story and gameplay create something very similar to what Mihoyo has made before, but in that their inspirations are so quite transparent that it becomes the work.

When I started the game and saw the title screen, my first instict was to think of Leiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999; an odyssey between its two leads as they explore various locales in the world. It's quite episodic, but still quite clearly is part of Leiji's universe with the appearance of Captain Harlock and the rest of his pirate group at times. Perhaps a somewhat unintentional parallel; trains aren't exclusive to Leiji's works, but part of it also reflects Star Rail's clear inspiration being the Trails series; there is a clear, core cast in a more episodic work that ends up still moving a main story onwards. It felt somewhat of a combination of Trails in the Sky's road trip aspects and Zero's very controlled main party, and it's clearly notable once one has played through those games and dives into Star Rail. Not even in simple presentation and story does this referential nature stop existing; I vividly remember in Jerilo-VI's story (was that the name? I'm not double checking) where Hook, a very clear way of baiting into players rolling for her if one is somehow enjoying her as a character, points out that Sampo (another gacha bait character) was last seen in a fight club. My first instinct was "lol like the movie", before seeing the dialogue choice distinctly references the first rule of fight club. Maybe call me joyless but that somewhat took me out as this was my first taste of this location's clear discriminatory issues between its class struggles, and instead of continuing to represent this in a way that expands the setting and we understand more what is happening behind the scenes, we're being dragged for constant quick shows of characters in the hopes one is baited to like them while constantly being self referential to contemporary world aspects. Like, why is the metaverse mentioned and why can we directly chastise Herta for it? I assume the idea is that the player is some sort of fifth-dimensional being who takes shelter in the Trailblazer's body, but Herta also recognizes it when we call her out...?

Regardless of this small nitpicking, Star Rail fails to make a strong case to enjoy it outside of the most surface level generation of dopamine with its gameplay. Which I can and will admit that its presentation is top notch: the combat, even if basic and hampered by being part of Mihoyo's gacha, still feels very nice to do succesfully. The visuals are nice, even if the character designs aren't very good (though better than Genshin's, I'll give it that) the world constantly pops in continuously varied ways. I, honestly, wouldn't mind continuing if the Trailblazer Level wasn't a thing that gatekeeps players from doing progress. I could get past its pure, clear unoriginality if it wasn't forcing players to grind. Soshage's just like that, though, and sometimes you really don't have to try at all to hide the clear bait if it works.

Honkai Star Rail feels like if Trails of Cold Steel and Persona had a child and that child was raised on nothing but Genshin Impact (The UI and gear systems are all almost identical to Genshin's) and Star Ocean. Star Rail features one of the most barebones and basic turn based systems I've experienced in awhile and I can only attribute that to the game being an over-glorified mobile game because I mean the combat is literally simplified to having only 2 attacks/techniques (alongside an ultimate attack which builds up overtime and is basically this game's version of Trails' S-Crafts) for each character lmao. It has a fraction of the depth as Trails combat system where you can move and reposition your team on a grid and constantly learn new skills and magic abilities thanks to the customizable orbment system. It doesn't even have as much depth as Persona 5s combat system with the Baton Pass and follow up attacks, but I'll give credit where credit is due, the animations look very stylish and pretty at least.

The characters and narrative are actually the most interesting thing about the game (which is kinda the opposite of Genshin because while I liked some characters well enough, the gameplay and exploration was mainly why I played it) the story starts slow in the opening hours, but quickly picks up as your player avatar the "Trailblazer" and their gang of friends March 7th and Dan Heng among others start going on interplanetary expeditions to find mysterious artifacts known as "Stellarons" which are corrupting the planets they inhabit all the while the gang keeps getting tangled up in the sociopolitical affairs of these various planets. Each individual planet feels incredibly fleshed out with impressive depth to the world-building and that's not even including the Space Station main hub area as well.

Too bad to experience the compelling narrative you have to suffer through every typical gacha and mobile game element you can think of from replenishing energy to do the smallest activities, daily login missions and awards and of course locking the best and most powerful characters behind a gambling gacha paywall which really hinders the experience, but I'll give Star Rail this, it is pretty fair to new players and F2P users, it's a grind, but you can definitely still get some good characters and equipment just for naturally playing through the game. I've gotten well over 100+ summons after about 35 or so hours and haven't spent a dime on the game, also new players are guaranteed a free 5 star character after 50 summons when using the starter banner, but the fact you have to grind the game that much to get those characters is ridiculous.

All in all even though Star Rail provides a compelling narrative, fascinating detailed world-building and characters with a decent amount of depth all while looking gorgeous to boot, the combat is just far too barebones and repetitive and the mobile game elements are too prominent that I could only ever recommend this game to people who actually enjoy needlessly grindy games or have a high tolerance for bullshit mobile game mechanics. Shame too because it would make a hell of a great game if it was just a normal J-RPG and had a bit more depth to the combat.

hoyoverse have one and only one thing they ever want to be doing: the epic shounen anime dramatic showdown scene. all the other writing building up to the big moment is frustrating -- characters launch into excessive monologues, overshare their life stories, do not react to critical new information or ask followup questions; the main character has an unusually high proportion of weird asshole dialogue lines in minor sidequests; there are problems with the lorebooks that would take a longer writeup to explain. this all looks like a bunch of scattershot complaints, but i really do think there is a deep and singular issue here with what the writing team think they're doing as opposed to what's actually happening on screen; i just haven't fully formulated the exact description of the problem yet.

on top of all this, it's a gacha single player game, and the wretchedly slow character progression systems that come with this are widely known. i'm used to these by now, but that doesn't mean it's good.

the dramatic moments are cool though! i'll have a good time with this for a bit -- at least the turn based poor-man's-smt battle system is something i enjoy, and it's fun to beat up goons in space sometimes -- but, especially after some experience with genshin, it's clear that this stuff is just not really for me.

EDIT: you know what, i'm bumping this up half a star cos some of the writing is winning me over. the text chats in particular are high level.

Honkai Star Rail is undeniable proof that no matter how lavish the production values of a free-to-play game are, the rotting core of a cash-grab mobile experience lurking underneath can never be truly hidden. HSR is a deluge of currency, items, drops, and design elements that are all meant to keep you spinning on that never-ending hamster wheel. Were the battle systems and RPG mechanics strong enough, I could see them potentially winning out against that. Instead what you're left playing is a glorified match game against bland enemies whose backstory I do not know or care about.

Lack of customization and character building is a death knell to any RPG and there's very little to be found in Star Rail. Characters have two abilities, an ultimate and that's it. Character progression is achieved almost entirely through the use of items which is one of the absolute worst ideas an RPG can put forth. Since battles grant almost nothing in terms of experience, it trivializes the entire gameplay loop. There's never a feeling your team is getting stronger; it's more akin to feeding them steroids to grow. And with the overall lack of options given to you in terms of abilities, there's an inherent shallowness to the whole experience that you can never shake off. The game doesn't even make you work to find your enemy's weaknesses; it tells you them before you even enter battle.

If there were anything resembling a compelling story I might have been intrigued to continue onward but sadly Honkai Star Rail kind of drops you into its universe and leaves you to fend for yourself. And while the girls are cute, I've also seen better in other games. Sorry, but the gacha demon will not be capturing me with this one.

A couple of days ago I was thinking "At what point do you review a live service game?" Because while I'm sure I'd love to wait for End of Service to review the "Whole Experience" at that point, why bother?

So the answer I've come to after seeing another friend post their own review on HSR is just, whenever. Do you feel you have a good enough basis? Then go ahead and post what you feel like.

I've played a lot of RPGs recently, including the Trails series which HSR's Director is a fan of and even took inspiration from for the combat system in HSR, and that was both a pro and and con.

The pro was obviously that I knew exactly what I was getting into in terms of the combat, its the basic AT system, with Delays, Advances and butting into the turn order to hit your ultimate, it's got a Break system introduced in Cold Steel 3 even if the conditions are more specific to get a Break off. Which is great Cold Steel 3 is the best combat in the Cold Steel quadrology.

And the cons... It feels kinda pedantic but when I first started playing HSR there were so many moments when I went "God the presentation for this would be so good if it wasnt a gacha."

To explain what I mean, there are several moments in the story where you are accompanied by other units, for a majority of Jarilo-VI this is March 7th and Dan Heng. There is a part in Jarilo-VI where the player character sneaks out with Bronya and Seele leaving March 7th and Dan Heng behind. So it's really jarring when you get into combat and your actual "Party" consists of March 7th and some woman you haven't even met yet, and neither Bronya or Seele.

Like I said the point feels pedantic, and at best is just "Could you imagine?" because if this were a singleplayer game the presentation of these events represented in changes in your party would be great. And you don't even have to Imagine that hard as the Player Character is mandatory for the final boss of Jarilo-VI because part way through the climactic fight they functionally change to a new unit entirely due to influence of the story. So they devs and writers clearly have some idea what I'm talking about here because they've done it.

So my main complaint basically boils down to "Would be better if it wasn't a gacha" and while I'll stand by that I will put down that as a Gacha it could be so much worse. Almost every system available to the player is generous in its own way to the point where I don't really mind most the Gacha aspects.

Anyway, good game, would've been better as a singleplayer game, but as a gacha its more then decent.

EDIT: Since this review I have gotten to the Luofu, and it's solidified my issues with the presentation of the party system, but because it goes on to be MUCH BETTER about it. Having a whole side story that you can do starring Dan Heng and 2 other units being lent to you for a trial period that fight.

Guess they just didn't want to do it for Belobog?