Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact (known as Genshin in East Asian countries) is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed and published by miHoYo for Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. The game offers an action-based battle system and an anime-style open-world environment. The game is free-to-play and monetized through gacha game mechanics.

Gameplay
Genshin Impact is an open world action role-playing game that allows the player to control one of four interchangeable characters in a party. The playable characters can be changed quickly in combat, allowing the player to use several different skill and attack combinations. The strengths of characters can be improved by increasing the character's level and upgrading artifacts and weapons that the character equips. Apart from exploration, the player can attempt to complete various challenges for rewards. After completing challenges, the game allows the player to increase their Adventure Rank, which in turn unlocks new quests, new challenges and the World Level.

Why It's a Vast Magical World of Adventure

 * 1) The graphics, as inspired by Breath of the Wild, look great. However, it is worth mentioning that this is a free product and the graphics in free games tend to follow a simple visuals. The game uses cel-shading, like almost every anime game, which saves the quality of graphics more.
 * 2) Beautifully designed characters. Their design, which quite refers to the fantasy anime titles, for example Sword Art Online, Fairy Tail, and many others. The most noticeable designs are from Mona, Fischl, Keqing, Venti, Zhongli, Hu Tao, Ayaka, Kaedehara Kazuha, Arataki Itto and Ganyu.
 * 3) Incredibly precise controls. Character controls are easy to learn and react very well to the fact that you are moving.
 * 4) Decent story that harks back to any amount of fantasy anime titles. A traveler wandering around the world questioning the gods about his/her long lost sibling.
 * 5) The game is completely free, even though the game doesn't even belong to the massively multiplayer online (MMO) genre. It is worth noting that there are microtransactions and loot boxes (banners), but it does not matter, you will get everything you want (the characters, the weapons, and more) after a long gameplay, being the absolute opposite of Pay-to-Win.
 * 6) The gameplay is extremely fun to play, at least for anime and role-playing game, although it becomes repetitive at times, the game offers an open world in which there is something to do.
 * 7) The game offers an open world filled with mountains, buildings, magic, adventure, fantasy, all kinds of resources, and much more.
 * 8) The voice acting is quite good whether you use the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or English voiceovers, in spite of the game's unfortunately poor lip syncing (see BQ# 4).
 * 9) * Many recognizable voice actors (Both Japanese and English) have made their way into Genshin Impact: Yuri Lowenthal (teenage Ben Tennyson from Ben 10 franchise, Protagonist/Makoto Yūki/Ryoji from Persona 3, Peter Parker/Spider-Man from various Spider-Man media, and Sasuke Uchiha from the Naruto series) as Dainsleif (the narrator from the trailer), Aoi Yūki (Madoka Kaname from mh:besttvshows:Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Futaba Sakura from Persona 5, Kurona Yasuhisa from mh:besttvshows:Tokyo Ghoul, and Gwen Stacy/Spider-Gwen from the Japanese dub of mh:greatestmovies:Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) as the female traveller/Lumine, Maaya Uchida (Rikka Takanashi from Love, Chuunibiyou and Other Delusions!, Rei Kuroki from Vividred Operation, and Katarina Class from My Next Life as a Villainess!) as Fischl, Chiwa Saito (Homura Akemi from Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Metis from Persona 3 FES) as Jean, both Todd Haberkorn (Ayato Kirishima from mh:bestshows:Tokyo Ghoul and Natsu Dragneel from Fairy Tail) and Kōki Uchiyama (V from Devil May Cry 5, Shigaraki Tomura from mh:besttvshows:My Hero Acadamia, and Gin from Hotarubi no Mori e) as Razor, Rie Takahashi (Mirai Asahina from Mahou Tsukai PreCureǃ, Megumin from KonoSuba!, Takagi from Master Teaser Takagi-San, Peni Parker from the Japanese dub of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) as Hu Tao, Kayli Mills (Alice Zuberg from mh:besttvshows:Sword Art Online: Alicization and Emilia from Re:Zero) as Keqing, Laura Faye Smith (Rosalina from the Super Mario franchise) as Noelle, Keith Silverstein (Robert E. O. Speedwagon from mh:besttvshows:JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Masayoshi Shido from Persona 5) as Zhongli, or Ryohei Kimura (Judar from Magi and Bumblebee from the Japanese dub of Bumblebee) as Tartaglia/Childe.
 * 10) ** Surprisingly, both Aoi Koga (Paimon's VA) and Konomi Kohara (Mona's VA) have played both Kaguya Shinomiya and Chika Fujiwara from Kaguya-sama: Love is War, while Kensho Ono (Diluc's VA), Kosuke Toriumi (Kaeya's VA), and Soma Saito (Chongyun's VA) have played Giorno Giovanna, Guido Mista, and Vinegar Doppio respectively in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with Sean Chiplock (Mista's English VA) and Griffin Burns (Doppio's VA) also voicing Diluc and Tartaglia/Childe respectively.
 * 11) ** This could be said the same to both voices of Hu Tao, since she is voiced by two characters from Re: Zero: both Rem (Brianna Knickerbocker) and Emilia (Rie Takanashi).
 * 12) The music is pleasing to the ear, lending the atmosphere of the event, be it while fighting or exploring the world. On the one hand, it can be reassuring, on the other, it stimulates the fight.
 * 13) The sound effects are great when they appear in the menu or during gameplay.
 * 14) The combat system is incredibly satisfying, at least with stronger characters like Venti, Qiqi, Diluc, and much more.
 * 15) The characters are easy to like, even the weakest in terms of skills like Amber, who looks attractive but also stands out in terms of personality.
 * 16) Speaking of the characters, there's a truly sizable amount of them. And what's truly remarkable about them is that none of them feel like clones of other characters. They're all unique in both design and personality. From the shy and timid to the more abrasive and brash to the compassionate and caring, each character's personality is easy to grasp and different.
 * 17) Unlike other RPGs, especially anime-like games, the game's HUD does not clutter most of the screen, but is nicely arranged for an adequate version of the game.
 * 18) The moment you set your birthday, you get gifts in this case, which is a nice springboard and extremely rare in games.
 * 19) Its later updates had brought many features:
 * 20) * Map expansion:
 * 21) ** Dragonspine, an arctic-like biome that can damage your characters' health if you have low temperature.
 * 22) ** New limited island, Golden Apple Archipelago, where several special quests and events take place.
 * 23) ** Inazuma, a kingdom based after Japan.
 * 24) **Enkanomiya the land under Inazuma looks amazing.
 * 25) **The Chasm, a new area in Liyue.
 * 26) ** Sumeru, a new region that is inspired by Middle Eastern and South Asian countries.
 * 27) * Its new challenges don't require resin.
 * 28) * New Cryo enemies, e.g., the Cryo Hilichurl grenadiers, the Cryo Samachurls (Samachurls are hilichurl shamans).
 * 29) * Teapot, where you can create your own houses and village.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Sometimes happens that enemies often walk on the exact line you are on, which can block them, for example, in impassable objects.
 * 2) Due to the game being made in China, it has a strict chat filter and several words were blacklisted, even if you don't intend to say something obscene.
 * 3) *In addition, miHoYo even bans players just for speaking badly about the Chinese Communist Party.
 * 4) **For example, one player got banned for 15 years for stating that COVID-19 came from China and for mocking the Chinese government.
 * 5) The PlayStation 4 version suffers from poor optimization.
 * 6) The resin system is unfair as it take 8 minutes to get 1 resin, while reward collection requires a minimum of 20 resin.
 * 7) * While the new challenges don't need resin, it can feel like a chore to play at times due to the artifacts and lack of respawnable chests.
 * 8) * Speaking of which, you can still put in a lot of effort into fighting off the enemies and travelling, yet a lot of rewards feel underwhelming.
 * 9) The game's recent controversy over its 1st anniversary event. You can read about it here.
 * 10) There are events which are timed-gated. If you don't know what time-gated means, it means you have to wait for the next part of the event for a certain amount of time, such as a day. This can limit the freedom of people playing at their own pace and make you feel like you're forced to play the game.
 * 11) It's hard for new players to obtain all the characters and to build'em up especially if are characters from new regions like Inazuma or Sumeru.

Reception
Genshin Impact received largely positive reviews by both critics and gamers alike. Critics mainly praised the open world direction, designs, voice acting and the combat, criticizing the monetization system.

On Metacritic, the PC version received an 83/100 and the PlayStation 4 version an 80/100. Users, although still mostly favorable, the PC version received a 7.7/10, the PlayStation 4 version a 7.2/ 10, and iOS version a 6.5/10.

On OpenCritic, the game received a rating of "Strong", an average score of 81/100, and a 93% critics recommend, based on 14 reviews.

Daniel Tack from Game Informer gave for Genshin Impact a 9.3/10, describing that the game is "whimsical, wondrous land dripping with unbridled charm and appeal, combining a ridiculously compelling reward loop with unfettered, continuous discovery. In this world I felt like a child visiting theme park for the first time — dazzled, mesmerized, and completely swept away. I only wish the shimmering glow wasn’t marred by a ghoulish monetization model, but that’s something I’m willing to overlook for my ticket to this fascinating realm."

Shubhankar Parijat from GamingBolt praised the visuals, an open world, the mechanics from the game, the creators of which they were inspired, and that monetization does not force the player to pay. However, he criticized the characters, mostly Paimon, which he found her annoying, and some technical issues. Ultimately he gave an 8/10, shortly describing "Genshin Impact is a game I can easily recommend. It would have been worth your time anyway, but given that it's free, it's even harder to miss."

Chris Carter from Destructoid gave a 7.5/10, saying "Genshin Impact could be a little more lively than it is when leveling, but the beauty of its world helps suck you in. You really can't beat free, so long as you resist the rather tame temptations to spend money."

Trivia

 * Since the game got popular, it spawned many memes like "Ehe te nandayo!" (Japanese only), traiting Paimon as an emergency food, Lisa's climbing sound effects (Japanese only), Baron Bunny (Amber's doll) dancing, and Ganyu's cocogoat milk.
 * Regarding the inconsistent lip-synching in other languages, the lip-synching was for the original Chinese audio.
 * When the game was first unvieled at 2019 ChinaJoy, it drew criticism, mainly by the Legend of Zelda fans at the convention who accused it of blatantly copying The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and showed explicit gestures towards the Sony booth, with one individual even destroying the PlayStation4 in protest.
 * Shortly after release, players discovered that the game's kernel-based anti-cheat system would remain active after the game was closed or uninstalled, which raised concerns that the game had installed spyware. Some Japanese players using iOS devices also noticed that the game could read the contents of players' clipboards while starting up. miHoYo defended the game by announcing that both the issues were the result of coding errors and had been adressed and fixed.
 * On October 6, 2020, journalist and Twitch streamer Kazuma Hashimoto published a video on Twitter demonstrating how Chinese political terms such as "Hong Kong" and "Taiwan" are censored within the in-game chat and the developer of the game, miHoYo, which is based in China, were the subject to China's censorship policy, which includes complying with a relatively large list of banned words that cannot be used in game or via chat.
 * In November 2020, the game sparked another controversy during the character Zhongli's release due to his gameplay and kit being viewed as poor to the point where it was taken as an insult toward Chinese players. miHoYo replied to the controversy regarding the character, saying that it was working as intended and there should not be any worry over that. They apologised and promised to improve the character's kit, through beta testing for version 1.3.
 * In March 2021, fast food company KFC announced a collaboration event in China that offered exclusive pins and in-game items to customers who turned up and shouted the phrase "Meet in another world, enjoy delicious food!" at the restaurant's employees to promote the game. Soon, the resturants were overrun by fans of the game and the event was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic regulations.
 * In April 2021, some called for a boycott of the game over claims of bigotry in the game's content, and how other users pointed out how the only playable characters with dark skin were described as "exotic" or "scary" in the game, and the game's adult characters expressing love towards another character that appears to be a child. However, this may have been oversight as the character in question was noted to have used an adult model during earlier stages of development. The game would have been called for boycott again in October 2021 due to the diplomatic tensions between China and Taiwan.
 * The game's first anniversary celebrations in September 2021 received criticism due to the company's handling on the event. Fans of the game criticized the anniversary rewards in comparison to rewards for community events that favored content creators.

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