It’s an understatement to simply call miHoYo’s Genshin Impact a “good game.” As the winner of both Google and Apple’s respective 2020 Game of the Year awards, Genshin Impact has surely made a name for itself through both the eastern and western world as a game that spans between PC, mobile, PS4/PS5, with plans to expand furthermore into the Nintendo Switch. Additionally, the game also supports crossplay between these different platforms. 

As someone who played the game on its western release on mobile, which can be shifted to the PC version as long as you linked the account to an email or username, the initial experience was a sight to behold. Reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda’s Breath of the Wild, the game is an open-world game with more of an emphasis on a differing cast of characters and a distinct utility of each character  through the usage of the in-game “seven elements” that each character is attuned to, enabling a different environmental interaction.

The game also has a leveling system for each character with a separate system for the user, the latter called “Adventure Rank” (AR). This ultimately checks how far you can go through the story, giving you time to level up your characters before delving much deeper into main quests and the like. Speaking of which, leveling characters in the game is quite unreliable as each of the mobs, or enemies, provide an extremely minimal experience yield, which is why the game showers you with experience books, used to level up characters in a much faster way. 

Initially, you start off with one character and as you progress you are given free characters to help you explore the world. Eventually the wish system is unlocked, enabling for you the chance to get better weapons and more characters. Through “gacha,” which is a system that derives its name from the Japanese capsule ball machine, summoning for characters and weapons is somewhat unpredictable, save for its rates.

Praises:

The game is quite expansive and is to be updated monthly to add new content and such. The controls are easy to maneuver and more recently, the game has put in tutorials and guides to help navigate this process too. Speaking mostly for mobile, the game’s user interface is quite simplistic in an approachable way. Gameplay often differs between individual characters and teams, providing a new type of experience should one begin to get bored of their current tempo. 

As mentioned before, there are seven elements that each character is naturally connected to as you get them. This allows for them to utilize abilities corresponding with one of these and create “elemental reactions” that can put you in the advantage against tough bosses, so this game also has a choice for those strategically-inclined to create tactics against mobs too. 

Genshin Impact also gives players lots of summoning currency when they first log into the game and has codes that the company gives out from time to time to further these rewards. 

Issues: 

The game takes a while to download. In my own experience, it took a day to download the whole game, and no, that isn’t an overstatement. As you play the game, especially on mobile, you find that your device tends to overheat a bit even for 30 minutes of gameplay. Don’t bother charging while playing, it’ll speed up that process. 

The game also has problems with its co-op system in that you are unable to interact with essential NPCs, or non-playable characters, that help you craft things without first disbanding your multiplayer team. This is awful because of the chance that you find a really good team, but then need to go back and craft at the nearest city by going back to single player mode, though this is minimally mitigated by the ability to befriend other players. Aside from helping others and collecting materials that spawn in the world, there is little to no incentive to be playing multiplayer, as joining another player’s world doesn’t seem to be very rewarding. While benefits are rather limited, the only reason I play multiplayer at all is because of my friends, who I can chat with while playing the game and help with quests and the like.

The company responsible for Genshin Impact also has problems with listening to its community. When I sent an email to miHoYo asking about how to retrieve an account or to link one, it took them a month to reply back to me, and by then I had already solved my problem on my own.

There are also issues with certain players getting their account hacked with the company not using a  stricter identification system, leading to accounts being sold on sites like eBay, which I have not experienced yet, nor do I hope to. 

The wish system in Genshin Impact is also skewed in a way as the game is known by its player base to have pretty awful rates in summoning for a higher rarity character or weapon than the standard 3-star weapon or 4-star characters and weapons. In fact, many people have “rerolled,” that is to say started new accounts, to wish for their favorite or better characters to start the game with, which I am also guilty of because my former account had none of the summoned characters I was interested in.

Finally, there is an issue of stamina that the game stalls you with. As an AR 48 player, I personally find it hard to grind and farm for materials for my characters. As the game is still incomplete, it literally tries to slow down your progression once you start reaching the early AR 30s, which will be quite noticeable because of the major decrease in available experience. Personally, I would play the game for a while if I could, but it takes approximately 21 hours for the game’s stamina to fully fill back up. 

 Genshin Impact is definitely not for those who want to steamroll or rush the game. It is a very time-consuming game requiring dedication and patience to be invested into it, while also denying you from playing for as long as you could be playing because of the stamina limit and other in-game factors. Should you still wish to play it, be my guest, as it still is quite enjoyable and beautifully crafted. Just take your time.