Yami playing Genshin Impact

  It has been more than a month i started playing Genshin Impact and with the milestones i have reached, i think i am ready to prepared a rounded opinion about this hottest AAA Mobile Game of the year. It took me more than a year to start playing Genshin Impact partly because of limited hardware issue of my mobile phone at the time, but mostly from my hesitation trying another Mihoyo Game due to personal bad experience playing Honkai Impact 3rd which is a very high maintenance for a mobile game. 

Before i tried Genshin, i always thought the game to be very overhyped with its well-placed aggressive marketing that attracts Normies which is a recipe for toxic community. However after trying what Genshin able to offer for some time, i do find the game have its merit that makes it earn its current position as the top reigning Mobile Game. If i have to sum up my experience with Genshin Impact, the game experience is a polarizing one. By F2P standard, Genshin offers very amazing open world exploration but at the same time some of the worst Gacha experience on par with FGO and Uma Musume. Personally i like Genshin because it is the Chinese answer to Avatar and Exalted, two great series inspired from Eastern Asia esoteric cosmology, and a decent one at that.

 In terms of gameplay, Genshin is an Open World RPG that offers relatively simple Combat mechanics combined with somewhat decent customization. When it comes to combat mechanics, Genshin revolve around Seven element system which each of the hero possess one elemental attributes. For most of the part, Genshin combat system heavily emphasize in elemental rotations in which the players must exploit enemy's elemental weakness and actively switch party members to inflict heavy damage. The Game offer somewhat well rounded starter party for the players but they have to roll the Gacha if they desire the Cool Flashy Powerful heroes which have atrocious drop rate. Compared to full fledged AAA Sandbox games like Skyrim or Fallout, the complexity level of Genshin are nowhere as deep but the content will keep most players occupied for a long time until they reach endgame.

 When it comes to production value, i think Genshin Impact managed to land that sweet spot in gaming industry being a low-entry but a well-rounded AAA Gacha game. In my opinion, in terms of Waifu and Storyline, FGO managed to still reign supreme for now. But at its current stage, Genshin managed to surpass the former in every other aspect save for those two that i mentioned. Personally i find Genshin Success lies in its ingredients to make it a well rounded F2P Open World Gacha game that really appeals for mass market but that is also probably the game achilles heel as well. While I don't think Genshin requires the enormous amount of content that MMORPG needs to retain their player base, the playerbase of Genshin will only stick around so long that Mihoyo churn contents in consistent rate as i don't see the loyalty of Genshin player base are close to the levels of fanaticism of the core FGO fanbase

 Lastly the Gacha Mechanics of Genshin is easily the vilest part of the game. This game practically force players to spend money at some point if they wish to get far in the game. The Genshin SSR drop rate is at abysmal 0,6% with guaranteed pity triggered at 90th roll. This is not the main issue however, as the infamy of Genshin lies in the difficulty to gather its gacha currency in F2P manner. For a 10 roll, players need 1600 Primogem and players are only able to gather slightly above that amount even if do the daily quests diligently. There are options to gather a good amount of Primogem through abyss dungeon, but those are only reserved for endgame only which most pure F2P players won't reach before they get burnt out. Realistically pure F2P players will need to grind for 4-5 months before getting an SSR and it even had a chance of getting undesirable spooks from that drop. So basically for players that are planning to commit with Genshin, they will at least have to buy 5$ monthly subscription which halven the time of gathering Primogems necessary for guaranteed SSR pull. For me the most insulting part that Genshin decided to pull off is that it is almost guaranteed that 9 from the 10 pulls will be 3* Weapons which will be pure garbage once you R5 them, at least FGO had more creativity when it comes to designing their garbage pool.

 Games like FGO and Uma Musume gave somewhat decent handouts from time to time to make up for their atrocious SSR rate. But from my experience, Mihoyo is rather notorious in this aspect which culminated in the debacle of Genshin 1st anniversary where the game review bombed by the playerbase due to insulting amount of handouts. Just like DW, Mihoyo are only able to pull off this kind of crap with Genshin Impact as long as they are able to maintain the quality of the game through content which will get more difficult as time goes by which had been proven with FGO from the last two years. 

 In the end, Genshin is a wonderful open world game highly accessible due to its F2P model but this game will not worth your time unless you are prepared to spend some money on it.