Lots of sandbox games had a boom in recent years. With people being home during quarantine, families wanted to create a life outside of their home to explore, so they turned to videogames. In perfect timing, Genshin Impact was launched by Mihoyo. It has a well-made story, intense gameplay, and immersing puzzles, but as you get further into the game, it lacks the luster it came out with. The game is still in development, so it makes sense why there is such a huge difference between early gameplay versus late, which is where my issues lie.
At the beginning of Genshin Impact, a cut scene plays out showing how the traveler arrived in Teyvat, the world in which the player adventures. It shows a fantastic battle scene to open the game, and also allows you to choose your gender in a way that doesn’t feel separated from the gameplay like most games have. When you arrive, you meet Paimon, your guide and travel companion through your new world, and every one of the city of Mondstat. You join the adventurers guild when you meet Amber and the other Knights of Favonious, and later on, you may get them through the gacha aspect of the game and play as them.
If you’re unfamiliar with gacha games, they can be a dice roll to insight on a company’s insight to how they care for their player base. Gacha is played by doing ‘spawns’, or summons, for items that are needed to get through the game. They include a rarity system, and in Genshin Impact these take the forms of star increase, and rarity increases as the star amounts do. There’s the hardest to get, 5 stars and the lowest at 3 when it comes to weapons of characters. It can be super exciting to get the currencies needed, however, most companies can be stingy with giving them to players because they make the currencies cost money. Genshin Impact has always been super kind to their fanbase, often giving them gems through fun events that make the gameplay more enjoyable even at later adventure ranks.
The game itself is super fun, especially for an open-world game. You progress through your adventure ranks, which are the player’s levels, which let go through the story of the game while also leveling up your characters. For a long time, it feels like there’s no shortage of things to do. While you wait for the gap from each story quest, you can fight bosses and enemies for materials to ‘ascend’ (a huge power increase every 10-20 levels) your characters. If you don’t feel like fighting enemies, for the time being, you can just adventure the world and collect materials that spawn through the world of Teyvat.
Personally, I’m at adventure rank 41 and have been playing since a little after the launch of the game, around October 1, 2020. I was practically addicted to the game for a long time, and couldn’t stop exploring this new world with incredibly fun gameplay. One of the things I enjoyed most is doing puzzles to get rewards, which usually included the gacha currency, primogems. I would spawn non-stop, and as always when I play games with any sort of lottery-based aspect, I got horrible gear and characters that didn’t aid me much. I came up with the plan to save mine for a ‘banner’ (how they promote a character, which usually includes an increase of getting them) of this 5-star character named Ganyu. Saving up for a character in advance is a fantastic way to show restraint for spending the currencies like crazy and to ensure, with pity (guaranteed a character or promoted item after a certain number of spawns), you’ll get them. My tactic granted me fruitful rewards, including the character I so desperately wanted, and other 5 stars.
While the game is riveting in the beginning, it starts to get very repetitive. You fight the same bosses to level up your characters, do the same quests to get items, and there’s eventually no more story quests to do. The game is still in early development, with there only being two of seven cities in the world of Teyvat, and the second one being released around March. Hopefully, there’s some change as the game progresses through its creation and additions to upgrading characters through the same menial tasks.
As someone who’s been playing since launch, is high in their adventure ranks, and has grinded through most of the new material, I can say the game needs to change its constant repetition with fighting the same bosses. it gets boring and drives away players from waiting for updates. You sit and wait to see the new notification that there’s a new event or character arriving soon, and most people don’t have the patience. Otherwise, this game has so much unending potential to be a fantastic full game, and I can’t wait to see what it turns into.