Welcome to our article about our first impressions with Genshin Impact. We played it on iPhone and PC!
Experience an immersive single-player campaign. As a traveler from another world, you will embark on a journey to reunite with your long-lost sibling and unravel the mysteries of Teyvat, and yourself.
Your World to Discover, Fly across the open world, swim through crystal-clear waters, and climb towering mountains. Stray off the beaten path to discover all the hidden secrets of a world full of wonder and mystery. Travel Alone or Battle Together, Charge head-on into battles solo, or invite friends to join the fight against dangerous monsters with 4-player cross-play for PS4, iOS, Android, and PC.
Master the Seven Elements. Not just another mindless hack and slash. Manipulating the various elements is the key to defeating powerful enemies and solving challenging puzzles. Build Your Dream Team: Choose who fights by your side. Build your party from over 20+ characters (with more to come) — each with unique abilities, personalities, and combat styles.
We played this game on both PC and iOS thanks to the amazing feature called cross-platform save. It is also available on PlayStation 4 and Android and despite owning a PlayStation 4 I could not get cross-platform to work, upon research online this seems to be the case with everybody. So I decided to go the PC route am occasionally use my iPhone for some small menial tasks.
Now the game itself is clearly heavily inspired by the latest Zelda Breath of the Wild game as it takes a lot of hits upsides and very few of its downsides. But there are also clear influences from games like Xenoblade and many others. While the resemblance is uncanny at first, it does not influence the gameplay at all, not unlike its free to play nature.
This might possibly be its biggest enemy, the micro transgressions, not transactions, but really transgressions are abundantly present in every aspect of this game. These gacha mechanics are used to get extra items, for example, swords, bows, books, and so on. One in every Gacha however is an actual character you can choose to play with, making this as close to pay to win as possible in my personal opinion.
As I was lucky to get in early I got several bonus codes that I found on the Internet and I was able to get several tries at a new character, resulting in getting a really decently powered assistant for the remainder of the game. Her swing with a broadsword might be slow but lordy is it effective. Despite having a main character in the game, either boy or girl, this new female fighter is by far my default and favorite.
Now about the game itself, if you have played Zelda Breath of the Wild, you basically know what to expect. Exploring the vast world, cooking recipes, defeating enemies, … the exploration level of this game is high and in my personal opinion provides us with a better, more filled-up world than Zelda.
Despite all those resemblances, Genshin Impact gives us quite the RPG, with many side quests, main missions, daily quests, and so on. All in a gorgeous anime-inspired world, the graphics in this game are simply amazing for a basically free game. You do not need to spend money on this game, but they try hard to get you to spend your hard-earned cash anyway.
Some of the upsides to this game involve adventure ranks that prevent you from entering parts of the world when you are not yet ready! I really like this principle as you will not get slaughtered in seconds by a new enemy. Luckily the map is quite open from the start so you will not lose your position in the game, adding to this is a function that shows where to go. I cannot stress how welcome this was in certain parts of the game when I had no I ******* clue where to go or what to do.
As any RPG will teach you a lot of the game is coming down to grinding, which will increase turn upgrade your adventure rank so you can move to new parts of the game but you can keep roaming freely in the already discovered areas and basically use your time to salvage items like apples, meat,…
Now for my experience with the game, I will admit I am not the biggest fan of Zelda Breath of the Wild, but this one did hook me more because of its guidance during gameplay. When I was away from my computer, I could just log into my iPhone and do some menial tasks like cooking or just running around the world to the next bit I had to go. Fighting was easier on the computer though and I do tend to switch to my PC every time I get into a big battle, just because it’s easier to play with my Xbox controller.
Like I said before the biggest downside to this game are the microtransactions but I understand where they are coming from. I would easily pay 60 bucks for a game like this without them and that is saying a lot. I just cannot see myself paying a few bucks just to get a new character when basic grinding can do the trick as well.
In conclusion, Genshin Impact has so far been a rather positive experience as it can keep you busy for a long time, even without the microtransactions. Graphically, it looks great despite its clear inspiration but in itself, it is a great attempt at a free-to-play game. I would like cross-save to work on PlayStation 4 and it’s a shame some cosmetic items are locked behind the PS4 wall.
