I've been playing Genshin Impact for several hours yesterday, on release day. That went smoother than I thought, probably because I pre-downloaded and pre-registered. Some people reported downloading and registering today wasn't going so well, but once you were in, the game played very smoothly. Now first things first, Genshin Impact is a good game. It is fun to play, taking some of the best gameplay elements of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and combining them with elements from more typical JRPG. I had a lot of fun, and I'll be playing this for a while.

On the downside, this is a gacha game. It is financed like a mobile gacha game, by players buying loot boxes that contain weapons and characters. I would not recommend this for completionists or people with a gambling addiction, as somebody calculated that it would take $20,000 to get all 18 characters and all 5-star weapons. Most of the content of the lootboxes is 3-star weapons, which you will accumulate pretty quickly if you start spending money. You basically need to do the 10 wish at a time method to get a guaranteed 4- or 5-star, and that gets expensive pretty quickly. Having said that, I spent $100 to get the introductory double currency offer, and I got one 5-star character (Venti) and a selection of good 4-star characters and weapons. And I was able to buy the resource pack of character and weapon xp, that allowed me to actually boost all those characters and make them playable. So the good news is that I have lots of options in party composition now. And as I am not interested in getting any specific character, I don't need to spend more money now. You can play Genshin Impact for free, especially with all the current bonuses you get for the 10 million pre-registration celebration, but it means having fewer options and being a bit weaker. This is clearly Pay2Win.

The main problem with mobile gacha games is that normally there isn't much gameplay involved other than collecting characters: Battles run in auto-mode, or are so boring that you *want* them to run in auto-mode, and the map is usually just linear. So the one thing one really needs to credit Genshin Impact for is to make a gacha game with full triple-A JRPG gameplay. Open world exploration, including climbing and para-gliding. Large maps full of interesting spots, with monster camps, resources, challenges and puzzles. The only other gacha game I currently play is Assassin's Creed Rebellion (because it has *some* gameplay), and Genshin Impact is clearly in a much higher league. I was also impressed on how good Genshin Impact runs on a iPad, with basically the same graphics, although I am not fond of the on-screen joystick for movement.

So even if you'd never spend money on a game like this, I would absolutely recommend trying Genshin Impact for free. Especially if you either loved Breath of the Wild, or you haven't got a Switch and always wondered why everybody was so crazy about Breath of the Wild. Getting this for free on a PC, PS4, or tablet is great!

On my first day, I played until Adventure Rank 13 (which is the real "level" of the game, and can't be bought). That was good, because at Adventure Rank 12 the daily commission system opens up. There is a reward for getting to Adventure Rank 20 before patch 1.1, in 4 weeks or so, but that seems relatively easy. I still have tons of places to explore, and lots of quests to do. The action-based combat is not overly complicated or difficult to execute, so I am doing okay with that. However there are optional hero trial challenges, which I can't seem to beat. I don't see me doing really difficult endgame boss content. But up to now, there is no need for that, and I am having a lot of fun.

- posted by Tobold @ 8:43 AM Permanent Link