Since its very first presentation, Genshin Impact showed itself in a less than bright light, soon ending up being cataloged as a low-cost copy of that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that was so talked about when the Nintendo Switch came out. Despite the strong criticism leveled against the production, the miHoYo guys did not give up, continuing to work with great dedication to their creation so that it could finally show itself in great shape. However, the arrival on the production scene surprised many users, who would hardly have imagined that the whole project would turn out to be entirely free-to-play, a certainly intriguing choice and potentially capable of bringing a large slice of the public closer to the production but at the same time risky in terms of in-game purchases. After launching into the world of Genshin Impact and studying its peculiarities, we are now ready to give you our final response on the work, which in the end turned out to be far more charismatic than we could have imagined.
Explorer of worlds in disarray
What comes before us in the first seconds of the game is a no holds barred fight between two world travelers and a dangerous entity that seems to be in possession of unprecedented power. Having chosen the digital alter-ego that we will impersonate, our partner will be captured while we, helpless in front of the enemy, we will end up being thrown into another dimension, while losing our ability to travel between worlds. Wake up in the lands of Teyvat, we will meet Paimon, a curious creature who will decide to help us in what will be our new task, defeat the monster that has got the better of us and save our lost friend. The narrative plot that will take shape starting from this premise - which to be honest returns a strong aftertaste of "already seen" - has undoubtedly been able to prove to be pleasant, either for an undoubtedly intriguing game world, or also for a large number of characters who will be able to capture the interest of the gamer on duty.
The adventure is a succession of new encounters, twists and turns, fights to the death and intrigues that are articulated in the shadows, a rich combination of events that in the approximately thirty hours necessary to reach the conclusion of the work, they know how to entertain with great taste, albeit without ever reaching truly memorable peaks. But if you want to be totally honest, at the present time it seems at least difficult to speak of a real end, given that the development team has already confirmed the arrival of new narrative content that will further expand the experience. Despite the free-to-play nature of the production, the script represents a cornerstone of the adventure, as also demonstrated by the enormous amount of dialogue lines we will have to deal with, although on several occasions the experience seemed to us. far too verbose. In fact, we will often and willingly find ourselves having to deal with huge walls of text that are not always particularly interesting, a situation that too many times ends up violently breaking the action, a problem that makes itself felt even more strongly if we consider that many dialogues have not been dubbed. That said, the fact remains that the work has been able to be followed with pleasure throughout its duration and we can't wait to find out what news the developers have in store for us.
Sunday adventurers
From a more properly playful point of view, Genshin Impact identifies itself as an open world action RPG in which we will be able to move within a rich game map by completing the various quests that will be presented to us. In-game we will be offered the opportunity to use a team of up to four members - where, however, only the character we will be using will be shown, interchangeable in real time between the other three according to our preferences - with over 20 companions to be recruited. for our mission. In terms of pure and simple combat-system, the production sports a well-crafted hack'n'slash structure that makes frenzy and diversity its pillars. The real beating heart of the fighting is in fact summed up in the intricate system of resistances and weaknesses that characterize each single enemy, which can be faced with greater or lesser effectiveness depending on the elements that we will combine. Fire, water, electricity, each of our allies will be linked to some element and it will be our task to be able to make the most of the various characteristics of the heroes in the team to win from battle to battle. Failing to master this system will in fact lead you to face battles that are extremely long and exhausting than normal, while a wise use of magic - coupled with the opponent's weaknesses - will help you to easily defeat even the most difficult creatures.
The key element of the production will therefore be to create a team as amalgamated as possible and capable of being able to face any danger it will have to face. The work will not fail to offer countless equipment including weapons and armor, interesting secondary narrative arcs for all our companions, various dungeons full of tasty treasures, puzzles related to the use of elemental magic, an interesting crafting system and much more. yet. Finally, within this rich set of possibilities, the so-called Adventure Rank is inserted, a level progression system that will increase every time you perform some action. By earning experience points and leveling up, the so-called Adventurers Guild will reward us with various gifts, and different portions of the game map - along with certain shops - will be made available only after we have reached a certain Rank. Even the narrative component itself requires the achievement of certain levels to be able to access specific quests necessary to advance in the adventure, a choice clearly designed to facilitate exploration and increase the hours of play necessary to reach the final stages. It is also important to specify that the Adventure Rank will also determine your level cap and, consequently, once you reach a certain Adventure Rank, you will need to use specific objects - obtainable by completing some main missions of the adventure - in order to "Ascend" and have access to an even higher level cap, with the maximum level currently set to 90.
In short, Genshin Impact proves to be a particularly rich and varied experience already in its basic version, which among other things will be enriched with many future contents… but this does not however mean that all that glitters is gold. Well yes, despite all the undoubted qualities present, the work does not fail to present some annoying shadow. First of all, there is no doubt that some of the characters obtainable are particularly unbalanced compared to others and, in the same way, we happened to have to deal with relatively useless companions and that we abandoned rather quickly. Secondly, it's hard not to criticize the co-op structure of the adventure, which has shown various fundamental criticalities - such as the impossibility of carrying out many secondary missions or, again, the total disappearance of loot for the guest invited to the game - which, at least for the moment, have seriously questioned much of the its potential.
All very nice, but how much do you cost?
It's clear that in the free-to-play context, everything concerning in-game purchases takes on particular importance, which in fact represent the only support element for productions of this type. Here, therefore, that the gacha component is entering the ecosystem of Genshin Impact, which had represented for many the most burdensome doubt regarding the work, especially given the past of many other video games - not always free, it is good to remember it - turned into pay-to-win or burdened by exhausting grinding systems aimed at encouraging the use of real money to progress faster in your game. Well, we are happy to be able to reassure you by confirming a not too invasive presence of these mechanics. The grinding component is not particularly nerve-wracking and, at least as far as reaching the end is concerned, we have never felt the need to buy something by opening our wallet. Furthermore, the presence of an in-game currency makes the entire gacha system even less intrusive and at the end of the day we also managed to get several four-star characters (where the maximum is five) and various very useful equipment.
Having said that, it is still obvious that anyone wishing to aim for completeness and reaching the highest levels will hardly be able to avoid spending hard cash and indeed, in recent days the "deeds" of various users have been told who have found themselves spending entire salaries even just to get a specific character. In short, the whole gacha component of Genshin Impact is not particularly intrusive, but remains a backbone of the production on which the team has obviously focused, although it must be said that given the very nature of the reference work, this should certainly not be surprising. From a more distinctly technical point of view, the production showcases a very pleasant artistic component which, due to its style and the brilliant colors displayed, is a bit like the Breath of the Wild that we so much appreciated. The game world, the creatures that can be faced and the NPCs that can be encountered are well characterized and differentiated, although in the long run you begin to feel a certain redundancy of scenarios and biomes. On the other hand, the frame-rate left us at least banned he has repeatedly run into annoying drops made to feel especially in the most agitated situations, all accompanied by a polygonal count that is not always satisfactory and by a loading of the textures a little too slow. The audio sector, on the other hand, proved to be of excellent workmanship, characterized by a rich soundtrack and convincing dubbing.
