Genshin Impact Review

Genshin Impact is a free to play, open-world and an action RPG. What made me play this game was because of the beginning of the story: two siblings are trying to travel all over the world when suddenly, they’re attacked by a god, causing them to separate. There’s a lot of mysteries to unravel and connections you’d have to make on your own. I first started playing Genshin Impact back in September 2020 when it was first released. You could consider me as a player who has been there since everything, but there have been gaps where I had to take breaks from playing the game due to burnout or having no motivation to play the game. 

I’m reviewing Genshin Impact since like I mentioned, I’ve played it since it came out, so it’s about time I should give my own experience and review of this game. Mostly maybe, a lot of people know about Genshin Impact due to its ‘impact’ on everybody who has or never played before. It is popular after all but, honestly, most people have heard about it without even playing it because there were major controversies surrounding it, which I will get to in this article!

Story and Characters

How it feels to play the game depends on everybody. One is for the story and events, second is for the characters/designs, third is for the power. For me, personally, I play it for all of these three.

The story is slow-paced, but sometimes it can be rushed. It ends in a good way. The characters they have in the game have their own personalities, nobody is the same, each is unique and interesting. For example, I wanna talk about Linenna’s personality and her backstory. When she was a child, Linenna was perceived differently in everybody else’s eyes because she was a different species than human, and they thought she was weird. She didn’t belong, so she hid her true self and tried fitting in with everybody else. Along her journey in the game, she began to learn and grow up, and she realized that it doesn’t matter if you’re weird or different from everybody else. She then expressed herself freely without having to worry about people judging her anymore.

Art Style

Now, the artstyle is certainly fantastic and satisfying to look at. The coloring, the shading and the anatomy itself is almost perfect. I’m not a strict art critic, but I can tell it’s good. And the Genshin Impact artstyle also has changed a lot over time! They improved making visuals and movement graphics, successfully making the game look appealing for all. I believe the best part of Genshin Impact, art-wise, is how they succeeded in the aesthetics of the game. What specific part am I talking about? It’s how they made the environment. It’s beautiful, no matter where you explore, every view you’ll look at is gonna be really pretty and nostalgic at the same time. 

Game Play

Anyway, there’s a lot to do in Genshin Impact, there’s events and ‘archon’ quests (aka, main quest), side quests, and story character quests (so you can learn more about them and or even get to know about their backstory!) which is really great for a RPG game.

There are also events. Some of them are time limited, or often limited to certain players who spend money in the game. You can get rewards for participating in events, by doing some mini-games and event quests. During events people love exploring new places and regions in this game as there are beautiful sightings and views you can find, and also symbols with hidden meaning behind them which incredibly makes the game even more fun to play. We can see that there’s a lot to do in Genshin Impact, but it can be repetitive for some players and may feel burnt-out from all of it. I know I have felt this way sometimes!

Have I also mentioned Genshin Impact is a gacha game too? If you don’t know what that means, a gacha game is a game where its gameplay includes randomized stuff you can roll for, basically gambling mechanics where you go to a ‘banner’ and ‘pull’ for a chance to win a prize. It’s kind of like ‘blind boxes’ you open over and over again. Beware though, because it is optional to spend real money on any gacha games! You should make sure you’re only spending real money if you really wanna do it! There’s a bunch of characters you can pull for if you love them very much. You can also pull for weapons too. There’s a limited-time banner that lasts for 20 days and one of them contains a limited-time 5-star character and along with that they also contain 4-star characters too. Same goes for the other banner except it’s weapons that are useful and they match the limited-time 5 star character’s style. I recommend using gacha games to try getting things you really like, and not spending too much money on it because you never know what you will get.

Controversies

There have been major controversies surrounding Genshin Impact, and people have many takes on how the game designers chose to show specific cultures through powers and story lore. They complain about the problem with its modern character design. I think it’s important to point out that the company is a Chinese company. Why did I say that you may ask? Well, let me introduce you to China’s strict laws for games. Their laws not only impact the changes, but its designs itself. I would like to point out there’s very few POC characters, which just straight up is a huge oversight and it feels racist. They are also focused on trying to make Genshin Impact characters portray regional beauty standards, to make them appealing for all the other players. Natlan’s character design, for example, is supposed to be based on Pre-Columbian American and also African cultures, and looks like a whole big mess. Overall, the most disappointing thing about it is how the character’s designs look. There are white characters claiming to be from that region wearing POC’s hairstyles (ex: dreads, afros.. etc.) which is cultural appropriation. These creators have no sense of how to do cultures correctly, they are trying to blend many cultures together without help from people who have those cultures.