Genshin Impact – The Good

There are many things that Genshin Impact does right. After all, there has to be a reason why the mobile version managed to hit one billion dollars in earnings within six months. These are my own personal reasons as to why I like this game so much.

Gameplay

The gameplay is a third-person hack-and-slash affair. Each character has a normal attack, a charged attack, an Elemental Skill (an offensive/utility ability on cooldown), and an Elemental Burst (an ult basically, requires energy generated from Elemental Skill to charge up). A team of four is active during regular gameplay, with one on-field character at any time.

The party of four mechanic is one of the reasons why the game is so fun for me. Each character has a different role in a team and interacts with each other in different ways. Sure, some characters have mechanics that makes them fun on their own, like Beidou‘s Tidecaller where properly timing it gives an attack buff and deals massive damage, but it is the interaction between the characters within a party that makes the combat interesting.

Customizability

The best part about Genshin for me is definitely the team and character builds. As someone who always loves customizability in my video games, Genshin gives me so much room to explore and experiment.

Every character can be equipped with a weapon and five artifacts. Every weapon and artifact set has their own set of passives, and they have their own stats as well. Depending on the character’s talents, elements, and intended role in the team, different artifacts and weapons can be used.

Build your team

And depending on how the characters work and how they interact with other characters’ kits, there are different ways to build your teams.

Team and character building is something that you can actually delve into quite deeply. Even characters with largely similar kits can be utilized differently based on those minute differences. One example I can give here is by comparing Kaeya and Rosaria.

In Genshin, one of the main ways to deal large amounts of damage is with elemental reactions. There is one element that is first applied on the enemy (or the enemy itself is innately imbued with an element) which is referred to as the base element, and an element that is applied afterwards to trigger the reaction, referred to as the triggering element.

Even similar characters aren’t actually similar.

Kaeya’s and Rosaria’s Elemental Burst both applies Cryo to enemies over 8 seconds, but Kaeya’s apply it at a much higher rate than Rosaria’s. Kaeya is much better for applying the Cryo base element to enable reactions since he can maintain the base element for reactions. Meanwhile, Rosaria is best for triggering reactions, as her reaction application is slow enough for another support character to maintain a different base element on the target. Both characters have very similar kits, but because of this minute difference they are utilized very differently, Kaeya being used to set up for reactions while Rosaria being the one to deal massive reaction damage.

Multiple roles for characters

And even characters themselves can be built differently for different roles. Take the previously-mentioned Kaeya for example. He can be built as a Cryo support by using his Elemental Burst and Elemental Skill to apply Cryo for reactions. If he’s paired with Chongyun, who can convert Kaeya’s physical attacks into Cryo, he can be a Cryo DPS. You can even build him as a physical DPS by abusing his high-damage normal attacks and easy access to the Superconduct reaction, which lowers enemies’ physical defense.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to build characters and teams in Genshin, and engage with discussions with other like-minded people in forums. New metas are still being discovered, and with new weapons and characters being released at a steady pace theorycrafting and discussions will only end when the playerbase collectively get sick of the game and left.

Others

Aside for the gameplay and customization, which are the main reasons why I like Genshin Impact so much, there are also a multitude of other things that keeps me playing.

First up, the music in Genshin Impact is amazing. The soundtrack composer and producer, Yu-Peng Chen, has years of experience under his belt, and he delivered some rather masterful work for Genshin. One of my favourite tracks is the ambience music for Stormterror’s Lair, A Storm, A Spire, and A Sanctum.

I also really like most of the cast we interact with as well. There’s the warm and helpful Amber and Noelle, the ever enigmatic and charming Kaeya, forthright and open Beidou, learned and wise Zhongli, and many more. I suppose the only character type I really don’t like are the workaholics, namely Jean and Ganyu, mainly because it’s extremely unhealthy and that they need to get a grip. And a vacation or two.

Lastly, I enjoy having events to shake things up and add new gameplay elements and minigames. I appreciate the burst of freshness it brings to the game at regular intervals. I suppose that is the only good thing about the F2P GaaS model: there better be something to keep the playerbase happy and playing or they won’t be getting any income.

 

And I supposed it is about time for me to address all the things I dislike about Genshin Impact. Which I’ll do tomorrow!