Genshin is a good example of a game that is really good but really hard to recommend. I've spend $45 since the month after it came out and I'm able to do everything. My buddy had a bad day and wanted Hu Tao and Staff of Homa. He dropped $400 in 20 minutes. If someone is susceptible to gambling, they need to stay as far away as possible from this game.
@@AstralSys. You can very well play through the entire game without having to spend any real-life money. The game is semi-generous in offering its in-game currency, so you can actually end up acquiring a decent amount of 5 star characters without any weight on your wallet.
@@muhammadhunain7784 right. Playing free to play you get about two wishes a day (I've never done less) and that will guarantee a five star every banner.
@@muhammadhunain7784 Doesn't matter how generous the game is. Gachas are tailor to break you to spend money. It's a matter of strong will to resist the temptation to ease the problem the game throws at you. It's like cults who don't make you join them and just make you come to "see how the things looks like, no strings attached." If something is too good to be true, it probably is.
@@charsquatch600 2 wishes would be 320 primogems a day. We reliably get 60 from daily commissions but where are the remaining 260 coming from? We can get small batches of 2, 5, 10 gems etc from various game activities and achievements such as exploring and finding chests. But how much exploring and how many hours a day do you have to put in to reach 260 gems?
YES seeing somebody understand the basics feels so good. Like it didn't get me angry that playing Diluc he as not Auto Attacking between E's, because playing in a simpler way is enough. But you can also learn about elemental Gauge theory and use it.
A heads up about the boat: It was introduced in an event in the summer where there WERE whirlpools, platforms with enemies and challenges in an archipelago. But it was a temporary area with its own lore which is a massive bummer. It was one of Genshin's best events.
@@jonathansoko5368 maybe stuff like the tower defense, wind festival or furnace events but lore heavy ones that add entire new areas to explore have no reason to go. Dragonspine is still here. The archipelago could've stayed.
I've seen it mentioned so many times now and I am convinced that Liyue is where the entire player base had an epiphany that this game was special. Floating through the mountains with that amazing soundtrack is when it really hits you.
You hit the nail in the head. Monsdtad is great but crossing the pass into Liyue and exploring the huge map, with the mountain ranges and rivers, exploring the puzzles while listening to the music. It really knew how to take advantage of being an open world game.
@@xythiera7255 makes sense, tbh... Inazuma is the first region where the devs go "'Ight, we don't need this base (BotW) anymore." and just went ham on the design.
The game is perfect for casual players who play seasonally - the longer you don't play it, the better it is. But for hardcore players going past the honeymoon phase and minmaxing everything with no content to use them on, the game will feel like it's moving very slowly for them and they are going to face lots of frustration with the mechanics and systems.
@Equinodium Lezarouxe well daily only take 20min at best, might aswell do it and wait for the new content, progression is not that important, afterall the hardest content atm is only abyss, and thats quite easy even for me f2p, unless you like to min max every character you own, then that gonna take long time
This is one of those games that is best played casually. Definitely not meant to be a main game, just something you play for an hour or two. If you rush through it, you’re gonna be out of content pretty fast.
This happened to me, and now I'm waiting for Mihoyo to release the next part of the story, because I refuse to spend one more second of my time grinding pointlessly.
While i agree that it's good to take your time with this game, and play it for the journey rather then poor endgame, I disagree that you will run out of content fast, main story + side/character story/hangouts/basic exploration prolly has a solid 100 hours of content to go through, if you wanna complete the side stuff collection, aka collecting all the anemoculus + variants, max out reputation + shrines + viewspots, finish all world quests, that adds another 50 or so hours, and if you wanna 100% collect all chests, to have all areas 100% (which still gives you a few chests off each area) takes probably another 50-100 hours across all 3 regions, especially without a guide. so in total your looking from anywhere across about 100 hours for a barebones letsplay where you just play as you go and do some side content, to about 250 hours if you wanna get absolutely everything you can. that may not be MMO type hours to sink into a game, but it's impressive for any rpg let alone phone game.
I feel this was a fair assessment of the game, and to be honest (as someone who's been playing daily since launch) I think you went a little easy on it. It's a good game worth playing for people who aren't gambling addicts or easily duped by shiny things. You CAN clear all the content without spending money on it and I know this because I've done it.
43:04 Fun Fact: The sword that fell from Celestia, is actually the traveler's sword. Back in the first cutscene where the twins get separated, your twin get's transported by the god, but they held onto the sword. However, when you get transported, you drop your sword, thus falling from Celestia into the sea. Kayea's grandfather was out sailing at that time, and found the sword. Cool lore if you ask me.
Characters in Genshin are like tools, there are certain roles and certain elements to do puzzles with, so with the free characters and a few free pulls you will have all the tools to progress, people that spend money on getting all characters are just getting more of the tools to try and experiment with, but is not really locking much of the content
11:12 A little correction here. There's actually no difference between damages in weapon types, they're all treated as Physical Damage. Claymores/Greatswords are just inherently good at breaking rocks and shields, not just the club, the Geo element is good at breaking rocks too
Well he'a not wrong, claymores do have a special modifier on them, because they have the shatter elemental reaction too, which is physical damage but only for heavy weapons vs frozen enemies, meaning that weapon types are actually considered seperate in the damage register for things like that.
@@ruzinus_ because fire catalysts user have an inherent "explosive". Before zhongli came out, klee is literally the best miner because all her attack has that effect
The thing about Genshin Impact is that in addition to being a gacha game, it also decided to be a videogame, with level design and puzzles. It's hard to recommend a gacha game because of how it preys on people with addictive natures, but that don't mean the videogame bits don't have their merits. Regardless, offering you a Botw like open world on your mobile phone at zero upfront cost is definitely a major contribution to its success as it's an insane value proposition to the customer.
Yeah I usually refer to Genshin as a video game with a gacha system, rather than just a gacha game. It’s definitely still there and they obviously still push it pretty hard, but there’s an actual game there even without ever opening the gacha. And even with the gacha, the amount of free stuff they throw at you is frankly pretty incredible.
Exactly, I had always wondered why people were so into it. I was under the assumption that it was just a gatcha game with some semi serviceable gameplay to use your characters. Since I've dumped a bunch of time into the game, I've come to realize how much game there is to it. It basically is Breath of the Wild with it's own take on the gameplay and unique mechanics and characters.
@@xythiera7255 you seem like a discerning fellow, and power to you if you can enjoy this sort of game without being enticed to spend thousands month on it. I also curb spending on this game in a similar fashion. But there are some who have a personality that can't help but whale on games that have these monetization schemes, and it is these unfortunate souls that we worry for.
Honestly dude, one of my favourite things to do while I’m working from home, or doing chores around the house, is listening to your vids. Love the content - keep doing what you’re doing 🤙
Yes! I helped my parents build our new home and while I painted all the baseboard around the house last year I listened to his videos about TES, Fallout, and Pokemon. It was great!
Graphics look better than pokemon arceus my daughter plays ... Insane if you consider the money the pokemon franchise makes! I was shocked at how dodgy it looks ...
Exactly these are the things that got me interested in this game, but the music while exploring is so calming that I slept through it whenever I played it while lying on the bed.
I've never spent any money on this game but I'm still capable of reaching the hardest parts of the game. It's not exactly a hard game, just gets you hooked on characters you want so badly. If you're someone who don't want to spend, just practice saving primogems and understand you'll have to grind slightly harder compared to whales. It's a fun game just know when to stop playing, just like any other game
As a F2P player, I am AR57 and had no problem clearing any content so far, except getting full stars on Floor 12 in Spiral Abyss. But that's never concern me. Getting biggest damages was never in my interest when playing this game, I am just hooked to the story progression. Just be smart in pulling the characters you want, and you will fine as a F2P.
Totally agreed on this one! I'm free to play as well, I play almost 5 months now, I was able to catch up on story (and Abyss progress), and deeply in-love with Teyvat, the overall story, the characters, and stuff. It's one of the best free game out there IMO. Easy to learn, little challanging to master, really hard (on the credit card) to perfect, but overall satisfying lore-wise.
Worth adding that the spiral abyss's upper floors reward is literally only "one extra pull or so" every 2 weeks. It's the least interesting content in the game and the rewards won't be missed by those players who don't opt to whale or tryhard the content with f2p's restrictions (mainly DPS as it is a timed challenge) I've yet to see any other content in the game (events or normal) that feels of sufficient difficulty for people to worry about - even with subpar artefacts and weird team compositions players shouldn't expect the game to be gating them off as free players
I'm not f2p myself but my sentiment for the game is similar. I have ppl assume I try to R5 and C6 and weap or char I want but I just want a single copy and save for reruns or new char I like.
If you are susceptible to addiction through gambling. Then no. Just no. I cannot deny that the game is absolutely beautiful. Even as an old player, roaming around to explore is really refreshing, since the game is in mobile, and it is very rare to experience this in mobile. But then again, the gacha aspect is too big of a trap for those gambling addicts. Same goes to kids. If you can control yourself, and if you are only after the exploration and adventure part, then I would recommend it 100% of a time. But if you get easily addicted, then save your ass.
As someone who’s played Genshin for the last several months, I think this is an excellent and fair review. Only correction is regarding blunt vs bladed weapons, in which there is absolutely no difference as the game makes no distinction. Another user did point out that the debate club is classed as a claymore and therefore superior at breaking shields, I agree with them that’s probably where the confusion came from. To expand on gacha and it’s effect on endgame (I.e spiral abyss) it’s absolutely possible to clear with just the free characters (Traveller, Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Barbara, Xiangling and arguably Noelle) and get 36 stars. It’s certainly easier with some of the other characters though. In addition, several 4* characters are among the most used characters. Bennett and Xingqiu are considered SS tier support units, the latter and Xiangling are some of the best off field DPS characters and one of the most effective teams is made up exclusively of 4* units. You absolutely can pay to win, but really what you’re paying for is the ability to win sooner than free players. Outside of spiral abyss, the level of difficulty is low enough that you won’t have much trouble even without a good team. For those that want to spend just a bit of money, the battle pass and Welkin Moon are great value. Beyond those, value for money drops a shit ton. This is an expensive game to whale in. There is some pressure in how limited the banners are. While this is obvious to gacha players, this does need to be emphasised for others. Impulsive spenders should not play this game.
you can clear out some spiral abyss from floor 9 to 11 but its impossible nowadays just clearing floor 12 with just free characters let alone getting full 9 stars, i am a plankton (aka only buying welkin sometimes) endgame player at AR58 having a shitton of 5 star characters INCLUDING A BUNCH OF THE 5* WEAPONS i still cant be able to beat it unless u get arataki itto which is a great character for current abyss (im skipping him cause i dont like him) it looks like spiral abyss now are suited for the current banner meta instead of being universally viable for all characters and team comps idk why they did that, probably because they are trying to nerf current broken team that broke the game aka morgana (ganyu venti mona combo) they fall off in performance for the current abyss and about bennett and xingqiu, they are sadly harder to get with the massive 4 star pool rate keeps going up, more and more 4 star characters are released on the side of every new 5 star as a support package SPECIFICALLY made for the 5 star in question, some of them are workable universal supports some of them are a complete niche to use aka gorou and kujou sara. Not to mention there is no pity guarantee system for specific 4 stars, so even if Bennet is on the banner rate up u can spend more than 100 pulls and still not get him
and fun fact the gacha aspect of this game is not at all a problem for an f2p as long as u are not being greedy af u can be able to look at leaks or datamines to look to the future and decide on a character u specifically want to start saving up by doing dailies and events, u get enough primogems for at least 1 5 star item in the game each patch
about 5* units and weapon, are a prove that the game can be better enjoyed at the endgame as older the account gets. I never whaled, because its stupidly expensive to do in my country, I only buy the welkin. But at ar 58 with more 5* and 4* character that I need to clear abyss, wishing became just for fun to have a new character and play a little different than before. Some people got to much crazy about clearing abyss, but is a part of the game that should also be done at your on pace.
@@barbaradesigns1774 I agree with most of this. At AR56 I'm still struggling to get 36 stars in abyss, but I think that's more down to my personal abilities and team comps, I think I have the tools in place if I used them properly. As a result, I play2waifu now. Abyss is a tiny part of the game though, you're right that people should do it at their own pace.
Some of the events in game also have bits of lore dump for certain characters, which isn’t really that important to the main game, but it helps flesh out the characters and the world
I absolutely did not expect to see you cover this game, but I'm so glad you did. I've never heard someone sum up exactly what I enjoy about this game as well as this.
Honestly didn't execpt you to cover Genshin, and honestly I think your assessment is fair. though sadly, what you said about min maxing people getting burnt out over grinding the same bosses and dungeons and what not ends up being the sad fate of a lot of the players who've been at it since launch. But imo, it's understandable, the game is still being made and people aren't machines. But i will say it does get boring at some point. but that's' when you make your own fun, like turning on co-op mode and letting the randomness ensue or helping new players out. Or, hell, even making an alt account to do a MC only playthrough. So yeah, genshin is worth a try for folks who haven't played it. It has it's flaws like all things and sometimes those flaws are pretty yikes, but it's a good game, evne jsut to kill a few hours.
min-max grind burnout is all on the dev's though, I imagine some time down the road they will make it so you can more easily obtain the stats you are looking for, but that will probably be like 5.0 or 6.0 after they finally lose players to critical burnout.
I started around the time Genshin first got released and I got to the point where I had nothing else to do but grind. As someone who likes min-maxing and figuring out that kind of thing, I tried getting the best artifacts for some of my favorite characters but ultimately just decided it just wasn't worth it. The game was too much of a time sink for how little reward I felt it gave in return. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was after Xiao first came out because until then you had about a month to save up primos and try to get the character but they decided to make that event only two weeks and then took him away and gave us a rate-up Keqing banner for the two remaining weeks; this really gave me an inkling that they're really going to press FOMO onto players from then on and I just quit. I got what fun out of the game I wanted and don't plan on ever returning.
@@windsgrace688 Yeah the Xiao banner was pretty poorly handled and idk if it was poor sales or backlash that made them opt to not go down that route, but luckily they haven't. In fact they now have double re-run banners. Which you know, kind of a double-edged sword. Good if you only missed one of the limited characters, bad if you missed both, and REALLY BAD if you have any kind of gambling addiction + missed out both. I'm glad you were able to get your fun out of it though, and sorry the grind got so bad. I hope one day they do something about it. There's just too many layers of rng when running domains. rng on drops, rng on stats, rng on substats. that's a lot. I wish they functioned more like the materials domains did on sunday where you could pick, that'd take off at least one layer of rng.
@@Lunneus it is indeed partly the reason for my burnout too and quit not long after. but, the most excruciating pain i felt back then wasn't the RNG, it was the shackle from the stamina/resin system. i play traditional MMOs with equally bad RNG in the past, but at least in those game, i have my freedom to choose on when and how i grind and farm whatever piece of equipment or weapon that i want, i can do it with my own pace without heavy planning and found my own way around the repetitive nature of such activity. but with genshin, i feels restricted and heavily dictated by my game on how i should play it. the constant FOMO it generated (if you don't spent your daily resin, it feels wasted isn't it), the limit on how much runs you can do, and along with the schedule of which dungeons opened on which day, are idk, it's frustrating for me. the limit on the runs kinda acceptable on work days, 30 mins for dailies, another 30 mins for artifact runs, and another 30 mins to 1 hour for roaming the open world, are fine for daily play time. but what if sometime on the weekend i want to "no-life"-ing the artifact runs? definitely not possible without resin refresh using primogem, right? you know, tbh, i don't even recommend the game to my friends. because, it's partly a painful experience for me, i spent money in it sadly, i bought the battlepass, the daily primo pack, even more primo because i want Klee when her banner comes out back then (and the funny thing is, i don't even get her in one pity. i pulled Mona and Diluc along the way). i consider myself as a light spender, and the money i spent on genshin still more than the money i spent in GW2, Elite:Dangerous, etc (individually), even with those spending, the overall experience i've got isn't better than what i've got from other games. and i don't want my friends trapped in the same kind of experience.
@@SoopDwagg No the wont do that becouse Artifact grinding is the only thing that keeps players playing without it there is nothing to do . It will stay how it is right now . Just how gatcha games are . The gatekeep you becouse there isnt realy anything to do .
Do I play Genshin: Yes Should you play Genshin : No Am I enjoying Genshin : YES Well you enjoy Genshin : Yes Is the lore good: Yes Is the music good : ABSOLUTELY YES Is It a Good Game: Yeah So Should you play It: No
I don't understand the whole being able to acquire extra things with money problem. Isn't real life like that? It's not a game problem, it's an individual's problem
@@Asm0sday it doesnt really make sense. How people can be addicted to the gacha system? If anything, i only pull the character that i want and it never even occurs to me to keep pulling till i run out of primogems. The only time i pull a wish on banner i dont want was when my controller got slippery and the button pressed on its own
@@akaikeshi1906 yeah but there's a difference between spending a flat 20$ for a character and rolling a chance to get it. if im paying for something i'm not paying for the CHANCE to get the thing
Even though I have played this game since launch and know almost everything about it, I still find it interesting listening to someone explaining it. I love these kinds of videos, thank you for making a video about Genshin!
I have a hard time recommending it too. Not because of it's gameplay (I love it), or the world (very involved and interesting), or the story (surprisingly good for a newer game), but because it really depends on your own personal control when it comes to gambling. It's a blast to play, It's very fun and involved, and it's really the Exploration RPG I've been looking for since I played the early Zelda games. And you can really play it for free, never spend a dime, and still play and beat everything in the game if you simply play right and smart. Seriously, there's a streamer who does nothing but f2p in Genshin, and he's beat the hardest content in the game. BUT...it is a gacha game, and they are almost as good at tempting you with spending as they are in making a good game. do NOT play this if you cannot control your spending impulses. Either play for free, or set a limit and stick to it. For me, my limit is 60$ per month, since I've bought games in the past for that amount, and if I can get a full month (or more) of enjoyment out of it, it's worth 60$ to me.
You said 60 "per month"? That amount of money is not worth for any game at all, if you need to put money into the game monthly then the game is not good for you. Set the limit to 60 and no more since that is the nornal price to a game.
@@КристиянТрънбашев-м9о I never said it was pay to win... People spend to get characters and weapons they like but since the drop rates are low, it can become a gambling addiction as the main comment said. Any game that uses this gambling mechanics are not worth it if you can't control your spendings, thats was my point. Plus it sucks that you need real money to have a chance to get a new characters.
@@sirius2643 Fair point, but then how many games per month do you purchase? do you just purchase one game your entire life? or do you on average spend 60 per month to purchase a game. I'd bet that most people spend more. So if at the end of a month your still playing that game, then why not spend 60 to play it another month and get more from the game? Most people if they actually look at what they are spending will find that they spend at least 60 or even more for their gaming entertainment a month. For me, that puts my budget at around 60 to 100 per month for the games I play. So while I understand your point, logically if you put the money on what you play, then 60 bucks is 60 bucks whether it's a new game or the same game you've played all month long.
@@temjiu9915 Nah, I pay 60 for a game or spend that on a free game and thats it. If I see that amount of money gave back enough content for at least a year then it was worth it and I may spend another 60 in that game for new content. But as you said, if I have to put that amount every month for "new content" then the game is not worth my time or money at all. Imagine spending 720 dollar a year in a single game or even half of it, no thanks.
Omg this is unexpected but not unwelcome, always happy to hear your opinion on games. Even with games you don’t like you never bash and complain you’re constructive and even point out good things in otherwise bad games. Love your work Salt!
Apparently, the VA confirmed the developers asked her to tone down her sexual sounds. She did a stream where she recreates her original moans. I heard she made mint off of that.
as someone who has been playing since launch week, it's always so fun to see new players deep dive into it!! i do spend a lot of money on the game as i'm in a position where i'm able to, but i have friends who've played for free for the same amount of time and we're on par in a lot of ways, which is super cool.
This might sound aggressive but It isn't meant that way... You're either lying or you got played, because if you're paying and you're on par with your friends, then that's a waste of money. And if u are better, then it's p2w...Anyway, as long as you're having fun!
@@user-ux3jp9oo7r yeah that sounds like a lie. There's no way you're paying and you have the same characters as the free to play or else he's just so unlucky af and lazy to grind for artifacts and shit.
i think what he mean for on par is probably like abyss clear 36star (which is very doable by f2p and that is the hardest content atm), since the game is not difficult by any mean
I can only really recommend this game to patient people who can control themselves and don't have a gambling addiction. I am a f2p player with a whale mentality, but I still managed to save 25k primos over some months. Story wise the game is amazing.
I've repeatedly considered this as it does kinda seem like something I'd like, but was always nervous about the gacha elements. Thanks for reviewing it.
It's too bad it's gacha. I've played a bit, and it was fairly fun, but when I look at all of the other games I have to play, with none of the content gated by a real slot machine, I just don't see why I should commit. I wish I could just buy it
Just play free to play. If you decide to get to the end game, you'll enjoy the challenge and journey. Paid players just play an overly easy game with no challenge whatsoever
Don’t worry about the gacha elements,, you can play the game in its entirety without paying anything and still get by easily,, the game gives you free characters at the start and free new character to play with every 2 patches or so anyway, you’ll also get a lot of free stuff that you can use to get new characters as well so being entirely F2P will not really gate you into getting the premium characters.. game is easy enough so its not pay to win despite the always heard “people spending so much in the game” concept
You dont have to spend money at all. I'm completely f2p and doing decent, if I had more skill and luck with artifacts I'd be doing really well. 4 stars can carry you through the game sometimes
@@CrimsonMagick Salt did skim over it a bit, but he did mention that you don't have to gacha for weapons and equipment, that's what all those treasure chests give you too. You can (and some people do) beat the entire story and solve every puzzle without ever using the gacha.
as someone who played since launch. i cant imagine how much more exciting playing this game now would be now that Dragonspine is accessible at low level. that mustve been very exciting
Personally I am a bit split on Liyue and Mondstadt as both are quite pretty and have their own charms but I just like venti and the actual city of mondstadt more than the admittedly very pretty rocky regions of Liyue, although I also feel that the characters in mondstadt are just better than the Liyue counterparts but I haven't been able to complete all the missions for Liyue as i accidently raised my world level way to high without leveling my party to match which is slowing progress significantly.
liyue and monstadt are good in their own way for different reasons I like monstadt a bit more because it has less of that running around and giving specific Zhongli almost every god damn item in liyue. I feel you on the last point I did the same but in Inazuma and now I have half my team at a good level while another is like 20 levels off and the other is 10
@@abdiabdi3225 20 levels off? Ouch hope their your supporting characters otherwise you must go through alot of food. I have been holding off on doing my acension quests now to catch my characters up. Although it does hurt to see the full green xp bar
Gameplay wise. I really found it unique and amazing that it has many vibes from different genres. There's Hangout events that feel like Dating Sims. The Teapot Quest which feels like a Creation Sim. Tower Defenses, Stealth Mode, Hide and Seek in some events. BUT the one gripe that I really have is that the 3D shooter NEVER returns again. I miss it and I started playing Genshin 'cos I thought there were Bullet Hell sequences for each Boss.
This is actually helpful. I mean i keep booting the game up for a couple hours every few months and just can't escape the thorough confusion with so many systems and currencies. Plus i forget what happened in the story.
Surprised you chose to cover Genshin but glad you did, it was a fair assessment and a well made video. As someone who has a moderately paid account and an f2p account, both at end-game status, I can honestly say that the f2p experience is extremely good, if you already enjoy or at least tolerate the other "contentious" aspects (anime aesthetic, somewhat grindy nature, etc)
@@kannatheweeb8836 they tend to be jrpgs, so if you'll grind regarsless of micro transactions. Idk how "anime aesthetics" is "contentious" but as long as you don't start nagging about it and demanding to cater to your aesthetic sense, that's fine.
I think my main issue is that if I want to throw money at it, I have no good way to do so. My option basically is to throw money in and hope to get something out. I'd much rather be able to buy something directly.
@@MaakaSakuranbo then only start spending when you're on the 70th pull you should be able to finally get whatever character you're looking for most of the time at least that's how it has been for me. and you can still spend money as the currency from the wishes can be used to buy some 4-star characters like Bennett
you can do absolutely everything with the starters in genshin, and it's already very unlikely that a player would only own the starters and nobody else, so yeah, it really isn't necessary to get stronger characters unless it's for abyss. even doing things that counter a character's kit, like a physical catalyst user build can work if you push for it to.
@@pantsuchan968 nope they can if you have a lot of patience. use weapons like eye of perception and skyward atlas that deal bonus physical damage every so often. that damage scales off physical damage.
Honestly, you’re bound to get at least ONE 5* character at ay point in your adventure if you save up enough primogems. I’ve been playing since late December 2020 and I’ve already gotten what people consider as the meta characters (Ganyu in her first banner or Zhongli in his 1st rerun) And this is before spending money once on a maxed out BP just to get the Deathmatch You’re either unlucky or you’ll saving up primos
To be fair, back when only Liyue was available I got through most of that storyline pretty easily with just Kaeya, Beidou, Barbara and Xinyan, I saved up for the banners with confirmed drops. It may not have been the best team but it was good enough. I think I got to somewhere around act 3 of chapter 1.
@@Indian_gae_boii The Golden Apple Archipelago. It's residual Mondstadt remains from when Barbatos cleaned house. It's also a hell of a vacationing spot.
The boat I Inazuma actually had fights with monsters in water platforms & whirlpools, fog which damages your boat & lights to guide you. All of this was temporary for patch 1.6 when they added those little island but they removed them after that patch. And only kept the boat. I still have the boat repair toolkit I got from that patch it was exclusive for 1.6
Loved this review. But there was two important things he left out: 1. The icy mountain area was actually an expansion that wasn't even released until after Liyue came out. The difficulty spike is real if you just walk in without knowing this first, which is exactly what I did when I first found it. 2. Genshin Impact has a co op mode once you reach adventure rank 16 (which kinda sucks, I know). Players can request to join you, you can request to join them, and there's whole entire systems of friends lists, emotes, and text chat. Up to 4 people can run around the world at the same time, which makes grinding bosses much more tolerable. I have no idea how he never had a single person request to join his world during his many hours of playtime. It's kinda a major part of the game.
It's a great game, and a phenomenal casual game that you just stick around with and go through the journey with it rather than trying to minmax or whatever. Given the rather relaxed exploration and mostly light hearted aesthetics and story (with, of course, exceptions) it's pretty fitting I think. In a word, I suppose, it embodies "comfy".
I think I'm the only one who not only genuinely likes Paimon's English voice, but actually enjoys and prefers it. The fact that her VA also voices Lara in MapleStory is also a plus.
Imo, her initial EN voice acting was kinda crude at times, but it grows on you. The EN voice acting director and the EN VA herself has made paimon into a pretty likeable character and her script and banter is pretty much expected and well appreciated.
1.Its a free game, the amount of money you want to spend is on your control. 2. The world building is so deep (if you read all the book in the game you will find how well build and how vast teyvat is). 3. The gameplay is fun, the elemental reaction and stuff, not too flashy which not make me overwhelming like honkai. 4. The music is world class. I cant explain, but its really world class, they already make an online genshin concert, just search on youtube. 5. All characters feels so alive, their background is so well build, and a world class voice actors make them even more alive. 6. If you're a weebs or into anime and stuff, then you will love it more. I play for almost a year, and i play for around 1-2 hours a day except weekend, i play around 2-3 hours. And im not even done with itto quest yet.
I never read the books in the game, and you reminded me to do so, since i used to do it to all my single player games like skyrim and the witcher, i should actually read a book in genshin and see what it's like
bruh, the world building is not even that great, boring even. You can just read the lore from wiki instead of reading it in game since they give a better explanation and yes, they are not that deep. The main story have a high possibility of being linked to honkai impact anyway.
@@michaelsilaban854 really bro boring? Liyue archon war? Ruu back stories? Neko back stories? The mysterious dragonspine? Did you know why spiral abyss island named as musk reef? Did you know why wuwang hill become a creepy place like that? And if you try to talk to the npcs, you will find they have their own backstories too. And how many npcs is in genshin impact? There is numerous. And we are not even reach the half stories bro.
@@arifigo1006 look, just because they have a lot of back stories, it doesn't mean those stories are deep or entertaining. Some of the stories feel to forced anyway. For example the archon war, like how come so many gods lives in liyue and fight for the control of it. Liyue in the game is so fucking small. Just imagine if just 2 gods as powefull as morax fight in that small landscape, that nation should be reduced to ash. But maybe if you don't look to much into it, these stories can be entertaining. But not for me anyway...
Yeah, that's a fair review. Although I have to say that the resin system is absolutely atrocious, making it borderline impossible to enjoy the game after you're done with the story. And the resource gathering becomes a drag, because all the important stuff you can farm without resin has a respawn timer of 3 days... as in, real life days, not ingame days... But it's not the worst game ever, that's for sure.
1. Even if they add 4 events in the patch, the experience is underwhelming more often than not. People were excited about the puppy event but the stealth is so brain dead, I have no idea who approved this. (although the Albedo event is great). From the events I took part in I would rank about 3 of them as great, 5 as good while the rest is meh and I have been playing for half a year. The biggest problem is that most events are locked behind AR rank so the newer players don't get to join the fun even. 2. Events for the most parts are NOT added as permanent content. They are featured temporarily and then "regifted" to the players with minor tweeks. 3. Grinding resources becomes an issue once you get to the higher AR. Since the only content left is the Abyss, once you hit the max AR ranks you are destined to be stuck in domain grinding them for 10 minutes a day before login off. You could stay on a lower AR level in theory, meaning you won't need to grind but then you can't really do the Abyss since the most drops in domains are locked behind AR rank and the game continues to force the player to get higher and higher AR to progress through the main story so you cannot low effort it really. The game is like chocolate. It's delicious. But if you eat it everyday for a year, you are getting fed up with it even if you just eat small pieces daily. And the gacha is is like something spiced your chocolate with both wasabi and jam, going heavily on the wasabi.
As a AR57, f2p, 36* every abyss since July, yeah i can say that. For casuals this game is so nice but try playing this game like you play the others you love lol first you cant cuz resin takes 10 secs to spend haha just consume and never complain! o/ still love the music of the game, I was never into anime but the combat is so nice, despite the time limit i love the abyss but people will spin everything to defend the game and lack of important qol in a year
SIDE NOTE. Very important for the main character, if you click on them. And then go to voices(I think its voices) You can hear their comments on events and characters. They have a personality. You can do this for every character, to get more of their personality, story. Ect. Its really cool
Personally I don't like that about the game. It shows me that the main character can talk, has a personality and opinions on things, but then why do they never say a thing when talking to others. I never liked the whole mute protagonist thing, so this only showed me that they could have made the dialog interesting and just chose not to.
@@antelasic1950 I suppose it stems from the immersion philosophy, in which people want to "feel like their character" and I guess it might be difficult if the protagonists sounds way different, hmm? I don't have that problem because I have an ability to "become" the character that I'm playing, i.e. I roleplay that character, with a few things added by me to better suit my preferences.
@@kapitan19969838 I can somewhat understand that. My problem is that most mute characters who stay silent 90% of the time are created so that people can feel like their character and imagine it's them who are in that world. But I don't know about you but I wouldn't stay silent in most of the conversations. I'd much rather deal with a character having a different voice then me, but allowing me to respond the way I want, then a character having no voice. It's infuriating when I'm talking to an npc and I want to respond to what he's saying but my character just stares blankly at them without saying anything. It's even worse when you have a side character who does nothing like in Genshin other then just talking for your character, and it's like "well, I guess I'm doing what this thing says. Can't really give my opinion here because I'm just staring silently at the other characters. Oh well.".
This game makes me feel bad cuz I love the look of the gameplay and it seems like a game id love playing. I just have a horrible gambling addiction at least when it comes to loot drops. I can't go near it, I thought about playing it strictly free, but the moment I drop a single dollar ill spend way more than I should :/
I made a decision when I started playing Genshin a year and a half ago that I would never spend more money on this game than the cost of a normal full price game. About US$65. I have stayed true to that and I have honestly had an absolute blast. If you don’t have an addictive personality and you’re resistant to FOMO then this game legit has great combat mechanics and exploration. And they are constantly adding new areas, characters, events and mini-games each month. Having not spent a single $ in the last 6 months I have saved enough in-game currency from daily quests and events to hit full pity 3 full times. Guaranteeing me at least one copy and most likely two copies of whatever 5-star character I choose to pull for next. With each extra copy of a character you unlock a constellation that basically increases their damage potential or elemental synergy in some interesting way. For 5-star characters the constellations are comically OP. It’s worth it alone for the BOTW like exploration which, as the video states, actually improves on BOTW by having far more things, secrets, loot and events to populate the landscape. Totally worth it even for Free to Play gamers.
Finding Liyue was such a JOURNEY for me. After Xiangling's quest I think she said something about visiting her in Liyue, so... I immediately looked up the nearest statue and started journeying. But... I was pretty underleveled. So by the time I reached Wangshu Inn I was just running from every enemy. I also discovered this conch house??? That I never saw again and I really wanna find it. Finally I got to Liyue, and was having a blast. Couldn't even find Xiangling tho :( her quest was so fun
All the open-world exploration, bosses, and domains* are specifically designed to be done with the characters you start off with (Traveler, Amber, Lisa, Kaeya, and Barbara). Hardest part, really, is finding the chars/compositions that give the playstyle you want. Diluc was the first 5-star I used, but I actually dropped him for Beidou when I found out about /that parry/ and I never looked back. *Spiral Abyss is its own thing.
@@kanta4549 noelle is technically a starter character, and you can use other elements but it'll take longer. a side note: you unlock the wolf (and the rest of inazuma) at around ar 40? and by then you would have gotten tons of free fates and probably used the primos you've saved, so it's safe to assume you have at least one geo character by the time you reach inazuma, built or not
Xiangling is definitely one of the best top tier characters, in the game and you get her for free. Paired with a Bennett, Xingqiu and Sucrose. You do massive amounts of damage. Sure, they are meta characters, but they are easier to acquire than the limited 5-star units.
Honestly this game have some hidden details that blows my mind. like for example If you go to a certain sitting stop at Qinqce village bamboo forest your character for some reason will directly look at Qingyun peak floating island that is soo far away.
What I mostly noticed about newcomers to Genshin is that they usually worry about the Gacha system like they feel of having to worry about spending money on all of the game's contents but honestly all of those are not even necessary to feel uneasy about and will become irrelevant to you if you're not a gambling addict, what you guys have to actually worry in this game is rushing through the main story which is the "Archon Quest" because most new players now feel pressured to complete all quest and started with the mindset of "getting everything done" in order to catch up with everyone to do farming, but sooner you might actually regret speedrunning everything when you will just wait for the next update for the story to progress, Honestly it's more important to see Genshin as similar to Minecraft when you first started you want to make your world grow bigger and better than it was before but until once you feel like you already accomplished everything and not sure what to do next you will feel kinda disappointed and realize that the game doesn't actually have much to offer. This is basically like waiting for the next season of your favorite anime to come out.
happened to me. I basically skimmed through the game in 6 months. 90% plus the map in each region. Reason i decided to take it slow after Enkanomiya. NGL tho. It is fun walking around with good artifacts on characters u like.
Kinda weird that you selectively never heard people complaining about how Genshin Impact fleeces its player. I assure you, people criticize it now, just as they did two years ago.
as a f2p player, i recognize that im not able to get all of the characters, which is why obtaining a character is much more special to me. also, i am able to casually enjoy the experience the game offers as you dont need to spend any money to enjoy most of it.
As someone who has been playing since february, I can say that the ugly parts of Genshin only start to come out once you hit engame (Adventure Ranking 55 or higher). Basically, there's nothing left to do but grind and wait for new updates. I don't mind it that much because the update frequency is decent enough and there's always new events every patch to keep you entertained for a while, not to mention that Genshin was made to be this sort of casual game that you play just a little bit everyday, so... It does suck not having more repeating content to do everyday, but still, it takes a really long time until you get to this point of "ok I did everything, where's the next patch?". For me at least, it took like 4 or 5 months (and I think that's a lot for a free game). And what you said about the gacha is absolutely true: While there are some notably strong limited 5 star characters (like Hu Tao or Ganyu), none of them is absolutely needed, and the only relevant "difficult" endgame content (where comps and builds play a more active role) is the spiral abyss, which is something you do in 30 minutes twice a month (basically, 5% of your time spent in the game). Wishing for characters is mainly just a matter of "I like this character and I want to have it".
2:44 Yes, while Breath of the Wild is literally my favorite game of all time, I can also acknowledge that it’s a blatant rip off of the 2022 hit game “Elden Ring.”
You can play Genshin F2P just fine. The endgame content is pretty easy and you can easily do it as F2P or without 5 Star Characters. The Gacha system is def on the expensive side, but like I said, not required to enjoy and clear the game.
@Equinodium Lezarouxe I find abyss fun LOL You can craft 4* weapons if you have the mats. And you can use the given characters for abyss. The only downside is you have to get good artifacts for them.
@Equinodium Lezarouxe like I said there are 4* stars you can craft if you have the prototypes. There was an event that let you choose a 4* star from liyue. And u can get fischl for free of u had played in the beginning. Diona too. But it's locked behind events tho so those who come after wouldn't get it of course. And they might be a new 4* we can get for free in upcoming update but that we will find out when the time comes. And no matter what ppl will be able to pull because you'll get enough Primogems from the game to get a 5* at least. So for sure you'll get weaps/characters. And I never said gacha is not required. I said you can use the given characters too and craft the swords for abyss. Ofc if you're planning to full stars it'll be impossible with just 4 characters. What I'm saying is if you're planning to do abyss, that'll mean you've reached endgame content thus for sure would have enough to pull for some characters with the Primogems they give. Meaning you can be f2p and still be able to do abyss if you're lucky with your pulls.
@Equinodium Lezarouxe For those people they can take it easy since 1-8 are permanent. I myself only finally managed to full star the abyss 3 months ago and i've started playing since 1.3. As long as they take their time I'm sure they will do it eventually at least till 8.
I appreciated this video a lot, I've been playing almost since launch so it's been awhile since I've seen early content and I appreciated what you had to say. I think the one thing I'd want to say would be that my favorite part of the lore is the way you see the world building crop up and connect to itself. For example, you do the first quest and then albedo's quest tells you about durin and you're like "hey that's the dragon dvalin fought". The archon quests vary in storytelling and stories (yes, I'm talking about the pacing of inazuma part 3) but aside from that, you really get the sense of how vast this world really is. Even the world quests that are short and unvoiced tell you something about the the people who live in teyvat. Like you work with scholars from sumeru often and you can see how differently they act from the other regional npcs. Things like seeing the bones of slain gods and the gouges left on the land from the archons just leave you thinking about what may have happened in the past. There are so many things that fit into place when you read through and you end up speculating about loose ends. Tho this is my own opinion and I think there are many ways genshin can do better on storytelling
You're the second long-form essay on this game that I've watched, and despite being sponsored, you appear to give a balanced view. I'd tried this game on release, but I was unable to contact support when I forgot my bloody password. Thankfully, I hadn't spent any money in the game. Due to the positive reviews, I'll likely start a new game and ensure my bloody login is saved somewhere.
I usually dislike people giving opinions when they have a sponsorship but I really love when they put in effort like this into it to prove their genuine opinion. Great video man.
Don’t worry about the gacha elements if you would like to consider playing this game,, you can play the game in its entirety without paying anything and still get by easily. the game gives you free characters at the start and free new character to play with every 2 patches or so anyway. you’ll also get a lot of free stuff that you can use to get new characters as well, so being entirely F2P will not really gate you into getting the premium characters. game is easy enough, so its not pay to win despite the always heard “people spending so much in the game” concept. .6% gacha rate is not low either with the pity system (meaning a guaranteed premium character by x no. of wish). As this is my 1st gacha game and as someone playing since day 1, I play because of the story, the characters, the gameplay and I really love the OST. The gacha mechanics has never bothered my enjoyment ☺️
The gacha mechanisms in this game goes really easy on the players cause currently imo one can explore and beat everything currently present in this game with just starter characters.
I spent $0 on the game and this is the only $0 game I'm still playing. Their other work Honkai Impact 3 also. People do complain about resin limits (and I feel it too sometimes) but I am a working adult with a gaming schedule. I don't get too many Refines of 5* gear, I'm at the hardest possible world level - and I'm still in the game. If you have been a hardcore MMO player trying your best to make F2P work for you in the past but never quite making it and burning out, this game practically spoils you. Anyway, my only concern now is that the boat is still mostly restricted to Inazuma, I doubt they'd leave the spawn points in Guyun, and the boat STILL can't be used to traverse the main continent. Pity!
I agree with everything you said. I just wanted to answer one of your doubts about if the high end stuff requires specific characters. 27:00 It actually doesn't take a lot of effort, grinding, money or skill to be able to do the high end stuff. It requires some effort, grinding and skill, but unless you're playing a really bad team, you won't need to overinvest in terms of time or money. Currently, the bigger problem is how easy the game is for those who are willing to go to a high level of investment, and also how little content is actually created targeting those specific challenge hungry players.
Also, as a long time free to play player, I should mention this. The hardest content in the game is the spiral Abyss. It is highly skill and material required. But you really can get it without spending. You can gain a lot of currency from just playing regularly and you will get the more powerful charecters as the pity system exist. I already have more than enough charecters to clear Abyss to full . I haven't done grinding to power up them and I'm a poorly skilled player and yet I only miss like 1 star in the entire spiral Abyss. So, there is absolutely no necessity of spending money in Genshin as if right now
When it comes to higher tier characters and weapons, literally the only times when that stuff makes a difference is the spiral abyss and difficult events. And events have so far given all primogems at the easiest levels. Getting 36 stars with only low tier characters can be very difficult/perhaps impossible. But you're gonna get some higher tier characters just by wishing bc getting wishes is easy (takes time, yes, but you don't need to spend money). And the pity system can enable you to get the ones you want if you're wise about your wishes. Even then, ofc artifacts will make a large difference, but getting like 30/33 stars is not hard as long as one levels up their weapons, characters, talents, and artifacts. And also using good team comps is important. And if you can only get 30/33 stars consistently, then you only miss out on 200/100 a month (out of like 5000+ possible). Like 95% of the game isn't abyss
I don’t think it’s totally justified when Genshin gets referred to as a “botw clone”, but I will say the one great thing about the game that it does take from botw is that addictive desire to explore every inch of the map. I loved the first few weeks when I was exploring and discovering two completely diverse regions. Now I’m stuck just waiting for new events to see what they involve and keeping up with banners to see if I wanna wish, and it’s so tedious and draining. The Gacha elements are what have stopped me from recommending the game to friends
I think it's an unfair comparison since BotW wasn't just about wanderlust but also about a plurality of globally active systems synergising with one another. Even if it tries to "copy" some of the aesthetics, it's still very shallow criticism.
I feel like the replies missed the point, it's that genshin is a BoTW inspired game, it's got open world climbing, swimming mechanics and some other stuff. But the gameplay itself is pretty different compared to BoTW
@@AlphaCarinae I've played Genshin since launch and still do so today, currently AR58. Also the art style are similar but are very distinct, Or you're going to tell me BOTW has a moe anime art style and Genshin copied it.
As someone who has been playing ever since the early days and rather "seriously" ever since last November.... The endgame certainly has a lot more grinding for artifacts which are just a frustrating cascade of RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG with very little, if any, control over the steps other than deciding whether to go ahead or not. That said, steady does it and eventually you do end up amassing decent enough sets, especially if you focus on a couple of characters instead of wanting to build them all, even with the base amount of 160 resin per day without ever refreshing it with money. And most importantly of all, the Spiral Abyss which is considered the endgame has a very powerful and popular meta team that is either composed entirely by 4 star units or have one or two members swapped for some 5 star options, but the core of the functionality and damage still revolving around the staying 4 stars, one of which is given for free for any players that delve a bit into the early floors of said Abyss in the form of Xiangling. So, the tl;dr: no, even late game you don't really to spend money, even on the late game, the game will just require that you be more focused, mindful and play a bit smarter than a whale who can literally throw money at the issue.
This has really opened my eyes to my own slow burn experience with the game. I was naturally wary of the gacha elements as they were introduced to me, and I've just generally gone off to play other games instead and come back to it for a single day here and there. I haven't spent any money and I'm not even past the tutorial yet, after my recent third attempt installing and giving it a shot... I really appreciate your video, because I can't even watch streamers playing this to give me a straight perspective. Knowing that the gacha elements are NOT a necessary function of gameplay, I'll definitely start it back up again.
99.99999% genshin hater are losers who play the game for free but expect to get every cool and awesome 5 stars characters/weapons they want without he need to spend a single dime . when they found out they can't have those they rage quit and trash talk the game . if you are that kind of wanting a free 5 stars collection without a single penny spend then stop it and get some help before too late
I dont recommend you playing this game and if you do just go f2p. As spending money will ruin the experience for you. Anyone who is rank 55 and above will tell you that right now this game is a massive chore and the only endgame content has been abyss. This was the case since launched and has not yet been fixed till now.
@@marimo7045 this is not an mmo its a story game with rpg elements OFC the game gets stale when youre at endgame that is when you polish your characters etc... but that is purely optional
@@Natha_Kun i never said it is an mmo. I play gacha games a lot, has been since for almost the past decade. Genshin has terrible endgame compared to other gachas and has a gear system that is outright atrocious (considering you dont get many refills). Burn out and fomo is normal for gacha but genshin takes it to another level without those issues i would have recommended this game.
@@marimo7045 i mean besides the endgame shenanigins the game itself has atleast 40 hours of cutscenes and dialouges and its at the 3rd region out of 7 so just what if it is completed? its gonna be a long road for sure but i can agree on endgame in genshin abd cause the devs intends to make genshin casual as possible its the same case for honkai 2016 so yeah
Respect to the developer's effort to make every events is entertaining,,, the game it self is already very good,,, but what surprise me is the events, it's like endless stream of events, I don't even have enough time to play all of it, bcs I'm still new and have many quests and unexplore area. Trying my best to not chew more than I could.
Played this game free to play for a few months and had a blast. After a while I got bored with my team and my interest dwindled. But then I started using a new team and it's almost like a whole new playstyle and I was invested again.
When referring to the late game (around the 27:00 mark), you are right to assume that requires a lot more grinding; but you don't necessarily need 5☆ or "high end" characters or weapons in order to get through that grind or to complete the story. The greatest challenge to an end game f2p is the Spiral Abyss, since the Damage Per Second rate and actual strategy becomes a lot more important. But Spiral Abyss is for those who seek a real challenge. Even in the Abyss tho, some of the best characters (ranked by the community) are 4☆s. Obviously 5☆s take a lot of the space as well because otherwise why would they be 5☆s, but Sucrose, Xiangling, Xinqiu, Fischl and especially Bennet are all 4☆s and considered to be some of the best assets you can get in the game by a lot of players. For 3 of those some of their best builds are considered to be f2p friendly using 4☆ weapons as well. The biggest grind is honestly trying to farm for decent artifacts! That in itself is a grind but it is not one that is really necessary until after you've finished a decent chunk of the main stories and gotten to around adventure rank 50; or have reached a plateau in your Spiral Abyss progression. So yeah; late game (which would be around AR 50-55 for most players) does require a bit of grinding if you're farming for certain 5☆ artifacts or certain sets (or are like me and have terrible RNG) but you do not need to have any specific 5☆ characters or artifacts in order to reach end game or to do well in it. Even if you have terrible RNG in your banner wishes you can still make noticeable progress for yourself over time which is honestly very satisfying at those late game stages. (Opinion piece over I will descend from my soap box)
As someone who has played the game since launch I will say that this really feels more like a dip in the pool than an actual critique compared to your other videos, though understandably you played very little of the game. I love Genshin Impact, I really do, but my word like any other form of media its flaws really start to show after the honeymoon period. I just hope certain aspects change especially communication between the devs and the community.
The conclusion is directed at you. Stop minmaxing this ultra casual game. This game also rolled out more quality of life fixes than ANY other games last year you can try to prove me wrong but you can't. What you want isn't communication, what you want is for the development team to coddle you.
@@VaioletteWestover I'm not sure what warranted such a harsh response to OP, but it's pretty clear that current communication is bad and works to the detriment of ANY player. Several of the characters they have released over the past few months have had issues, and some have ONLY just been addressed now, like Yoimiya's normal attacks targeting dead enemies. This isn't even mentioning the problems of a resource bottleneck with mora and EXP books and unfair artifact RNG exacerbated by the awful resin system. And are we just forgetting about Abyss?
@@kurama1838 If you are playing like a sane person, as in understanding that artifacts do not need to nearly be perfect to complete all content, and not training every character you have, then there is no mora or experience book bottleneck. I currently have 23 million mora and 1200 experience books and 12 characters outfitted with great artifacts.
Agreed. I will never touch any game labeled gatcha ever again. Everything done by devs on such games is to ruthlessly extract money from you, nothing more. I laugh when people talk about the devs like they are their friends lol
@@TheRoleplayer40k Honestly, once you realized you just spent $100 on a Jpg and didn't get said Jpg cause of a bullshit RNG system, yeah. That kinda broke me for it.
@@ADarkAngel4949 I was conned by then too in a game called counterside. I was freed when they made a change to a character that had been the best, to make it worse, because everyone had been using it for so long (and spent 100$s if not 1000$s) to get it and then released a new sexy girl character who did exactly what the old one did, so you basically just had to buy it again It shackles were lifted from my mind and I saw the truth clearly and haven’t gone near gatcha again.
@@TheRoleplayer40k Fire Emblem: Heroes was mine. Somedays I see the new units and art, and somedays I can hear the siren sing her song, but I am a stronger man, and her song will not draw me.
27:00 the hardest thing a player may struggle with end-game is the last spiral abyss floors, thats the only place where you need to have more characters (8) and they must be strong. You can clear it as a f2p player, but it will be difficult and it will take months to get there. For new players, you really only need Noelle, thats why she has her own banner and shes guaranteed drop.. this maid has carried so many newbies. edit: Forgot to clarify that you don't need to clear the last abyss floors 9-12, they reset every 2 weeks and its just an optional thing to get some more rewards after you clear the initial abyss floors 1-8 that dont reset.
I like you spent a lot of time with the game to review it. Like you actually went through most of the main story and regions. Some other people reviewing this game just go through mondstat or just early game stuff but that’s just the surface. It really picks up as you progress and the combat gets way more satisfying in mid game to endgame. This is all my opinion through, just expressing my gratitude for actually playing the game for a while before this video! (Also you spent money just to show us how it works, absolute madlad)
The only thing I would recommend new players to do is farm different materials as often as you can. I never really bothered getting materials and now I can’t do level up my characters.
In my personal experience you can clear the entire game without rolling gatcha. Ive done it with am amber/lisa team though certian things like the abyss are definatly easier with 5 stars like hu tau zhongli and ganyu. But realistically speaking most of the time if you follow any genshin content on social media youll usually know at least a month in advance that a character is saving so you can show some restraint and save those primos for things you want more than others. Yes the gatcha sucks but it dosnt make the game itself a bad expirence
I liked the game, combat is cool and really fun. The music is great and the story is interesting. thought I absolutely hate grinding and level gated sections of the game. it becomes less of a game, and more like a second job.
I'll say that the one thing that makes going F2P in genshin hard is the time limit on some banners. Like yes, if you save up the currency and don't literally spend it as you get it, you have a chance of getting the banner characters you're after (especially since I think doing wishes in groups of 10 gives you better odds), but when a banner has only 3 days left and you want the 5-star character because they synergise with the team you've been building, that can sometimes push you over the edge.
Personally I just got bored with it and I was never a gambler so this eventually turned me off to the game. Granted I play Star Trek online, ESO, and Phantasy star 2 online New Genesis, Warframe, and 76 I found them more enjoyable as they all don't really have that strong of a gotcha style. So far 76 and Warframe has no actual gotcha style cost in it. Everything is basically straight forward. Warframe has what is known as the relics system to get Prime counterparts of the Warframe but you don't spend money on them at all and you can own them up with a lot of grinding. 76 you flat out know why you are getting up front and how much it cost. Sure GI is beautiful and well done, but the lottery system is a turn off as is the leveling system. I will be honest I hate the leveling system in the game as well as the slot machine. The game relies heavily on whales(what is a game industry term don't believe me look it up) and thoss who are easily manipulated and high risk of gambling addictions. I do find it funny how he doesn't touch on those points of gambling addictions as some who watch these videos might actually be easily manipulated or has gambling addictions. Not adding those warnings seems a bit concerning as he is promoting this gambling game to others.
I played this game for 325 days and I have to agree with everything you said You can play this game for free and beat 100% of the content but the appeal of a certain character might force you to spend money as the in-game currency although sometimes rather generous it is nowhere near enough to get all the characters especially with the 50/50 RNG. I myself have been tempted multiple times to spend more money but I just don't have it (fortunately lol) as if you failed to get the character within the time limit you have to wait from 3 months to an entire year for said character to come back which is stupidly long, they try to fix it by increasing the rate of a rerun but honestly, it is not enough especially if you lose the 50/50 again.
You don't need to spend to enjoy it, but it will make you feel awesome to have all the 5 stars characters and weapons. Kinda like upgrade your at best Royal series weapons to Lynel weapons,it hits differently.
I dunno if anybody will read this, but here I go. I have very actively played genshin for a year as a f2p and as mentioned in this video you can enjoy the game without spending a penny. Sadly the endgame is really lacking only broken by a short releaf from a new update. I see myself as a minmaxer and I enjoy party building. If you roll patiently and snipe for the characters/weapons you want you can get pretty much all of it, as long as you don't try to go for all characters. Getting all 4 star characters is entierly possible tho and you can make every character work. That is for the good parts. As I am sad to report I have quit genshin for about 1-2 months now. I have played a decent amount of gatchas fully f2p and genshin has been the most enjoyable by far. Genshin is so much more than any other gatcha, but in the end it is still a gatcha. What I mean with that is, some problems will never be fixed. The game is pretty unbalanced, I did say that you can make every character work, but it is much harder with some than others. Only newly released characters will get love, while older ones have to hope for a skin, or another character that is simmilar to them to bring things like weapons and artifacts they can profit from, but as Genshin also suffers from severe powercreep, that character will be compleatly outclassed by the other one. Not to mention some elements are inherently "better" than others and get a lot more characters released for it as a result. The imbalance isn't just on a gameplay level, but on a story level as well, 4 star characters will most likely be much less featured in the story than 5 stars, if at all. Sometimes they get trown a bone by a new sidequest (on that note hangout events do fix the problem slightly, but it is still not much) or an event, but even than I remember an event that was marketed as a "Fischl" event, one of the most popular 4 star characters mind you, where she kinda just left half way through and focused on the 5 star character "Mona" instead. What I am saying is that if your favorite character is a 4 star and/or an older character you will get very rarely anything. Furthermore I am not the kind of guy that looks for "hot anime waifus" I generally don't mind them and as long as they are interesting story wise, why not? I do however get bothered when it is pretty much only "hot anime waifus" in the game and "husbandos" for that matter. Tho I think the male designs are generally more interesting than female designs. The female designs range from mostly "meh" with a few "ok" and "good" ones. You do have the child characters that a refreshing change, but they have yet to add a single male child. Old people will probably never be a thing. As well as more chubby or disfigured characters (don't get me wrong making a character "chubby" or "disfigured" doesn't make them a good character, but when all the characters are sexy top model you begin to starve for some veriety). I am not saying that these problems will never be fixed, but after starting to play genshin hopefully, you can say my optimism was dampend after a year of playing. Genshin was designed to make money, it is designed to make you want more, no matter how much time or money you invest you will never have "enough". Some of the things I "want" from the game are in direct opposition to "making money", I can't really blame Mihoyo for wanting to make money, but in the end this leads to Genshin having a lot of wasted potential, that will never fully be realised. In the end, I can't recommend Genshin to anybody. It isn't a bad game, but it will also never be "great". I also would like to add a warning to everyone: "Every gatcha is meticulously designed to manipulate you into spending money, if you pay any amount of money in any gatcha game you run the danger of loosing control over how much, *ESPECIALLY* when you think something like 'I can handle it', if you take a lax approach to spending money you should not be playing any gatcha or free to play game for that matter. Spending money is ok, as long as you keep track of how much. I recommend writing down how much you spend and to inform yourself on how these games manipulate you into paying money. The more you know about the manipulation the less it effects you. Having a hard cap on a monthly spending is also a good strategy, be warned tho, exceptions become the norm really fast. The easiest methode to keep controll is however to not start paying at all."
Yeah, u got me dude. I’ve paid about 10 dollars for the welkins and now after the 2.4 livestream I want to spent more than that just to get all these character… thanks for the advice.
Genshin is Really good..you can play as F2P..don't listen to people who overreact..you can play without spending..theres a lot of fun puzzle,mystery,big world
The conclusion really summed what kept me engaged with genshin in terms of escapsim, especially last year when dragonspine launched and I couldn't travel home to see my family for xmas. The music,the exploration and tone of dragonspine was just the perfect bit of escapism at just the right time I needed it. Genshin's not my favourite game ever, but it is this nice consistent bit of comfort food I can always play between other games and know I'll have a fun time with.
As someone who's halfway through AR57 and played every day since release up until a month ago, I agree with everything you said here. I love all of your videos and I never thought I'd see you cover this and it gave just as great an overview as every other game you've talked about! Thanks for this~.
Genshin is a good example of a game that is really good but really hard to recommend. I've spend $45 since the month after it came out and I'm able to do everything. My buddy had a bad day and wanted Hu Tao and Staff of Homa. He dropped $400 in 20 minutes. If someone is susceptible to gambling, they need to stay as far away as possible from this game.
Good to know I’m good, I’m too broke to gamble
@@AstralSys. You can very well play through the entire game without having to spend any real-life money. The game is semi-generous in offering its in-game currency, so you can actually end up acquiring a decent amount of 5 star characters without any weight on your wallet.
@@muhammadhunain7784 right. Playing free to play you get about two wishes a day (I've never done less) and that will guarantee a five star every banner.
@@muhammadhunain7784 Doesn't matter how generous the game is. Gachas are tailor to break you to spend money. It's a matter of strong will to resist the temptation to ease the problem the game throws at you. It's like cults who don't make you join them and just make you come to "see how the things looks like, no strings attached." If something is too good to be true, it probably is.
@@charsquatch600 2 wishes would be 320 primogems a day. We reliably get 60 from daily commissions but where are the remaining 260 coming from? We can get small batches of 2, 5, 10 gems etc from various game activities and achievements such as exploring and finding chests. But how much exploring and how many hours a day do you have to put in to reach 260 gems?
Me, who has been playing this game for over a year and knows it inside and out, still watching every minute of him explaining the gameplay
Right there with you.
Oh yeah? How much gauge does Bennett level 1 charged e apply then.
Lol it's just a joke... unless you don't know
YES seeing somebody understand the basics feels so good. Like it didn't get me angry that playing Diluc he as not Auto Attacking between E's, because playing in a simpler way is enough.
But you can also learn about elemental Gauge theory and use it.
me too, probably to check if he misunderstood something
Same
A heads up about the boat: It was introduced in an event in the summer where there WERE whirlpools, platforms with enemies and challenges in an archipelago. But it was a temporary area with its own lore which is a massive bummer. It was one of Genshin's best events.
Absolute legend chad who deserves a checkmark
Was not expecting a wild Sabuuchi here. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one
It's not sad. Events should come and go like that.
@@jonathansoko5368 maybe stuff like the tower defense, wind festival or furnace events but lore heavy ones that add entire new areas to explore have no reason to go. Dragonspine is still here. The archipelago could've stayed.
@@Benzinilinguine What's a "chad"?
I've seen it mentioned so many times now and I am convinced that Liyue is where the entire player base had an epiphany that this game was special. Floating through the mountains with that amazing soundtrack is when it really hits you.
You hit the nail in the head.
Monsdtad is great but crossing the pass into Liyue and exploring the huge map, with the mountain ranges and rivers, exploring the puzzles while listening to the music.
It really knew how to take advantage of being an open world game.
Na iyue is quit boring and and how many times have you ever realy floated around . Inosuma is way more interresting in my opinion
@@xythiera7255 makes sense, tbh...
Inazuma is the first region where the devs go "'Ight, we don't need this base (BotW) anymore." and just went ham on the design.
I had it at the end of the mondstat story line that scene after the boss fight really got me.
It was Dragonspine for me.
I think most, if not all players can agree that the music in this game (specially the bosses) , are impeccable.
Yeah they really got that element down. It's all beautiful
Oh my god the Inazuma music is just si amazing it's part of my playlists
agreed. the music for the archipelago, character demos, trailers, inazuma are all so amazing
Agreed 100%, the music in this game is S+ tier
Exactly. Childe's Battle theme and Azdaha's battle team sound so rich and royal, it radiates badass and powerful vibes.
The game is perfect for casual players who play seasonally - the longer you don't play it, the better it is. But for hardcore players going past the honeymoon phase and minmaxing everything with no content to use them on, the game will feel like it's moving very slowly for them and they are going to face lots of frustration with the mechanics and systems.
this is the real review
I can play daily but only half hour or so… works well for me tbh
@Equinodium Lezarouxe well daily only take 20min at best, might aswell do it and wait for the new content, progression is not that important, afterall the hardest content atm is only abyss, and thats quite easy even for me f2p, unless you like to min max every character you own, then that gonna take long time
tru. I've been playing for a year now and realized the shorter time I spent on the game, the more enjoyable it became for me.
@@myaachoom agreed
This is one of those games that is best played casually. Definitely not meant to be a main game, just something you play for an hour or two. If you rush through it, you’re gonna be out of content pretty fast.
This happened to me, and now I'm waiting for Mihoyo to release the next part of the story, because I refuse to spend one more second of my time grinding pointlessly.
While i agree that it's good to take your time with this game, and play it for the journey rather then poor endgame, I disagree that you will run out of content fast,
main story + side/character story/hangouts/basic exploration prolly has a solid 100 hours of content to go through,
if you wanna complete the side stuff collection, aka collecting all the anemoculus + variants, max out reputation + shrines + viewspots, finish all world quests, that adds another 50 or so hours, and if you wanna 100% collect all chests, to have all areas 100% (which still gives you a few chests off each area) takes probably another 50-100 hours across all 3 regions, especially without a guide.
so in total your looking from anywhere across about 100 hours for a barebones letsplay where you just play as you go and do some side content, to about 250 hours if you wanna get absolutely everything you can. that may not be MMO type hours to sink into a game, but it's impressive for any rpg let alone phone game.
Yep the endgame artifact grind is hell
I started playing whenever kokomi came out and was really into the story and stuff but by the time i got to inazuma I just got burned out lol
@@zac-1 Even as someone playing from Day 1 Inazuma overwhelmed me quickly
I feel this was a fair assessment of the game, and to be honest (as someone who's been playing daily since launch) I think you went a little easy on it. It's a good game worth playing for people who aren't gambling addicts or easily duped by shiny things. You CAN clear all the content without spending money on it and I know this because I've done it.
Man ur a great person, im so proud i saw u
Don't listen to this apologist. I'm sick of you people
@@jonathansoko5368 what are you calling salt a apologist for?
He literally said that so wtf is your argument again?
@@jonathansoko5368 apologist for what?
43:04 Fun Fact: The sword that fell from Celestia, is actually the traveler's sword. Back in the first cutscene where the twins get separated, your twin get's transported by the god, but they held onto the sword. However, when you get transported, you drop your sword, thus falling from Celestia into the sea. Kayea's grandfather was out sailing at that time, and found the sword. Cool lore if you ask me.
Characters in Genshin are like tools, there are certain roles and certain elements to do puzzles with, so with the free characters and a few free pulls you will have all the tools to progress, people that spend money on getting all characters are just getting more of the tools to try and experiment with, but is not really locking much of the content
11:12 A little correction here. There's actually no difference between damages in weapon types, they're all treated as Physical Damage. Claymores/Greatswords are just inherently good at breaking rocks and shields, not just the club, the Geo element is good at breaking rocks too
he thought of that because debate club has Atk% substat so it will generally deal more damage
Hmm... So you mean Staff of Homa does the same damage as the Debate Club? Lmao.
Yanfei has the rock breaking effect on her skill and heavy attack for some reason.
Well he'a not wrong, claymores do have a special modifier on them, because they have the shatter elemental reaction too, which is physical damage but only for heavy weapons vs frozen enemies, meaning that weapon types are actually considered seperate in the damage register for things like that.
@@ruzinus_ because fire catalysts user have an inherent "explosive". Before zhongli came out, klee is literally the best miner because all her attack has that effect
The thing about Genshin Impact is that in addition to being a gacha game, it also decided to be a videogame, with level design and puzzles. It's hard to recommend a gacha game because of how it preys on people with addictive natures, but that don't mean the videogame bits don't have their merits.
Regardless, offering you a Botw like open world on your mobile phone at zero upfront cost is definitely a major contribution to its success as it's an insane value proposition to the customer.
Yeah I usually refer to Genshin as a video game with a gacha system, rather than just a gacha game. It’s definitely still there and they obviously still push it pretty hard, but there’s an actual game there even without ever opening the gacha. And even with the gacha, the amount of free stuff they throw at you is frankly pretty incredible.
Exactly, I had always wondered why people were so into it. I was under the assumption that it was just a gatcha game with some semi serviceable gameplay to use your characters. Since I've dumped a bunch of time into the game, I've come to realize how much game there is to it. It basically is Breath of the Wild with it's own take on the gameplay and unique mechanics and characters.
Actuly gatcha games dont realy pray on you at all . You allways know what you get into .
@@xythiera7255 you seem like a discerning fellow, and power to you if you can enjoy this sort of game without being enticed to spend thousands month on it. I also curb spending on this game in a similar fashion. But there are some who have a personality that can't help but whale on games that have these monetization schemes, and it is these unfortunate souls that we worry for.
Ok but every video game nowadays even non-gacha games have gambling such as loot crates so it’s kinda not just exclusively jenshin.
Honestly dude, one of my favourite things to do while I’m working from home, or doing chores around the house, is listening to your vids. Love the content - keep doing what you’re doing 🤙
Yes! I helped my parents build our new home and while I painted all the baseboard around the house last year I listened to his videos about TES, Fallout, and Pokemon. It was great!
the graphics, music and lore are what really pulled me into playing the game. it's very pretty ingame, calming for sure.
Graphics look better than pokemon arceus my daughter plays ... Insane if you consider the money the pokemon franchise makes! I was shocked at how dodgy it looks ...
Exactly these are the things that got me interested in this game, but the music while exploring is so calming that I slept through it whenever I played it while lying on the bed.
Weebs love those cutesy graphics...
@@judgeprime3730 The graphics are good, better than what you can make.😂
Great game, it being a live service do make my experience and pacing in a halt was often annoying.
I've never spent any money on this game but I'm still capable of reaching the hardest parts of the game. It's not exactly a hard game, just gets you hooked on characters you want so badly. If you're someone who don't want to spend, just practice saving primogems and understand you'll have to grind slightly harder compared to whales. It's a fun game just know when to stop playing, just like any other game
Bruh if you only had to grind SLIGHTLY harder compared to the WHALES of the game, then I'd play it all the time, lmao don't downplay the grind.
@@SSJGengar unless you wanna be like Tony to or IWTLGaming or Moba and Chill 😅
@@SSJGengar you just need 8 well built characters to complete the hardest content
@@summermoney2971 yes and not, the monsters and the bonus in abyss change every few weeks, so u may need to change your teams
as a side note, saving for a particular 5* may require up to 3 months of saving for a f2p
As a F2P player, I am AR57 and had no problem clearing any content so far, except getting full stars on Floor 12 in Spiral Abyss. But that's never concern me. Getting biggest damages was never in my interest when playing this game, I am just hooked to the story progression. Just be smart in pulling the characters you want, and you will fine as a F2P.
Totally agreed on this one! I'm free to play as well, I play almost 5 months now, I was able to catch up on story (and Abyss progress), and deeply in-love with Teyvat, the overall story, the characters, and stuff. It's one of the best free game out there IMO. Easy to learn, little challanging to master, really hard (on the credit card) to perfect, but overall satisfying lore-wise.
Ignore any and all apologist for this game they will say ANYTHING they have to to try and convince you it is t horrible.
Worth adding that the spiral abyss's upper floors reward is literally only "one extra pull or so" every 2 weeks. It's the least interesting content in the game and the rewards won't be missed by those players who don't opt to whale or tryhard the content with f2p's restrictions (mainly DPS as it is a timed challenge)
I've yet to see any other content in the game (events or normal) that feels of sufficient difficulty for people to worry about - even with subpar artefacts and weird team compositions players shouldn't expect the game to be gating them off as free players
I'm not f2p myself but my sentiment for the game is similar. I have ppl assume I try to R5 and C6 and weap or char I want but I just want a single copy and save for reruns or new char I like.
Side activities are fun
If you are susceptible to addiction through gambling. Then no. Just no.
I cannot deny that the game is absolutely beautiful. Even as an old player, roaming around to explore is really refreshing, since the game is in mobile, and it is very rare to experience this in mobile.
But then again, the gacha aspect is too big of a trap for those gambling addicts. Same goes to kids. If you can control yourself, and if you are only after the exploration and adventure part, then I would recommend it 100% of a time. But if you get easily addicted, then save your ass.
i play battle cats which i like the gacha system so could i still play geshin impact
Most reliable comment here
When your twin is "cubed" I can only hear Max0r saying they were eaten by megablocks.
Also Eula getting called "End User License Agreement" is funny
As someone who’s played Genshin for the last several months, I think this is an excellent and fair review. Only correction is regarding blunt vs bladed weapons, in which there is absolutely no difference as the game makes no distinction. Another user did point out that the debate club is classed as a claymore and therefore superior at breaking shields, I agree with them that’s probably where the confusion came from.
To expand on gacha and it’s effect on endgame (I.e spiral abyss) it’s absolutely possible to clear with just the free characters (Traveller, Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Barbara, Xiangling and arguably Noelle) and get 36 stars. It’s certainly easier with some of the other characters though. In addition, several 4* characters are among the most used characters. Bennett and Xingqiu are considered SS tier support units, the latter and Xiangling are some of the best off field DPS characters and one of the most effective teams is made up exclusively of 4* units. You absolutely can pay to win, but really what you’re paying for is the ability to win sooner than free players. Outside of spiral abyss, the level of difficulty is low enough that you won’t have much trouble even without a good team.
For those that want to spend just a bit of money, the battle pass and Welkin Moon are great value. Beyond those, value for money drops a shit ton. This is an expensive game to whale in. There is some pressure in how limited the banners are. While this is obvious to gacha players, this does need to be emphasised for others. Impulsive spenders should not play this game.
you can clear out some spiral abyss from floor 9 to 11 but its impossible nowadays just clearing floor 12 with just free characters let alone getting full 9 stars, i am a plankton (aka only buying welkin sometimes) endgame player at AR58 having a shitton of 5 star characters INCLUDING A BUNCH OF THE 5* WEAPONS i still cant be able to beat it unless u get arataki itto which is a great character for current abyss (im skipping him cause i dont like him)
it looks like spiral abyss now are suited for the current banner meta instead of being universally viable for all characters and team comps idk why they did that, probably because they are trying to nerf current broken team that broke the game aka morgana (ganyu venti mona combo) they fall off in performance for the current abyss
and about bennett and xingqiu, they are sadly harder to get with the massive 4 star pool rate keeps going up, more and more 4 star characters are released on the side of every new 5 star as a support package SPECIFICALLY made for the 5 star in question, some of them are workable universal supports some of them are a complete niche to use aka gorou and kujou sara. Not to mention there is no pity guarantee system for specific 4 stars, so even if Bennet is on the banner rate up u can spend more than 100 pulls and still not get him
and fun fact the gacha aspect of this game is not at all a problem for an f2p as long as u are not being greedy af u can be able to look at leaks or datamines to look to the future and decide on a character u specifically want to start saving up by doing dailies and events, u get enough primogems for at least 1 5 star item in the game each patch
about 5* units and weapon, are a prove that the game can be better enjoyed at the endgame as older the account gets. I never whaled, because its stupidly expensive to do in my country, I only buy the welkin. But at ar 58 with more 5* and 4* character that I need to clear abyss, wishing became just for fun to have a new character and play a little different than before. Some people got to much crazy about clearing abyss, but is a part of the game that should also be done at your on pace.
@@barbaradesigns1774 I agree with most of this. At AR56 I'm still struggling to get 36 stars in abyss, but I think that's more down to my personal abilities and team comps, I think I have the tools in place if I used them properly. As a result, I play2waifu now. Abyss is a tiny part of the game though, you're right that people should do it at their own pace.
Some of the events in game also have bits of lore dump for certain characters, which isn’t really that important to the main game, but it helps flesh out the characters and the world
I absolutely did not expect to see you cover this game, but I'm so glad you did. I've never heard someone sum up exactly what I enjoy about this game as well as this.
Honestly didn't execpt you to cover Genshin, and honestly I think your assessment is fair. though sadly, what you said about min maxing people getting burnt out over grinding the same bosses and dungeons and what not ends up being the sad fate of a lot of the players who've been at it since launch. But imo, it's understandable, the game is still being made and people aren't machines. But i will say it does get boring at some point. but that's' when you make your own fun, like turning on co-op mode and letting the randomness ensue or helping new players out. Or, hell, even making an alt account to do a MC only playthrough.
So yeah, genshin is worth a try for folks who haven't played it. It has it's flaws like all things and sometimes those flaws are pretty yikes, but it's a good game, evne jsut to kill a few hours.
min-max grind burnout is all on the dev's though, I imagine some time down the road they will make it so you can more easily obtain the stats you are looking for, but that will probably be like 5.0 or 6.0 after they finally lose players to critical burnout.
I started around the time Genshin first got released and I got to the point where I had nothing else to do but grind. As someone who likes min-maxing and figuring out that kind of thing, I tried getting the best artifacts for some of my favorite characters but ultimately just decided it just wasn't worth it. The game was too much of a time sink for how little reward I felt it gave in return. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was after Xiao first came out because until then you had about a month to save up primos and try to get the character but they decided to make that event only two weeks and then took him away and gave us a rate-up Keqing banner for the two remaining weeks; this really gave me an inkling that they're really going to press FOMO onto players from then on and I just quit. I got what fun out of the game I wanted and don't plan on ever returning.
@@windsgrace688 Yeah the Xiao banner was pretty poorly handled and idk if it was poor sales or backlash that made them opt to not go down that route, but luckily they haven't. In fact they now have double re-run banners. Which you know, kind of a double-edged sword. Good if you only missed one of the limited characters, bad if you missed both, and REALLY BAD if you have any kind of gambling addiction + missed out both.
I'm glad you were able to get your fun out of it though, and sorry the grind got so bad.
I hope one day they do something about it. There's just too many layers of rng when running domains. rng on drops, rng on stats, rng on substats. that's a lot. I wish they functioned more like the materials domains did on sunday where you could pick, that'd take off at least one layer of rng.
@@Lunneus it is indeed partly the reason for my burnout too and quit not long after. but, the most excruciating pain i felt back then wasn't the RNG, it was the shackle from the stamina/resin system. i play traditional MMOs with equally bad RNG in the past, but at least in those game, i have my freedom to choose on when and how i grind and farm whatever piece of equipment or weapon that i want, i can do it with my own pace without heavy planning and found my own way around the repetitive nature of such activity. but with genshin, i feels restricted and heavily dictated by my game on how i should play it. the constant FOMO it generated (if you don't spent your daily resin, it feels wasted isn't it), the limit on how much runs you can do, and along with the schedule of which dungeons opened on which day, are idk, it's frustrating for me. the limit on the runs kinda acceptable on work days, 30 mins for dailies, another 30 mins for artifact runs, and another 30 mins to 1 hour for roaming the open world, are fine for daily play time. but what if sometime on the weekend i want to "no-life"-ing the artifact runs? definitely not possible without resin refresh using primogem, right?
you know, tbh, i don't even recommend the game to my friends. because, it's partly a painful experience for me, i spent money in it sadly, i bought the battlepass, the daily primo pack, even more primo because i want Klee when her banner comes out back then (and the funny thing is, i don't even get her in one pity. i pulled Mona and Diluc along the way). i consider myself as a light spender, and the money i spent on genshin still more than the money i spent in GW2, Elite:Dangerous, etc (individually), even with those spending, the overall experience i've got isn't better than what i've got from other games. and i don't want my friends trapped in the same kind of experience.
@@SoopDwagg No the wont do that becouse Artifact grinding is the only thing that keeps players playing without it there is nothing to do . It will stay how it is right now . Just how gatcha games are . The gatekeep you becouse there isnt realy anything to do .
Do I play Genshin: Yes
Should you play Genshin : No
Am I enjoying Genshin : YES
Well you enjoy Genshin : Yes
Is the lore good: Yes
Is the music good : ABSOLUTELY YES
Is It a Good Game: Yeah
So Should you play It: No
Depend, if you have gambling addition then don't play but if not then sure lol
I don't understand the whole being able to acquire extra things with money problem. Isn't real life like that? It's not a game problem, it's an individual's problem
@@miikan001 i wouldn't say perfectly balanced, but it's certainly still better than some gacha games out there
@@Asm0sday it doesnt really make sense. How people can be addicted to the gacha system? If anything, i only pull the character that i want and it never even occurs to me to keep pulling till i run out of primogems. The only time i pull a wish on banner i dont want was when my controller got slippery and the button pressed on its own
@@akaikeshi1906 yeah but there's a difference between spending a flat 20$ for a character and rolling a chance to get it. if im paying for something i'm not paying for the CHANCE to get the thing
Even though I have played this game since launch and know almost everything about it, I still find it interesting listening to someone explaining it. I love these kinds of videos, thank you for making a video about Genshin!
I have a hard time recommending it too. Not because of it's gameplay (I love it), or the world (very involved and interesting), or the story (surprisingly good for a newer game), but because it really depends on your own personal control when it comes to gambling.
It's a blast to play, It's very fun and involved, and it's really the Exploration RPG I've been looking for since I played the early Zelda games. And you can really play it for free, never spend a dime, and still play and beat everything in the game if you simply play right and smart. Seriously, there's a streamer who does nothing but f2p in Genshin, and he's beat the hardest content in the game.
BUT...it is a gacha game, and they are almost as good at tempting you with spending as they are in making a good game. do NOT play this if you cannot control your spending impulses. Either play for free, or set a limit and stick to it. For me, my limit is 60$ per month, since I've bought games in the past for that amount, and if I can get a full month (or more) of enjoyment out of it, it's worth 60$ to me.
You said 60 "per month"? That amount of money is not worth for any game at all, if you need to put money into the game monthly then the game is not good for you.
Set the limit to 60 and no more since that is the nornal price to a game.
@@КристиянТрънбашев-м9о I never said it was pay to win...
People spend to get characters and weapons they like but since the drop rates are low, it can become a gambling addiction as the main comment said. Any game that uses this gambling mechanics are not worth it if you can't control your spendings, thats was my point.
Plus it sucks that you need real money to have a chance to get a new characters.
@@sirius2643 Fair point, but then how many games per month do you purchase? do you just purchase one game your entire life? or do you on average spend 60 per month to purchase a game.
I'd bet that most people spend more. So if at the end of a month your still playing that game, then why not spend 60 to play it another month and get more from the game?
Most people if they actually look at what they are spending will find that they spend at least 60 or even more for their gaming entertainment a month. For me, that puts my budget at around 60 to 100 per month for the games I play.
So while I understand your point, logically if you put the money on what you play, then 60 bucks is 60 bucks whether it's a new game or the same game you've played all month long.
@@temjiu9915 Nah, I pay 60 for a game or spend that on a free game and thats it. If I see that amount of money gave back enough content for at least a year then it was worth it and I may spend another 60 in that game for new content. But as you said, if I have to put that amount every month for "new content" then the game is not worth my time or money at all. Imagine spending 720 dollar a year in a single game or even half of it, no thanks.
Is $720 a year consider a Whale? I’m genuinely curious
Dendro means "tree" in Greek. In fact every element is named after its greek translation.
Omg this is unexpected but not unwelcome, always happy to hear your opinion on games. Even with games you don’t like you never bash and complain you’re constructive and even point out good things in otherwise bad games. Love your work Salt!
Regardless playing or not. Its pretty fun
Lol all the anime losers disliking it
@@SSJGengar Dislikes? What are those?
@@SSJGengar I see no dislikes. What is this heresy you speak of?
I like Lisa though, she’s pretty pro at climbing
What does this mean? I'm scared
@@fandral92 You can climb in the game, like up cliff faces and stuff
@@Purriah yeah, i guessed that, i thought this was gonna be some pedo shit but if its sincere thats ok
Apparently, the VA confirmed the developers asked her to tone down her sexual sounds.
She did a stream where she recreates her original moans.
I heard she made mint off of that.
@@youngthinker1 Sexual sounds? nevermind, i dont want to know
as someone who has been playing since launch week, it's always so fun to see new players deep dive into it!! i do spend a lot of money on the game as i'm in a position where i'm able to, but i have friends who've played for free for the same amount of time and we're on par in a lot of ways, which is super cool.
This might sound aggressive but It isn't meant that way... You're either lying or you got played, because if you're paying and you're on par with your friends, then that's a waste of money. And if u are better, then it's p2w...Anyway, as long as you're having fun!
@@user-ux3jp9oo7r yeah that sounds like a lie. There's no way you're paying and you have the same characters as the free to play or else he's just so unlucky af and lazy to grind for artifacts and shit.
@@user-ux3jp9oo7r Pay to win in a game with no winning? goofball
i think what he mean for on par is probably like abyss clear 36star (which is very doable by f2p and that is the hardest content atm), since the game is not difficult by any mean
@@erick2328 yeah it's doable. Just need a lot of good artifacts
I can only really recommend this game to patient people who can control themselves and don't have a gambling addiction. I am a f2p player with a whale mentality, but I still managed to save 25k primos over some months. Story wise the game is amazing.
I've repeatedly considered this as it does kinda seem like something I'd like, but was always nervous about the gacha elements. Thanks for reviewing it.
It's too bad it's gacha. I've played a bit, and it was fairly fun, but when I look at all of the other games I have to play, with none of the content gated by a real slot machine, I just don't see why I should commit. I wish I could just buy it
Just play free to play. If you decide to get to the end game, you'll enjoy the challenge and journey. Paid players just play an overly easy game with no challenge whatsoever
Don’t worry about the gacha elements,, you can play the game in its entirety without paying anything and still get by easily,, the game gives you free characters at the start and free new character to play with every 2 patches or so anyway, you’ll also get a lot of free stuff that you can use to get new characters as well so being entirely F2P will not really gate you into getting the premium characters.. game is easy enough so its not pay to win despite the always heard “people spending so much in the game” concept
You dont have to spend money at all. I'm completely f2p and doing decent, if I had more skill and luck with artifacts I'd be doing really well. 4 stars can carry you through the game sometimes
@@CrimsonMagick Salt did skim over it a bit, but he did mention that you don't have to gacha for weapons and equipment, that's what all those treasure chests give you too. You can (and some people do) beat the entire story and solve every puzzle without ever using the gacha.
as someone who played since launch. i cant imagine how much more exciting playing this game now would be now that Dragonspine is accessible at low level. that mustve been very exciting
Personally I am a bit split on Liyue and Mondstadt as both are quite pretty and have their own charms but I just like venti and the actual city of mondstadt more than the admittedly very pretty rocky regions of Liyue, although I also feel that the characters in mondstadt are just better than the Liyue counterparts but I haven't been able to complete all the missions for Liyue as i accidently raised my world level way to high without leveling my party to match which is slowing progress significantly.
liyue and monstadt are good in their own way for different reasons I like monstadt a bit more because it has less of that running around and giving specific Zhongli almost every god damn item in liyue. I feel you on the last point I did the same but in Inazuma and now I have half my team at a good level while another is like 20 levels off and the other is 10
@@abdiabdi3225 20 levels off? Ouch hope their your supporting characters otherwise you must go through alot of food. I have been holding off on doing my acension quests now to catch my characters up. Although it does hurt to see the full green xp bar
Lower your world level.
@@putent9623 cant untill you reach max world level
@@voidstar6353 you should be able to adjust your world level at wl5.
Gameplay wise. I really found it unique and amazing that it has many vibes from different genres. There's Hangout events that feel like Dating Sims. The Teapot Quest which feels like a Creation Sim. Tower Defenses, Stealth Mode, Hide and Seek in some events. BUT the one gripe that I really have is that the 3D shooter NEVER returns again. I miss it and I started playing Genshin 'cos I thought there were Bullet Hell sequences for each Boss.
Just wait mihoyo release their next 3a shooting game then u can shoot it all night
@@nagi-springfield93 What's it called so I can keep my eyes out for it
@@len5630 Haven't has a name yet but they usually call it project X, they have been working on it secretly since genshin released
Thanks for covering this game, I always wondered about it, and it actually looks really good with the footage you've covered.
This is actually helpful. I mean i keep booting the game up for a couple hours every few months and just can't escape the thorough confusion with so many systems and currencies. Plus i forget what happened in the story.
Surprised you chose to cover Genshin but glad you did, it was a fair assessment and a well made video. As someone who has a moderately paid account and an f2p account, both at end-game status, I can honestly say that the f2p experience is extremely good, if you already enjoy or at least tolerate the other "contentious" aspects (anime aesthetic, somewhat grindy nature, etc)
Well most anime games are grindy xd
@@kannatheweeb8836 they tend to be jrpgs, so if you'll grind regarsless of micro transactions.
Idk how "anime aesthetics" is "contentious" but as long as you don't start nagging about it and demanding to cater to your aesthetic sense, that's fine.
I think my main issue is that if I want to throw money at it, I have no good way to do so.
My option basically is to throw money in and hope to get something out. I'd much rather be able to buy something directly.
@@MaakaSakuranbo I agree with that, what I do pay for in the game is only known quantities.
@@MaakaSakuranbo then only start spending when you're on the 70th pull you should be able to finally get whatever character you're looking for most of the time at least that's how it has been for me. and you can still spend money as the currency from the wishes can be used to buy some 4-star characters like Bennett
you can do absolutely everything with the starters in genshin, and it's already very unlikely that a player would only own the starters and nobody else, so yeah, it really isn't necessary to get stronger characters unless it's for abyss. even doing things that counter a character's kit, like a physical catalyst user build can work if you push for it to.
"physical catalyst user build" Catalysts don't deal physical damage, though. Ever.
@@pantsuchan968 nope they can if you have a lot of patience. use weapons like eye of perception and skyward atlas that deal bonus physical damage every so often. that damage scales off physical damage.
Honestly, you’re bound to get at least ONE 5* character at ay point in your adventure if you save up enough primogems.
I’ve been playing since late December 2020 and I’ve already gotten what people consider as the meta characters (Ganyu in her first banner or Zhongli in his 1st rerun)
And this is before spending money once on a maxed out BP just to get the Deathmatch
You’re either unlucky or you’ll saving up primos
To be fair, back when only Liyue was available I got through most of that storyline pretty easily with just Kaeya, Beidou, Barbara and Xinyan, I saved up for the banners with confirmed drops. It may not have been the best team but it was good enough. I think I got to somewhere around act 3 of chapter 1.
When you said you loved the boat exploration, I couldn't help but feel sad that you missed ver 1.6 Golden Apple archipelago. I hope they bring it back
the what
@@Indian_gae_boii The Golden Apple Archipelago. It's residual Mondstadt remains from when Barbatos cleaned house. It's also a hell of a vacationing spot.
The boat I Inazuma actually had fights with monsters in water platforms & whirlpools, fog which damages your boat & lights to guide you.
All of this was temporary for patch 1.6 when they added those little island but they removed them after that patch. And only kept the boat.
I still have the boat repair toolkit I got from that patch it was exclusive for 1.6
Loved this review. But there was two important things he left out:
1. The icy mountain area was actually an expansion that wasn't even released until after Liyue came out. The difficulty spike is real if you just walk in without knowing this first, which is exactly what I did when I first found it.
2. Genshin Impact has a co op mode once you reach adventure rank 16 (which kinda sucks, I know). Players can request to join you, you can request to join them, and there's whole entire systems of friends lists, emotes, and text chat. Up to 4 people can run around the world at the same time, which makes grinding bosses much more tolerable. I have no idea how he never had a single person request to join his world during his many hours of playtime. It's kinda a major part of the game.
It's a great game, and a phenomenal casual game that you just stick around with and go through the journey with it rather than trying to minmax or whatever. Given the rather relaxed exploration and mostly light hearted aesthetics and story (with, of course, exceptions) it's pretty fitting I think. In a word, I suppose, it embodies "comfy".
I think I'm the only one who not only genuinely likes Paimon's English voice, but actually enjoys and prefers it. The fact that her VA also voices Lara in MapleStory is also a plus.
I like paimon's voice too! I mock her sometimes, but it's all in good fun haha
Imo, her initial EN voice acting was kinda crude at times, but it grows on you. The EN voice acting director and the EN VA herself has made paimon into a pretty likeable character and her script and banter is pretty much expected and well appreciated.
@@Mathster_live btw paimon's va uses they/them pronouns
@@euntro40 here we go again
@@rianv6266 is there something wrong?
1.Its a free game, the amount of money you want to spend is on your control.
2. The world building is so deep (if you read all the book in the game you will find how well build and how vast teyvat is).
3. The gameplay is fun, the elemental reaction and stuff, not too flashy which not make me overwhelming like honkai.
4. The music is world class. I cant explain, but its really world class, they already make an online genshin concert, just search on youtube.
5. All characters feels so alive, their background is so well build, and a world class voice actors make them even more alive.
6. If you're a weebs or into anime and stuff, then you will love it more.
I play for almost a year, and i play for around 1-2 hours a day except weekend, i play around 2-3 hours. And im not even done with itto quest yet.
I never read the books in the game, and you reminded me to do so, since i used to do it to all my single player games like skyrim and the witcher, i should actually read a book in genshin and see what it's like
bruh, the world building is not even that great, boring even. You can just read the lore from wiki instead of reading it in game since they give a better explanation and yes, they are not that deep. The main story have a high possibility of being linked to honkai impact anyway.
@@michaelsilaban854 really bro boring?
Liyue archon war?
Ruu back stories?
Neko back stories?
The mysterious dragonspine?
Did you know why spiral abyss island named as musk reef?
Did you know why wuwang hill become a creepy place like that?
And if you try to talk to the npcs, you will find they have their own backstories too. And how many npcs is in genshin impact? There is numerous.
And we are not even reach the half stories bro.
Wow you got me a respect for the effort you have paid to the game. (sorry for my bad English, correct me if I’m wrong )
@@arifigo1006 look, just because they have a lot of back stories, it doesn't mean those stories are deep or entertaining. Some of the stories feel to forced anyway. For example the archon war, like how come so many gods lives in liyue and fight for the control of it. Liyue in the game is so fucking small. Just imagine if just 2 gods as powefull as morax fight in that small landscape, that nation should be reduced to ash.
But maybe if you don't look to much into it, these stories can be entertaining. But not for me anyway...
Yeah, that's a fair review. Although I have to say that the resin system is absolutely atrocious, making it borderline impossible to enjoy the game after you're done with the story. And the resource gathering becomes a drag, because all the important stuff you can farm without resin has a respawn timer of 3 days... as in, real life days, not ingame days...
But it's not the worst game ever, that's for sure.
1. Even if they add 4 events in the patch, the experience is underwhelming more often than not. People were excited about the puppy event but the stealth is so brain dead, I have no idea who approved this. (although the Albedo event is great). From the events I took part in I would rank about 3 of them as great, 5 as good while the rest is meh and I have been playing for half a year. The biggest problem is that most events are locked behind AR rank so the newer players don't get to join the fun even.
2. Events for the most parts are NOT added as permanent content. They are featured temporarily and then "regifted" to the players with minor tweeks.
3. Grinding resources becomes an issue once you get to the higher AR. Since the only content left is the Abyss, once you hit the max AR ranks you are destined to be stuck in domain grinding them for 10 minutes a day before login off. You could stay on a lower AR level in theory, meaning you won't need to grind but then you can't really do the Abyss since the most drops in domains are locked behind AR rank and the game continues to force the player to get higher and higher AR to progress through the main story so you cannot low effort it really.
The game is like chocolate. It's delicious. But if you eat it everyday for a year, you are getting fed up with it even if you just eat small pieces daily. And the gacha is is like something spiced your chocolate with both wasabi and jam, going heavily on the wasabi.
As a AR57, f2p, 36* every abyss since July, yeah i can say that. For casuals this game is so nice but try playing this game like you play the others you love lol first you cant cuz resin takes 10 secs to spend haha just consume and never complain! o/ still love the music of the game, I was never into anime but the combat is so nice, despite the time limit i love the abyss but people will spin everything to defend the game and lack of important qol in a year
if all events were permanent they would just be dead same as teapot is, its only been used by select few % (idk anyone that actually mains teapot)
SIDE NOTE. Very important for the main character, if you click on them. And then go to voices(I think its voices) You can hear their comments on events and characters. They have a personality. You can do this for every character, to get more of their personality, story. Ect. Its really cool
Hey not tryna be a jerk about it or anything, but its etc (et cetera) not ect
Personally I don't like that about the game. It shows me that the main character can talk, has a personality and opinions on things, but then why do they never say a thing when talking to others. I never liked the whole mute protagonist thing, so this only showed me that they could have made the dialog interesting and just chose not to.
@@antelasic1950 I suppose it stems from the immersion philosophy, in which people want to "feel like their character" and I guess it might be difficult if the protagonists sounds way different, hmm? I don't have that problem because I have an ability to "become" the character that I'm playing, i.e. I roleplay that character, with a few things added by me to better suit my preferences.
@@kapitan19969838 I can somewhat understand that. My problem is that most mute characters who stay silent 90% of the time are created so that people can feel like their character and imagine it's them who are in that world. But I don't know about you but I wouldn't stay silent in most of the conversations.
I'd much rather deal with a character having a different voice then me, but allowing me to respond the way I want, then a character having no voice. It's infuriating when I'm talking to an npc and I want to respond to what he's saying but my character just stares blankly at them without saying anything. It's even worse when you have a side character who does nothing like in Genshin other then just talking for your character, and it's like "well, I guess I'm doing what this thing says. Can't really give my opinion here because I'm just staring silently at the other characters. Oh well.".
@@antelasic1950 Oh I 100% relate 😅
This game makes me feel bad cuz I love the look of the gameplay and it seems like a game id love playing. I just have a horrible gambling addiction at least when it comes to loot drops. I can't go near it, I thought about playing it strictly free, but the moment I drop a single dollar ill spend way more than I should :/
I made a decision when I started playing Genshin a year and a half ago that I would never spend more money on this game than the cost of a normal full price game. About US$65. I have stayed true to that and I have honestly had an absolute blast.
If you don’t have an addictive personality and you’re resistant to FOMO then this game legit has great combat mechanics and exploration. And they are constantly adding new areas, characters, events and mini-games each month.
Having not spent a single $ in the last 6 months I have saved enough in-game currency from daily quests and events to hit full pity 3 full times. Guaranteeing me at least one copy and most likely two copies of whatever 5-star character I choose to pull for next. With each extra copy of a character you unlock a constellation that basically increases their damage potential or elemental synergy in some interesting way. For 5-star characters the constellations are comically OP.
It’s worth it alone for the BOTW like exploration which, as the video states, actually improves on BOTW by having far more things, secrets, loot and events to populate the landscape.
Totally worth it even for Free to Play gamers.
i love how the Deja Vu achievement popped up out of nowhere, that had me laughing sooo hard
Finding Liyue was such a JOURNEY for me. After Xiangling's quest I think she said something about visiting her in Liyue, so... I immediately looked up the nearest statue and started journeying. But... I was pretty underleveled. So by the time I reached Wangshu Inn I was just running from every enemy. I also discovered this conch house??? That I never saw again and I really wanna find it. Finally I got to Liyue, and was having a blast. Couldn't even find Xiangling tho :( her quest was so fun
All the open-world exploration, bosses, and domains* are specifically designed to be done with the characters you start off with (Traveler, Amber, Lisa, Kaeya, and Barbara).
Hardest part, really, is finding the chars/compositions that give the playstyle you want. Diluc was the first 5-star I used, but I actually dropped him for Beidou when I found out about /that parry/ and I never looked back.
*Spiral Abyss is its own thing.
I disagree especially after the release of the golden wolf lord.
@@kanta4549 noelle is technically a starter character, and you can use other elements but it'll take longer.
a side note: you unlock the wolf (and the rest of inazuma) at around ar 40? and by then you would have gotten tons of free fates and probably used the primos you've saved, so it's safe to assume you have at least one geo character by the time you reach inazuma, built or not
Also, Geo Traveller exists
Yeah, Noelle, Barbara, and Geo Traveler give all the tools needed to take care of that fight (2x geo, 2x healers) - with room for one wildcard.
Xiangling is definitely one of the best top tier characters, in the game and you get her for free. Paired with a Bennett, Xingqiu and Sucrose. You do massive amounts of damage. Sure, they are meta characters, but they are easier to acquire than the limited 5-star units.
What a good review, watched the whole thing and it's really spot on from what you got to experience
Honestly this game have some hidden details that blows my mind. like for example If you go to a certain sitting stop at Qinqce village bamboo forest your character for some reason will directly look at Qingyun peak floating island that is soo far away.
The way you described Kaeya and Diluc made me spit my tea from laughing too hard.
What I mostly noticed about newcomers to Genshin is that they usually worry about the Gacha system like they feel of having to worry about spending money on all of the game's contents but honestly all of those are not even necessary to feel uneasy about and will become irrelevant to you if you're not a gambling addict, what you guys have to actually worry in this game is rushing through the main story which is the "Archon Quest" because most new players now feel pressured to complete all quest and started with the mindset of "getting everything done" in order to catch up with everyone to do farming, but sooner you might actually regret speedrunning everything when you will just wait for the next update for the story to progress, Honestly it's more important to see Genshin as similar to Minecraft when you first started you want to make your world grow bigger and better than it was before but until once you feel like you already accomplished everything and not sure what to do next you will feel kinda disappointed and realize that the game doesn't actually have much to offer. This is basically like waiting for the next season of your favorite anime to come out.
happened to me. I basically skimmed through the game in 6 months. 90% plus the map in each region. Reason i decided to take it slow after Enkanomiya. NGL tho. It is fun walking around with good artifacts on characters u like.
Kinda weird that you selectively never heard people complaining about how Genshin Impact fleeces its player. I assure you, people criticize it now, just as they did two years ago.
Played this game for a year now but I still managed to finish this video because hearing your commentary on it was so entertaining!
as a f2p player, i recognize that im not able to get all of the characters, which is why obtaining a character is much more special to me. also, i am able to casually enjoy the experience the game offers as you dont need to spend any money to enjoy most of it.
As someone who has been playing since february, I can say that the ugly parts of Genshin only start to come out once you hit engame (Adventure Ranking 55 or higher). Basically, there's nothing left to do but grind and wait for new updates. I don't mind it that much because the update frequency is decent enough and there's always new events every patch to keep you entertained for a while, not to mention that Genshin was made to be this sort of casual game that you play just a little bit everyday, so... It does suck not having more repeating content to do everyday, but still, it takes a really long time until you get to this point of "ok I did everything, where's the next patch?". For me at least, it took like 4 or 5 months (and I think that's a lot for a free game). And what you said about the gacha is absolutely true: While there are some notably strong limited 5 star characters (like Hu Tao or Ganyu), none of them is absolutely needed, and the only relevant "difficult" endgame content (where comps and builds play a more active role) is the spiral abyss, which is something you do in 30 minutes twice a month (basically, 5% of your time spent in the game). Wishing for characters is mainly just a matter of "I like this character and I want to have it".
It's a cute game that after some time became a chore, a second job I was going to after finishing my first job.
i mean basically all live service games at this point it
2:44 Yes, while Breath of the Wild is literally my favorite game of all time, I can also acknowledge that it’s a blatant rip off of the 2022 hit game “Elden Ring.”
You can play Genshin F2P just fine. The endgame content is pretty easy and you can easily do it as F2P or without 5 Star Characters.
The Gacha system is def on the expensive side, but like I said, not required to enjoy and clear the game.
@Equinodium Lezarouxe
I find abyss fun LOL
You can craft 4* weapons if you have the mats. And you can use the given characters for abyss. The only downside is you have to get good artifacts for them.
@Equinodium Lezarouxe like I said there are 4* stars you can craft if you have the prototypes.
There was an event that let you choose a 4* star from liyue. And u can get fischl for free of u had played in the beginning. Diona too. But it's locked behind events tho so those who come after wouldn't get it of course. And they might be a new 4* we can get for free in upcoming update but that we will find out when the time comes.
And no matter what ppl will be able to pull because you'll get enough Primogems from the game to get a 5* at least. So for sure you'll get weaps/characters.
And I never said gacha is not required. I said you can use the given characters too and craft the swords for abyss. Ofc if you're planning to full stars it'll be impossible with just 4 characters.
What I'm saying is if you're planning to do abyss, that'll mean you've reached endgame content thus for sure would have enough to pull for some characters with the Primogems they give. Meaning you can be f2p and still be able to do abyss if you're lucky with your pulls.
@Equinodium Lezarouxe
For those people they can take it easy since 1-8 are permanent. I myself only finally managed to full star the abyss 3 months ago and i've started playing since 1.3.
As long as they take their time I'm sure they will do it eventually at least till 8.
Most of craftable 4* are dog shit lol
I appreciated this video a lot, I've been playing almost since launch so it's been awhile since I've seen early content and I appreciated what you had to say.
I think the one thing I'd want to say would be that my favorite part of the lore is the way you see the world building crop up and connect to itself. For example, you do the first quest and then albedo's quest tells you about durin and you're like "hey that's the dragon dvalin fought". The archon quests vary in storytelling and stories (yes, I'm talking about the pacing of inazuma part 3) but aside from that, you really get the sense of how vast this world really is. Even the world quests that are short and unvoiced tell you something about the the people who live in teyvat. Like you work with scholars from sumeru often and you can see how differently they act from the other regional npcs. Things like seeing the bones of slain gods and the gouges left on the land from the archons just leave you thinking about what may have happened in the past. There are so many things that fit into place when you read through and you end up speculating about loose ends. Tho this is my own opinion and I think there are many ways genshin can do better on storytelling
You're the second long-form essay on this game that I've watched, and despite being sponsored, you appear to give a balanced view.
I'd tried this game on release, but I was unable to contact support when I forgot my bloody password.
Thankfully, I hadn't spent any money in the game.
Due to the positive reviews, I'll likely start a new game and ensure my bloody login is saved somewhere.
After the 4 hour long Dragon Age Origins video, this 1 hour video feels like the first part of a longer piece
I usually dislike people giving opinions when they have a sponsorship but I really love when they put in effort like this into it to prove their genuine opinion. Great video man.
Don’t worry about the gacha elements if you would like to consider playing this game,, you can play the game in its entirety without paying anything and still get by easily. the game gives you free characters at the start and free new character to play with every 2 patches or so anyway. you’ll also get a lot of free stuff that you can use to get new characters as well, so being entirely F2P will not really gate you into getting the premium characters. game is easy enough, so its not pay to win despite the always heard “people spending so much in the game” concept. .6% gacha rate is not low either with the pity system (meaning a guaranteed premium character by x no. of wish). As this is my 1st gacha game and as someone playing since day 1, I play because of the story, the characters, the gameplay and I really love the OST. The gacha mechanics has never bothered my enjoyment ☺️
The gacha mechanisms in this game goes really easy on the players cause currently imo one can explore and beat everything currently present in this game with just starter characters.
I spent $0 on the game and this is the only $0 game I'm still playing. Their other work Honkai Impact 3 also. People do complain about resin limits (and I feel it too sometimes) but I am a working adult with a gaming schedule. I don't get too many Refines of 5* gear, I'm at the hardest possible world level - and I'm still in the game.
If you have been a hardcore MMO player trying your best to make F2P work for you in the past but never quite making it and burning out, this game practically spoils you.
Anyway, my only concern now is that the boat is still mostly restricted to Inazuma, I doubt they'd leave the spawn points in Guyun, and the boat STILL can't be used to traverse the main continent. Pity!
I played last year. It was fun for a time. I can see why it’s popular even though it is not for me
Yay! Another video that I can fall asleep to over the next few weeks. Great content as always Salt!
Lmao same. Got a bunch of good nights from that long ass fallout 4 video.
I agree with everything you said. I just wanted to answer one of your doubts about if the high end stuff requires specific characters. 27:00
It actually doesn't take a lot of effort, grinding, money or skill to be able to do the high end stuff. It requires some effort, grinding and skill, but unless you're playing a really bad team, you won't need to overinvest in terms of time or money. Currently, the bigger problem is how easy the game is for those who are willing to go to a high level of investment, and also how little content is actually created targeting those specific challenge hungry players.
Also, as a long time free to play player, I should mention this. The hardest content in the game is the spiral Abyss. It is highly skill and material required.
But you really can get it without spending. You can gain a lot of currency from just playing regularly and you will get the more powerful charecters as the pity system exist.
I already have more than enough charecters to clear Abyss to full . I haven't done grinding to power up them and I'm a poorly skilled player and yet I only miss like 1 star in the entire spiral Abyss.
So, there is absolutely no necessity of spending money in Genshin as if right now
When it comes to higher tier characters and weapons, literally the only times when that stuff makes a difference is the spiral abyss and difficult events. And events have so far given all primogems at the easiest levels. Getting 36 stars with only low tier characters can be very difficult/perhaps impossible. But you're gonna get some higher tier characters just by wishing bc getting wishes is easy (takes time, yes, but you don't need to spend money). And the pity system can enable you to get the ones you want if you're wise about your wishes. Even then, ofc artifacts will make a large difference, but getting like 30/33 stars is not hard as long as one levels up their weapons, characters, talents, and artifacts. And also using good team comps is important. And if you can only get 30/33 stars consistently, then you only miss out on 200/100 a month (out of like 5000+ possible). Like 95% of the game isn't abyss
I don’t think it’s totally justified when Genshin gets referred to as a “botw clone”, but I will say the one great thing about the game that it does take from botw is that addictive desire to explore every inch of the map. I loved the first few weeks when I was exploring and discovering two completely diverse regions. Now I’m stuck just waiting for new events to see what they involve and keeping up with banners to see if I wanna wish, and it’s so tedious and draining. The Gacha elements are what have stopped me from recommending the game to friends
@Cristofer Andrade and BoTW "stole" from Shadow of the Colossus, etc.
I think it's an unfair comparison since BotW wasn't just about wanderlust but also about a plurality of globally active systems synergising with one another. Even if it tries to "copy" some of the aesthetics, it's still very shallow criticism.
I feel like the replies missed the point, it's that genshin is a BoTW inspired game, it's got open world climbing, swimming mechanics and some other stuff. But the gameplay itself is pretty different compared to BoTW
@@AlphaCarinae Didn't know BOTW invented grass, climbing, swimming and cel-shaded graphics.
@@AlphaCarinae I've played Genshin since launch and still do so today, currently AR58. Also the art style are similar but are very distinct, Or you're going to tell me BOTW has a moe anime art style and Genshin copied it.
As someone who has been playing ever since the early days and rather "seriously" ever since last November....
The endgame certainly has a lot more grinding for artifacts which are just a frustrating cascade of RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG with very little, if any, control over the steps other than deciding whether to go ahead or not.
That said, steady does it and eventually you do end up amassing decent enough sets, especially if you focus on a couple of characters instead of wanting to build them all, even with the base amount of 160 resin per day without ever refreshing it with money.
And most importantly of all, the Spiral Abyss which is considered the endgame has a very powerful and popular meta team that is either composed entirely by 4 star units or have one or two members swapped for some 5 star options, but the core of the functionality and damage still revolving around the staying 4 stars, one of which is given for free for any players that delve a bit into the early floors of said Abyss in the form of Xiangling.
So, the tl;dr: no, even late game you don't really to spend money, even on the late game, the game will just require that you be more focused, mindful and play a bit smarter than a whale who can literally throw money at the issue.
This has really opened my eyes to my own slow burn experience with the game.
I was naturally wary of the gacha elements as they were introduced to me, and I've just generally gone off to play other games instead and come back to it for a single day here and there.
I haven't spent any money and I'm not even past the tutorial yet, after my recent third attempt installing and giving it a shot...
I really appreciate your video, because I can't even watch streamers playing this to give me a straight perspective.
Knowing that the gacha elements are NOT a necessary function of gameplay, I'll definitely start it back up again.
99.99999% genshin hater are losers who play the game for free but expect to get every cool and awesome 5 stars characters/weapons they want without he need to spend a single dime . when they found out they can't have those they rage quit and trash talk the game . if you are that kind of wanting a free 5 stars collection without a single penny spend then stop it and get some help before too late
I dont recommend you playing this game and if you do just go f2p. As spending money will ruin the experience for you. Anyone who is rank 55 and above will tell you that right now this game is a massive chore and the only endgame content has been abyss. This was the case since launched and has not yet been fixed till now.
@@marimo7045 this is not an mmo its a story game with rpg elements OFC the game gets stale when youre at endgame that is when you polish your characters etc... but that is purely optional
@@Natha_Kun i never said it is an mmo. I play gacha games a lot, has been since for almost the past decade. Genshin has terrible endgame compared to other gachas and has a gear system that is outright atrocious (considering you dont get many refills). Burn out and fomo is normal for gacha but genshin takes it to another level without those issues i would have recommended this game.
@@marimo7045 i mean besides the endgame shenanigins the game itself has atleast 40 hours of cutscenes and dialouges and its at the 3rd region out of 7 so just what if it is completed? its gonna be a long road for sure
but i can agree on endgame in genshin abd cause the devs intends to make genshin casual as possible its the same case for honkai 2016 so yeah
Respect to the developer's effort to make every events is entertaining,,, the game it self is already very good,,, but what surprise me is the events, it's like endless stream of events, I don't even have enough time to play all of it, bcs I'm still new and have many quests and unexplore area. Trying my best to not chew more than I could.
Played this game free to play for a few months and had a blast. After a while I got bored with my team and my interest dwindled. But then I started using a new team and it's almost like a whole new playstyle and I was invested again.
When referring to the late game (around the 27:00 mark), you are right to assume that requires a lot more grinding; but you don't necessarily need 5☆ or "high end" characters or weapons in order to get through that grind or to complete the story.
The greatest challenge to an end game f2p is the Spiral Abyss, since the Damage Per Second rate and actual strategy becomes a lot more important. But Spiral Abyss is for those who seek a real challenge.
Even in the Abyss tho, some of the best characters (ranked by the community) are 4☆s. Obviously 5☆s take a lot of the space as well because otherwise why would they be 5☆s, but Sucrose, Xiangling, Xinqiu, Fischl and especially Bennet are all 4☆s and considered to be some of the best assets you can get in the game by a lot of players. For 3 of those some of their best builds are considered to be f2p friendly using 4☆ weapons as well.
The biggest grind is honestly trying to farm for decent artifacts! That in itself is a grind but it is not one that is really necessary until after you've finished a decent chunk of the main stories and gotten to around adventure rank 50; or have reached a plateau in your Spiral Abyss progression.
So yeah; late game (which would be around AR 50-55 for most players) does require a bit of grinding if you're farming for certain 5☆ artifacts or certain sets (or are like me and have terrible RNG) but you do not need to have any specific 5☆ characters or artifacts in order to reach end game or to do well in it.
Even if you have terrible RNG in your banner wishes you can still make noticeable progress for yourself over time which is honestly very satisfying at those late game stages. (Opinion piece over I will descend from my soap box)
As someone who has played the game since launch I will say that this really feels more like a dip in the pool than an actual critique compared to your other videos, though understandably you played very little of the game. I love Genshin Impact, I really do, but my word like any other form of media its flaws really start to show after the honeymoon period. I just hope certain aspects change especially communication between the devs and the community.
The conclusion is directed at you. Stop minmaxing this ultra casual game. This game also rolled out more quality of life fixes than ANY other games last year you can try to prove me wrong but you can't.
What you want isn't communication, what you want is for the development team to coddle you.
@@VaioletteWestover I'm not sure what warranted such a harsh response to OP, but it's pretty clear that current communication is bad and works to the detriment of ANY player. Several of the characters they have released over the past few months have had issues, and some have ONLY just been addressed now, like Yoimiya's normal attacks targeting dead enemies. This isn't even mentioning the problems of a resource bottleneck with mora and EXP books and unfair artifact RNG exacerbated by the awful resin system.
And are we just forgetting about Abyss?
@@VaioletteWestover whiteknight spotted.
@@kurama1838 If you are playing like a sane person, as in understanding that artifacts do not need to nearly be perfect to complete all content, and not training every character you have, then there is no mora or experience book bottleneck. I currently have 23 million mora and 1200 experience books and 12 characters outfitted with great artifacts.
@@evilmiyoho6742 You named your entire account Evil Mihoyo, I think you need to get a grip perhaps.
Honestly, I can see the appeal for sure, but I had my fun with Gatcha games, and I rather just not go back. Frees my mind
Agreed. I will never touch any game labeled gatcha ever again.
Everything done by devs on such games is to ruthlessly extract money from you, nothing more.
I laugh when people talk about the devs like they are their friends lol
@@TheRoleplayer40k Honestly, once you realized you just spent $100 on a Jpg and didn't get said Jpg cause of a bullshit RNG system, yeah. That kinda broke me for it.
@@ADarkAngel4949 I was conned by then too in a game called counterside.
I was freed when they made a change to a character that had been the best, to make it worse, because everyone had been using it for so long (and spent 100$s if not 1000$s) to get it and then released a new sexy girl character who did exactly what the old one did, so you basically just had to buy it again
It shackles were lifted from my mind and I saw the truth clearly and haven’t gone near gatcha again.
@@TheRoleplayer40k Fire Emblem: Heroes was mine. Somedays I see the new units and art, and somedays I can hear the siren sing her song, but I am a stronger man, and her song will not draw me.
27:00 the hardest thing a player may struggle with end-game is the last spiral abyss floors, thats the only place where you need to have more characters (8) and they must be strong. You can clear it as a f2p player, but it will be difficult and it will take months to get there.
For new players, you really only need Noelle, thats why she has her own banner and shes guaranteed drop.. this maid has carried so many newbies.
edit:
Forgot to clarify that you don't need to clear the last abyss floors 9-12, they reset every 2 weeks and its just an optional thing to get some more rewards after you clear the initial abyss floors 1-8 that dont reset.
I like you spent a lot of time with the game to review it. Like you actually went through most of the main story and regions. Some other people reviewing this game just go through mondstat or just early game stuff but that’s just the surface. It really picks up as you progress and the combat gets way more satisfying in mid game to endgame. This is all my opinion through, just expressing my gratitude for actually playing the game for a while before this video! (Also you spent money just to show us how it works, absolute madlad)
The only thing I would recommend new players to do is farm different materials as often as you can. I never really bothered getting materials and now I can’t do level up my characters.
In my personal experience you can clear the entire game without rolling gatcha. Ive done it with am amber/lisa team though certian things like the abyss are definatly easier with 5 stars like hu tau zhongli and ganyu. But realistically speaking most of the time if you follow any genshin content on social media youll usually know at least a month in advance that a character is saving so you can show some restraint and save those primos for things you want more than others. Yes the gatcha sucks but it dosnt make the game itself a bad expirence
I liked the game, combat is cool and really fun. The music is great and the story is interesting. thought I absolutely hate grinding and level gated sections of the game. it becomes less of a game, and more like a second job.
I'll say that the one thing that makes going F2P in genshin hard is the time limit on some banners. Like yes, if you save up the currency and don't literally spend it as you get it, you have a chance of getting the banner characters you're after (especially since I think doing wishes in groups of 10 gives you better odds), but when a banner has only 3 days left and you want the 5-star character because they synergise with the team you've been building, that can sometimes push you over the edge.
Personally I just got bored with it and I was never a gambler so this eventually turned me off to the game.
Granted I play Star Trek online, ESO, and Phantasy star 2 online New Genesis, Warframe, and 76 I found them more enjoyable as they all don't really have that strong of a gotcha style.
So far 76 and Warframe has no actual gotcha style cost in it.
Everything is basically straight forward.
Warframe has what is known as the relics system to get Prime counterparts of the Warframe but you don't spend money on them at all and you can own them up with a lot of grinding.
76 you flat out know why you are getting up front and how much it cost.
Sure GI is beautiful and well done, but the lottery system is a turn off as is the leveling system.
I will be honest I hate the leveling system in the game as well as the slot machine.
The game relies heavily on whales(what is a game industry term don't believe me look it up) and thoss who are easily manipulated and high risk of gambling addictions.
I do find it funny how he doesn't touch on those points of gambling addictions as some who watch these videos might actually be easily manipulated or has gambling addictions.
Not adding those warnings seems a bit concerning as he is promoting this gambling game to others.
I am surprised at how much I like the game. It's in my opinion, very solid overall.
I agree! I thought gacha= trash but it's actually really well made
Very solid at exploiting people with gambling addictions :P
@@TheRoleplayer40k reeeeeeeeeeeewwww
@@TheRoleplayer40k people enjoying the Game so it's bad
@@TheRoleplayer40k eh, this game and every other AAA title released the past 5 years
Genshin is F2p friendly I never spend any money but still got to AR 56 with 36 star abyss :)
I played this game for 325 days and I have to agree with everything you said
You can play this game for free and beat 100% of the content but the appeal of a certain character might force you to spend money as the in-game currency although sometimes rather generous it is nowhere near enough to get all the characters especially with the 50/50 RNG. I myself have been tempted multiple times to spend more money but I just don't have it (fortunately lol) as if you failed to get the character within the time limit you have to wait from 3 months to an entire year for said character to come back which is stupidly long, they try to fix it by increasing the rate of a rerun but honestly, it is not enough especially if you lose the 50/50 again.
A one hour video for a yes/no question. Nice
Its called an interview bro. But Id say yes
You don't need to spend to enjoy it, but it will make you feel awesome to have all the 5 stars characters and weapons. Kinda like upgrade your at best Royal series weapons to Lynel weapons,it hits differently.
I'm so happy you got Beidou early into the game
I dunno if anybody will read this, but here I go. I have very actively played genshin for a year as a f2p and as mentioned in this video you can enjoy the game without spending a penny. Sadly the endgame is really lacking only broken by a short releaf from a new update. I see myself as a minmaxer and I enjoy party building. If you roll patiently and snipe for the characters/weapons you want you can get pretty much all of it, as long as you don't try to go for all characters. Getting all 4 star characters is entierly possible tho and you can make every character work.
That is for the good parts. As I am sad to report I have quit genshin for about 1-2 months now. I have played a decent amount of gatchas fully f2p and genshin has been the most enjoyable by far. Genshin is so much more than any other gatcha, but in the end it is still a gatcha.
What I mean with that is, some problems will never be fixed. The game is pretty unbalanced, I did say that you can make every character work, but it is much harder with some than others. Only newly released characters will get love, while older ones have to hope for a skin, or another character that is simmilar to them to bring things like weapons and artifacts they can profit from, but as Genshin also suffers from severe powercreep, that character will be compleatly outclassed by the other one. Not to mention some elements are inherently "better" than others and get a lot more characters released for it as a result.
The imbalance isn't just on a gameplay level, but on a story level as well, 4 star characters will most likely be much less featured in the story than 5 stars, if at all. Sometimes they get trown a bone by a new sidequest (on that note hangout events do fix the problem slightly, but it is still not much) or an event, but even than I remember an event that was marketed as a "Fischl" event, one of the most popular 4 star characters mind you, where she kinda just left half way through and focused on the 5 star character "Mona" instead.
What I am saying is that if your favorite character is a 4 star and/or an older character you will get very rarely anything.
Furthermore I am not the kind of guy that looks for "hot anime waifus" I generally don't mind them and as long as they are interesting story wise, why not? I do however get bothered when it is pretty much only "hot anime waifus" in the game and "husbandos" for that matter. Tho I think the male designs are generally more interesting than female designs. The female designs range from mostly "meh" with a few "ok" and "good" ones. You do have the child characters that a refreshing change, but they have yet to add a single male child. Old people will probably never be a thing. As well as more chubby or disfigured characters (don't get me wrong making a character "chubby" or "disfigured" doesn't make them a good character, but when all the characters are sexy top model you begin to starve for some veriety).
I am not saying that these problems will never be fixed, but after starting to play genshin hopefully, you can say my optimism was dampend after a year of playing.
Genshin was designed to make money, it is designed to make you want more, no matter how much time or money you invest you will never have "enough". Some of the things I "want" from the game are in direct opposition to "making money", I can't really blame Mihoyo for wanting to make money, but in the end this leads to Genshin having a lot of wasted potential, that will never fully be realised.
In the end, I can't recommend Genshin to anybody. It isn't a bad game, but it will also never be "great".
I also would like to add a warning to everyone:
"Every gatcha is meticulously designed to manipulate you into spending money, if you pay any amount of money in any gatcha game you run the danger of loosing control over how much, *ESPECIALLY* when you think something like 'I can handle it', if you take a lax approach to spending money you should not be playing any gatcha or free to play game for that matter. Spending money is ok, as long as you keep track of how much. I recommend writing down how much you spend and to inform yourself on how these games manipulate you into paying money. The more you know about the manipulation the less it effects you. Having a hard cap on a monthly spending is also a good strategy, be warned tho, exceptions become the norm really fast. The easiest methode to keep controll is however to not start paying at all."
Yeah, u got me dude. I’ve paid about 10 dollars for the welkins and now after the 2.4 livestream I want to spent more than that just to get all these character… thanks for the advice.
@@Tysm34 Stop spending, you are wasting your money and you know it.
@@evilmiyoho6742 yeah thank you very much
@@Tysm34 your welcome xD
Genshin is Really good..you can play as F2P..don't listen to people who overreact..you can play without spending..theres a lot of fun puzzle,mystery,big world
The conclusion really summed what kept me engaged with genshin in terms of escapsim, especially last year when dragonspine launched and I couldn't travel home to see my family for xmas. The music,the exploration and tone of dragonspine was just the perfect bit of escapism at just the right time I needed it. Genshin's not my favourite game ever, but it is this nice consistent bit of comfort food I can always play between other games and know I'll have a fun time with.
As someone who's halfway through AR57 and played every day since release up until a month ago, I agree with everything you said here. I love all of your videos and I never thought I'd see you cover this and it gave just as great an overview as every other game you've talked about! Thanks for this~.