Thanks to a successful PR offensive and positive word of mouth, Genshin Impact is one of the hottest and most successful gacha games of the  year. I mentioned that I was going to try it once the version 1.1 patch hit on November 11th, and indeed I did. An hour here, and hour there. I had a lot of connection issues with my wifi that hampered my progress, but after hooking my laptop to the router with a LAN cable those went away and I was finally able to progress.

Many quests are locked behind your “adventurer rank” but I was able to continue with the main quest once I reached AR 10, after much opening of chests and completing of side quests. Until they asked me to complete a stealth mission to steal a Holy Lyre. I hate stealth missions, though. You probably didn’t know that because I won’t play games with a heavy stealth focus (sorry Metal Gear!) and I have no problems dropping a game if it springs a surprise steal mission on me. So yeah, Genshin Impact is dropped until I can get someone (you know yourself, see you Saturday) to come over to my house and clear that stupid mission for me. I HATE stealth missions, have I said that already?

What I like about Genshin Impact

-Bright happy colors!

-The cellshaded anime-style art is nice.

-I like open world games with plenty of areas to explore.

What I don’t like

-The combat is too fiddly with all the elemental reactions, switching parties to get different effects, having to break shields, getting frozen, etc etc. It’s all a bit too “action” for me, since I prefer less messy systems.

-Dungeon puzzles. Especially the kind that needs specific party members with specific abilities to clear. It’s forgiveable right now since most of the domains are more like tutorials, but I don’t want to keep doing this kind of thing. The worst ones are the ones with archers in some high place where you have to get Amber to aim and strafe and other such nonsense. Royal PITA.

-Other gimmicks like gliding and swimming. I didn’t think much of gliding either way until I did Amber’s story quest and had to glide everywhere. Another PITA.

-Supposedly you’re able to fight enemies all over the field, but if you stray too far away from a boss, it retreats and heals all its HP back to full. Boo, hiss~

-Beating enemies gives you only a pitiful amount of Character EXP, like +10. So there’s no point fighting enemies unless there’s a chest involved. This makes combat even less enjoyable and more frustrating.

-The game will eventually open up and have more areas to explore, but right now I’m tired of running through grassy plain after grassy plain and I’m already done exploring Mondstadt.

-The game sounds like it’s going to get even more complicated once I progress. Right now my level is really low so I haven’t experienced any of the things fans talk about like leylines (only seen one), domains, Abyss, ascension quests, world levels (big fat zero), daily commissions, etc.

-Stealth mission. Seriously? No.

Future plans?

As you can see from above, the things I dislike are more than the things I like. There’s nothing wrong with Genshin Impact – that’s the way the game is designed to work, and plenty of people love it that way. It just doesn’t suit my personal tastes. The only reason why I’m not dropping it outright is because it’s very very early days for me and my opinion might change as I get used to things/as update patches fix things. The game is definitely on hold until “I” get that stealth mission done. In the meantime, I have some one hour reviews to do and Tokyo Xanadu eX+ to finish.

Update (Nov 26th)

Bwahaha! Complaining on My Blog-no-Jutsu never fails! After shutting down the game without even trying the stealth mission, I decided that giving up without trying wasn’t very gamer-like of me. So I loaded up the game today… only to find that the game had skipped the stealth mission entirely and cut straight to the cutscene where a mysterious stranger makes off with the Lyre. Whooppeee! But why? A bug? An anti-frustration feature? Or my trusty old Jutsu at work again? Of course it’s the jutsu!

Either way, a pass is a pass. Thanks to that, I’ve been able to proceed with Genshin Impact‘s story without any further hassle. Between story quests and the occasional map quest, I’ve reached Adventurer Rank 12 and unlocked “daily commissions.” Daily commissions are just another name for glorified busywork – go here and beat this monster, give this wheat to that little boy, that kind of thing. But it’s a good excuse to explore areas of the map I haven’t been to.

Thus right now I am loitering around Dawn Winery, clear across the continent from the Falcon Coast where I’m supposed to be gathering tear crystals to save a dragon. Very patient creature, that Stormterror. Next Genshin Impact upgrade will be at AR20, and then in 10-level increments until/unless I drop the game. See ya!