By Penny Theodorakopoulou,
September 28, 2020. That is when the infamous to every gamer (especially gacha lovers) Genshin Impact was released. But for those who do not play video games but watch TikTok, that new meme with a little girl in red dancing in a high-pitched voice is Klee, one of the characters that are available (sort of) in Genshin Impact.
But what is Genshin Impact, I hear all you non-gamers wonder while reading this very article. Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action/adventure RPG (role-playing game). In it, you play a vague and mysterious traveler from another world (either male or female, who both have names, as we discover later in the game: Aether and Lumine correspondingly). As the game starts, both siblings fight mid-air with a sorceress, who, according to which sibling you choose to play as, takes away the one you did not select to some kind of portal, taking the other twin away whilst sealing the selected twin.
Five hundred years later (yes, you read that correctly), the protagonist (we will refer to them as “Traveler” from this point on) wakes up and finds themselves on the beach with Paimon, a companion that wishes to help the Traveler find their lost twin. And so their journey begins, as we are set to the first place of the enormous world of Teyvat — Mondstadt. While trying to find the lost twin, the Traveler alongside Paimon interacts with various NPCs (non-playable characters), and we, too, emerge in the story that Genshin Impact offers us, which I will not spoil for obvious reasons — this is a review after all, not a gameplay, go play yourselves and find out what happens!
Gameplay
It is a rather ambiguous issue, and I agree with that. On one hand, the game itself will not let you continue the story unless you level up your Adventure Rank (AR), which is basically the level your account is, reaching up to AR 60 (up until now, but the creators of Genshin Impact have announced in the past that they would increase it to AR 70 for those players who have been playing since day one, every day, for the past two years). For new players, this is not much of an issue, since a lot of content has been added since the release of the game, giving them plenty of quests — main and side quests — to occupy their time. However, things were not so easy when early supporters of Genshin Impact began to play. Quests were quite limited and there were not as many events as there are now. You could do one or both of these things: either grind artifacts and items in order to level up your characters or explore.
MiHoYo (now HoYoverse), the company that released Genshin Impact, has done an amazing job at creating a vast and magnificent world for players to literally spend hours walking around. We have the spectacular open world of Teyvat, with many places to explore (so far, players can feast their eyes on Mondstadt, Liyue, Dragonspine, Inazuma, Enkanomiya, the Chasm, and the recently added map, Sumeru, which had already expanded with today’s patch). In fact, I discovered Liyue, the second map that was available for players, by simply wandering around and trying to enjoy the view. It is a truly captivating game, which, in my humble opinion, is one of the main factors that players keep playing the game for hours, every single day.
However, as much as I love exploring, it can be a tad tedious sometimes, especially if you are left behind quite a lot. I will now speak from personal experience. Back in 2020, when we were still in quarantine due to COVID-19, all I did every day was play Genshin Impact. Literally. And because I was playing for hours, I ended up having nothing to do. I should note, however, that I had no clue that I had to farm that many artifacts in order to really power up my characters. So, the only option for me, since I had completed the story up to a certain point, was to explore Teyvat and have 100% completion progress in every single part of Mondstadt and Liyue, which were the only two available maps back at that time. I was wandering for hours, trying to find every single chest, every Anemoculi and Geoculi (each were needed in order to level up the statues so the player’s stamina can be increased up to 240), and, of course, solve every puzzle, a feature that irritates me the more the game progresses, as the difficulty increases more and more. So, after a year of playing the game, I stopped playing right before Inazuma was about to be released. And here I am, a year later, having missed all those events, all the progress of the story, and, therefore, I have to start exploring Inazuma and keep up with the story and exploration that I have to do… But it is fun, regardless of the amount of time I must devote.
Genshin Impact and the Curse of the 50-50
Apart from an open-world action RPG, it is also considered — and is — a gacha game. A gacha game is one that utilizes the gacha (toy vending machine) feature in video games. Gacha games urge players to spend in-game currency in order to acquire a randomly selected in-game item, much like loot boxes do. Generally speaking, some in-game cash can be acquired through gameplay, and some can be obtained by paying the game publisher directly with real money. In other words, it is a game of luck in two crucial aspects of it: stats for the artifacts and, of course, characters. Genshin Impact is a free-to-play game; but there is a plethora of people that wish to spend money on it just to get the character they wish. It can be really annoying to want a character that will change the composition of your team but lose the 50% chance to get that character. All Genshin players have experienced that at least once, and it probably happen again. And so the “whale” accounts occur. An account is considered “whale” when the player has spent a great amount of money on purchasing in-game content. The greatest example is when they buy in-game wishes so they can “pull” for their favored character, unlock extra content, etc.
My personal viewpoint on Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact is a great game overall. Its graphics are great even on low settings, the music is captivating, and the voice acting, especially the Japanese one, is incredible. The vast map of Teyvat is remarkable, with vivid colors and many places, hidden or not, to explore. Of course, there are some major disadvantages to the game, such as the unskippable dialogues, the lack of the main story, which is to find your lost twin, and the immense grind you ought to do in order to have a powerful team so you can beat your enemies. But one thing is for certain: no matter its cons, Genshin Impact, even after two years — and counting — has managed to keep its players dedicated to it, one way or another. Since today is the 2-year anniversary of the release of the game, I wish to say one last thing:
Happy Birthday, Genshin Impact and Travelers!
References
- Genshin Impact, wikipedia.org, Available here
- Genshin Impact Review, pcgamer.com, Available here
- Review: Genshin Impact takes players on an immersive adventure, eastside-online.org, Available here
- Genshin Impact is the game of the year contender you never saw coming, inverse.com, Available here
- Genshin Impact Review, ign.com, Available here
