GENSHIN IMPACT Final Thoughts – Everything You Need to Know!

So as the Genshin Impact Closed Beta has come to a close for PC and mobile before its hopeful release sometime between now and October, I’m left with some thoughts and feelings about the game. Before I go too much further, for those sitting here wondering what happened to the PS4 release date, yes, they had to hold another Beta test as they did run into some hiccups during the Beta specifically concerning performance issues. This ended up resulting in a slightly delayed release, back to “Fall 2020.”

I did a dedicated video on the game a month or so ago where I went on to discuss various features in detail, so I’m making a note to avoid rehashing past areas I’ve covered. This is, instead, going to be a video completely focused on my general thoughts concerning all of the hours I spent over my few weeks playing through the Closed Beta.

So first things first, the story, holy crap was I entertained by it and the depth to which they went to tell this multilayered tale as you search the world of Teyvat for your.. Less skilled sibling that got beat up in the intro. It was like my first time reading Harry Potter, I was enchanted. Each new tier of the story brought forth a new character that breathed some form of life into your character’s questline and catapulted you further into the wondrous world. 

My only grievances with the story was that it was locked behind your adventure level, which after I reached level 20 felt like I was grinding harder than I have in some games in quite some time. I felt like this really set Genshin Impact very far from Breath of the Wild, which the game drew inspiration from. When I was playing Breath of the Wild I could literally bee-line through the quest and jump to the end to fight Ganon if I really felt like it, but with Genshin Impact, oh boy, they’re going to make me work for that story. 

Then when I did reach the lush refreshing period of the story locked behind higher tiers, it only lasted maybe 20 minutes or less at times. Though, don’t get me wrong, some took their time in telling me a story, and that was perfectly fine by me!

This brings me to questing and leveling. Each day you log in you’ll be faced with daily quests in Genshin Impact that you should attend to in some hopes of garnering more XP. Usually they will give you around 200 to 275 XP upon completion. Which isn’t very much. 

I was actually surprised that there were dailies in a single-player game like this as features like that are usually a little more.. MMO-esque so to speak. Everyday you should also be working on ley line outcrops, they’re like little instances of monster waves that will eventually end with you attaining even more XP for your character and also your adventure rank XP, which are separate by the way. My characters were like level 42 when I was only adventure rank 30. 

Which is fine, I’d rather it not be locked behind my rank anyway because the monsters actually increase in difficulty within the world as your adventure rank goes up. And these monsters don’t exactly die easily. 

Then you can go face world bosses that respawn within minutes, sometimes daily, and honestly we’ll just have to see once release happens what their respawn is, but you’re going to need it for the XP and also the crafting material needed to ascend your characters to the next level. You can also tackle these bosses with three other players besides yourself, which is where the multiplayer co-op really shines, and quite frankly, I was all over that! 

Some of our wonderful viewers were able to hop over to my game once I reached adventure rank 16, a requirement to unlock co-op, and assist me in defeating these world bosses and reap the benefits of murdering them together. You can also do domains, aka dungeons, together as a group. These domains cost resin though, a currency needed to actually participate and you only have 90 originally in a day. You can go out and grind a bit to refill it, but for the most part, you’ll have to wait a certain amount of time before it tops back up for you. I felt like this was a little limiting, and really doesn’t belong in a game that is mostly going to be played solo. 

Just like how each day has new domains of forgery that you can participate in to garner weapon ascension material. So make sure you preplan, because I sure as hell didn’t! Oh, and I should mention there are different types of domains, some are for character XP, some give you ascension material, others give you artifacts. All of these are necessary to gear and level your characters so they’re ready to face the difficulty of the world you’re unlocking as your adventure rank levels. 

Overall, the questing beyond the storyline was just very grinding and also limiting in my eyes. Was it still addicting? Yes. Did it get a little tiresome? A bit. I’m just thankful they cycled through varying dailies to spice things up. I’m hopeful they spice the bosses up, because once you got familiar with their patterns, it was just kind of rinse and repeat. 

So, what do you actually do in Genshin Impact? Honestly, you sign on, do your dailies, story if you unlock it, explore to find chests in the world and fight the slight mobs that come around them, kill the bosses, do the abyss tower, and do the domains. Otherwise, there’s not much else to do, at least currently. 

It looks like they’ll add in a few things come release as there’s something called Battle Pass that’s not unlocked right now. To give you an idea of time required I’d spend three hour streams just trying to get to the next level of story, and let me tell you, sometimes I wouldn’t make it up even one adventure level. But at least I got to fight with some of my viewers in co-op play, which is always fun and helps pass the time spent otherwise repetitiously grinding!

We’ve been speaking of all the grinding that needs to be done, so let’s take a moment and talk about the combat, as that’s always a hot topic of discussion. For someone that doesn’t typically play a lot of action games, let alone Anime RPGs like this, I found the combat to be quite fun and honestly didn’t feel like a cross-platform game. Usually most games I play that are also mobile games feel super mobile game-ish. You all know what I mean! That to me was probably the most pleasantly surprising thing I’ve come across thus far. I had to actually aim with my archer’s aimed skill, granted I sucked at it, but it was a nice feature. I could do their base bow and arrow attacks that would auto-lock to the enemy, but if you wanted a stronger shot, you’re going to need to aim. And unfortunately.. My aim was definitely not always true. The melee though is insta lock-on, and sometimes it would lock me onto a torch and I’d spend a good half of the fight smacking an enemy and then twisting around and showing that torch who’s boss. I’m sorry torches, I didn’t mean to be that kinda person towards you. But in the “heat” of the moment – hehe, see what I did there? Sometimes it’s difficult differentiating between targets! It happens, okay? 

Each character has a base attack, a charged attack, an elemental skill on a cool down, and a burst that’s charged after a period of time. I enjoyed unlocking different elemental characters and only managed to unlock 6 out of the 7 of them. Dendro, aka Nature element, was not in this beta playthrough, so not sure what to expect yet! But each character plays off another character’s elements. Say if I use an electric attack and combo it with a cryo attack from another character then it will create a superconduct attack that deals a down on the enemy’s defenses. It’s just nice figuring out what element works well with another one. Because let me tell you, there were a couple occasions where I used a pyro skill and then switched to a cryo character and accidentally put out my fire attack. Yeah….just….don’t do that. But on the other hand, I can create giant fiery tornadoes. So that’s cool. 

Overall, I like how you can seamlessly swap between four separate characters in solo play and just let loose with a barrage or varying elements that compliment each other and figuring out which characters work best with each other is also fun. 

It took me a while to unlock most of the elemental characters though as most are locked behind the Gacha system. And guys, we gotta talk about this. So there’s a Gacha system in the game called Wish. You use primograms that you can farm within the game itself or wishes that you get through completing the story to redeem for a wish that will either give you a character, a weapon, or a character bonus skill. There’s no other way of attaining most of these characters and I didn’t really win too many of them. I have horrible horrible luck with Gachas. And I’m not sure what the final Gacha system will look like or how much it’ll cost in real money. I think in all the days I played I got one four star weapon while all the rest were blah three stars. I never got a character bonus skill, and I mainly got pyro and electro skilled characters. I can already tell you I’m either going to put myself into a slight money hole with this game or I’m going to get too frustrated at the lack of results. I’m just going to have to see upon release what their Gacha system looks like, but I can tell you right now not that many people are overly thrilled over this choice. Gacha mechanics are a mobile feature, something that really doesn’t have any place in PC titles.

All in all, the game itself is alive, beautiful, and worth hours of exploration during gameplay. There are a few concerning things like the Gacha system and the relatively grindy, repetitious feel between bits of story, and might I add the lack of the ability to pet dogs, because my heart couldn’t take not being able to pet the dogs. But for the most part, this game is ready and I’m ready for it. Am I excited to play it? Heck yes. Am I going to be playing it and probably spending money on the gacha system? Yes, and someone needs to help me with limitations. I love the combat, the elemental compliments each character gives to another, and most of all, I look forward to actually being able to play with Stix and all of you! And before you saunter off, I’d like to showcase a little gameplay so grab some popcorn and kick back and watch!