I have trouble articulating my feelings towards Genshin Impact. It is, by far, the game that I've spent the most amount of hours in since picking the game up nearly 2 years ago as of writing this, clocking in at just about 2200 hours into the game. The only game that beats it out in terms of how many hours I've put into it would be CS:GO, but it's not a fair comparison considering I've been playing that since 2014.
There are a lot of aspects about Genshin Impact that I absolutely adore. I love the visuals, I love the characters, I love the gameplay, I really love the story, and I really love exploring the massive in-game world that keeps expanding with constant updates. Believe me, I really love Genshin Impact, else I wouldn't be playing this game or streaming it either.
However, there are so, so many things working against this game that the developers - HoYoverse - don't want to do anything to fix, which makes this game a very tough sell for any new player.
By now I'm sure you've heard it all. The gacha system is horrible. There's a lack of proper endgame content. Story quests for individual characters are lazy and non-sensical, the artifact system truly is horrendously awful, etc. - and the sad thing is that it's all true.
Over the last few months (since around September 2022), I've fallen out of love with Genshin Impact. I was already on the edge with the game, as I have been starting to get just slightly bored of things, but there was one catalyst, one particular event that lead me (and many of my friends) to lose interest in Genshin Impact, being how the developer essentially confirmed in an interview that they have no plans for any meaningful long-term content, or anything to work for to the dedicated players of this game (like me). And that's what gets me about this game. The developer basically said to the face of players like us that they don't care. You can read the mentioned interview here, trust me it's very infuriating to read.
HoYoverse's strategy with Genshin Impact is to constantly bring in new players to the game with its flashy characters, amazing-looking trailers, amazing production values and just overall great music. But they don't care about keeping those players interested in the game. They really don't care if those players end up sticking around or not. They just want the player numbers and the profit that comes from the 1 in 10 people that spend money on the game.
It's a sad state of affairs for this game. Credit where credit is due, I genuinely enjoy the gameplay of Genshin Impact. It's rather dynamic using all the 7 elements at your disposal and letting you experiment by building characters and putting them into different teams to see if they work with each other or not. The one Achilles' heel the gameplay for this game is the artifact system. It truly is awful, bringing RNG on top of RNG in order to get the build you want. I can't articulate it into words how bad it truly is, so I will let a Genshin Impact YouTuber known as Vars II explain it for me in great detail.
The story of Genshin Impact is also written rather well for the most part. And for the sake of things, I'm only really talking about the Archon Quests (aka "main story") of this game. There are many things that add to the "allure" of this game's story, enough small details sprinkled in that people have devoted hundreds, if not thousands of hours speculating and theorizing on small details of the story. And that, to me, is a sign of a healthy story with healthy writing. Except Chapter 2, which is, thus far - the worst chapter in the game, as the pacing for it is wildly inconsistent.
That's the one part I don't like about Genshin's storytelling - the pacing. The Prologue & Chapter 1 are really there to get you sorted and used to the game itself - to learn all the different mechanics, explore around the world, etc., thus their pacing is rather slow, which is good as you want to make the player feel comfortable and welcome throughout it all. Chapter 2, however, throws that all out the window. The first act is genuinely great, following a similar style and structure as the Prologue & Chapter 1, but it begins going downhill starting in Act 2 of the story. Starts out really good only to then wildly increase the pacing after the first cutscene and essentially bomb-rush the rest of the chapter afterwards, ending in the most underwhelming and rushed campaign I don't think I've experienced since playing NFS Carbon in 2006. Clearly they took that to heart, because in Chapter 3 (the latest chapter so far) - they slowed things down considerably again, making it super confusing to follow along with things at times. But hey, chapter 3 itself was genuinely great, so I'm glad they at least listened to feedback.
Outside of the Archon Quests however, the rest of the stories and side quests you can do are...awful. Some of them are dreadfully written even. But what bugs me about them is that there are some World Quests that can span easily about ~20 hours, and none of them are voiced in the least, nor have any special events (like special music, for example) placed in them, making them lack any impact or permanence in the player's memory. A few of them have some memorable moments, but for the life of me I cannot remember most of them after I complete them, unless a theory-crafter brings it up while discussing this game's plot. They're just so incredibly forgetful and, most of the time, meaningless.
If you can't tell, my feelings and thoughts on this game are incredibly mixed. I'll be honest - I do NOT recommend this game for new players. I really don't. Because once you exhaust all the content that this game has, I truthfully mean it in the most literal sense - there is nothing to do. I mean it, there is absolutely nothing to do once you complete the Archon Quest up to whatever point it is by the time you're reading this, and you've done all the Story + World Quests. Sure, this content is about 400-500 hours long, and that's great for those looking to get into this game on paper, but for a game of this style you will catch up with everything very quickly and be left in the exact same boat as everyone else. Starved for new content, wishing you had something to do in the game. You can see this with the handful of Genshin Impact YouTubers & streamers that are still out there. Most of them are just doing character challenge videos or doing misc. content, such as just building random teams and doing random things with said teams. It's all monotonous and boring content that doesn't have any permanence or long-term watchability.
I love Genshin Impact, I really do. I will continue playing it and I'll probably continue to stream & make content for it. But I will not be caught dead recommending this game to anyone. I'm really sorry to say.
There are a lot of aspects about Genshin Impact that I absolutely adore. I love the visuals, I love the characters, I love the gameplay, I really love the story, and I really love exploring the massive in-game world that keeps expanding with constant updates. Believe me, I really love Genshin Impact, else I wouldn't be playing this game or streaming it either.
However, there are so, so many things working against this game that the developers - HoYoverse - don't want to do anything to fix, which makes this game a very tough sell for any new player.
By now I'm sure you've heard it all. The gacha system is horrible. There's a lack of proper endgame content. Story quests for individual characters are lazy and non-sensical, the artifact system truly is horrendously awful, etc. - and the sad thing is that it's all true.
Over the last few months (since around September 2022), I've fallen out of love with Genshin Impact. I was already on the edge with the game, as I have been starting to get just slightly bored of things, but there was one catalyst, one particular event that lead me (and many of my friends) to lose interest in Genshin Impact, being how the developer essentially confirmed in an interview that they have no plans for any meaningful long-term content, or anything to work for to the dedicated players of this game (like me). And that's what gets me about this game. The developer basically said to the face of players like us that they don't care. You can read the mentioned interview here, trust me it's very infuriating to read.
HoYoverse's strategy with Genshin Impact is to constantly bring in new players to the game with its flashy characters, amazing-looking trailers, amazing production values and just overall great music. But they don't care about keeping those players interested in the game. They really don't care if those players end up sticking around or not. They just want the player numbers and the profit that comes from the 1 in 10 people that spend money on the game.
It's a sad state of affairs for this game. Credit where credit is due, I genuinely enjoy the gameplay of Genshin Impact. It's rather dynamic using all the 7 elements at your disposal and letting you experiment by building characters and putting them into different teams to see if they work with each other or not. The one Achilles' heel the gameplay for this game is the artifact system. It truly is awful, bringing RNG on top of RNG in order to get the build you want. I can't articulate it into words how bad it truly is, so I will let a Genshin Impact YouTuber known as Vars II explain it for me in great detail.
The story of Genshin Impact is also written rather well for the most part. And for the sake of things, I'm only really talking about the Archon Quests (aka "main story") of this game. There are many things that add to the "allure" of this game's story, enough small details sprinkled in that people have devoted hundreds, if not thousands of hours speculating and theorizing on small details of the story. And that, to me, is a sign of a healthy story with healthy writing. Except Chapter 2, which is, thus far - the worst chapter in the game, as the pacing for it is wildly inconsistent.
That's the one part I don't like about Genshin's storytelling - the pacing. The Prologue & Chapter 1 are really there to get you sorted and used to the game itself - to learn all the different mechanics, explore around the world, etc., thus their pacing is rather slow, which is good as you want to make the player feel comfortable and welcome throughout it all. Chapter 2, however, throws that all out the window. The first act is genuinely great, following a similar style and structure as the Prologue & Chapter 1, but it begins going downhill starting in Act 2 of the story. Starts out really good only to then wildly increase the pacing after the first cutscene and essentially bomb-rush the rest of the chapter afterwards, ending in the most underwhelming and rushed campaign I don't think I've experienced since playing NFS Carbon in 2006. Clearly they took that to heart, because in Chapter 3 (the latest chapter so far) - they slowed things down considerably again, making it super confusing to follow along with things at times. But hey, chapter 3 itself was genuinely great, so I'm glad they at least listened to feedback.
Outside of the Archon Quests however, the rest of the stories and side quests you can do are...awful. Some of them are dreadfully written even. But what bugs me about them is that there are some World Quests that can span easily about ~20 hours, and none of them are voiced in the least, nor have any special events (like special music, for example) placed in them, making them lack any impact or permanence in the player's memory. A few of them have some memorable moments, but for the life of me I cannot remember most of them after I complete them, unless a theory-crafter brings it up while discussing this game's plot. They're just so incredibly forgetful and, most of the time, meaningless.
If you can't tell, my feelings and thoughts on this game are incredibly mixed. I'll be honest - I do NOT recommend this game for new players. I really don't. Because once you exhaust all the content that this game has, I truthfully mean it in the most literal sense - there is nothing to do. I mean it, there is absolutely nothing to do once you complete the Archon Quest up to whatever point it is by the time you're reading this, and you've done all the Story + World Quests. Sure, this content is about 400-500 hours long, and that's great for those looking to get into this game on paper, but for a game of this style you will catch up with everything very quickly and be left in the exact same boat as everyone else. Starved for new content, wishing you had something to do in the game. You can see this with the handful of Genshin Impact YouTubers & streamers that are still out there. Most of them are just doing character challenge videos or doing misc. content, such as just building random teams and doing random things with said teams. It's all monotonous and boring content that doesn't have any permanence or long-term watchability.
I love Genshin Impact, I really do. I will continue playing it and I'll probably continue to stream & make content for it. But I will not be caught dead recommending this game to anyone. I'm really sorry to say.