Hi all! As stated in the title, I spent quite a lot of my time on this game and I have a lot to say about it. There is no official review on our favorite site yet, which gives me an additional reason to share my opinion with you. Let’s go!
How to feel about this game? What is it and what to expect from it?
So, contrary to the subconscious reflex, not every free-to-play MMO. Again. THIS IS NOT AN MMO. You shouldn’t treat her like, for example, Chinese or European representatives of this genre, where the path to maximum lvl and high-end content is just the beginning and an annoying hindrance. First of all, this game is a solo adventure, although you can play it with a friend in co-op. The fixed difficulty of the game makes the cooperative mode even more preferable, because although the game as a whole will not test you with bone-crushing hardcore, the mobs will definitely kill you, the bosses are moderately difficult, elite enemies can seriously strain your group of adventurers, especially if your team is not very well balanced in the composition of elemental characters, but we’ll talk about them a little later. In addition, it is worth noting that the gameplay of the game can be attributed to the Hack and slash genre, where you, with one weapon or another, deal with mobs standing in your adventure path, and a simple hack is cheerfully diluted with two abilities per character. The group will be allowed to contain four heroes. Despite the genre in which filling the world may not be of paramount importance, Genshin Impact is, in my subjective opinion, a game about a stunning world and its exploration. The game has everything for this: breathtaking views, a huge number of chests around every corner, many enemies for the combat system, a very large number of collectibles that increase your stamina when you use them to repair the sanctuaries of the Archons. You start out with little stamina and are barely strong enough to swim even twenty meters. Having collected all these elements, you will be able to swim, run and soar for quite a long time on a local glider.
In addition to the big and beautiful world, the game can offer you good stories. Of course, they are not as chic and cool as the world itself, but they are quite on the level and will find something to surprise you with several times. The production videos are made on the game engine, they look very cheerful and interesting, but, unfortunately, they are not very numerous. I won’t dwell on the plot and its presentation separately, it’s better to try it yourself. Continuing the idea of storytelling, we will smoothly move on to dialogues and characters. It’s still a little worse here. It’s nice to listen to the voice acting, there are very charming characters, there are some good jokes. Paimon, this is your personal guide in this world, often conveys voice acting and his personal attitude.
A few words about localization. There is a suspicion that the game was translated into Russian, straight from Chinese. Because in several, or even many, places, the text differs greatly, in specific words, from the English voice acting, leaving the overall meaning and mood. The most striking example is the frequently heard word “Archon” in localization, when, as always, in the voice acting it is the word “God”. I don’t know who you have to be to seriously translate the word “God” into the word “Archon”. It was annoying until the plot revealed a little bit of the game’s lore. No spoilers, but take my word for it, “Archon” reveals the essence and correspondence of these personalities to reality much better. I don’t know Chinese and, of course, I can’t check, but elements like these, which get to the very essence much better than the English version, suggest that good work has been done with the Chinese language.
Wonderful views are very common here. The developers are concerned about the now fashionable photo mode.
The world of Teyvat is divided into seven states, each ruled by its own Archon. So far, only two of them are available – Archon of Wind and Archon of Earth. Each of them has its own architecture, its own nation, its own geography and its own landscapes. Mondstadt is a free city and the cornerstone of the philosophy of its people is the wind and its freedom. It is made in the European style of medieval castles and the entire area around is closer to the European spirit and eye. Another state that you can visit after going a little further through the story is Li Yue. Probably, in contrast to the European city, Li Yue is a clear allusion to Asian countries in general and to China itself in particular. This is evidenced by the changing landscapes on the way to the second accessible city and the architecture itself. Li Yue is ruled by the Archon of the Earth and this is already a country of sacred observance of agreements as such and all kinds of contracts in particular. The Archon of Earth instilled in this nation a deep respect for bargains and fair trade. There is a strong hand of formality and tradition in this country.
Mondstadt, city of free winds.
Each country has very different music. Even without looking around, you can easily guess by the musical compositions which and two countries you are in. The musical component is almost the second, after the chic world, extremely strong side of the project. The audio component is almost better than the landscapes you pass through, immersing you in the wonderful world of this game. Many times I caught myself thinking that I just wanted to sit down as a character and admire the sprawling views and enjoy the flowing music. The developers, as if guessing and striving for such an effect, have scattered plenty of chairs and their analogues, such as flat stones or tree trunks, around; you can sit on all this and admire the surroundings, enjoying the moment.
Li Yue, city of contracts.
In further updates the world will grow, adding new lands and stories. Considering that the main character needs to bypass all the Archons, and so far we have met only two, the game has very great potential both in the open world and in the plot.
Brief overview of characters and their synergies.
So, the game features https://richmoosecasino.co.uk/ 24 characters, your active group can only have four, you can switch between them once every two seconds, and to change the composition of the current group, you need to load the squad collection menu for four seconds. Two out of 24, this is the main character in different elements, which completely change his abilities and interact differently. Without going into details and giving some dry numbers: the game features 7 elements, of which 5 are wind characters, 3 are ice, 5 are lightning, 3 are earth, 3 are water, 5 are fire, but the “Wood” element does not have playable characters, is represented only in the environment and a few monsters.
INall characters presented. And this list will continue to grow.
What’s in the shooting ranges?? Yes, all characters are not the same. They are all very individual. Maybe some are more convenient than others, but here it’s worth talking about their specific builds and gear, which can make the same character very different in terms of gameplay. Having entered the game and seeing the first abilities of the main character, the player may feel perplexed – “What?! Only two abilities?!». Yes, each character only has two abilities. However, pretty quickly you will realize that the entire combat system here is built around the ability to combine and cause elemental reactions. For example, by soaking an enemy with water, or simply driving him ankle-deep into a river or lake and using an ice ability on him, you will turn him into a frozen sculpture for two seconds. Here are all the reactions: Ignite, Crystallize (Damage with an Earth ability with any other), Electric Charge (Water + Electro), Freeze (Water + Ice), Melt (Ice + Fire), Overload (Electric + Fire), Super Conductivity (Ice + Electro), Disperse (Wind + any element), Evaporate (Water + Fire). As you can see, there are a lot of variations. I won’t describe any guides and will only mention that in terms of pure damage these reactions are not identical. Some deal it immediately, some gnaw at your enemies a little at a time, and some do not cause damage at all, but provide a critical advantage, for example, freezing.
Each character has their own type of weapon and cannot be changed, which adds additional variety to the gameplay and even two characters with the same type of weapon feel very different. Weapons include bows, “catalysts”, like magic books from magicians, spears, one-handed and two-handed swords. The main character wields a one-handed sword and can change his element by resonating with the statues of the Archons. So for now only Wind and Earth are available. Unfortunately, the protagonist himself is just a not very useful placeholder. When you get several characters from “Prayers”, that’s what they call donation elements for knocking out characters and weapons, you can, with a clear conscience, put it on the shelf and take more convenient and useful ones. Although, who knows, maybe you will like it more than me?
Typical start and end of a fight, but larger enemies require a different approach.
You can easily overcome the plot with any character pool. Play with those you like. If you, of course, want to knock out someone specific, and you don’t mind spending from one and a half thousand, then we’ll talk about donnat, where and how to pour money, below.
Donation system overview. Why doesn’t the game stifle me??
The game is free-to-play. We are accustomed to the fact that if a game is distributed according to this model, then its cost can significantly exceed the cost of a regular 60 bucks game. In part, this is true. You can pour some unrealistic amount of money into it. You can easily google videos on YouTube where people poured 600 bucks into it. If you are a gambling person, then it is better to immediately hide your wallet, the game will not require serious investments from you, but if you get carried away, it is easy to lose a lot. There is a donation currency, popularly called “Primogems”. She looks like a four-pointed star. The fact that the store sells strange sparkling triangles should not confuse you, these are all the same primogems that are converted 1 to 1. The game has an adventure level, or your account level. For each level you will be given various kinds of consumables, primogems, coins, which are called mora in the game, and a little further you will open additional activities like four daily assignments, which are easy to complete in half an hour, weekly tasks, which almost always fill themselves in while you play and explore the world, and current tasks for the patch that give a lot of experience, but you will finish them well if by the end of the patch. Also, as your adventure level increases, you will be given the opportunity to purchase a battle pass. It is quite cheap and its cost is included in the one and a half thousand wooden ones I mentioned earlier. They will give you a battle pass without it, but it will, of course, make the reward more meaningful. Almost always three times more than the free option.
In addition to the battle pass for 750 or 1400 rubles (which includes +10 BP levels), I would recommend that you spend 379 rubles on something like “Blessing of the Hollow Moon” or “Primogem Card”. It is located in the recommended products section of the store. She will instantly give you 300 primogems in the form of strange triangles and every day for 30 days she will pour 90 primogems, which in total will give you 3000 currency per month. For comparison, one attempt to roleplay a character or weapon from “Prayer” costs 160. Garbage almost always falls, but every 10 attempts either a character or a four-star weapon will fall one hundred percent. Of course, like the characters, it is not equally valuable, but quite decent. The rules and odds of winning can be viewed in detail for each “Prayer”, in English “Wishes”. At the moment, the following options are presented: For beginners, in the first eight attempts the character Noelle will drop out 100%, she is not an S tier of course, but can be a very strong part of your party, the temporary prayer “Ballad of Cups” with an increased chance of knocking out several specific characters, and this is where I would recommend pouring in primogems to start with, the weapon prayer “Incarnation of a Deity” seems useless to me, because you can already craft good weapons, but the characters from this prayer are not and finally, receive the prayer “Wanderlust”, it has no time limit and you can always flog them. There are many videos on YouTube that go into more detail, so let’s move on.
They give you Primogems for almost everything in the world. Open the chest – get primogems. Got an achievement – take the primogems. Restored the level of the archon statue – well, you get the idea. You will be able to spin these very “Prayers” to get characters without even a minimum investment of 379 rubles. The game very gently limits you in the story only to the level of your account, which, by the way, cannot be bought for money. It’s as if they’re telling you: “We have a huge, interesting world here, let’s get a little distracted and run around finding something new and dilute the plot with exploration.”."Sometimes they say this directly from the mouth of one character. And these breaks perfectly dilute the plot inserts, once again allowing you to earn free primogems, experience, gear and consumables. You will run through the entire plot and won’t even notice that you, in fact, need gold and consumables for everything around you. There will be more than enough to keep the characters on track. As your adventure level increases, or your account level if you prefer, the world level will change. Enemies become stronger, and the loot from them becomes more valuable. However, this does not mean that you should put off especially valuable chests for later, the developers have foreseen this and have locked the quality of loot from all significant chests, collect everything you see now and you will not experience any problems.
What about high-end content and post-storylines??
We already said at the beginning that this game is more of a solo adventure than preparation for high levels. So this is even too true. The world, which at the beginning seems so huge, full, interesting and alive to you, after adventure level 30 already looks more like a desert with colorful tumbleweeds, sadly driven by the wind. However, you are not trying to play The Witcher by completing the storyline and all the additional tasks? Don’t complain that the world has become empty? That’s why I drew your attention at the beginning that this is a single adventure, which is valuable for its process, and not for the final stages.
Because with the post-plot stage that’s all. Very. Badly. After leveling up your characters and improving your talents for the first time, you will begin to notice that you are spending some inadequate amounts of gold on all this. One of the weekly tasks of the battle pass is to spend half a million gold. I spent it in the first week and didn’t notice, because the influx of gold was stable and very generous. In the second week, I spent about two million on leveling up the 4 main characters, their talents and weapons, and I felt that I had to think where to get gold, because for the first time in almost 70 hours I began to miss it. Again, I note that you will feel all this only at the very end, if you want to pump up and strengthen your group, but if you finish the story missions and put the game aside, logging in once a day for half an hour to complete daily assignments, then you will not notice all this and the game will remain just as wonderful for you. You have to be able to stop in time.
But if you don’t want to stop and you like the combat system, it can offer you serious challenges. There is such a thing in this game as a spiral abyss. For each level there is a reward, depending on how many stars you receive throughout the three halls. In each you can get three and ultimately get nine by collecting three rewards from primogems and gold, this is in addition to all the useful things that will fall for any successful completion of the level. And for simply completing level 3 of the Abyss you will even be given one very decent character. For the first four levels you can get by with a regular squad of four people, but then the game will force you to create two groups of a maximum of four people, you can put less to complete the level in two parts in turn. Thus, you should have EIGHT pumped up, ready for a serious, hard battle and synergizing characters. Which is quite a lot. And pumping everyone up will take almost all of your time for grinding and you will be perplexed by the system of local energy that is spent on this very grind. True, for those who are not chasing quick results and want to play for a maximum of an hour a day, this system is well suited.
Here’s the Abyss and the reward for getting all nine stars in three rooms.
Almost everything here is tied to energy or resin, of which you have a maximum of 120 units, and about 180 units per day, so it would be good to drain it evenly, fortunately, the game is also available on mobile phones, so on the way to work or on your lunch break you can spend half an hour and avoid the limit of this currency. It is spent evenly on all content that increases your adventure level at the rate of 100 experience per 20 resin. In other words, from the very beginning you will be given the opportunity to spend it on two types of activities. One brings character experience, and the second brings gold. Better choose experience. One activity will give you 100 account experience and spend 20 resin out of 120. Then they will tell you that we have bosses here, there, one for each element for the character element. Fight – free, pick up loot – 40 resin, which will give 200 adventure experience. But that’s not all! We have weekly bosses! Two pieces! Quite complex. They will give you 60 resins to pick up loot from them and this will bring, in addition to various goodies, already 300 account experience. I think you got the pattern. These same 120 resins will hold you tightly by the throat in the post story. The game is on everything, as if inviting you to play it and immerse yourself without stopping, but after the 30th level of adventure, almost everything you will bump into is the limit of 180 resin per day. 120 units are restored in approximately 16 hours.
Major currencies. Newbie mistakes. Useful links.
Did I already mention collectibles?. On each of the lands, these are either Anemoculi, of which there are 65 in the game, or Geoculi, of which there are already 131. Each of them is given to their own statue of the Archon and the statues can be upgraded to level 10. Collecting them all is of course not critically important, but it is quite entertaining and when exploring the world this is an obvious goal. So, looking at these numbers, I can say that in the game your best friend is an interactive map. I conjure you, every time you find this or that oculus, mark it on the map, so, after 40 hours, you will not start frantically searching from 131 points on the map where you did not pick up the remaining five geocules. Thank God I avoided this, but many people complained about it. It also marks the places where ore and other useful elements appear. An irreplaceable thing in this game. genshin-impact-map.appsample.com
The main currencies are, of course, primogems and mora, gold in this game. But besides them, there are also various kinds of loot from mobs, but with it everything is more or less clear. What puzzled me at one time was the strange books that said they improve talents. You can look at what type of these books each character needs on another site genshin.gg in the Farming section. After the character overcomes the level limit again, you can go to the skills section and by clicking on the skill you will see the “Improve” button. And at this stage you will experience complete frustration from the huge tons of currency and loot that at least your main group will need to level up.
Among the mistakes, I would highlight the draining of primogems to non-temporary “Prayers”, because in temporary ones there is an increased chance of good characters dropping out, not all of them, of course. The second mistake is the hasty leveling of blue, three-star weapons and artifacts. Better save all your resources on purple things. Of course, there are blue ones and they are very good, but until you get comfortable with the game system, it’s better not to waste your supplies on them. The third mistake I’ll probably call is what can be called “Wastefulness”. The game is very generous at the beginning, but this is not a reason to waste everything you have on the first things you come across. For example, after receiving a form for crafting weapons, go and look at the reviews, some weapons are too good, while others, on the contrary, are very mediocre. You won’t be able to get many forms of weapons in the near future, so be careful. If you need to craft some food, you can easily buy some consumables, they are replenished from sellers, but keep in mind that in post-story content you will need every thousand to level up your characters.
So you completed the story, received adventure rank 30 and asked: “That was fun, but what should I do now??». My answer is: "Wait". Yes, the game can easily make you fall in love with it, yes, it has great potential, yes, it is very hard to put down from it. BUT! I implore you, don’t spoil your impression of the game, don’t try to painfully role-play new characters, don’t get bogged down in upgrading your talents and weapons when you run out of resources. You don’t play games when they’re over? Just enjoy the process and don’t rush to the end. Let it be a pleasant adventure.
As a 50+ hour single player game it’s excellent. Like a long-running, incompletely written adventure with a potential of 170 hours. The next content update will be on November 11th. Enjoy the world, characters and exploration.
The world is amazing, the game is commendable.
Pros: Huge interesting world, visual style, atmosphere, music, voice acting, many different characters with different playstyles, many pleasant stories.
Cons: Everything is bad with post content, grinding comes down to a tiny amount of resin, pumping up characters and their body kit requires an incredible amount of resources.