Genshin Impact Review

Hittobox

Oct 27, 20208 min read

Updated: Jun 16, 2022

Genshin Impact Review (Android, PC, PS4)

75 Hours on PS4, 5 hours mobile, 15 on PC

*Spoiler Free Review

We're taking a look at Genshin Impact, but let's refer to this as Genshin Gacha', the waifu try and never collect 'em game with some guys thrown in for good measure. We'll break down this game in the good ol' fashioned point system. Scale of 0 to 10 with a focus on Game Design/Artistic style, Gameplay, Story, Controls, and Audio.

Video Review

The selling point to this game isn't just the collect 'em all feature, it's also experiencing the some of the best of The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Fire Emblem Heroes mashed together. Attractive anime-like cartoon characters in a Zelda-like inspired world with containing so many mechanics from BOTW are in your face all over this game like; the cooking, to the stamina, to the design of the environments and enemies, the way enemy characters animate, and more. So many things seem to take a hint from it. Not that this is exclusive to Zelda, because it's not, yet the way Zelda utilized all of these together seems eerily familiar. This game isn't just what's like Zelda though, it goes well beyond that.

For this game we tried out 3 versions: PC, PS4 and mobile on an Android device. Majority of time spent on the PS4 version and secondly PC. All versions of the game we tried were all very outstanding. I was in fact shocked to see how great the mobile version looked and performed, running surprisingly smooth. I'd say it was doing better than the PS4 version in frame-rate and overall game performance. Now the settings aren't nearly the same, but I find optimizing a game experience is vastly more important than a game looking so pretty it chugs the frame-rate to a nearly unplayable and un-enjoyable point. Don't really need to go over the PC version as that's always going to be the best iteration of the game unless ported from console to PC. The PS4 is in-between the two, sacrifices some of the high end fidelity to try and balance out performance. Problem is It doesn't quite get there. I had constant issues with lag when fighting larger groups of enemies. Something as simple as picking up a bunch of items on the screen rapidly couldn't seem to keep up with me smashing the pick up item button to the point where the sound effect would play twice the amount of times until the game figured out "oh hey, you're trying to pick up 3 apples." So which version should you try? I'll come back to this in a bit, but mostly due to this game being made for the best experience using a controller.

Game Design & Art Style

As we mentioned this game takes a lot of ques from the not just mechanics, but also the art design of BOTW. I think taking what that game did and tweaking it to fit this game's narrative worked really well. It's enough good Zelda to enjoy but with enough other pieces to feel wholely new. The design of the overall world is fantastic and areas don't feel too alike. An issue I found to exist in BOTW with having a pretty empty world with random set pieces. Limitations likely provoked by the hardware. This game has chests and random items to find constantly all over. Finding the next chest just doesn't get old, in part due to the different ways that can be required to get them. Random chests, fight enemies to unlock them, figure out a puzzle, use a bow to shoot some balloons. It keeps it mostly fresh. I did find the story line to be mostly forgettable, and the fact that so many different stories can occur with side quests and it seemed every part of the story introduces a new character to the point I'm constantly playing keep up with all the new people drags it down a bit for a while. The game has a World Level feature which is separate to the character's level. This World level gets advanced after certain points in the game, roughly hitting them about every 20 levels. I wish this worked a little better, it seemed for me just when I started getting enemies to be easy, it cranked it up a bunch and made me feel like I just started the game over. I think this could be better if the iterations weren't so vast and more to the lines of having a level 20 character fighting level 25 to 30 enemies, once I hit level 30, enemies go up to 35 or 40. Something more subtle. An issue that does need to be addressed is when you attack enemies at a distance, they are able to reset their health to full, even if you start far away and end up next to them I've found that I can have an enemy's health bar be mostly gone and "poof" back at full. Hopefully this gets addressed in an update, it can get pretty annoying as it happens more frequently than I'd care to admit. Overall though, no bugs or issues are a deal breaker, no large complaints about it, just minor nit-picky stuff.

GAMEPLAY

It's a lot of fun for a while, the problem begins to show itself around character level 30. The grind. This game becomes real grind induced. Not only that, it has a Resin problem, or a limiting factor to how much you can farm dungeons to get gear to upgrade your character, weapons, etc. It roughly allots you four times of going through a dungeon or mini boss type of battle and then you're done for the day. If you want to grind for something for hours, you're mostly out of luck. I don't really see a benefit to limiting a mostly single player game to time allowed to play aspects of the game. That is poor design. I know there is some co-op but it's pretty limited and there's nothing that pits players against each other like a typical multiplayer game. Maybe this will matter more later on, but for now it's poor design.

AUDIO

Another thing that does come off mildly poorly in this game is character audio. Not the voice actors, the timing and frequency that become annoyances. I can't even begin to tell you how annoying the idle yawn is if you let the game idle for what seems like 10 seconds and hear a long yawn, then another 10 seconds, the same yawn, and again. It's as if the game is screaming at me to do something and never leave it alone. Don't dare think of leaving for a bathroom break, as all you'll hear is the game nagging you while you're there. That one thing aside, then there's Paimon, what is your deal Paimon? The floating fairy that's your buddy and plays dumb a lot of the time, is a really annoying side kick. If Robin was ever like that to Batman, you know he's gonna bat slap the (you know just what) outta' you. I'll give it the benefit I either just started getting numb to it eventually, or maybe she got better with time, it's hard to say. The world music itself was pretty solid, can't say any of it was out of place or so wonderful I had to stop minus a few moments. There are a few really nice serene moments where the game will look really scenic and the music just fits so well you have to take a minute to soak it in. Overall though nothing too noteworthy. Sound effects seemed well fitting minus a small bug of a sound effect getting stuck looping. Issue would be fine if you leave the area or load into another location. There were some areas that seemed just pure quiet. I wasn't sure in those moments if I wanted it or it felt off. Then the character would do that annoying yawn or idle dialogue and everything was ruined again.

CONTROLS & PERFORMANCE

Previously I mentioned some points about the controls across the versions of the game. This is a flaw for mobile devices. It seemed like there's too many controls to utilize that it just can't effectively keep up with what you wanted to do. I need to move the camera over, but I'm in the middle of a fight so I have to attack, but then I need to dodge rapidly, camera is the wrong direction. You get the idea, it adds up quick and it always feels like a scramble to do anything in the game. You don't worry about that with a controller. It's doable if that's the only option you have. I would highly recommend to stay away from the mobile version if you can. Using a controller on a PS4 or on PC made sense for everything you do in the game. Controller shortcuts were logical, button layouts made sense. Game was made to be played with a controller. If you're on the PC version use a controller. You can't change the key bindings of the game and the default keys don't all make the most sense.

The control of the characters themselves feel proper. I loved how zippy and responsive a character can feel in a fight. This is slightly more of an issue for PS4 and mobile while in fights game lag or response time feels mildly constrained. Animations of the characters are all well done. I didn't experience any bugs or issues with my time in any version of the game. It feels really exciting when you're in the midst of combat zipping around smacking blobs of enemies and then quickly switch out characters for type advantages then switch again to create an overpowered combo attack with say fire and electric. The fighting in this game is so very fluid and this will be one of the reasons this game holds up above a lot of the rest.

SUMMARY

Genshin Gatcha' Waifu Collector is a very solid game with a great foundation of taking what worked well in Zelda BOTW and making a majority of it better. It's a shame it couldn't do everything better and instead decided to make it a grind that grows stale over the long run. It nailed the art style and is beautiful, lots of fun quests and story elements. Oh you bet I fed the hell outta' those ducks and they liked it.

Genshin Impact is a really good to great game. Not sure it has staying power for most gamers unless there's a lot of adjustments and new content added in the future. We'll see as they continue to unroll updates.

SCORE

7.5 / 10.0

▣▣▣▣▣▣▣◪▢▢

+ Gameplay is fun and familiar to those who've played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

+ Solid level and beautiful areas to explore

+ Nice variety of characters and abilities

- Audio timing and music blandness

- Controls/lag input

- Story/growing stale and repetitive over time

- Gacha mechanic in a mostly single player game has little purpose besides bleeding wallets and

punching players in the face when it should have been paid DLC at the minimum

*All other comments were too minor to further affect the score. If some of the technical issues are addressed and depending on future updates this score may be updated to reflect that state of the game.

Recommend playing on anything but the mobile version (unless that's the only option for you), not unplayable, but it's the lesser version of the game by all means. The game is free on all devices (there are in game purchases so beware to all those who struggle with needing to get certain characters, the rates are not in your favor, I didn't pull any 5 star character or weapon across 3 versions and roughly 6 total profiles).