Ask Lemmy

The gameplay is fun, but it's hindered severely by the grind built into its core progression.

Like all grindy games, it starts fun and you feel powerful for the first few hours. But then they introduce the concept of world level and character progression as soon as you're out of the tutorial. Everything turns into damage sponges, so you have to upgrade your characters and weapons, either by grinding dailies/misc world objectives or by spinning the gatcha wheel (ideally with real money, for the developer).

Then you start to get a bit stronger, but subsequent upgrade materials are locked behind higher world levels, so you advance up. Everything gets even tankier, you feel more inclined to just spend cash to skip the grind, and then you repeat this cycle several more times until your character is all statted up and has the right relics at the right levels that you want.

To further add salt to the wound, progression is character-specific, so when you get a new character from the gatcha wheel out of its >100-strong cast of waifus and twinks, you have to start the progression from scratch for that character.

The gacha is a really, really big downside, but still:

Genshin Impact received "generally favorable reviews" according to review aggregator Metacritic.[87][88] The open world of Teyvat drew praise; IGN's Travis Northup described Teyvat as "a world that is absolutely bursting at the seams with possibilities", and Hardcore Gamer's Jordan Helm described it as "one big environmental puzzle".[27][92] Liyue in particular was picked out by Kotaku's Sisi Jiang for being "one of the most exciting regions that I've visited in a video game in years", before continuing on to discuss how the region "shows an idealized portrayal of Chinese social relations that exists in localized pockets".[100] Game Informer characterized the game as an incredible experience, noting that "[t]he gameplay loop of collection, upgrading, and customization is captivating and compelling".[91] The execution of gameplay impressed Pocket Gamer, and Destructoid's Chris Carter called the combat system "one of the most interesting things" about the game.[5][95] NPR remarked that the game had an abundance of content despite being free to play.[101] Gene Park of The Washington Post lauded the game as revolutionary for the genre, having players "imagine a mobile gaming world with titles with quality that matches the industry's top-tier experiences".[102] Polygon also praised the game for differentiating itself from its peers, heralding its arrival as mobile games become more mainstream and appealing to "an audience outside the typical mobile gaming demographic" and "new players without the hardware to play more conventional and resource-hogging RPGs".[103]