Genshin Impact

An adventure game that invites you to dive into the thrilling events of the fantastical world of Teyvat. Alongside a group of brave companions, you’ll explore the ruins of ancient empires, use forbidden spells, test your strength against fantasy creatures, and take on incredible bosses. This is a hundred-hour journey.

The graphics don’t aim for realism, but they’re still a treat for the eyes. Simple, easy-to-read object shapes, high-quality artwork, vivid effects, and real-time rendering create a unique artistic style. The characters are well animated, move naturally, and react to hits during combat. Lighting and weather change dynamically, bringing the visuals and gameplay to life.

Genshin Impact is a single-player, story-driven, third-person action RPG set in a huge open world. It’s a gacha game focused on collecting characters, assembling a team based on their abilities, and endless progression.

At the same time, it’s a free-to-play grind-heavy live-service game with a long development cycle. You can vary your solo play by teaming up in co-op and inviting one to three friends into your world. Regardless of the mode you choose, the game requires an internet connection to run.

In the first few days, players are showered with resources, rewards, and characters, but after a couple of days, the freebies dry up and character progression slows down considerably.

For the game, miHoYo created the medieval world of Teyvat and carefully developed its basic rules and laws, the timeline of events, and the current state of affairs in its nations. You can learn more by visiting the in-game library and listening to dialogue.

Teyvat is ruled by seven gods, or Archons: Anemo, Geo, Hydro, Pyro, Electro, Dendro, and Cryo, each representing a well-known element. The game map is also divided into seven regions, whose residents worship only one deity. Each region has a large city (a capital) and several settlements, farms, and production sites.

Each region has a unique style based on the medieval culture it represents: Japan, China, India, Russia, Ancient Rome, Germany, and France (including national and climatic features). Each also has something like an ideology: some value order, others freedom, and others financial prosperity.

The world of Genshin Impact is truly vast and expansive. You can explore it not just from side to side, but also up and down. Teyvat is full of activities: daily and weekly tasks, killing enemies and bosses, opening chests, and solving unusual puzzles.

In the style of an MMO, each region’s map is divided into zones with different levels, which determine the quests and enemies you encounter. The greater the difference between a zone’s level and your character’s level, the harder it is to kill even a simple mob.

Genshin Impact inherits its gameplay and controls from mobile games. One button is for the basic attack—press it several times to perform a combo. Another is for elemental attacks. There’s also an “ultimate” ability that charges over time.

The basic combat system revolves around one-handed and two-handed swords, as well as bows with magical arrows. Characters’ abilities come from the elements: fire, water, wind, electricity, ice, earth, and living plants. In addition to offensive spells, there are support and defensive ones, such as a healing aura or summoning a pet. The environment also reacts to magic—you can freeze water or set grass on fire.

During combat, you directly control only one character, but you can switch between party members instantly at any time, using all kinds of weapons, skills, and “ults.”

The abilities of different characters can be combined. Drench a target with water and hit it with fire to trigger a “vaporize” reaction. Freeze a target and hit it with lightning to “shatter” it. Or douse a target with water and hit it with lightning to spread the damage. Earth powers help with defense and crowd control, while air powers boost attacks.

Combos can deal significantly more damage to a target than normal or magic attacks. This is especially useful since some enemies and bosses are immune to physical or magic damage. Movement also includes climbing any walls and ledges, dashing to dodge, and flying through the air. There is a stamina system.

It’s not easy to build a powerful team in Genshin Impact that can destroy everything in its path, because classes are tied to specific characters. And those characters are tied to the gacha system. This is a monetization method where players get a random set of items for a set amount of money. In Genshin Impact, the chance of pulling a five-star (ultra-rare) character is 0.6%, and if you want a specific one, such as an earth mage, the odds drop to a fraction of a percent.

Technically, you can complete the game with the free characters given to you in the first few hours. But tackling dungeons or completing co-op quests with them will be tough; you’ll need better heroes. That means opening plenty of loot boxes, which takes hours of grinding or spending real money.

At the same time, the game has many manipulative mechanics that encourage you to collect characters or even want to get them all. Limited-time heroes are sure to be a much-anticipated surprise. This creates an addiction and makes you spend a lot of money on cute anime waifus.

The story of Genshin Impact is simple and full of clichés. In the prologue, the protagonist’s sibling is taken away, and they do everything they can to get them back and defeat the main villain (who is evil because the plot says so). But the story also includes unusual plot twists and well-developed characters.

The side quests are simple, but offer an unconventional approach to completing them. You’ll have to think creatively, unlock a certain skill, or save up in-game money for a bribe. The game also features lengthy personal quests from its characters.

As players complete quests and explore the game world, they gain several types of experience, increasing their character, friendship , and Adventure Ranks. The latter is the main measure of success, unlocking further story progression, difficult dungeons, and various features.

All the items you collect are used to improve the ones you already have. Players feed unwanted weapons or equipment to their useful items. The same goes for characters: when you get a duplicate, you have to “apply” it to the character you already own, thereby making them stronger. This significantly boosts their stats and unlocks an additional talent.

Upgrading each element is also divided into stages. You can’t just upgrade weapons or characters alone; everything needs to be developed in parallel, or progress will simply stop.

It unlocks at Adventure Rank 16. The mode is cross-platform, so your team can include friends playing on any gaming device. Characters are divided up according to the number of players. Co-op offers its own set of quests:

Successful co-op play requires knowing your abilities and how they work with other characters, as well as having good equipment. At the time of release, Genshin Impact was not planned to have a PvP mode.

In co-op, “Spiral Abyss,” story quests, and side quests are unavailable to the whole team. Only the host receives rewards for challenges, and they are also the only one who can open chests and collect collectibles.