(W.I.P.)
From the perspective of someone who's been playing from release until now, this game is extremely overrated.

Genshin Impact is a gacha game that disguises itself as a "big AAA experience", with horrible predatory practices regarding monetization and terrible design choices. I've definitely had a lot of fun with this game, especially grinding and doing random stuff with a few of my friends when we run out of resin (the energy counter of this game that regenerates with time). That being said, I cannot recommend it to anyone.

Gameplay
Genshin is an open world RPG with a pretty enjoyable gameplay loop where, similiar to BOTW, you explore a vast and beautifully designed world where you'll occasionally encounter either enemy camps or overworld puzzles, both awarding a treasure chest upon completion full of items, Mora ("money") and Primogems (the ingame currency used in the gacha). These can be used to upgrade your characters and gear. This is definitely the best part of the game and where I had more fun, just exploring and taking in the gorgeous scenery while finding loot along the way. However it's grown so big that it becomes repetitive at times with it's crazy amount of puzzle mechanics that they've introduced along the years (the majority being unfun), specially with the desert area from Sumeru, a wasteland with almost nothing to find, boring visuals and just straight up horrible puzzles and quests. Despite this, the recent areas have been pretty good.

Combat
The combat revolves around an elemental reaction system, you'll need to mix and match different elements to maximize your damage. This system is pretty shallow and limited compared to other RPGs, be it Monster Hunter, SMT or even Pokémon, there are just a few reactions you are able to perform with the seven elements (Pyro, Hydro, Cryo, Electro, Anemo, Geo and Dendro) with some being extremely powercrept (Anemo and Geo straight up don't mix and produce the same reactions everytime). You trigger these by using each characters skill and burst, a quick activation elemental attack and a cutscene that usually does something. There are regular neutral attacks too but if they're not influenced by skills or have elemental properties they're pretty much useless. Most of the time you'll be activating skills and bursts back to back and spamming regular attacks, rendering the combat to just spamming and occasionally dodging, that is if you don't have a shield character wich makes gameplay even more boring than before.

Characters
They're for the most part the focus of the game. You'll be grinding to make your character stronger to grind even more. They're obtainable for the most part on the Gacha banner meaning most of them are pretty limited. Each one requires A LOT of investement and eat a lot of resources to just level up, even having permanent upgrades only obtainable through rolling the character multiple times on their banner that may make or break them.