Quick Look: Genshin Impact

Immediately envious of Jan's Diluc.

Jan has both Jean AND Diluc?? Damn.

"Accidentally"

This would be awesome

But I made the mistake of playing a gotcha game one time

Never again

Edit: Turns out it is "gacha" but "gotcha" feels thematically accurate to the experience.

How tf do you have both Jean AND Diluc if the answer isn't $$$ I'd honestly just be madder

I love game.

I tried playing this game last night, but the gamepad controls were so awkward and you can't change them. (like Sqaure isn't normal attack and you can't use the d-pad in the menus). It was super disappointing. Maybe I'll try again with the kb+mouse controls instead.

The drop rate on the two 5 star characters Jan has is less than 0.5%. Absolutely nuts he got them both and like 5 more 4 star characters (less than 5% drop rate) without spending any money.

Jan might be a secret whale

I've been playing way too much of this game since the global launch.

please tell me for the sake of my sanity that Jan didn't just luck into that roster with no rerolling

If you tell me Jan also got Venti as well... I will be seething! Seething with jealousy, I say!

So I’ve played 20 hours on this, got 6 characters and I’ve never even thought about paying money yet. 20 hours. For free. Even if they want 50$ after 30 hours it’s totally fine for me. I’ve had a LOT of fun and it’s not worse than some AAA Open World Games. It’s really good and the quests are fun and there is a ton of variety.

Also; im playing on iOS. With touch screen. I HATE that normally but it’s totally fine in this game for some reason? If this is the new F2P model, I’m in. The production value is just insane, don’t know if you know by now but I like it?! :D

Yeah wtf is with hiding the character entirely when looking upward at them from below? Like Jeff said design the character differently if that's seriously a concern. I think there's just something I'm missing with that stuff, though, like the art style in general; I just will never understand the appeal of this art style. Truly. Game is cool otherwise.

When Nintendo launched Fire Emblem on phones I was worried about this future, where games with multiple characters have those unique characters gated based on luck or money. This game was developed in China and that type of market, where free-to-play is the only successful model, and it shows. In a way I want this game to succeed cause it could spur a new game franchises developed in China, but I'm torn.

If this succeeds in the West, companies just like e.g. EA said the new Dragon Age is a "live service" game. So who's to say you dont have to spend currency to unlock "special" party members. They even did this for BattleFront2 but with skills and weapons....

Yes i want more games, even if they come from China, but this entire model is nasty

I managed to play this for around 15 minutes until the anime broke me. Nice job anime.

Fantastic game. Might be a shock to people who want to min/max or "play optimally" and aren't used to gacha games, but overall I'm enjoying this a lot. Really dig the combat, it's fun to mix the various skills and create the reactions you want, though like Jeff said it isn't super in-depth, but managing stamina, cooldown and elements is a lot of work on harder content, but awesome when it works. Character building is fun too.

Also, I feel like they blur out the character when you climb for visibility purposes... like you're trying to look up, so they hide the character.

@mistercoke: I feel like the safest way to play these games is to spend what you think was worth what you got out of it, or not at all. The rates are so bad that if you spend $50 on rolls expecting to get something it will, statistically, crush your dreams. I feel like a good balance is to get whatever $5/month daily crystal subscription is on offer and MAYBE the battle pass - if you don't play past a month or two then just don't re-sub. No big loss.

But yeah these games are so heavily subsidized by insane whales that the f2p experience is actually pretty good if you've got an iron will. It won't barrage you with ads and (in this case) you won't run into a PVP frustration wall. Experienced gacha players will have a good time and the community I roll with is all over Genshin Impact right now. But the cynic in me looks at this game as a way to grab players who AREN'T experienced and see if they fall for the same old tricks. I'm lucky I learned my lesson with Fire Emblem Heroes instead of getting taken to the cleaners with something like Fate Grand Order, at least.

People need to stop support this garbage. This game being such a huge success is why come the end of this new generation games like COD and Assassin's Creed are going to be filled with Gacha garbage.

Played waaaaaaay too much of this in the past 10 days and hit AR35 today. I enjoyed my time so far with the only bummer being my poor luck with the gacha.

Also currently the main story quests end at about AR30, meaning you don't have that much to see narrative-wise until they add the rest of Chapter 1 in. Currently you have the Prologue parts 1-3 and Chapter 1 parts 1-2 with part 3 teased once you hit the end of Part2.

There are a lot of rumours and "leaks" swirling around about the future content and dates for the 1.1 patch, with some claiming it will land "any day now" or "next Monday".

@mupod: yeah I get that and I don’t think im gonna be playing this in two months. But then again I don’t play games for long anyway. All I’m saying is that I don’t get the „oh man you have to spend a lot“ aspect of this video. I don’t get why they need more characters. And I think it’s really okay that I’ve spent a lot of time and didn’t even look at this shop. Also: for the first 6(?) hours the shop wasn’t even available.

I really don’t like f2p and I know why it’s bad most of the time and I don’t want this for my AC, Cyberpunk, etc. I really don’t. Because I’d rather pay 60 bucks and own the full game.

Gotta say though: I’m not a person that needs endgame stuff, I never did. And after 30/40 hours I lose interest in most games, even the good ones because there’s a TON of games and I’m playing 12 of those at a time (I know it’s weird :)) - but maybe that’s because I’ve been playing games for 30 years now and I don’t own a switch anymore and this is as BOTW as it gets? I don’t really know. I just posted my comment because I thought it was weird how they presented this here. Like „after two hours you HAVE to pay because you NEED this character“ etc.

Sorry for the movie script length comment, sometimes it’s hard to find the right words, since I’m from Germany and my English sometimes is a little rusty...

TLDR: I get that this model may be a problem for some people and EA or Ubi may get weird ideas now, but there are a ton of other games out there that are way more problematic in my opinion (my son played Brawlstars, and woooow that was something else...)

This game is exactly what I needed right now

i'm really enjoying this game!!

I got into this game in a big way that I wasn't expecting and I haven't spent a single dime on it.

I guess this game was just the kind of game I needed right now. The art style and environments are beautiful. It's so good for just putting on a podcast or some music and just exploring the world and randomly stumbling upon puzzles and loots. Just mindlessly exploring.

Now if only RNG would just freaking give me Venti, goddamn it!

Shame they didn't mention my absolute favorite part of the game, the same as in BoTW. Korok seed type of world 'secrets'. Seeing a circle of stones with one missing? Put a rock there, a chest spawns! 3 torches in a line one of them unlit? Light it and a chest appears!

There is a simple delight in finding those 'puzzles', recognizing where something's 'off'. And the world is absolutely filled with those.

@mistercoke: I'm not going to criticize the guys harshly for guessing that the game is going to nail you hard with F2P bullshit later on, because that's a pretty fair assumption to make considering how F2P mobile games usually are.

But even as a gacha veteran this game has actually surprised me with how...reasonable it is? For example, I went to go craft a 4* sword - since the game has a 'forge queue' I assumed it was gonna hit me with the ol' Warframe trick and slap a 48 hour timer on it. Nope, forged in 3 seconds. And not just that - F2P games LOVE to nickel and dime you on things like inventory space. This thing? Functionally limitless space as far as I can tell.

But it's not a pretty-looking game with generous F2P mechanics because they're being nice. It's because the gacha model is THAT lucrative.

Ah yes, accidental upskirt attempts.

This game would be dead in the water if the only playable characters were fat and balding with glasses.

Jan, Jeff, and Paimon Emergency Food explore the rolling hills of Genshin Impact.

Fixed

@windir2112: The issue with games like this is there's a lot of good "game" to it that makes it hard to just reject whole cloth. Look at overwatch, all a gacha game is from the east is overwatch lootboxes for different mechanics and some of them have the free to play wait/energy system in it too.

I wish all this crazy monetization stopped and became less predatory but Impact is not where we boycott an end to it all

Soo....this game would be dead if it wasnt using the same things that make it this game...Im guessing Madden would be dead if it stopped simulating football...go figure.

Glad to finally understand what the actual gameplay of this entails. Everywhere I looked, I saw it just described as a gacha game, which I understand to be a monetization system and not a genre of game, but maybe that’s just video games in 2020, I dunno.

Just got into it, but I'm liking it so far. And for the naysayers, lets be honest, if the game was by Nintendo, and this was a sequel or spinoff to Zelda: BOTW, you'd be calling this game a masterpiece, especially if it was a free to play game with a gacha hook after hours in. That's not to say I plan to spend money on it, it would really have to hook me like Warframe did to do that.

I've constantly been hearing this from most if not all quick takes from game sites about this game and then I hear from the public that its good and fair with the grind etc. I think this game would be better received if it was the same game just models of some popular franchise that exist like dragon quest or Zelda/Mario. The hate was so strong for this game from some websites who said it would fail but then I hear it's doing gangbusters. Sometimes I forget games media is mostly speaking from their exact opinion and not some end all be the all-business side of things. The game is fine and I think it gets a bad wrap cause the aesthetics and Zelda existing/Zelda being so beloved. You don't get hate for copying batman combat or battle royal etc. The system heavy physics and open-world idea shouldn't be some taboo go to...zelda did it great but there's' always a chance to improve or do things nicely in another iteration. PS the F2P stuff isn't a bother as long as the stuff adds up to being fun/under 70 bucks of purchasing since that's the case for a full game. I see the F2P aspect as a demo. A demo you can complete as well but get more out of if you want extra stuff. It's not Free to Free. Lol. Plus the F2P aspects arent as dier as a few hours into the game would lead you to believe...they just push it cause that's how they make money...you don't really need the stuff early on and even later. IDK, man. This isn't Plants vs Zombies 2 where the brought things are almost necessary cause its almost impossible otherwise and you can't buy the stuff within game hours/coins earned.

@justabard: At the very least, and I don't love it, Overwatch is cosmetic only. Legitimate playable characters and weapons being locked behind gacha mechanics is where I draw a hard line - regardless of how same-y or whatever the weapons end up being.

Combat in this game feels a lot like Tokyo Xanadu eX.

Man, Jan said he was lucky to not get any dupes. When he was scrolling through his character list I thought they were all dupes, all those anime people looked identical to me.

I'm actually surprised at how positive they are on this game. I figured the gacha elements would drive Jeff away for sure. They were definitely right about there being loads of systems. That tends to be the case with gacha games from my experience.

I'm almost AR30 and have been playing the shit out of this game since launch. I'm really having a lot of fun so far. I spent $5 on the daily primogems thing cuz it seemed like a decent deal but don't really feel the need to spend anything else. No 5 stars yet and right now I'm saving my primogems to see what banners come up next while I explore the world and work through the quests. No issues clearing content with my Noelle, Barbara, Lisa, Xiangling party.

It's a beautiful game and looks like a lot of fun to play. It hurts to imagine that talented artists and programmers were wasted on this attempt to psychologically manipulate you into giving their company money. This could have been a full priced game but instead every element was carefully designed, not to be fun, but to wage psychological warfare on the players to extract the maximum amount of money from them. Sure, you might be able to have fun with it and play very little. But the game will fight you every step of the way. Are you willing to take the risk that it will win and you'll spend hundreds of dollars on something that should be, max 60 dollars? Or worse that you are more vulnerable than you thought and you spend literally all your money on this crap like so many people have, without a way to get it back. That what happens if the system works as designed. This is not a game, this is a trap.

I would not call myself a gacha expert, but I have spent a lot of time on a couple of these games. The defining aspect of a gacha is not necessarily the spending, but the loooooooong natured approach to progression. If you are willing, there will always be something to do.

If you are a person who 100%'s games and have never played a gacha before, then either stay away or be prepared to play this game for 1000 or more hours. You WILL have to play every day. If you just want to play something for fun that apes a lot of defining features of BOTW and has sweet, sweet anime butts, then go nuts. There is probably a lot of fun to be had here if you like what you see, just be prepared for what it will become.

Personally, I do not need another time cruncher game like this in my life, so I only played for an hour or two. Did get lucky with the 5 star zombie girl though.

Here's a link to a video (55:10 if the timestamp doesn't work) that does a pretty good breakdown of the monetization stuff in the game and how crazy expensive it can be. He also spends $148 CAD and does as many pulls as he can with them (it's not many) which is further into the video.

So if ya never played a gacha and wanna try this out just be careful not to fall into the gacha hole cause boy is it expensive.

Jan Has Jean and Diluc and has not even gotten to earth magic yet what the fuck

Finally I can play as a vtuber.

I'm glad they got a renowned anime scientist on this - thanks for your insight, Professor Gerstmann

Ooof, trying to install this now. Dunno what's up with their servers but the download is gonna take about 12 hours!

Co-op currently seems to be mainly for mat farming and just running around the world. When you kill a world boss or complete one of the world challenges they spawn a flower that asks you to spend Resin to get the rewards. The flower is unique to each player so you can help folks farm a boss / event and pick which ones you want to spend your Resin to get the rewards for.

Most permanent world things are not really available in co-op like story quests etc., and only the host can get chests and collect those stamina upgrade things since they are one time pickups.

Time to first "finally" 1:40

I used a VPN and switched to an Asian country and it downloaded faster after that

I'm not sure why, but I've been immune to collecting stuff in games. Even back in Diablo. Once they showed the loot stuff 3 minutes in, any good vibes the intro had were washed away from me.

I'm wondering if people that grew up on collecting Pokemon just transitioned into being the audience for gacha games.