I know what you’re thinking, seeing the title and thinking, “Raizen! I thought that you were an anime nerd! Why are you only just now getting around to playing Genshin Impact?” I even wrote an article about it back before it was released, so it’s not like it somehow escaped my attention.

But yeah, as of about two weeks ago, I finally got around to installing the game on my phone, and I gave it a go to see what all the fuss was about. And I’ve been digging into the game’s content. Really digging into it. And as of typing this up, I had no choice as to whether I’d take a break from it, because the game is under periodic server maintenance to prepare for a new version.

Wow, does this game have a lot of content. And while comparisons to Breath of the Wild are already obvious, it’s comparable (perhaps even greater) in terms of content. Which is astounding considering that this is a free-to-play mobile game with almost no in-game content locked behind a paywall (as far as I’m currently aware).

So basically, it’s like Breath of the Wild in that there’s a short outset, after which you can just explore the world at your own pace. Alongside the free exploration, Genshin Impact’s story is quest-driven, with much of the more valuable resources being available in the game’s many side quests, including the in-game currency that is used to obtain the premium content.

Where Breath of the Wild has you only play as Link, but with numerous clothing options with associated benefits, in Genshin Impact, you have the freedom to choose your playable character, each with their own kit, among whom you can swap out on the fly. Much of Genshin Impact’s strategy revolves swapping out your characters based on their attributes, though it’s generally preferable to focus down on a character that you choose as your main attacker, with the rest of the party offering support, considering that resources get more scarce as you continue playing.

Some of the in-game resources and quests refresh on a real-time day-by-day basis. Otherwise, you can simply buy up massive quantities of cooking ingredients from shops, and cook up enough dishes so that you can heal up continuously as you blow through the game’s content.

But hey, is delayed gratification really that bad?

And speaking of food, your characters each have a fullness meter, which increments when the character is fed, and prevents feeding them when they’re full. However, it decrements with time. This encourages players to battle strategically, rather than cheese battles by healing up from huge quantities of food each time they take significant damage.

Because the game’s battle system is kinda complex, I appreciate that players are introduced to strategic elements incrementally based on their progress, with players becoming acquainted with some of the games more advanced strategies (such as elemental reactions) after days of playing at a reasonable pace.

Which I might have waived, unless it’s reasonable to expect a player to reach Adventure Rank 29 and a character level of about 50 in a couple weeks. It feels like I’ve been going at it hardcore, but at this point, I might continue on at a more steady pace.

So yeah, I like it. And I’m impressed. I remember a time in which the smug “hardcore real gamers” refused to accept mobile games as real games. And now, here we are, with a mobile game that’s about as deep as some of the deeper console games. And more impressive about it is that it’s free-to-play.

If the option is available, which it is for iPhone, PS4, and PC, I suggest playing this game with a controller. The touchscreen controls suck Chicken McNuggets, as you’d probably expect, but you have the option to switch to a connected controller on your iPhone once you reach a point that reasonably takes about 15 minutes of play (a drop in the bucket, considering all the content this game has to offer). From what I hear, the controller option isn’t available when playing on Android, but Android players are free to clue me in if they get one to work.

As an aside, I thought that this game was coming to Switch, as Mihoyo stated at one point. Are they waiting for Nintendo to release a platform with a beefier processor?

If you go to download it, be prepared, because it’s a doozy of a download. The initial app download wasn’t huge, but be ready for a download of about 23 GB of assets on the initial bootup. When I downloaded it to iPhone, the assets downloaded in about 2 minutes, which is pretty impressive considering that I was situated between a couple hills at the time, without a cell tower in sight. When I downloaded it to PC at home, the same 23 GB took about a half-hour to download. And again, the game downloaded to my phone in about 2 minutes. Cellular technology has gotten impressive.

You might be wondering, “Raizen, why did you download it to your phone, and your PC? Did you start multiple accounts?” No, just one account. You actually can access the same account from different devices, with PS4 being an available choice, if you have one. What’s really cool is that, in Genshin Impact, you don’t save the game. The game does it for you, automatically, and in real time. As it does so, your save data is stored on the server, so you can pretty much just close your game while it’s connected to the network, and you can just resume it when you open it again, even if you open it on a different device.

The downside to this is, there’s no save-scumming. So whatever mistake that you make, you’ve gotta cope.

As you probably guessed, the game makers don’t keep their lights on by offering this game for free without microtransactions. And while it seems like nearly all in-game content is accessible to players, there is a gacha system that offers premium characters and weapons for a premium currency. Like many such games, Genshin Impact creates an economy that establishes the value of its premium currency.

This premium currency is provided to players over the course of normal gameplay, to the point that players can start making pulls after they’ve progressed to the point that the gacha system becomes available (for players considering making multiple accounts for “rerolls” to increase the chance that they can have premium content early on, in Genshin Impact, this is highly impractical to attempt, because the non-permanant gachas aren’t available from the outset).

While this is the case, unless the player is astoundingly lucky, the pull rates for the best premium characters is astoundingly low. Thankfully, the gacha system does have a “pity” system, which guarantees a random premium item after a certain number of pulls, and has a system that guarantees a featured premium item will be pulled. It’s somewhat complex, but players have figured out how it works.

The downside is, it takes a whopping 180 pulls for this guarantee to kick in, though a player would have to be highly unlucky. It can take months for FTP players to save enough Primogems to guarantee a pull of a featured character, even if they are unlikely to spend them all when they finally make the attempt. It would take 28,800 Primogems to attain enough of the currency used to make pulls to guarantee a banner character, and because there’s two of the “wish” currency, you want to be careful to buy the right one for the banner you want to roll on.

It could potentially take a lot of money for a whaling player to straight-up buy a new character from nearly no Primogems. Which is why, for your effort, you might find it easier to justify combining consistent play with a cheap package which rewards players with 90 Primogems each day for 30 days.

It is hypothetically possible to obtain all playable characters (besides one limited character) in the course of a year as a FTP player, as this is the approximate amount of time it takes for the gachas to cycle through all the featured items that have been released. But this would take an amazing amount of luck. Or a person could whale during that time, if they’re an oil baron’s kid. But I don’t want to calculate the amount of money that could potentially take. I suspect that most FTP players would research which player they’d want the most as they save up their gems, and go for it if they’ve saved up enough for a guaranteed pull and the respective gacha cycles back around.

Okay, story. Genshin Impact has a story. So, it’s like this: Rin and Len Kagamine fly through the sky, minding their own business, when they’re suddenly attacked by some woman who seems mean but is probably just totally misunderstood. You choose between Rin and Len, and your choice determines the main character you play at the story’s outset (and probably eventually swap out for some premium waifu character). The two get separated, so the character you choose and name has to embark on a journey to find their twin. At some point, they fish up some space fairy that nearly drowned, even though she can fly. They then go on adventures, visit cities, and take on numerous quests. Where does the story end? I don’t know, because it’s still ongoing, with more content added as the game is being updated. There are many, many characters, with distinct personalities, particularly the ones that get featured on the gachas. In some cases, you get to test out some of these characters in story battles, where they stomp all opposition with ease, to demonstrate that these premium characters are worth having.

Also, Paimon is ten tons of adorable in a five-pound sack. And considering that she’s one character that you’re going to see a lot of, it’s great that they got it right. The main character is mostly a silent protagonist, so Paimon chimes in so that half the game’s dialogue isn’t implied by subtext.

While you can tell just by looking, I’ll point out anyway that the production values in Genshin Impact are surprisingly high. Not that the character models are particularly realistic, but I appreciate that they did an anime-style game right.

By cel-shading character models AND GIVING THEM OUTLINES.

Which is apparently really, really hard, because for some reason, game makers seem to struggle with making anime-style games actually, you know, look like anime. A sincere “thank you” to the Genshin Impact team for getting it right.

Based on my experience with it, I think Genshin Impact is well-made, and I can give it a recommendation to anyone looking for a robust, mobile JRPG experience.

If you try it, please take to the comments, and tell me who your favorite character is, and why your favorite character is Klee.