Genshin Impact is Looking Great!

It’s been a couple months since I did my initial video on Genshin Impact.
With the announcement that Mihoyo, the developer behind Genshin Impact are going to be releasing the ridiculously popular Honkai Impact 3rd on PC in the near future, and comparisons being made between the two games, I thought it’d be worth it taking another, more updated look at the game.
I know some people wrote it off initially as a mere “Breath of the Wild clone,” and I’m aware that the game does share some similarities to the Zelda game, but I don’t see anything wrong with that.
If you weren’t aware, Genshin Impact was announced back in June. I did a video detailing the kind of game it was and made comparison to two other Anime titles coming out: Both Blue Protocol and Project BBQ.
However, where the latter two Anime titles are MMOs – with Blue Protocol being an open-world Anime MMORPG and Project BBQ being.. well, Project BBQ actually doesn’t have a world-classification yet so we’ll need to see, but nevertheless they’re both MMORPGs.
Genshin Impact is not.

While it isn’t an MMO, the game definitely leaves things open for a multiplayer system of sorts down the line. Allow me to elaborate a little – currently, there are what, 11, 12 characters you can play as.
You can have 4 characters with you at any given time – both in and out of combat, and you can freely switch between active characters via a simple key press.
This means that you choose from a pre-determined selection of characters and tackle content with those characters specifically. However, some players speculate that there may be some form of multiplayer coming in the future.
While the game can only be played online – which honestly makes sense for the kind of game it is, tooltips in-game lead players to believe that there will be a function that allows you to group up with other players for certain kinds of content.
Whether that content involves traversing the open-world or instead has people choose from their list of characters to tackle dungeons or other instanced content is up for discussion.
But the fact remains that a little too much is left to the imagination right now as Mihoyo have not come out and denied the potential for multiplayer connectivity.

I unfortunately never had the opportunity to participate in the original beta test or any form of testing since the game was announced.
All of the information I have, all of the opinions I have, everything is based off of what I – and, obviously you have access to.
But from what players are reporting, while yes the game technically shares similarities to Breath of the Wild the game stands on its own legs as its own game.
Mihoyo aren’t attempting to replicate the success of the Zelda game nor are they trying to make a “Zelda inspired” rip-off.
The game features a large open world, has a lot of interesting interactions with NPCs, your party members and monsters, a very strong story and narrative along with a lot of different features and mechanics that help separate itself from any other game.
Well, according to players it does feel like a little like a fantasy-inspired Honkai Impact, which is its predecessor. So I mean.. technically it’s trying to separate itself from most other games.

Honestly, I don’t see why the game got the initial hate it did.
Let me be clear when I state that although Genshin Impact does, as I have mentioned at least twice already, share similarities with Breath of the Wild – and heck, might even take inspiration from it, it is much more than a simple clone.
The game has its own world, its own characters, its own lore, story and game mechanics. It’s so much more than “a copy,” and people honestly have to stop considering it one.
Genshin Impact looks like it will be a quality singleplayer RPG – and we can never have enough of those.
Yes, Mihoyo is known for its mobile games and the microtransactions found within them but so long as Genshin Impact allows for us to obtain gear, characters and progress through the game without paying, then I feel like it’ll end up alright.
I mean I have a feeling they might put things like outfits behind a paywall and that’s understandable.
They can do what they want with outfits or customization – so long as it doesn’t allow for advantages then they can charge whatever they want for cosmetic items. But other than microtransactions, I can’t help but think that people really blew this out of proportion.
Like, do you guys remember that dude that picked up and smashed a PS4? What the actual fuck even? Dude, if you’re going to smash a PS4.. send it to me instead and just say you smashed it.
That’s just wasteful and beyond silly. But I mean hey, it’s your console, you’re technically allowed to do whatever you want with it. But that overreaction to a game trailer? Are we for real?
There are hundreds of hours worth of gameplay of Genshin Impact uploaded to Youtube and spread over the internet, by this point I hope, really, strongly hope that people have learned – have come to the conclusion that this is its very own game.
Let’s wait and see what the final product is like before we go smashing anymore PS4s, yeah?

I’m excited for Genshin Impact. It looks like a ton of fun.
It’s beautiful, it has some really awesome looking combat and it’s going to be completely free across both PS4 and mobile devices, offering seemless cross-play functionality between the two platforms.
Whether or not the game takes inspiration from other games is irrelevant: If it’s a good game, it’s a good game and that’s what I’m looking forward to. Hopefully you guys feel the same way.
While there hasn’t been a beta test recently, Mihoyo were dropping hints that there is a planned beta test scheduled for sometime in the very near future.
So if you haven’t already, make sure to keep an eye out for that to get in and make your own judgments of the game.