Genshin Impact Review - The RPG Files | MMORPG.com

System · October 2020

Genshin Impact Review - The RPG Files | MMORPG.com

Genshin Impact is a game that sort of crept up out of nowhere. The 'Breath of the Wild' inspired game from Chinese studio miHoYo has captured the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere. But is it a solid free-to-play RPG, or does it devolve into predatory microtransaction practices? Here is our full review.

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Dattelis · October 2020

Might give it a go, since its free

Albatroes · October 2020

Those are some pretty serious cons.....

I mean if you play the game as is, I definitely agree that its a 9.0......end of the day though, its still a gacha game.....and before people harp in on the usually defense "they gotta make money somehow" companies can easily make enough money not going the player power hiding in 'slot machines' route (which is what gacha games really are at the end of the day).

Including all of that, I would bring it down to a realistic 6.5. Do away with the whole upgrading via duplicates thing and just offer all the stuff on a longer way via in-games with boosters in the shop and/or add more way to earn ingame shop currency, with the option to not only buy the currency (which you can) but to just buy the items and heroes you want outright, in bundles if need be. Its not a bad game by any means, but over-zealous monetization have killed plenty of good games in the past (unless peopel forgot that Archeage used to be good once, people argue BDO was good once too before it went mtx heavy).

sybaritictrance · October 2020

Albatroes said:

Those are some pretty serious cons.....

I mean if you play the game as is, I definitely agree that its a 9.0......end of the day though, its still a gacha game.....and before people harp in on the usually defense "they gotta make money somehow" companies can easily make enough money not going the player power hiding in 'slot machines' route (which is what gacha games really are at the end of the day).

Including all of that, I would bring it down to a realistic 6.5. Do away with the whole upgrading via duplicates thing and just offer all the stuff on a longer way via in-games with boosters in the shop and/or add more way to earn ingame shop currency, with the option to not only buy the currency (which you can) but to just buy the items and heroes you want outright, in bundles if need be. Its not a bad game by any means, but over-zealous monetization have killed plenty of good games in the past (unless peopel forgot that Archeage used to be good once, people argue BDO was good once too before it went mtx heavy).

Ironically, I had this exact discussion with our EIC when I submitted this review. Like you, he felt that my criticism of the MTX system should have warranted a lower score. I wanted to emphasize how good the game is, despite the major downside of still ultimately being a gacha game, which turns a lot of people off. However, I think for a lot of players who are adamantly against the idea of spending money on this, the game in its current state before you hit rank 20 will easily give people 20-50 hours of gameplay. I think they'll stop playing when they finish the main story and only return as new content is added, which is basically what a lot of people do in subscription based games like FFXIV or WoW. If you completely ignore the MTX system, and you don't mind waiting for resources to refresh, there's very little downside to jumping into Genshin Impact and that's how I justified the score. As you said, as is, the game is very good and should be judged as a game before you factor in the MTX. For me, the MTX is largely inoffensive, but it's necessary enough to warrant taking a one point hit, otherwise I would have given it a 10.

Aeander · October 2020

Definitely not a 9/10 with its business model. Gachas are bad, and a 0.6% summon rate is bad even by gacha standards. That's your total rate for anything, btw. You could get your character with that 0.6%, or you could get an unwanted weapon like I just did.

More like a 7/10 or 8/10 for sheer gameplay but with a huge caution label slapped on the side. "Warning, this game is fun, but it will do everything in its power to fleece you."

unfilteredJW · October 2020

Aeander said:

Definitely not a 9/10 with its business model. Gachas are bad, and a 0.6% summon rate is bad even by gacha standards. That's your total rate for anything, btw. You could get your character with that 0.6%, or you could get an unwanted weapon like I just did.

More like a 7/10 or 8/10 for sheer gameplay but with a huge caution label slapped on the side. "Warning, this game is fun, but it will do everything in its power to fleece you."

This x100. The low even by gacha standards rates unfortunately kills what is otherwise a fun game, and I dropped it quickly because of it. Needing duplicates of characters on top of the low rates just fucking smells.

Scot · October 2020

After what has been said, I await to hear from one of those posters who likes to tell us that funding models do not effect how we game in a detrimental manner. Some models more than others of course, but they all have since they moved on from subscription and paid expansions.

Iselin · October 2020

sybaritictrance said:

Albatroes said:

Those are some pretty serious cons.....

I mean if you play the game as is, I definitely agree that its a 9.0......end of the day though, its still a gacha game.....and before people harp in on the usually defense "they gotta make money somehow" companies can easily make enough money not going the player power hiding in 'slot machines' route (which is what gacha games really are at the end of the day).

Including all of that, I would bring it down to a realistic 6.5. Do away with the whole upgrading via duplicates thing and just offer all the stuff on a longer way via in-games with boosters in the shop and/or add more way to earn ingame shop currency, with the option to not only buy the currency (which you can) but to just buy the items and heroes you want outright, in bundles if need be. Its not a bad game by any means, but over-zealous monetization have killed plenty of good games in the past (unless peopel forgot that Archeage used to be good once, people argue BDO was good once too before it went mtx heavy).

Ironically, I had this exact discussion with our EIC when I submitted this review. Like you, he felt that my criticism of the MTX system should have warranted a lower score. I wanted to emphasize how good the game is, despite the major downside of still ultimately being a gacha game, which turns a lot of people off. However, I think for a lot of players who are adamantly against the idea of spending money on this, the game in its current state before you hit rank 20 will easily give people 20-50 hours of gameplay. I think they'll stop playing when they finish the main story and only return as new content is added, which is basically what a lot of people do in subscription based games like FFXIV or WoW. If you completely ignore the MTX system, and you don't mind waiting for resources to refresh, there's very little downside to jumping into Genshin Impact and that's how I justified the score. As you said, as is, the game is very good and should be judged as a game before you factor in the MTX. For me, the MTX is largely inoffensive, but it's necessary enough to warrant taking a one point hit, otherwise I would have given it a 10.

You should listen to your EIC

Aeander · October 2020

I'm understanding of the argument that this game gives you lots of content for free. Easily 50 hours worth.

However, it has the worst gacha system I've ever seen, with piss poor summon rates. In addition, the rate of earning currency to even do that is embarassingly low. 2 primogems for a chest? 5 if you're lucky? 10 if you're very lucky? 40 in very, very rare chests that are few in number? A single wish with those pathetic summon rates costs 160. You earn a mere 60 per day through dailies.

A week of play didn't even get me enough wishes to do a single 90 summon pity. The gacha isn't just bad. It's unrewarding and downright glacial.

And don't even think about purchasing summons. $25-30 (half the price of a game) just got you a mere 10 wishes. Congratulations on getting (1) 4 star character/weapon and (9) 3 star weapons.

Quizzical · October 2020

This is more a review of a monetization model than a review of a game. You've barely told the reader anything about the game itself. Is the game mostly about combat, or will you spend a lot of time on other, unmentioned activities? What is the combat like, anyway? Does it basically play itself? Tab-targeting? Aggressive click on everything? Turn-based?

I don't care very much if you think the game is fun or not. I want to know actual information about the game in order to know whether it fits what I like, and there's very little of that on hand in your "review".

Aeander · October 2020

Quizzical said:

This is more a review of a monetization model than a review of a game. You've barely told the reader anything about the game itself. Is the game mostly about combat, or will you spend a lot of time on other, unmentioned activities? What is the combat like, anyway? Does it basically play itself? Tab-targeting? Aggressive click on everything? Turn-based?

I don't care very much if you think the game is fun or not. I want to know actual information about the game in order to know whether it fits what I like, and there's very little of that on hand in your "review".

If it's actual curiosity on your part rather than a critique of the writer, the game is an exploration-based open world game akin to Breath of the Wild with action combat and a scaling-based RPG level progression. Combat is primarily about switching between characters to combo pyro, electro, hydro, cryo, anemo (air), and geo (earth) status effects.

sybaritictrance · October 2020

Quizzical said:

This is more a review of a monetization model than a review of a game. You've barely told the reader anything about the game itself. Is the game mostly about combat, or will you spend a lot of time on other, unmentioned activities? What is the combat like, anyway? Does it basically play itself? Tab-targeting? Aggressive click on everything? Turn-based?

I don't care very much if you think the game is fun or not. I want to know actual information about the game in order to know whether it fits what I like, and there's very little of that on hand in your "review".

I already wrote a review in progress previously, and it’s linked in this article. If you didn’t read that, I can’t imagine you actually care about this game at all. I also can’t imagine that you live under a rock and haven’t heard literally everyone on social media compare this game to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so you know “how it plays” based on that comparison alone.

Aeander · October 2020

I think it's worth stating that the reviewer's avatar is Euden, the main character of a mobile gacha game - Dragalia Lost, which shares more than a few passing similarities in its gacha system.

Take from that what you will.

Quizzical · October 2020

sybaritictrance said:

Quizzical said:

This is more a review of a monetization model than a review of a game. You've barely told the reader anything about the game itself. Is the game mostly about combat, or will you spend a lot of time on other, unmentioned activities? What is the combat like, anyway? Does it basically play itself? Tab-targeting? Aggressive click on everything? Turn-based?

I don't care very much if you think the game is fun or not. I want to know actual information about the game in order to know whether it fits what I like, and there's very little of that on hand in your "review".

I already wrote a review in progress previously, and it’s linked in this article. If you didn’t read that, I can’t imagine you actually care about this game at all. I also can’t imagine that you live under a rock and haven’t heard literally everyone on social media compare this game to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so you know “how it plays” based on that comparison alone.

I read the review in progress, too. You didn't answer my questions there, either. Saying that it's kind of like some other game that I've never played and can't get without a $200 hardware investment (on top of the cost of the game itself) really isn't terribly meaningful.

My complaint is there's a whole lot of "I liked this part" or "I didn't like this part" but far too little explanation of the game to know whether it fits what I like or don't like. And the latter is most of the point of a review, isn't it?

Wizardry · October 2020

I already gave this game a deep lookover and completely forgot most everything about it so it must have turned me off completely.
Just glancing over notes,the lolly companion is a huge turnoff,the microtransactions were bad and I do remember watching a video that went into detail about that.

action combat,a huge no thanks.

cartoon characters,no thanks.

comparison to BOTW,lol I thought that game was grossly over rated and created it's own marketing hype.When I see people claiming AMAZING on ANY game they have yet to see more than maybe a couple marketing videos then yeah I know what kind of audience is hyping up the game.A very similar occurrence is happening right now with Cyberpunk,people claiming amazing while never stepping foot in the game.this is why "previews" are a joke,they mean nothing and are only there to serve some monetary agenda.

Reviews are not much better,I tend to see inflated scores and after reading a SHILL site like IGN try and DEFEND themselves and how they changed the meaning of what a score is ,I just laughed and said yeah whatever a bunch of BS.A 10/10 ALWAYS will mean perfection and no game ever should attain such a score unless of course the afformentioned AGENDA,sort of like hardware reviews on this site.

Still fresh in my mind is the BS articles Bill was making on Destiny 2 LONG before it was even Beta tested,previews and some title named "WE NEED this game"really told me what a shill he was.Way too often there is some agenda behind articles that is no about passionate gaming but more about business.

FTR a REVIEW of ANY product should be based on similar products in a comparison format.This has been an industry standard for 50 years or more.You don't review a game on itself because that means there is nothing to bring the score down,i mean how could a game fail at anything if there is no comparison to anything else,there is no bar to set.

Quizzical · October 2020

Aeander said:

Quizzical said:

This is more a review of a monetization model than a review of a game. You've barely told the reader anything about the game itself. Is the game mostly about combat, or will you spend a lot of time on other, unmentioned activities? What is the combat like, anyway? Does it basically play itself? Tab-targeting? Aggressive click on everything? Turn-based?

I don't care very much if you think the game is fun or not. I want to know actual information about the game in order to know whether it fits what I like, and there's very little of that on hand in your "review".

If it's actual curiosity on your part rather than a critique of the writer, the game is an exploration-based open world game akin to Breath of the Wild with action combat and a scaling-based RPG level progression. Combat is primarily about switching between characters to combo pyro, electro, hydro, cryo, anemo (air), and geo (earth) status effects.

So it's "action" combat. What is "action" combat? There are a very wide variety of combat systems that can reasonably be called "action" combat. Fortnite, Dauntless, DDO, GW2, and Spiral Knights all have some variant of "action combat", but their combat systems don't have a whole lot in common with each other. Or if you want to talk about Zelda games, The Adventure of Link and Twilight Princess both have "action combat", but basically nothing in common besides the setting.

Aeander · October 2020

Quizzical said:

Aeander said:

Quizzical said:

This is more a review of a monetization model than a review of a game. You've barely told the reader anything about the game itself. Is the game mostly about combat, or will you spend a lot of time on other, unmentioned activities? What is the combat like, anyway? Does it basically play itself? Tab-targeting? Aggressive click on everything? Turn-based?

I don't care very much if you think the game is fun or not. I want to know actual information about the game in order to know whether it fits what I like, and there's very little of that on hand in your "review".

If it's actual curiosity on your part rather than a critique of the writer, the game is an exploration-based open world game akin to Breath of the Wild with action combat and a scaling-based RPG level progression. Combat is primarily about switching between characters to combo pyro, electro, hydro, cryo, anemo (air), and geo (earth) status effects.

So it's "action" combat. What is "action" combat? There are a very wide variety of combat systems that can reasonably be called "action" combat. Fortnite, Dauntless, DDO, GW2, and Spiral Knights all have some variant of "action combat", but their combat systems don't have a whole lot in common with each other. Or if you want to talk about Zelda games, The Adventure of Link and Twilight Princess both have "action combat", but basically nothing in common besides the setting.

I am not the reviewer. That is not my job. However, essentially, combat consists of:

A team of 4 characters selected by the player, each of which have one cooldown elemental skill, and one much stronger resource-based elemental burst skill. Each character also has a regular one button attack combo and some variation of "charge" attacks performed by holding the attack button.

Characters are divided into elements (pyro, cryo, hydro, dendro, geo, anemo, and electro). Each element has its own status effects, reacts violently with other elements (ie: hydro plus electro charges the foe and makes them release chain lightning). Elements also interact with the world, allowing you to burn grass and wooden shields, solve puzzles, etc.

Each character has one weapon type out of swords, polearms, greatswords, bows, and catalysts (tomes/orbs).

Some characters are damage dealers, other tanks, some offensive support, and some straight healers.

Combat essentially has you swapping between characters to use their elemental skills and elemental burst skills in synergy with one another, with normal and charge attacks as filler damage.

The greatest similarity of combat would be to NieR Automata, with basic combos, weapon swaps, and reactionary dodging.

Allwynd_01 · October 2020

Out of generosity, I would give it 6/10 for the graphics, voice acting and fluidity, but it's a very lackluster game with awful monetization.

Derkyn · October 2020

how is it the difficulty of this game?
Its is the typical mmo difficulty that you have 20-30 hours of tutorial until the end game where the enemies start doing some damage?

Bloodaxes · October 2020

Quizzical said:
So it's "action" combat. What is "action" combat? There are a very wide variety of combat systems that can reasonably be called "action" combat. Fortnite, Dauntless, DDO, GW2, and Spiral Knights all have some variant of "action combat", but their combat systems don't have a whole lot in common with each other. Or if you want to talk about Zelda games, The Adventure of Link and Twilight Princess both have "action combat", but basically nothing in common besides the setting.

Not to defend OP as his response to your critique was a little snarky, but you could have easily searched on youtube/twitch/whatever to see what type of action combat it has.

While Aeander's reply is quite in detail and helpful, it doesn't seem necessary in a review. Action combat should be sufficient to deduce it's not turned based or a shooter (you listed fortnite).

Aeander · October 2020

Bloodaxes said:

Quizzical said:
So it's "action" combat. What is "action" combat? There are a very wide variety of combat systems that can reasonably be called "action" combat. Fortnite, Dauntless, DDO, GW2, and Spiral Knights all have some variant of "action combat", but their combat systems don't have a whole lot in common with each other. Or if you want to talk about Zelda games, The Adventure of Link and Twilight Princess both have "action combat", but basically nothing in common besides the setting.

Not to defend OP as his response to your critique was a little snarky, but you could have easily searched on youtube/twitch/whatever to see what type of action combat it has.

While Aeander's reply is quite in detail and helpful, it doesn't seem necessary in a review. Action combat should be sufficient to deduce it's not turned based or a shooter (you listed fortnite).

I think the truth is probably somewhere inbetween. Action combat as a description somewhat narrows things down, but it is itself a very broad label. And if you are reviewing something, your review should not rely on external, unrelated sources just to give your reader a very basic understanding of the thing being reviewed.

Bloodaxes · October 2020

Aeander said:

Bloodaxes said:

Quizzical said:
So it's "action" combat. What is "action" combat? There are a very wide variety of combat systems that can reasonably be called "action" combat. Fortnite, Dauntless, DDO, GW2, and Spiral Knights all have some variant of "action combat", but their combat systems don't have a whole lot in common with each other. Or if you want to talk about Zelda games, The Adventure of Link and Twilight Princess both have "action combat", but basically nothing in common besides the setting.

Not to defend OP as his response to your critique was a little snarky, but you could have easily searched on youtube/twitch/whatever to see what type of action combat it has.

While Aeander's reply is quite in detail and helpful, it doesn't seem necessary in a review. Action combat should be sufficient to deduce it's not turned based or a shooter (you listed fortnite).

I think the truth is probably somewhere inbetween. Action combat as a description somewhat narrows things down, but it is itself a very broad label. And if you are reviewing something, your review should not rely on external, unrelated sources just to give your reader a very basic understanding of the thing being reviewed.

I guess putting a gif or a small video showcasing the combat would have been sufficient.

Still, I stand by what I said before. Reviews shouldn't be a place to describe every aspect (feature) of the game for the player in full detail.

sybaritictrance · October 2020

Quizzical said:

I read the review in progress, too. You didn't answer my questions there, either. Saying that it's kind of like some other game that I've never played and can't get without a $200 hardware investment (on top of the cost of the game itself) really isn't terribly meaningful.

My complaint is there's a whole lot of "I liked this part" or "I didn't like this part" but far too little explanation of the game to know whether it fits what I like or don't like. And the latter is most of the point of a review, isn't it?

So, if you read my review in progress piece, and you weren’t able to figure out what the gameplay was like by this comment: “Genshin Impact is an online-RPG that lets you take a squad of four playable characters (controlled one at a time, swapped on the fly) and you have free reign to do basically whatever you want. It’s like someone took a Tales game and rebuilt it inside of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” then I’m not sure what else you needed to know.

The Tales games are fairly well known amongst RPG players, so forgive me for assuming you would be familiar. I apologize for coming off snarky, but I felt like it was more important to describe “gacha” to people who may not be familiar with it more so than to explain the mechanics that are familiar from another highly regarded RPG franchise.

Aeander · October 2020

Ooh boy. The comparisons to Tales are really, really stretching it. For all of the mediocrity of recent Tales games, they're actually quite deep in terms of combat.

And comparing a game franchise with a party of 4 simultaneous characters supporting eachother in which each character is individually fun to play with well over 10 active abilities each (Tales) to one with 4 playable characters, only one of which is available at a time with a grand total of 8 skills for all 4 characters (GI) is an impressive yoga stretch.

But then, maybe the only Tales games this guy has played are its multiple lazy mobile entries.

unfilteredJW · October 2020

Snowflake "reviewer" continues to be a snowflake.

joeslowmoe · October 2020

Lol, this dude wrote a crappy review of a game where he spends most of the time describing what "Gacha" is and then responds all pissily when someone legit asks about information about the game he reviewed which is for some reason almost completely non-existent in the review of the game.

P.S. Legit LOL at someone calling themselves a writer telling their reader they need to reference outside sources to better understand their review of a video game. It's a video game review man. Your reader is going to assume that some information about the game is going to be included. This whole effort was pretty pointless as a game review. You should have titled this "Let me explain 'Gacha' systems" if you wanted to be forthright about the content of the article.

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