Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact is an open-world, gacha, action RPG developed and published by HoYoverse for the PC, iOS/Android, and PS4/PS5 platforms. “Gacha? RPG? What are all these terms?” Don’t worry, I will explain it a bit more.
“Open-world” means that the player can freely explore the world and the quests within, as opposed to games where you can play certain stages and levels that have their own borders. “RPG” stands for Role-Playing Game and means that the player control one or more characters that are part of the story line. The “Gacha” mechanic is a game model that originates from East-Asia. It is a mechanic where players use in-game currencies to receive random items, such as characters. The in-game currencies are earned through game play, and some by purchasing it from the game publisher using real-world funds.
About the world…
Genshin Impact’s world is called Teyvat. It has several regions that are inspired by the real world we know, containing sceneries like mountains, forests and deserts. In these regions, there are thousands of hidden chests, quests, puzzles and secrets for the player to explore! And personally, I love to enjoy the lovely aesthetics the game brings with as I explore.
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Story
The game starts off with a cutscene. The twin siblings, known and referred to as the Travellers, are shown confronting a mysterious, powerful deity named the Unknown God. The twins try to leave Teyvat, but are stopped by the Unknown God. She attacks the twins, and they try to defend themselves but are ultimately overpowered. The Unknown God captures one of the twins, sealing them away, while the other is left stranded in Teyvat. During this cutscene, the player gets to choose from which perspective of the twins they want to follow the story, the choices being the female twin “Lumine” and the male twin “Aether”.
The choice doesn’t heavily impact the game play, yet. “Yet”, because the game is still in development and the story hasn’t finished yet. Players, though, claim that Lumine is slightly stronger than Aether.
After choosing a Traveller, the cutscene concludes with the remaining twin vowing to find their lost sibling and uncover the mysteries and evils of Teyvat.
Gameplay
Genshin Impact revolves around elements. The regions, characters, enemies and even the plot are directly linked to the elements. There are 7 of them; Anemo, Cryo, Dendro, Electro, Geo, Hydro and Pyro. These represent the elements that we know. Wind, ice, grass, electricity, earth, water and fire. Every playable character in the game has an affinity with one of these elements, and it affects their abilities and how they interact with the environment. Certain characters will be needed to beat enemies that are weak to their element. The Traveller will eventually be able to yield all elements as the story progresses.
For example, it would be easier to beat a “Hydro Slime” with a character that has the Cryo or Pyro element. This mechanic will be introduced right away, and will need to be utilised and mastered later on.
Combat
While exploring the world of Teyvat, you will encounter several types of enemies. To counter these, the game allows up to 4 characters in a “party” to be freely switched between during exploration and combat. Just like the characters having their own elements, they also have their own weapons, such as swords, claymores, bows, catalysts and polearms. Claymores are greatswords, polearms are spears and catalysts are magical weapons.
Using these weapons, each character has three types of attacks. Normal attacks, skills and bursts. With normal attacks, characters deal physical damage, except for catalysts, since these are magical weapons that use elemental power. Skills have a cool down period until they can be used again. They deal elemental damage and using skills yields elemental energy that charges the character’s burst. When the character’s burst is full, it can be used to create a powerful elemental attack. Bursts also have their own cool down period.
These elements also react to each other. You can switch between the 4 characters in your party and attack enemies with different elements consecutively to create even more powerful reactions.