So. Genshin Impact. I went in expecting it to be an overhyped dud. It’s not a dud, but it may be a bit overhyped.
It does have a pretty [and] big world for a free-to-play game, which is not an MMO and is meant to be played not only on consoles and PC, but also (and mostly) on mobile phones. And this world is probably the main attraction here.
You see, if you will like the story, you will be constantly blocked by "Adventure level". This is something, which is more important than your characters’ level, since a lot of features are linked to it. In fact, I’ve reached maximum level on 6 characters by adventure level 11 or 12 and they were stuck there till adventure level 15, when I was able to "Ascend" some of them (gives a star, unlocks a skills, increases stats and maximum level).
How do you gain adventure level? Mainly exploring of the wilderness. You can do quests, but most of them will be "commissions" from adventures’ guild and randomly generated and simple. There are some "challenges" I’d say, as well, but in the end they are about going to A and killing X amount of B or something of the sort. At least at my level.
The world that you will have to traverse on foot and fast-travel does tickle exploratory fancy: level designers earned their money for sure. While there are a lot of wide open spaces, there are a lot of niches and camps and what not, that you want to explore for a chest or something similar. There are also some "special" places, where you need to meet certain conditions in order to get that chest.
And some places have monsters, that are much higher level than you. For example I’ve encounter 2 monsters that were 36 or something like that. One of them was attacking me in melee and I had to run, the other I did click to death using ranged attacks and then going into melee, once the rain started falling and I was able to utilize freeze for some extra damage.
Yes, battle system is, essentially, tappity-tap one. Clicker. It is meant for mobile games, after all. While clicking and dodging you do get some elemental orbs, that allow to activate special skills of your party characters, that can help in a fight, but personally, I rarely found an actual need for them.
What I find is good about the fighting mechanics (and not only) is elements’ effects. There are 7 elements (fire, ice, water, .etc) that can be combined through different attacks and they can make fighting quite a bit fun despite you needing to click through most of it. The concept shines, when you have 3 or more relatively tough enemies with various types of shields, that correspond to different elements and they also have special skills of their own, that can be combined against you. In such situations you will need to actively switch between characters to quickly deal with the enemies. Yet again, in my current playthrough, there were like 3 or 4 encounters like that at best.
So, the world is good, fighting is sometimes good. What about the story for which you will need to explore and fight? Well, I’ve expected far worse. Characters and their interactions so far are quite flat (although there are a lot of potential "waifus"), and world-building in general is lacking (although there are quite a few books if you dare to read them), but I am curious in how the events will unfold.
But that’s the problem, that I am faced with: there is an adventure level block. I’ve already faced one and overcame it, but then after, essentially, 2 quests in main story I got blocked again and I need to gain 3 more levels. But I do not want to anymore. The novelty has died down for me. I do not have any real motivation to explore besides gaining this level, but it feels tedious already. It’s definitely not the type of exploration, that I would be doing on daily basis (although I did it for 4 days, 2-3 hours each).
So that’s the reason why I think it may be a bit overhyped. It won’t be for everyone and it won’t be able to create an "addiction" in everyone. I am reminded of someone’s comparison of GTA to Saints Row: in GTA’s city you want to live, and Saints Row’s city you want to destroy as a drunken challenge. Genshin Impact’s world you may want to visit on vacation, to relax.
But it’s still a good game. I did enjoy my time spent with it so far and I will, probably, return to it still. At the least, I am curious how developers will be carrying it forward, "keeping it new". For me, I’d like to get ability to have gamepad recognized automatically without the need to switch control type on each launch on PC and have a chance to adjust controls on the said gamepad. But those are technical things. For gameplay… Perhaps, a horse.
