Genshin Impact: First Impressions

So I have just started to play The Legend of Genshin Impact: Breath in the Wild! and I don’t say that lightly the game takes a lot from the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. Though has some major extras which do take the game to a new level. Firstly I have only been playing for a handful of hours and will certainly come up with a more detailed review on Genshin Impact once I have put heaps of more hours into it but for now pretty positive experience. The game is great on first instance, though has a couple of things I would like to bring up right away. Genshin Impact has a slightly arcade feel to it and by this I mean how the game welcomes you to the world, the lack of options or even the ability to save a load, keep in mind this game does become an co op I have heard after a certain level however for now feels a little bit impersonal. That is not necessarily a bad thing but caught me off guard when thinking I was going into a kind of Japanese Role playing game. The game feels more like it stems from a mobile game or massive multiplayer online game creator. It has certain features that ring with mobile games like jumping into the fray without any initial option or consultation of what the player wants to do and being pushed tons of terms & conditions prior to playing instead of the standard options given with more role playing games. Are the creators doing a sneaky Tik Tok version of data mining? Haha if they produce great games in doing so then why not! 

Going on the game however its great, many features do stem from Zelda breath of the wild and by that the gliding and climb anything till you run out of stamina are great add ons but this game Genshin Impact I believe takes things a little further with a plethora of abilities and items that need to be upgraded, found, sold, merged and more. The game has some great huge features that kind of remind me of Star Ocean two back in the day where you could collect cook and craft so much, it’s a great attempt as a modern illustrated Japanese role playing game. The graphics looks great and playing on the Playstation 4 pro does make quite a difference when compared to the mobile version and yes there is a mobile version of this game! The only downside is you can cross play mobile version with PC but not with PS4 which for console gamers is a little bit disappointing. Always been a great idea to have your save moved over and simply play during work or Christmas lunch! 

Back to the Game!

But let’s talk more about the game, on first instance it appease its going to be a major swap out role playing game, the main character gets replaced with other elemental characters and allow for fast seamless change in tactics mid battle, that’s a great idea but would have thought it could have also been interesting to have a team fight and auto set your teammates abilities as in many other role playing games of this nature. The idea to have a single usable character does seem interesting and with so many areas to understand and build on that might have been enough for the player to handle as adding more elements might have been too much. In any case the game looks great and one of my favorite features is already the ability to loot nearly anything, not sure if eventually looting will turn up some legendary items but it works well for now when slashing at a simple bush can yield cooking items and more! The interaction is great and I can see Genshin Impact being a top contender for the long awaited continuous role playing games still not in the market. The only game that has lasted the test of time is Skyrim Elder Scrolls 5 which has only lasted so long cause its been released one thousands times on different consoles which doesn’t look like it will ever change. Genshin Impact is great and any person interested in Japanese Role playing games or simply Zelda should give this a try and most importantly the game is free! That’s insane for a game of such quality however when you think about it the creators clearly have other things in mind, instead of creating a one of buy and then lets add some DLC or downloadable content they are clearly looking at this game in the long term. I would be very interested in seeing where this game is going to end up and what else is going to be added but for now I’m still just about two percent into the game and hope I will enjoy it as much when I have finished the main story line. The interesting thing about Genshin Impact’s model is it will allow the creators and writers to extend the story should they choose to while allowing the player to maintain the same character and experience. I am not yet sure how this game will eventually interact with the betting on Esports world however in that being said who knows what the creators will come up with. The game has huge potential but more importantly opens the doors to a new realm of role playing games and the idea where free to play can deliver more for the creators having hit two hundred and fifty million dollars in its first month of release does show game makers you don’t need to get greedy to create a good game. Can you imagine explaining that to Todd Howard who has sold one off fees on the re-release of Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim across every console to date!

Genshin Impact: Mechanics

So having put another week into Genshin Impact I decided to come back and add a little more to this piece, just cause the game has so much more to offer than what is clear on the first hours of play with Genshin Impact. So diving a bit further into the game the more detailed mechanics begin to emerge, I have now got to the stage where I am seeing that what initially looks like a hack and slash is actually quite strategic and if you really want to enjoy the game learning about the said strategy does make a huge difference to the way you will play and enjoy Genshin Impact. For example there are a ton of upgrades and buffs to be had in the game from your weapons to your artifacts which are pretty much your armor, necklace, ring and other additional item replacements you have in most role playing games. Each of these items carries a buff and that buff has a multiplier effect on the character. Furthermore each characters has abilities that scale based on certain attributes in Genshin Impact, that being the case it’s very important for the player to check this scaling ability to insure the right item has been placed on the right character, but there is more, when using at least two or four of the said item another multiplier is added to the attribute making the scalability of the game quite extensive and I have noticed those abilities can alter the outcome of damage but even as much as ten times the original damage number. It’s quite important to look into these attributes when playing Genshin Impact and double checking to insure you have not only added the right item but also set of items and even insured such items have been upgraded to the maximum possible, this will have a huge affect on adventuring as Genshin Impact does hold some old role playing game mechanics with areas being unavailable not because you can not enter but because the level of monsters in that said area are just too many levels above the player, however scaling and upgrading items like artifacts have a huge impact on this and the same mechanics apply to the weapons in the game. Not always a common feature in games but Genshin Impact does give a huge sense of gratification when upgrading weapons as the idea behind the upgrading on Genshin Impact is that nothing goes to waste. You generally use an older weapon to add experience to the newer weapon and when that weapon is no longer your best then you use it to upgrade your newest and more powerful weapon. The model is extremely organic and does give the player a sense of recycling. Other features that slowly come out into this game as you progress are the use of environments and abilities or better yet elemental abilities  to match such environments the great feature that Genshin Impact has put onto the game is that using an elemental ability when out of combat such as wind on a dandelion will allow you to pick up such seeds and the same go for some kind of both fire and ice flower, though I don’t yet have the ability to cool down the fire flower to pick up whatever seeds will be left behind. I will certainly add more to this however here is a short video on finding more dandelion seeds!