Star Rail benefits significantly from great production values and entering a genre where its contemporaries don't outclass it so severely as to make it less worth playing.

The music is unique, the visuals are great, and the systems are solid enough (if a bit simple). It also remains snappy while still having excellent animations, the game is fairly high QOL when not making you grind excessively at the current endgame. The Simulated Universe content in particular might be some of the best content in a gacha game I've played; while it's balanced a little wonky I think it’s a fun mode with a decent amount of variety. I also have enjoyed the story enough; I think near the end of the Belobog content up until what’s current it gets a bit weaker and mostly stays there, but it’s fine and still has some fun characters to bump elbows with.

Most of the rest here is a mixed bag. I like the main plot and cast, but it is surrounded with so much lore fluff and excessive exposition for any given idea that it ends up decreasing the impact of the whole thing. I hate to bag too much on it for this because people tend to get a bit hyperbolic about similar points, but even as a seasoned JRPG enjoyer, the amount of nonsensical proper nouns here really is a bit much, as is the amount of supertext that explains absolutely nothing and compounds that effect. The game has a love for its own universe, which is occasionally a blessing, but often it just dilutes the pertinent text with lengthy optional lore dump after lore dump together, even moreso when it decides to be a hit-and-miss Funny And Quirky game in tandem.

Gacha mechanics here are also everything you’d expect, it rewards you constantly for every little thing to make you think that it’s more giving or “fair” than most gacha when in reality it’s about as manipulative and awful as any other in that regard. That said F2P has been viable enough in my experience.

In the end, I’m feeling mildly positive on it. I’ve enjoyed it like I enjoy a bit of junk food from time to time. I periodically have the desire to play it when I have some time to burn and don't wanna play something more engaged, and that's more love than I've ever had for Genshin. A nice little run through dailies and Simulated Universe, maybe a little bit of grinding. I guess that’s all that matters in the end.

(Updated 5/25 after clearing all the current story content)

Reviewed on May 06, 2023


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