this game held me in a chokehold for years after it released

but moving on from it, i can't really say the magic of what originally enticed me to play it is there. the character designs still are amazing, the environment art is beautiful, the main story is fairly interesting and the game boasts a great OST.

the problem comes from the game's systems i believe; while the character designs are great there's only like 5 model bases for them and after a while every design looks copy-pasted onto the base, losing some of their individuality; the environment in-game reuses many textures and cuts corners in order to be playable on mobile as well, leading to brand new areas looking bland; any story content aside from the main storyline is so OBNOXIOUS to go through, especially event stories. i'd say the soundtrack is the only thing unaffected by the monotony of the game, but looking at the albums you quickly realize how you only hear 10% of the music in game, as you often go through the same areas, repeating the same tracks, and you kill everything so fast that the battle music doesn't have time to ramp up.

obviously, other gameplay mechanics such as the grind ultimately led me to burn out, but i won't go in depth as many others already have done it. it was just disappointing after trying out HSR to see that hoyoverse could improve on those things yet chose not to bring genshin up to date