WEEEEEEEEEELT YAAAAAAAAAANG I WANT YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Update: I have gotten mr Yang I am incredibly happy ty mihoyo ty ccp
Update: This shit blows
Update: I got Acheron I need to finish Xianzhou Luofu I NEED AVENTURINE LIKE I NEED CRACK
Update: I finished 2.1 it was awesome I trust the plan I want my pookiebear aventurine

okay, finished the Jarilo-VI arc (ar 24 main quest) and i think i have more opinions about this game now.

first off: turn-based combat allows the game to be more creative with their battles, that is specially true in the final boss battle of this quest also hoyo-mix can peg me and i wouldn't mind, this game is far more advanced, faster, cleaner and better optimized than genshin, everytime i have to open that game now i feel like i'm crawling an ancient dungeon.

also, this game's world design is far more smart than genshin, in genshin you could see the BIG difference between mondstadt and sumeru, to the point where it's weird to even think those two are basically on the same map, the game power-crept itself in it's world design. that doesn't happen here, for the exchange of having more linear spaces, the world design and building truly shines (also, having how many treasures are left in an area on the map is a feature genshin should've had for ages now).

about it's story, i think that it has a really big potential, specifically because of what i've already said. take genshin for example: scaramouche's fight. while it is a cool fight the first time you play it, the more you do it as a weekly boss, the more you notice it's flaws, like, you're really telling me the guy that is basically a god right now can only throw a couple of missiles and step on the ground? it's that sort of thing i think star rail can correct and innovate upon, since you can put a lot of stuff into turn-based combat that doesn't require extreme skill from the player. i also think that it's a really smart idea to separate your story arcs in worlds, that way, supporting characters from different arcs don't have to acknowledge each other if the story writers don't want to. let's take genshin again for example, don't you think it's weird you NEVER see the archons having any interaction between themselves whatsoever?

anyways, i think this is a step forward for hoyoverse and i will continue playing the game, 8/10 for now, let's see when the game stops having content and it becomes a grinding mess again.

HSR is a great game with a good story, cool characters (some of them really well written) and decent gameplay mechanics.

However, the gacha and episodic updates really ruins the game. Only getting crumbs of the story every 40 days made me totally disconnect from the story in general, sometimes the updates only give you 10 minutes of the mainline story which doesnt help.

Would be an awesome game if it was fully released from the start.

Gacha games are always a hard sell because they are grindy, time gated, and really just want you for your money. Despite such gold digger status, I genuinely do think that Honkai Star Rail is a gacha game that has used the past games of the HoYoverse to give a compelling argument for such a live service game that keeps updating and growing. While there certainly is some problems with Star Rail's delivery, and potential down the road; ultimately Honkai: Star Rail provides a solid answer to a space adventure RPG.

Perhaps the biggest selling point of Honkai Star Rail is just how big it can get, and how much can easily be added without giving much disturbance to what most gacha games need for an overarching story. Not to say there isn't an overarching story, but the real point of interest is exploring new planets, cultures, and developing the world of Star Rail over any actual take down of a big bad. This is something that Star Rail even has over such mammoth games like Starfield, No Man Sky, and Fate Grand Order. There is legitimately a massive amount of text, voice overs, and side missions that would make even the Mass Effect series blush. To say that Star Rail is a massive game is honestly an understatement at this point, already rivaling the 1st two arcs of Fate Grand Order in terms of size, as of May 2024. The first two main areas, Herta Space Station & Belobog, are a great start to the game, and impressed me with how much lore and content there was initially to began with. Belobog even feeling more like it's very own game when compared to the Herta Space Station opening.

Sadly, due to how big Star Rail can be, and how it utilizes both it's time, upgrade, and promotion currencies this makes the game a massive time sink. There is just something blatantly scummy and cruel about how Star Rail's combat works, and how the progression of the Equilibrium (difficulty) gets in Star Rail that rubs me the wrong way. See combat in Star Rail is pretty lax for the most part as long as you have the correct affinities to take down enemy weaknesses. In a lot of ways, both Fate Grand Order and Star Rail have similar combat prep and style. Use the enemy weaknesses while having characters equipped with proper light cones (Craft Essences) and hopefully be at a good skill level to make the battle easy to win. Where FGO and Star Rail differ however is that Light Cones are a bigger part to the stat equation, there is a mildly higher character growth when summoned from the gacha (6 compared to FGO's 5), and leveling up costing far more at the higher levels compared to FGOs requirement to fully upgrade a servant. This makes leveling up all the way far more difficult, and nearly a week endeavor just to get a character to the final level. This isn't accounting for other parts in Star Rail's character system like the fully upgraded light cones, skills, or relics that you can use. Plus on top of all this the game's promotional currency gets equally pushed out because you keep using it upgrade characters abilities/skills/levels/light cones. It's kinda insane how much time and effort it takes to fully invest into one character in Star Rail, let alone 20 of them, which the game honestly intends for you to do with some of it's higher required side content. So if you mess up like I did, and upgrade too fast on your equilibrium (difficulty) you end up being locked out of both story and side content till you can grind the rest to enjoy the game again.

Really the only thing I can say about Honkai Star Rail is that you'll be investing a lot of time in it if you want to experience it. For some that can be a deterrent, but for others this may be a blessing. While a vast majority of your time will be spent grinding/ leveling up your characters and equipment; the game does have proper story, characterization, lore, world building, and some pretty cool animations to boot. It really is just a cool role playing space adventure that keeps making cooler and interesting characters so you can spend money on, and frankly I like that a lot more compared to something like skins. It's still a scummy practice, but at least there is some substance behind that. If you can tolerate that, and a bit of grinding, I absolutely recommend Honkai Star Rail.

Mr. President, we must not let there be a jpeg waifu gap between us and Communist China.

More than halfway through the story content released so far and this is a marked improvement on most turn-based rpgs in the pace and depth of its combat, customization, characterization and mature storytelling. Tropes exist to supplement interesting themes, not as a substitute for them. Not a vent, headpat or hot spring in sight.

Sometimes, though, I want to play more of the game but I need to reach an arbitrary "Trailblazer Level" that requires management of daily doled out 'energy' to grind "Trailblazer EXP". This is about the only time I remember this is a f2p/mobile game and it's a bit of a bummer. But I get over it.

A friend of mine recently made a review of HSR and I felt compelled to do the same in a burst of creativity, do note none of this was proofread and I’m just typing my thoughts as I go

I’ll start by mentioning the ugly parts of Honkai: Star Rail because some are legitimate deal-breakers that, in my opinion, cannot be ignored.

The game is a gacha game. The very system is intrinsically exploitative and as such I cannot in good faith recommend it to just anyone even if it is one of the “least bad” ones in that regard.
Even if the game is very generous in its currency – with an average of 90-100 draws awarded per patch on Free To Play accounts – it is still a game with a pricey game model that exploits emotional attachments to prey on gambling mechanisms.
As such, I would not recommend playing this game if you are prone to spending money on it and could potentially fall for gambling mechanisms. It is an unethical model

The second biggest ugly part is: it’s a Hoyoverse game at heart, so you will have no uncertain amount of colourism at its core. There is (at the time of writing) ONE character who isn’t pure white in skin tone and I would be surprised to see that change soon given the general treatment of such characters by fandoms in anime & anime-adjacent spaces.
Some of the designs just scream “This is a Hoyoverse design” due to them having the same general body type, the same general asymmetry on everything and long hair parted in two due to model clipping issues.


With that out of the way, I still believe that this game is one of the best RPGs I have played in recent years and it has one of the strongest starts I have seen in a live-service game. For the sake of spoilers, I will not go too into depth into some specific elements because this review would put on ten thousand words from me rambling about every character I find compelling or each part of the lore that I find riveting.

I initially started Hoyoverse games in 2016 with Honkai Impact 3rd’s release but didn’t really stick with it until Genshin Impact, the new kid on the block. At that point, I looked at HI3 from afar and played Genshin Impact a decent lot until circa 2 years into the game’s lifespan where I eventually dropped it in favour of HI3 and my old-time gacha game: Granblue Fantasy. I mention these games because there will be frequent callbacks to some of them on various aspects for which the parallels hold merit.

As such, I had general expectations of what HSR would be. I was deeply acquainted with MiHoYo and their ways and had a general idea of the quality the game would have. To date, they’d mostly stuck to action-oriented games so my learning it was a turn-based game had me intrigued, not to mention with yet another genre of world-building when its predecessors were respectively modern-fantasy/sci-fi leaning and full-on fantasy.

And ultimately what I got to play was what I believe to be the mix of the best from both Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3rd.

Honkai: Star Rail is, at the end of the day, a mobile game so its gameplay is not complex. You alternate between open-world “relaxing” phases and the turn-based combats that make up for the majority of the “meat” of the gameplay.

In combat, each character has the same kind of kit: a basic attack that generates one Skill Point, a skill that falls under a certain category (bounce damage, single target damage, AoE damage, enhance, debuffing, etc) that uses one Skill Point, and an ultimate that generally follows their archetype’s design philosophy save for the few oddballs that don’t.

Each enemy has specific elemental weaknesses (borrowed for the most part from Genshin Impact with some Honkai Impact 3rd types mixed into it) and you preferably want to meet those weaknesses to exploit it and inflict a standard turn-based RPG Break with varying consequences depending on the element ranging from just a damage over time to a big chunk of Speed (the stat determining where one places in a turn) being cut or delayed.
Despite being simple, the game’s combat system is surprisingly robust. Enemies are distinct enough and there is no shortage of different enemy compositions in endgame that result in few scenarios where you can just slap one team and call it a day expecting to clear.
Every character has their niche of general role and elemental weakness with little to no overlap, and the only characters who have yet to find a good use just don’t have the appropriate game mode or right equipment released yet.
Erudition characters, for example, follow the general archetype of doing multi-target damage. In the Erudition path (the game’s way of saying classes) some characters rely on a particular kind of mechanic called “Follow-up Attacks” (abridged FUA) that launch an attack when a certain requirement is met.
On release, two such characters – Herta and Himeko, were frankly terrible and the two worst units in the game. The game released an equipment set that benefits FUA characters and then plans to add a game mode centred around large enemy waves rather than an Elite unit and some goons to kill on the side when they inevitably take collateral damage. If that wasn’t enough, they also released a character that heavily enhances FUA compositions.
As such these characters, while still not good in a single-target environment, now sit in a comfortable position for that incoming mode which is one of the three main endgame modes once someone is done with the story.

There is to date no significant power creep in the game and even the few overlaps you may find ultimately do not matter because of the matters of unit availability and elemental weaknesses. Sure Guinaifen – a Fire Nihility character (the game’s damage over time path) – has a lot of overlap with Sampo which is the same but for the Wind element, but both can work together and may justify using one or the other depending on enemy weaknesses. The only characters I haven’t found myself using yet in the endgames suffer not from a kit issue but from the value their skills have at all.

On the topic of endgame, it is also surprisingly plentiful. In the span of one year there are already two major endgame modes with a third coming in four days, which is two more modes than Genshin Impact ever got since its release.

You can tell HSR had a heavy influence from Genshin Impact on the open world aspect, as much as Honkai Impact 3rd did when it introduced Open World chapters, but even there it finds the best of both worlds.
Maps are roughly the same size as Honkai Impact 3rds but this time they’re not just empty maps, there are numerous collectibles and characters, some of which with whom you can interact with that are in one relatively contained map rather than an enormous explorable space like Genshin Impact had.
In terms of gameplay in a semi-open environment though… this is where the comparison with Genshin Impact stops because HSR’s reminds me much more of another game.

Undertale.

The game, in terms of short-lived but delectable exploration, reminds me a lot of Undertale and its sequel Deltarune). You’ll find a myriad of small things to interact with that can be anything: characters, NPCs, dogs, trash cans, lamps, closets, and all of them will reward you with either a piece of lore, a whole subplot being introduced that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things but is enough to distract you for a long while, or small bits of dialogue that poke fun at the fact that you talked 7 times to a trashcan or bothered to count them at all when it isn’t going on a philosophical tirade for a few paragraphs for something small.
This game’s overworld writing is, at its core, very reminiscent of it to me. It’s filled with small bits of dialogue that are 90% optional that tell you about some things you’ll never see again, or hint at something bigger. Sometimes it will lead to nothing and sometimes you’ll hear about a character you never thought would matter until they come up in another, much bigger quest.

Sometimes you’ll start a small side quest that’s entirely unserious, and sometimes you’ll start a much bigger side quest that hits very close to realistic issues and tackles them with enough grace to lead you to a certain conclusion (such as “you’re an awful person for trying to fire a disabled person that is just struggling”) without going too deeply into it at the risk of delving into something they’re not well-placed enough to discuss at length.

And that is perhaps the best thing about HSR’s writing: it’s not afraid of talking about some serious topics when it wants to, but they’re self-aware enough to not go too deeply into some things that they do not master to avoid sounding awfully self-pretentious or downright immoral like I have seen some RPGs do.

Some questlines speak of parenthood, survivor’s guilt, the inability to turn a page on a chapter of your past, worries of the future or lack thereof, feelings of love – sometimes unrequited – that a character refuses to let go of because it’s one of the last things they have left of that person, and much more.
At the same time, some questlines are just “What if Pokémon was a thing here?” that is just a brilliant parody of it, some are just about making up something about a guy to imagine what he was doing, or about a character dreaming that they’re the richest on the planet (while the game tells you, ironically enough, that gacha systems are HORRIBLE. In a gacha game.)
It also isn’t afraid of making its characters morally dubious or straight-up unethical, all that without telling you “Ah but look, they have a sad backstory that explains why they are the way they are”.

I’m someone with a deeply rooted preference of darker writing, and my initial fears that this game would take Genshin Impact’s route of being a game that feels solely written for teenagers seem, to date, unfounded.
There is another fear from Genshin Impact I had for this game’s writing that also seems to be unfounded: abandonment of characters.
In Genshin Impact, you will almost never see a character again once their main “expansion” is over. After Inazuma you would rarely return to it or find any of its characters relevant.

Honkai: Star Rail… doesn’t do that.
After Herta Space Station (the game’s starting zone) you eventually return to it and the game very much tells you that you will return to it again eventually.
After the Belobog arc (the first major story arc of the game’s first version) you are told you will return to it eventually and you, unsurprisingly, return to it and the game tells you there will be more to come.
After the Xianzhou Luofu arc (the game’s second major arc), you are once again shown and told that even if the main part is done you will come back to it eventually and it isn’t the last you will hear of those characters.
It is a genuine relief to feel like the characters this game has been trying to make me care about for a long while aren’t just going to vanish forever like they did in Genshin Impact. I can only hope from the bottom of my heart that writing this won’t age terribly but the lack of decisive farewells and the presence of purposefully unresolved scenario points make me optimistic.

Part of that relief comes from how compelling and pleasant the game has managed to make its storylines and characters.


I want to go back to Belobog because it was amazing to follow the story of people who are doing everything they can to survive in the face of an ice age.
I want to go back to the Space Station because it’s delightful to see morally dubious scientists who are research-driven in the most hyper-fixated way.
I want to go back to the Xianzhou Luofu because learning about their past and current struggles was amazing and, in terms of my own personal writing, inspiring in some ways.

That’s not to say HSR’s story writing is phenomenal or the best thing I have ever seen in a work of fiction. While the game is usually very consistent there are parts that sometimes fall a bit flat and some pacing issues due to the inherent structure of a live-service game.
But at the end of the day, I’d call it a very good story because of something that has always been MiHoYo’s strong suit.

Lore and world-building.

I wouldn’t say any of HI3/GI/HSR has a phenomenal story but they’re very good at world-building.
It’s why their latest two games, Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, have a ton of collectibles that are always consistent amongst themselves and do an amazing job at painting the different factions and events that transpired prior to the game’s events.

I say collectibles, but it’s in everything. One of the main endgame modes has a ton of lore that isn’t just “here read this” and has you interact, equipments have large story bits – some of which are vital to some characters’ past or understanding, sometimes even random interactable elements like a giant egg among dozens will have a very important lore bit that was otherwise just hinted at.

It’s the game’s double-edged kind of writing: some will despise having to read around a bunch to learn more, some like me will love being able to make a ton of theories in their mind and have it rewarded in the form of affirmation of disproval when you look further into everything and learn more.

Some would say lore is worth little if it doesn’t contribute to the story but I disagree, to me lore is a very vital part of making a fictional universe feel like it’s something alive for more than just what the player sees. Some things precede you and everything you see is a result of it, while some other things precede you and are still going on but you – the player – personally have nothing to do with it and are just a bystander to it.

It all ties with a major component of what makes a story good: its actors, the characters.
And HSR’s characters are all very nice. There’s more than meets the eye for each and every one of them and storylines around them don’t magically resolve just because there was something to observe them.

It is something that I found lacking in Genshin Impact’s writing for most characters that I appreciate. Everyone has their own demons and struggles, and everyone goes on about them in their own ways. Some characters cannot move on, some reluctantly move on, some move on with apprehension while some move on with a smile.

But at the end of the day, it’s about them as characters and not about how the main character may or may not have a hand in it. They all stand nicely on their own and have a past that you weren’t a part of that you wouldn’t organically learn about in a random conversation.

The game isn’t shy to let you learn about them directly though, characters that would be relevant in something specific find a way to be relevant there and you just spend more and more time with them around and honestly? It’s really, really nice.

What helps is that the cast feels somewhat diverse in many ways, be it personality or age groups. As much as I love Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact, their cast for the most part was teenagers and young adults with very few exceptions of which most were not playable.
HSR from the get-go already has many characters who are, while not old, definitely not young.

Welt, a character directly coming from Honkai Impact 3rd, is not necessarily old physically but is very much old in terms of age and the game treats it that way: he’s the “kind of old guy with nerd hobbies if you look into him enough.”

Yukong is canonically an old person (in relative anime-adjacent media terms physically, but is very much treated as near retirement in-universe). Natasha is your local underworld doctor who embodies the very idea of a thirty-or-so years-old woman who is exhausted and overworked. Blade is the emotionally unresponsive grown man, etc.

In general, the cast is just older and thus feels more mature for the story inclusion. Some of it heavily ties into their characterization and story developments but I won’t go in-depth about it to avoid spoilers because they just so happen to have some of the best personal quests.

Characters stand on their own enough and they’re all a product of their environment rather than having the same kind of character everywhere. Sure, someone like Guinaifen and March 7th (that is a character’s name yes) may look like they would be too similar at a glance, but their circumstances are different enough that they end up being very different characters with different aspirations and themes.

Of course, there are some exceptions to “every character stands on their own” but it is for a reason, and it is Himeko, Welt, and Luocha.
The three of them are more or less directly involved with Honkai Impact 3rd (Welt directly is from it, HSR Himeko has yet to be majorly relevant in the story but is directly mentioned in HI3, and Luocha is yet unknown but is associated with another character from HI3 that is canonically in HSR).

Not everyone is a good person either, which was one of my initial worries that also proved unfounded. Some have large co-dependent issues even if they are kind, some are downright sociopathic, some do a lot of harm even if they do not care about it that much. The fact that I have seen people complain about specific characters being “morally horrible” (for whatever that could mean on social media) is a good enough sign in my book.

To talk about the artistic side of the game (because I can’t just keep bringing up story and characters for another few thousand words) I would say it’s… a mixed bag, with some mediocrity laced with the absolute high points.

Visually the game is stellar. You can tell they have spent years working on this kind of model for characters and environment and given the patch cycle this game burdened itself with I am amazed at how consistent they have been with some of it.
The character designs are… conflicting but overall, decently made. They’re good enough to tell you various things about a character save for the relatively glaring issue: the designs of the Xianzhou Luofu. Those can be relatively summed up into word tags that account for 80% of female designs: upside down heart pattern below the neck, detached sleeves, uncovered back and/or sides, asymmetrical ornaments here and there and then something attached to one thigh or hip.
It was great the first few times, but it has overstayed its welcome visually and I hope they’ll receive the overwhelming feedback in that regard.
Part of the good news with designs is that characters are not tied down by weapons like they are in some games. As such you can have a character be on the high-damage path and use… a book while he throws chalk at enemies, or someone just throwing fireworks and explosives.

With all that being said, the environments on the other hand are beautifully made and are diverse enough to amaze you with every zone when you look into it for a moment, without any that stick out negatively.

Belobog has this very steampunk aspect that feels inspired by Frostpunk to an extent that gets better with every zone. True to its identity though, everything is austere and small. You can tell strife has been on this place at a glance and what isn’t hard cold stone is simply frozen.
The thing is, none of its assets are shared with the environments you will find on the Space Station and the Xianzhou Luofu.
Herta Space Station is exactly what you would expect: it’s a space station that looks futuristic. There are no odd turns and everything is smooth, giving off the impression of something very formal with no odd turns in corridors that was simply made for research (because it was).
The Xianzhou Luofu is, to me, the best visual style they have ever made for a place. It can be summarized as “Space Republic of China” and it is a delightful sight. There are very traditional Chinese elements to the architecture and everything but when you look closer into things then you realize that anything technological at all is organic. The couriers are organic origami-like birds, the vehicles – starskiffs – are organically grown plants that look like sailing ships that instead float in the air.
And all of this is plentiful. The Xianzhou Luofu is meant to represent a very “alive” place and so you will constantly see Starskiffs passing you by when it isn’t replaced by the hustle and bustle of merchants and passersbys.

The best part of all this is that it ties into the soundtrack. Herta Space Station has very relaxed lo-fi music in its general hub but leans heavily into synth/atmospheric techno in everything else.
The Xianzhou on the other hand is a very odd mix of eastern instruments with more modern aspects to it that sometimes add more dynamic modern beats into it.
And finally, the entire reason I wanted to talk about the music despite not having that grand of a musical background: Belobog’s music. And I can’t recommend Jonathan Barouch’s video essay over the topic enough.

For people who aren’t in the mood for a 30 minutes video essay on music, here is a summary of Belobog’s soundtrack.
It is for the vast majority low-sounding guitar and plucked strings and when it isn’t, you instead get this very austere music that entirely does without any of the string instruments to instead replace it with a synth and bowed strings.
And it’s all very, very intentional. The entire music is a set-up for some moments that are accompanied by music later down the line. The entirety of Belobog’s musical pieces follow leitmotifs that are handled brilliantly and make what would be an otherwise “great but no more” soundtrack something phenomenal, and the same goes for some story beats it accompanies.
The first time you go through this moment is honestly unforgettable.

MiHoYo and HOYO-MIX know how to do video game music. It’s not a secret considering how good Genshin Impact’s music was (and to an extent so was Honkai Impact 3rd’s) but while Genshin Impact approaches a very orchestral approach, HSR doesn’t so I wouldn’t directly compare them to say one is better than the other.


There are two more points that I really wish to mention because one of them is dear to me, and the other is worth mentioning to give credit where it is due.


The first is: this game is very, very queer. It’s not a surprise given how unapologetic Honkai Impact 3rd was about having canon lesbians despite backlash and how it was somehow even less apologetic about it in GGZ. Of course, in HSR, it rarely goes to the point of having two men or women profess their love to one another directly to their faces.
Why do I mention it in particular? Because it’s a Chinese company most of the romantic aspects of the game are harder to find than in plain sight and are not hidden when you look into it.
There is a major female character who calls a woman her beloved, but it’s in a Light Cone (the equivalent of weapons in the game).
Two female characters are very much in love with each other, but you don’t flat-out have a scene that confirms it. Instead, they were canon lesbians in their HI3 counterparts and constantly talk about each other.
One of the main characters of HSR doesn’t directly mention that they love a certain person, but instead, every achievement in the game featuring her and the other person talks about how they are meant for each other and a very important quest relating to her is downright named after a work about a woman professing her love to another person that doesn’t recognise them.
The game doesn’t shy away from this, because many characters are associated romantically with another character. Sometimes it’s in heavy subtext where the only way to deny it is to be homophobic and channel one’s inner historian to say “They were very good friends, roommates even”. At other times it’s more subtle than that and you’ll need to rely on media literacy to remind yourself that it is a Chinese game from a company that got in trouble with their government in the past for multiple occasions.


Lastly, there is something worth noting about HSR that I feel the need to mention.
Their community support is probably the best I have seen in many years (granted it isn’t a high bar given that my main live-service games were GBF and FFXIV). Every time there is significant feedback or negative criticism, they have patched the game for it.

They made dailies easier and better, they increased the Trailblaze Power (the game’s stamina resource), they rearranged some story bits, they added a ton of QoL changes to everything, and now they’re adding more and more content with said changes.


I can’t stress it enough but do not play this game if you are liable to fall for predatory gacha tactics.

But overall? This is one of the better games I played in the last two years, and for now it shows a lot of promise for what is already — and probably, the best gacha game made in a long time and a very refreshing arrival in the scene of turn-based games, a scene that was seeing a drop of popularity ever since Square Enix decided it wasn't popular enough to entertain making games that fit the genre.

There’s a reason it became my hyper fixation.

Love it. But.

Have you ever seen something with so much work and love put into it and then wondered why it's presented in the form it is. Like, as if the form it's presented in is the result of necessity or the times rather than because of what the creators actually wanted?

I ask this because that's what this game is for me. Honkai Star Rail is very engaging, genuinely fun (which is rare for a gacha game), and well produced. At the time of writing, 2.2 came out just a few weeks ago and I really liked it. A lot. Lived in my head absolutely rent free ever since. Great story, great twists, and lots of content (in that patch). But.

It's honestly frustrating that it's a gacha game because this is genuinely a retail experience I would pay for. I say this because I think the game is genuinely worse for being a gacha. Each character is interesting and unique but god forbid you want to build them in some experimental way because if that doesn't work out and you have to rebuild them it could take days or weeks to actually do so. Characters being "in your party" in the narrative and either being nowhere to be found or becoming trial characters just for that bit feels so jarring because a lot of the time the game actually does feel like a full retail release so when someone goes with you you have that "oh right they aren't actually with me" moment which frankly just feels like a missed opportunity. Values and substats are conflated to force grinding which can be an RNG nightmare when the game could just be a much more fun experience if it wasn't constantly fighting for your money and retention.

I'm being so genuine when I say I love this game but every single problem I have with it ultimately goes back to it being a gacha and that is the most frustrating feeling in the world. It's good! I recommend it! But a lot of the times I honestly wish it were the same quality as a lot of those other gacha games out there where the only people that really get goaded into paying (decent amounts) in them are simps rather than people who want to build fun and interesting comps with the fun and interesting character that's available for 2-3 weeks.

It's frustrating.

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?

It's a gacha, so be careful, but with that being said, this is honestly a pretty good game. The gameplay is simple but compelling, a turn based RPG that doesn't fall in the typical mobile grind thanks to a linear plot and some good designed bosses, while also being easy enough to play on the go. The story I played (Jarilo VI + a couple side quests) was surprisingly deep even if I don't like how it ends, the characters are easy to like thanks to a good writing/voice acting and a couple of them have optional content that you may like more than the main plot (Shout out to Pascal). Honestly the only problems are the ones tied to the genre, microtransactions, battle passes, resources, etc. As a result, the game demands a lot of your time and that's why I stop playing it, not because I get bored, but because I want to play other things. So again, great game, but be careful