This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a meme. This isn’t a copypasta or some stupid shit. This is a genuine cry for help. I can’t listen to anything but touhou music. At first I thought it was just video game music, or instrumental music, but no; even other game songs that I used to love are meaningless to me now. Songs from when I was a child, songs that previously had genuine emotional meaning and were attached to precious memories, are utterly worthless to me now – and I can’t enjoy any new music, either.

It’s not even that “mOdErN mUsIc iS bAd,” I mean I literally can’t reprogram my brain to pump out even the slightest amount of dopamine – or frankly any other chemical – at the sound and experience of music I’ve never heard before. Bands and musicians that are almost universally well-regarded for music that will be remembered throughout human history, and perhaps even afterwards, just sound like blank noise to me. I tried listening to Queen and had to stop because my stomach acids started boiling and I felt a migraine coming.

It’s not even just a matter of genre. I listen to remixes of touhou tracks of all kinds of genres, with and without lyrics, and I love every single solitary second of it. The sheer ecstasy that the climax of Starry Mountain of Tenma brings me is unrivaled by even my most tender and intimate memories.

My emotions are entirely controlled by what touhou song is currently playing, either out loud or in my head – and if I’m forced to hear any other kind of music in a public setting, like the playlist my bosses run at the restaurant I work at, my mental state gradually deteriorates until I’m forced to listen to fucking Cirno’s Perfect Math Class lest I suffer a complete mental breakdown in public. I was caught in my car after work singing Lyrica Live’s cover of Necrofantasia by the guy I have a crush on, and I nearly drove my car into the fucking ocean. I think he might’ve been recording me. It hasn’t been brought up by any of my coworkers but that doesn’t mean they don’t know.

My friends have desperately tried to pull me out, to introduce me to other genres, I even joined a fucking punk rock band for a little bit in the hopes that it’d recondition my brain, but I just found myself drumming the solos from Pristine Beat and Sailor of Time in every song we played. Nobody even noticed, they thought I came up with it on the fly, they called me a professional drummer in the making, but I knew I was just a hack.

I even hear touhou music in my fucking dreams. Literally, just last night I had a dream in which was hosting a fancy yacht party with all my friends and I could perfectly hear Jynx’s remaster of Plastic Mind blaring in the background, the ZUNpets pouring into the very ethereal essence of my soul as the dreamscape laid my inner desires bare.

I’m listening to 17.5’s version of Egoistic Flowers as I write this; I can feel Allah’s love coursing through me. Maybe he’ll take pity on me – for no other god seems to care.

Many would instantly assume this game is dogshit on the basis that it's gacha, I'm calling this game dogshit because it's dogshit, plain and simple.

Look, Genshin and HSR are guilty pleasure games, so while I enjoy them, I also loathe them at the same time. Gacha is a disease that taints anything it touches, but I enjoy those games despite the model.

Hearing Wuthering Waves was a Genshin competitor, but with good combat, my interest was piqued. Genshin's combat, while interesting in its own right, hardly leaves any room for skill expression. Having now played a decent amount, it's clear that Wuthering Waves exists only as a decent combat system, the rest of the game attached is so abysmal, there is no realm in which anyone could even remotely compare it to Genshin. That's not to say it's not a Genshin clone, that much is certain, Wuthering Waves apes Genshin at literally every conceivable design decision. When you actually compare them as games though, it's the coughing baby vs. hydrogen bomb meme incarnate. Every single aspect of Genshin bar combat is superior and it's not even remotely close.

Looks-wise, Genshin is miles ahead of Wuthering Waves, more so from an art direction standpoint. Genshin is downright beautiful, especially in the newer areas of the game. Wuthering Waves' world is lifeless and dull, there has yet to be a single locale that has stood out or garnered even an ounce of recognition for its appearance. While a lot more subjective, character design is also much better in Genshin, I have yet to see a single character in Wuthering Waves that is not incredibly generic manhua slop with very little variety.

With the writing, Genshin is definitely not known for its storytelling prowess, but frankly, anything is better than the total shitshow that is Wuthering Waves. For starters, there's no beginning, you're just dropped into this dull world and suddenly a gang of generic waifus start salivating at your very existence, literally zero reason given whatsoever. You're summoned to the capital to meet the leader of the city, again, no reason whatsoever given, but when you get there, she's inexplicably on a fucking trip and will be gone for 3 days even though she just summoned you not 10 minutes prior?!? But wait! She's got a puzzle for you to solve in her absence which is just fuc-... I wrote more, but deleted because the point was dragging, the story is complete dogshit, we'll just leave it at that.

The open-world, oh boy the open-world, where to start... the problem is too systemic with Wuthering Waves to completely isolate and fully explain, but the process of exploration and navigating the world is just So. Fucking. Boring. The root cause is still likely the look of the game, the world is so dull, the enemies, while unique, aren't visually interesting. The puzzles are ripped straight out of early Genshin (when the game was a lot less interesting) and feel very unpolished. There are thousands of intangible details that just feel off, like a very cheap imitation. The reason I still play Genshin is because I enjoy exploring the beautiful locales that each come with new gimmicks, puzzles and enemies. Nothing is too mechanically difficult, so it's a meandering and meditative experience to explore the map. Since every aspect of the game is so well-crafted, it's effortless to explore every little nook and cranny even if it's not that experientially rich.

Even the combat isn't so clear-cut that it completely leaves Genshin in the dust. Yes, Wuthering Waves is much more frenetic, relying on twitch reactions during combat; it's deeply satisfying to parry and dodge bosses, stringing through characters using the intro/outro skills and animation cancels. The combat system allows for a lot more skill expression and as such, it's definitely the highlight of the game. That said, Genshin isn't necessarily horrid when it comes to combat, the reaction-based nature of combat is certainly less high-octane, but interesting, nonetheless. The problem lies in overworld enemy difficulty, nothing in Genshin is strong enough that a moderately built team can't absolutely eviscerate. I have yet to reach endgame, so I can't say for certain, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Wuthering Waves will run into this same issue. Outside of endgame bosses and game modes, you'll steamroll everything, resulting in the same problem Genshin has arrived at. Boss fights will likely always be superior in Wuthering Waves, hooray, it's got that going for it!

I could go down the line and list every little aspect, the worldbuilding, the character writing, the fucking music... it's all so much better in Genshin. Maybe it's unfair to compare Genshin and Wuthering Waves, Genshin is making billions and is closing in on its 4-year anniversary. That's what I would say, if Wuthering Waves didn't blatantly copy Genshin so egregiously at every single turn. If you're going to directly steal even pointless minute design decisions like arbitrarily discounting monthly pulls, you're opening yourself up for the comparisons, sorry, I don't make the rules.

At the end of the day, Wuthering Waves is a gacha which inherently stacks the deck against it; Genshin is able to overcome that blight with the competency it exudes at every turn, Wuthering Waves not so much. In constantly grasping and awkwardly trying to mimic the success of Genshin, Wuthering Waves has doomed itself to always live in its shadow, forever the "Genshin clone with slightly better combat" - a pathetic existence.