Review: Genshin Impact (Part 2)
July 15, 2022
[CONTAINS SPOILERS]
In Part 1 I wrote about the main reasons why you should probably play Genshin Impact, and in the second and final part of the review, we’ll dive into more of its nuances and places where it could still use improvements. Don’t let anything here stop you, but just keep in mind Genshin is literally a work-in-progress. It still has a lot of quirks, and it’s fixing some of those as it is growing, so that’s something to look forward to.
STORY
So, for a free-to-play game, there’s certainly a ton of playable characters, many of them obtainable for free, and a lot of free-roam areas with new areas continuously being added to the game. The same pattern repeats for the lore too. It’s obvious Hoyoverse doesn’t lack ambitions when it comes to building things on huge scales, but whether the game has the depths to match is whole another story.
Well, that’s not the case for the writing in this game. There’s definitely a lot of quests (I mean like hundreds), but the quality is subpar, lacks substance, and comes off repetitive at times. Having played Genshin for the past 6 months, I have been struck with numerous similar sob stories and dramatic twists that things have come to feel somewhat trite and uninteresting.
Storytelling Methods
My favorite gaming YouTuber mentions this a lot in her reviews of a game: show, don’t tell.
What it means is instead of outright stating facts, the storyteller opts to show character or world attributes via actions and reactions. While “telling” is unavoidable, effective storywriting utilizes “showing” to build a character and their personality or to create an ambience, in addition to concise, no-bullsh*t “telling”.
Instead of doing just that, 90% of the time, Genshin states facts in walls of text outright in the dialogue, leaving little up to player’s own discovery or imagination. This actually doesn’t make for a very nice experience.
Part of what makes adventure games fun is that through exploration, some discoveries leave a firm impression on the player so they can form their own opinions and conclusions. Too much ‘telling’ robs the player of such opportunity.
Video: Sangonomiya Kokomi’s first appearance in the story
The most egregious example I can think of [SPOILER WARNING] is how later in the Inazuma arc, the game straight-up says that Sangonomiya Kokomi is a brilliant strategist, but the Kokomi we see doesn’t really scream “evil smart”. She gives out ration instructions to her subordinates and apparently she keeps a little notebook with solutions for every situations, and that’s about it
Apparently, parts of her character are inspired by Zhuge Liang (诸葛 亮), a famous millitary strategist of the Shu (蜀国) in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义), but we don’t see Kokomi deploying any sort of clever battle tricks like lure, trap, or misdirection in her army’s fight against the Shogunate. Kujou Sara, the leader of the Shogunate is said to be not super smart, so it was a wasted opportunity to not show the Shogunate soldiers getting tricked by Kokomi’s Flawless Strategy (instead of whatever this sad passive talent is right now).
It happens more often than this, however. Frequently, when the Traveler arrives at a new region, someone would dump a ton of information in dialogues on them. If Paimon were also present, she would literally reiterate everything but dumbed-down, effectively doubling the time it takes to explain one thing.
Like I said telling is unavoidable, but good storywriting strikes a delicate balance between describing directly and indirectly. In many cases, Genshin’s storywriting leaves players wanting because of this.
Btw, this section is named after a quest in Genshin that ridicules the storywriting practice where the author constantly adds new characters or new abilities to current characters in order to stretch out the plot line. Ironic much?
“Dialogue Prison” & Illusion of Choice
Someone really clever termed Genshin’s dialogue-stun-lock behavior as ”dialogue prison” and I can’t agree more. Essentially, the player can’t skip the dialogue until at least a few seconds later and once a certain % of the dialogue has been displayed, wasting a player’s time even when they clearly don’t want to read the dialogue.
During dialogues, the player is usually presented with two choices, but it’s often the case that the two choices mean the same (“are you okay” vs “are you alright”…just ???), and more egregiously, there’s a few times when the two options are actually one sentence split into two halves. Sometimes the dialogue options are “……” and “…………”, which …ironically I have nothing to say to that.
Side Quests
Hoyoverse has the ambition to build huge things for Genshin and it shows, but side quests is one area where Genshin has the number but not the quality. Many sidequests are fetch quests asking the player to run errands or to eliminate some random mobs. Sometimes due to the trite ‘Rule of Three’, you go to three locations and carry out the same task thrice, making side quests potential time sinks.
Quest System
The cutscenes in Genshin are beautiful, but you can only watch them once.
A common criticism of Genshin is that none of the quests are replayable, except for hangout events. Once you finish the quests, currently the only way to re-experience them is by watching on YouTube or by starting a new account.
The closest thing to a replay feature is the Archives’ quest dialogue, which only offers text and voiceover. Where’s the beautifully animated and rendered cutscenes? I’m sure it took them a lot of effort, so why make them available one-time only?
ENDGAME
The global leveling system in Genshin is called Adventure Rank, currently maxing out at AR 60. The player levels up by accumulating EXP from opening chests, unlocking Teleport Waypoints, completing quests and daily commissions — pretty much everything. Before AR 50, a player would slowly but steadily ascend through the ranks, but upon reaching AR 55, the process would suddenly grind to a halt. That is because the required amount of EXP would spike ten-fold. This abrupt spike was added on the cusp of version 2.0, where many difficult open-world enemies are also added, because apparently the players became too powerful.
But even way before reaching AR 55, you have already explored most, if not all, of the open world and completed most quests. Congratulations, welcome to the endgame.
An Empty World
The problem with Genshin’s map is that a player could burn through contents faster than new stuff are added. Chests opened? Gone forever. None of the playable characters can be found in the open map either — Xiangling isn’t working with her master at the Wanmin Restaurant, Qiqi isn’t behind Bubu Pharmacy’s counter, and Ningguang can’t be found at her Jade Chamber. Wouldn’t it be fun if you could spend your Mora on Yanfei for a piece of “legal advice”, or if you could ask Kujou Sara to spot you for a bow practice?
I think Red Dead Redemption 2 has done this part exceptionally well. There’s a ton of random ambushes and stranger encounters, and Arthur can camp out in the wild, hunt, fish, and even tame horses. He could find random people to play poker or five finger fillet with, or he could be taking a hot bath. Even if you weren’t in a rush to progress the main story, you have a ton of things to do.
Oh yeah, fishing. The fishing in Genshin is really boring. If it weren’t for the Catch, I wouldn’t have done it.
And then there’s the Resin system.
Resin is a type of self-refilling currency. A player gets 1 unit every 8 minutes, and it takes 21 hours, 20 minutes to go from 0 to full (160 units). Genshin does give estimates to how long it takes to refill (pictured).
There are various Resin-gated activities in the game like collecting boss drops (40 per run), farming Mora or character EXP books (20 per run), farming artifacts (20 per run), and collecting weekly boss rewards (30 per run, up to 3× a week). Because of the limit each day (well, 21.33 hours, but practically who’s going to log in more than twice a day?), the player would have to prioritize which resources they need the most. It doesn’t help that some materials can be farmed only on certain days.
For a casual player this isn’t an issue (my second account always has it full), but for those who need to quickly ascend a new character through the ranks and do not wish to pay for Resin, it’s going to be a long-term sore spot.
Daily/Weekly Grind
Everyday Genshin gives the player four assignments, each giving a small number of Mora and Primogems. Completing all four tasks gives the player 60 Primogems in total with minimal efforts. While this is a slow-and-steady way to accumulate Primogems for your favorite character, the commissions are no more than “go this place, kill these mobs” or running random errands for some NPC.
A few Inazuma Daily Commissions can also lock a player out of World Quests if they picked a wrong answer. They would never know what would happen if they got it right, unless if they looked on the internet or someday chose a different response out of sheer boredom.
There are also Weekly Bounties. They are a nice and quick way for higher-level players to earn some Mora, but the ones that take place in Mondstadt and Liyue are very tedious. It’s mandatory to interact with three clues scattered in the area before you can even fight the target, but get this:
Using your instinct, you inspect a flower, and Paimon would pop up and say something to the effect of “wow, the Ruin Grader is resistant to Cryo damage”, which…how? It’s dumb.
Fortunately, Inazuma bounties have completely forgone this cursed system…thank the Archon. Now you can go straight to where your bounty would spawn and fire away.
Spiral Abyss
Spiral Abyss (SA) is a permanent, single-player gauntlet challenge consisting of 12 “floors” (difficulty levels). All floors can be challenged repeatedly, but the rewards for floors 1-9 can only be claimed once, due to their lower difficulty; in contrast, floors 9-12 are more difficult, but rewards do refresh every 2 weeks. Among the four levels, floor 12 is considered the hardest content in Genshin.
Yet, it’s worth noting that there’s no global (or server) leaderboard or any scoring system of any kind. There’s the timer, but Spiral Abyss usually only requires the player to eliminate all enemies within a certain time limit to get rewards. Hoyoverse designed Genshin to be a non-competitive PvE (player versus everything) and it shows.
One may ask: how is Spiral Abyss difficult?
Well, it’s often a DPS check, which is a rudimentary combat checkpoint system measuring damage dealt against a timer. Enemies in floors 11 and 12 are higher-level, meaning they have a larger HP pools along with other annoying quirks, like increasing character’s stamina consumption or stealing Energy.
How do you succeed in SA then?
It’s simple — this ain’t Elden Ring. It’s the combination of 1) have decent units (characters, weapons, artifacts); 2) have these units built; 3) have the rights units in a team; 4) use their skills in the right sequence (“rotation”).
If a player satisfies all these requirements, it’s then just a matter of button-smashing.
If you have Zhongli’s unbreakable shield, you don’t have to dodge at all. Hu Tao can easily cause Vaporize reactions with Xingqiu and/or Yelan, dealing 6-digit damage. Venti/Kazuha’s cyclone/whirlwind capability can pull in smaller enemies and increase teammates’ elemental damage.
What does it take to get to that point? Well, it’s just resources. It’s about the grind. It’s a mix of tremendous amounts of money and time spent, whether one pays or not.
Video: Sevy’s discussion on META
Within the Genshin online communities, SA’s straightforward DPS check nature has necessitated META (”most effective tactics available”) team compositions and the practice of theorycrafting (TC). META means using certain characters in a team, and using their skills in quick succession and the proper order (”rotations”). Theorycrafting means leveraging game mechanics to maximize game damage.
Having a basic understanding of META and theorycrafting is probably essential for AR 50+ players, but Spiral Abyss accounts for very little of the Genshin experience, and valuing success in SA over enjoying the over world experience sorely misses the point.
What if you can’t clear Spiral Abyss? Imagine the audacity when someone told other people to “git gud” so they can 36-star SA. Does it even matter? It’s just 600 Primogems every 2 weeks — if you’re not clearing floors 9-12 for an entire year, you’re missing 90 pulls, which is not even a guaranteed featured 5-star character (more on that later).
Don’t forget it’s minimal cost for Hoyoverse to maintenance the Spiral Abyss. Their only job is to change up the special buff “Blessing of the Abyssal Moon” — the description text and a couple if loops in their code. Seeing people obsess over SA is just…ugh.
So far I haven’t cleared floor 12 and I’m fine with that. A friend told me eventually I would clear it but I don’t know if I’d care to. I’m not hurting for 150 Primogems, and I can clear all other world content with ease, so it’s all good.
The RNG
As a player’s journey in Genshin reaches its end-point (progression-wise, not story-wise), they will soon meet the RNG, the de facto overlord of Genshin’s endgame.
RNG is a random number generator, and in a compsci context it generally refers to any kind of probability-based number generation. In MS Excel, function RAND returns a random floating point number between 0 and 1, and that is the basis for RNG in any program, really. Video games are no different.
The prominent ways RNG in Genshin influences gameplay include:
- Enemy drops: e.g., world bosses drop 2 or 3 units of character ascension materials randomly; blue Ley Line challenges drop random # of EXP books;
- Domain drops: e.g., artifact, talent/weapon, and weekly boss domains drop random # of drops and materials, irregardless of player performance;
- Artifact leveling: artifacts received are random, they come with random # of sub-stats, every 4 levels a random sub-stat gets leveled-up;
- Gacha system: Genshin’s monetization rides on the fact that 5-star items are tied to low probability.
We’ll look at artifact leveling as an example.
Artifacts (mods) can be leveled up using other artifacts. The maximum level is 20 for a 5-star (high-rarity) artifact. A 5-star artifact can come with 3 or 4 sub-stats, besides its main stat. Here I count the levels of RNG during the artifact farming and leveling process:
- Every artifact domain features two artifact sets A and B (4-star/5-star). The artifact set to receive from is randomized.
- An artifact can be a flower (increases HP by flat amount), plume (increases ATK by flat amount), sands, goblet, and circlet. Which ones to receive is randomized.
- An artifact (sands/goblet/circlet) can choose one main bonus stat from flat HP, flat ATK, flat DEF, HP%, DEF%, ATK%, and others.
- A 5-star artifact can have 3 or 4 sub-stats. If it had only 3 sub-stats, it will gain 1 when leveling. This sub-stat is given at random.
- The sub-stats of an artifact are given at random (sands/goblet/circlet’s sub-stat cannot be the same as its main stat).
- When leveling an artifact, every 4 levels, 1 of the sub-stats will be randomly selected to get leveled up.
That’s 6 levels of RNG. Six.
That’s just way too much randomization in the pursuit of getting a “good” artifact. And it just so happens that much of a character’s performance in endgame will depend on good artifacts. So it begins the daily grind — burning through your daily resin, go through artifact domains just to get yourself heartbroken seeing DEF% artifacts on that artifact set that you actually want, then rinse and repeat.
It’s no wonder it’s more often frustration over such system than a sense of fulfillment/purpose that drives Genshin’s long-term player retention. In terms of why RNG is so ubiquitous in Genshin, I suspect Hoyoverse had too much ambition and yet couldn’t give present a better solution than basic RNG to close design gaps.
The player reception also plays a part. The established playerbase will complain about the RNG, yet despite how awful it is, they won’t stop playing the game. New players will continue to join Genshin, not quite knowing what awaits them. For now it’s a house of cards, but it doesn’t hurt Hoyoverse’s bottom line and the dev can keep glossing over how utterly unfulfilling the system is, so it continues.
GACHA SYSTEM
Recall that I mentioned the characters in Genshin to be its biggest strength. Well, it doesn’t come without any cost. Enter the gacha.
Gacha first emerged in Japanese as vending machines, but soon digitalized as a monetization model. It refers to a type of game where you pay a small amount of money for a chance to receive an item (”pull”), and items come in various rarities. The probabilities to receive low-rarity items is high and vice versa. Despite how little it costs for a “pull”, a participant in such behavior can quickly spend hundreds of dollars trying to pull that one high-rarity item.
Genshin’s massive commercial success is not without the help of gacha — it’s simple, effective, and lucrative. It’s been done before in the Honkai Impact series, which was also developed by Hoyoverse, as well as many others. To the player, the loop is also clear: do things, save pulls, get character. But it’s also complicated, as the devil’s in the details.
The Cost
Let’s first talk numbers, and more specifically — the costs. Because weapon banners work differently, I will only reference the limited character wish banner from now on. All costs are in USD. Some other regions actually have higher costs after currency conversion (like CAD).
Each pull in Genshin costs 160 Primogems. Every 10 pulls, you are guaranteed a 4-star item, and every 90 pulls you are guaranteed a 5-star item. More on that later.
In 42 days (6 weeks), a F2P player can accumulate about 7,540 Primogems via Daily Commissions (2,520), Spiral Abyss floors 9-12 (1,800), Maintenance Compensation (600), Livestream Codes (300), three 5-star character trials (60), and limited events (about 2,260).
A low spender can spend $20 for two purchases of Blessing of the Welkin Moon and one purchase of the Battle Pass (Gnostic Hymn). The former gives 3,000 Primogems in total over 30 days, or 3,780 over 42 days, while the latter gives 4× Intertwined Fates* and 680 Primogems at Level 50. Together they give an additional 5,700 Primogems.
*”Intertwined Fate” is a type of wish only usable on limited character and weapon banners.
The total is then 13,240 Primogems. This might seem like a lot, but after 160:1 conversion to wishes, it’s only 82 wishes (it’s actually 82.75, but three quarters of a wish doesn’t count). Pulling all 82 times gets a player close, but not necessarily to reach the threshold of 90 pulls to 100% receive a 5-star item.
What if this wasn’t enough?
Genshin’s got you covered — you could always purchase Genesis Crystals with actual $$$. They convert to Primogems on a 1:1 basis. These packs range from $5 to $100. If you haven’t bought these packs before, they also give you a substantial first-time bonus (2×), making the cost of wishes from these packages a bit easier to stomach for someone who rarely tops up. As a general rule, the cheaper the pack, the higher the cost per wish.
Surprises no one that these top-up packs have no special benefit besides being always available — multiple Welkin Moon purchases don’t stack but extend the period (up to 6 times) in which a player receives daily Primogems, which requires daily logins to claim, and Battle Pass can be maxed out early, yet is only available once every 6 weeks. GCs just come with a much higher $$$ cost. If a player mixes free and low-cost sources of Primogems (i.e., Welkin Moon and BP), it only costs $0.24 for a wish, whereas the cost per wish when the source is GC is calculated to be:
- With first-time bonus = $1.21~$1.33
- Without bonus = $1.98~$2.42
It’s much steeper. And there it shows the true face of a gacha game — revenue. It’s clear profit is Hoyoverse’s current top priority.
Pity System
The aforementioned 10-pull and 90-pull guarantees are part of what’s called the ‘Pity System’, acting as a failsafe method in the event of a player never receiving any 4-star/5-star items. The three pillars of the Pity System are:
- Hard Pity: if 89 consecutive pulls have not yielded any 5-star character, the 90th pull is 100% a 5-star character; if 9 consecutive pulls have not yielded any 4-star item, the 10th pull is 100% a 4-star item; upon triggering this event, the pity count is reset;
- Soft Pity: a hidden, early-trigger failsafe mechanic — once current banner pity count exceeds 74, probabilities of obtaining a 5-star character is increased 10-fold (baseline is 0.6%); there’s no soft pity for 4-star items;
- 50/50: the first time a 5-star item is obtained, there is 50% probability of obtaining the featured 5-star character and 50% chance obtaining a “standard” 5-star character. If the latter occurs, the next 5-star character obtained is 100% the featured 5-star character.
Anyone interested can read more over here.
Standard 5-star characters can be very strong or useful as well, but because they can always be obtained via the permanent standard wish banner, there’s less of a point to specifically pull for them on the limited character banner.
But that also means worst case scenario, it will take a whopping 180 pulls to even get one copy of the featured 5-star character on the banner. Because one could only accumulate 82 wishes per 6-week cycle, it would take over two months to accumulate 180 wishes. For reference, based on ~$2 of average per wish cost from no bonus Genesis Crystal packs, 180 pulls could cost as much as $360.
For example, on the July 2022 Leaves In The Wind banner, where Kaedehara Kazuha is the featured 5-star character, with Shikanoin Heizou, Thoma, and Ningguang as featured 4-star characters. They all receive a probability increase.
My second Kazuha arrived at pity count = 77. Had I run out of Primogems and patience at 70 pulls, I might have actually topped-up just to get him again, knowing I was already in the soft pity territory. Pulling a 5-star in soft pity is average luck, and most people are not even as lucky as this.
What about rate-up 4-star characters? Well, it’s even harder to get a specific 4-star because there’s zero failsafe as to 100% obtaining one of the three featured characters. By the time I have received 2× copies of Kazuha, I have only received 2× copies of Heizou, while I’d already received 4× copies of Thoma.
Even then, that’s still better than trying to get a certain 4-star character on the permanent wish banner where all 4-star characters are available and no one is getting a specific probability boost.
Duplicates
When a player receives duplicates of a character from wishes, they can unlock constellations, which can increase a character’s damage or offer extra utilities; the maximum is 6 (shortened as C6). 5-star characters tend to have better constellations. Below is the general pattern for 5-star characters’ constellations, and the screenshots are examples of Kamisato Ayaka’s constellations C1, C2, and C6.
- C1: quality-of-life/convenience feature
- C2/C4: damage increase (C2 > C4)
- C3+C5: increase Elemental Skill & Burst level by 3
- C6: significant damage increase
From a commercialization standpoint, 5-star characters’ C6 satisfies high spenders, while their C2 tempts and captures medium spenders, or those who pulled C1 early/accidentally. Because it’s usually a solid damage increase, C2 can be considered a good value upgrade whereas C6 is often flat-out overkill for most players. But from a low-spending player’s perspective, getting a high-rarity character is better than nothing at all, so, most do stop at C0.
As opposed to potentially giving a new ability, weapon refinements only increases a weapon’s passive ability; the maximum is 5. Unlike constellations however, it’s player’s choice to keep two copies of a weapon or refine a weapon, whereas a constellation is always tied to a certain character and cannot be used on other characters or converted to something else.
According to KeqingMains (KQM), the worst case scenario for achieving that would cost 917 and 811 pulls respectively (at 99th percentile, with pity and Epitomized Path). At $2 a wish, it’s around $3,456 USD. Even with numbers at 50th percentile, it would still cost well over $2,000 for a C6R5 5-star character + weapon.
Like how difficult it is to pull for specific 4-star characters even with probability boosts, it’s much harder to pull for specific 4-star weapons because they are never featured on the limited character banner (I have played 6 months and only ever received 1 copy of the Widsith). The weapon banner is a whole can of worm I’m not going to open, but certain 4-star weapons do receive probability boost there. But it’s just not worth it.
Personally, sure, I do really enjoy C1 Yelan and C1 Kazuha, but losing 50/50 twice on getting Yelan wasn’t a great experience (at least the second time…I got two 5-star items within 40 pulls). It certainly cost a lot, as C1 Yelan alone cost more than what I’d pay for Cyberpunk 2077 ($60 at launch), a game I played for well over 200 hours and I mostly enjoyed.
Pretty sure 200 hours playing C1 Yelan is not nearly as fun as an entire AAA video game, even if it’s Cyberpunk 2077 we’re talking about.
What happens when you get additional constellations on a character you have already C6’d? Well, the duplicate gets converted to another type of currency: Masterless Starglitter. A C6+ 4-star gives 5 while a C6+ 5-star gives 10. A common way to spend this currency is to get more wishes, and 5 Starglitter gives 1 Intertwined Fate. I can only say it’s better than nothing.
FINAL WORDS & VERDICT
Video: the second preview on Genshin Impact 3.0 Sumeru
Genshin Impact shows us Hoyoverse’s ingenuity in creating a vast and dynamic open world, and it also represents one of the few Chinese video games today that actually emphasizes on graphics, design, aesthetics, and adventure. The large roster of playable character is much appreciated, and nearly half of them can be acquired with no money spent, in a free-to-play game no less. The high-rarity characters are even better designed and bring a lot of freshness to the gameplay, which are definitely the main attration of Genshin, if not downright the most important one.
Yet I can feel the conflict within Hoyoverse in terms of which direction they want to take Genshin going forward.
On the one hand, it’s the characters and the gacha system. Their marketing is highly effective. Their gacha system and exorbitant prices work exceptionally well as reliable sources of financing for their ongoing development. The fans certainly like the waifus/hudbandos and high spenders will continue swiping for big damage numbers. It’s win-win-win.
On the other hand, the upcoming Sumeru updates are a clear sign that they are still trying to push their own boundaries, once again focusing on mechanisms, designs, lore, and world-building, which is a clear sign to me that they still want to deliver a better overall game.
So here it is the duality of Genshin Impact as a product: a commercial success, and a game trying to be great.
And I’m sure Hoyoverse let the huge revenue streams go to their head more than a few times. The 1-year anniversary was a sh*tshow. The weapon banner didn’t even have Epitomized Path (Pity System) before. Hoyoverse still ignores pleads to add time-based 2FA (two-factor authentication).The month-long 2.6 content draught was insufferable and clearly they didn’t prepare for it. Many of these would have been somewhat excusable if Hoyoverse were an indepedent studio and if their playerbase wasn’t already in the millions, but they’re not. According to Wikipedia, Hoyoverse has about 4,000 employees globally with $7 billion of total assets. It’s anything but a small company.
By 2022, it’s rumored that Hoyoverse’s valuation sits at 200 billion RMB (or about $29.55b USD) (link is in Chinese, no cited source), which would put it in the league of publically traded video game companies like Take-Two (T2), Roblox, and EA. Unfortunately, I personally believe this number is massively inflated and Hoyoverse just isn’t in the same weight class as these comparables. Not in the capital markets at least.
Still, if rapid growth is what Hoyoverse’s founders originally wished for, then they need to step up and match the industry peers or even the very best, who aren’t just making bank, but also delivering great creations.
The AAA Comparison
Genshin Impact, at launch, had a lot of potential. The beautiful graphics and PC/PS compatibility meant that it could very well compete in the same arena as true AAA open-world action/adventure titles, like the 2018, 2019, and 2020 GOTY Red Dead Redemption 2 (developed by Rockstar Games and published by Take-Two Interactive).
Video: Red Dead Redemption 2 technical analysis
I brought up RDR2 because it’s one of my favorite games. It’s a fan favorite and I bet most designers/developers wished they could be a part of it.
Brilliant cinematography, breathtaking visuals with dynamic landscapes, numerous gameplay systems, the mocap, hyper-detailed character models, masterful animations, a heartbreaking story, lively NPCs, and even the soundtracks were so meticulously done. It was in development for 8 long years and all the efforts really crystalized in the final product. RDR2 is such a masterpiece that I don’t think another game can top it in the same category.
Comparing Rockstar and Hoyoverse may seem unfair. After all, Rockstar Games had a big budget, more capital available, and many more talents that it could afford to not release new games if they wanted to. The Grand Theft Auto series was already a resounding success.
Yet Hoyoverse isn’t that different. They are rich now, and they’re based in Shanghai. Being one of the top (and few) gaming companies in China, they easily have access to the best talents too, whether fresh graduates or industry veterans. The problem is that Hoyoverse is very much in a rush to prove itself.
They opted instead to build the game as they go, and one of the resulted problems is that the dev has to make sacrifices in terms of deliverables. If they wanted to allocate more resources, talents, and energy to characters and open world, then the storywriting and certain gameplay features will have to take the backseat.
The fact that Dendro wasn’t available at launch is a great example of this — if Hoyoverse could already make enough $$$ to thrive, why bother adding it so soon? Wouldn’t that have been extra work for themselves? Why not drip-feed the marketing later to hype it up so they can extend the shelf life of the game?
The conclusion here is that Hoyoverse in 2022 is no longer an underdog, and some of its problems are self-imposed due to their development process and management priorities. To solve the problems it’s not impossible from their end, but will definitely slow down their revenues, which is perhaps not ideal for a top-grossing gaming company.
Verdict
As a gamer, should you play Genshin Impact? Probably.
Most will enjoy the open world and the characters. There are many things to do early on, and it’s free-to-play (if you have the willpower). Even then, paying for gacha can be ok if you set a budget, just beware of the prices to obtain a certain item.
On the flipside, the storywriting will remain as the game’s primary weakness. Unless Hoyoverse gets better writers, I don’t see this changing. The many in-game currencies are confusing and the gacha is a hot mess.
And eventually, we all reach this point: we run out of content and become dependent on drip-fed updates. It becomes a daily grind, farming, mining, etc., and Spiral Abyss. If you’d enjoy that, go ahead; but I think most people don’t.
The tricky thing is the story is far from being over. Every 6 weeks the game tries to reel you back in with new content and new chests to open, so it can be tough to drop it completely. How much leeway should you give a game?
Still, the complexities and nuances don’t detract from what makes the good parts of Genshin Impact: the adventure, meticulously designed characters, fluid combat, and the ever-expanding open world. Perhaps it still has a chance to become something great. ∎