介绍
Taking an Impact Driver to my Cranium is a “game” about the endless conflict between the denizens of the mortal coil, Russia, and the creatures that live in your parents’ basement. It’s the type of game that worms its way into your brainstem and sits there for e̷t̶e̸r̶n̵i̷t̷y̷. Going into Genshin Impact, it’s important to understand that the age of consent is 18 years old, and so long as you never forget, you’ll probably be fine. In this game, you play as the Living Manifestation of Squandered Potential, who finds themselves stranded on the beaches of Normandy after watching their sibling get vored by God. It’s a game that depends on a Pokémon Type Advantage Chart that only plays by its own rules when it feels like it. When you play Genshin Impact, it’s not for the story, or the world, or anything that you would associate with a video game. No, you play Genshin Impact because you want to socially isolate yourself even more than science originally deemed possible by lusting over fictional characters.

重要的东西
Genshin Impact is not a game for people that easily succumb financially to the downfall of humanity as we know it, women. I say with the utmost confidence that this is the reason most people pick up this game in the first place, and I can’t say I don’t understand, because I do. It is for this reason that the most important part of this game is not the part that you actually play, but the part where you roll a d20 to gain an attractive person and parade them around like a parent running their kid around for a toy review channel for kids on YouTube. While we’re here, it’s important to note that if you’re playing this game on PC through the Epic Games Launcher, you have to allow MiHoYo to run it’s Chinese Surveillance State every single time you launch the game. That is to say, this game’s anti-cheat is very strong, so you better hope you don’t have anything on your computer that you don’t want China to see if Xi Jinping ever decides to harvest your device’s data.

玩游戏
Genshin Impact is a game about fucking around with the elements like a chemistry professor having a psychotic episode mid-lecture. As such team composition is among the most important mechanics to understand, but fuck that, the key to having fun in this game is to strike a balance between playing optimally and keeping your play-style loose, because playing optimally means outing yourself as a pedophile on the internet. Do not try to min-max because RNG will physically age you 40 years. Playing optimally means wasting your life in the Gacha System trying to get a “Thermonuclear Bomb with a Canonically Lethal Waistline” or “The Literal God of Rocks.”

故事
Genshin Impact’s “Teyvat” is a world collectively ruled by The Seven. Higher Powers which rule the seven elements while giving superpowers to mentally deranged lunatics, except for the God of Nature, who has zero characters to their name. This all came about long ago when their were way more gods that all fought one another for power, this all culminated into the Teyvat that we, the player, travel in today. The war resulted in the Seven Gods of each element ruling over their respective lands with their own respective totalitarian regimes. The game takes place in 3 (or 4 if you’re from the future) nations, The first of which is Mondstadt, a lawlessly land found in Eastern Florida. Mondstadt is a nation which depends almost entirely vigilante justice since the Catholic Church and Provisional Government refuse to do literally anything about the Wolf Infestations and the Murderous Dragon. Next we have China, a land ruled by The Rock God of Contracts and the Tianquan Ningguang of the Liyue Qixing (these are all real terms). Liyue has fallen into a state of unrest because I caused a public display of violence in the streets because the entire Liyue Chapter of the game’s main story is a gigantic waste of the player’s time. The third nation, Inazamu, is a literal dictatorial regime controlled by the God of Electricity, who has issued a crackdown on the nation’s second amendment right to keep and bear arms which is being enforced by the Tri-Commission’s Kanjou Commission.

战斗
Combat in Head-On Collision is very simple. It can be easily boiled town to “Swap between your Main-DPS Punching Bag and also the other ones.” The game’s incentive on DPS makes the character archetype of “the tank” completely worthless because health is nothing more than a shackle. Even with how common Attack and HP are, the game is generally pretty good at giving you what you want when you want it, unless what you want is anything related to CRIT. That being said, what kind of enemies should you expect to find in this game? The answer is unfortunate. Enemies in this game belong to 1 of 5 groups, The first are The Hilichurls, a race of sapient, humanoid lifeforms with their own language and culture different to that of humanity. It is for this reason that the game forces us to do combat with them. The Hilichurls are found quite literally everywhere across Teyvat, but the only one that seems at all concernd with trying to improve relations with them are a singular child in Mondstadt. The second group are The Treasure Hoarders. These are bands of organized criminals who are seriously just trying to survive are you sure we’re the good guys. Fortunately for me, because they committed a crime, I feel no remorse in forcibly extracting the life from their feeble bodies. The third group, The Fatui of Snezhnaya are heavily armed “diplomats” who seek to conquer all of Teyvat through subterfuge and 7ft tall super-soldiers are absolutely conducive to that goal. The Fatui are lead by the Eleven Fatui Harbingers, Eleven random people named after Commedia dell’arte stock characters who are loyal to the Tsaritsa of Snezhnaya, aka the Ice God. The KGB serve as the primary antagonist throughout each main chapter of the game, as they seek to further the goals of the Tsaritsa by making enemies of all of Teyvat. The fourth group of enemies hails from The Abyss. They seek only the downfall of humanity at all costs. The fifth and final category of enemy consists of everything else, ranging from slimes to plants to animals to automata.

设计
MiHoYo’s design team is honestly second to known. This section of the review isn’t going to attempt to be funny in the slightest because I genuinely adore most of Genshin Impact’s designs. The game is beautiful to look at and they only make better looking areas with every update. Characters, for the most part, are visually distinguishable from silhouette alone. The Fatui and Automata are among my favorite designed enemies in any game ever and the Fatui Pyro Agent currently sits close to the top of my favorite designs of all time. MiHoYo has incredibly talented creatives at its disposal and they make no attempts to hide it. I ‘m glad they don’t, because like I could stare at the stars of Elden Ring’s Siofra River for hours on end, I could look at most places in Teyvat for hours on end.

最后的笔记
Genshin Impact is a game best enjoyed by people with financial restraint and in short bursts rather than long sessions. The passive dialogue of characters can get mildly annoying at the best of times and downright irritating at the worst of times. The main story’s writing is a hot mess most of the time, but the broader lore is often quite interesting. It’s hard for me to believe that the player character’s travel companion “Paimon” isn’t being written to be the most annoying creature alive, because MiHoYo can never decide whether or not she speaks in the 1st or 3rd person. Not only that but they have Corina Boettger put on a voice that’s like nails on a chalkboard when playing her, which is a genuine shame since Boettger’s natura voice is nowhere close to being Paimon levels of awful. Most of my problems with this game come from the main story, but recently I’ve come into conflict with the player progression aspect through The Spiral Abyss, It’s a gauntles of floors of the abyss with waves of enemies that you progress through on a time limit. Floors 1-8 have static arrays of enemies while Floors 9-12 rotate bi-monthly. As of writing this, I have just completed Floor 8 and I wish I hadn’t because it only highlighted the flaws of the activity. If an important character in a team dies, you have to restart the chamber you’re on. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. There are no revives, not even between chambers, and that genuinely boiled my blood. It’s important to understand, that unless you’re a gremlin like me who hoards fragile resin, you have to keep a conscious view of how much resin you have at any given time. You expend resin whenever you want to claim boss loot or loot from a domain and you only get 160 per-day. This has the unfortunately consequence of stopping the game from being played and stopping progression in its tracks. When you’re using resin, God will come and collect his existence tax and unless you hoard Fragile Resin, you will have to find something else to do. This game does have a multiplayer, but it is unfortunately limited. You can’t exactly do anything that isn’t combat or farming for the game’s many resources in Multiplayer, which is unfortunate since the multiplayer is very fun, at-least in my experience.

结论
Do I recommend Genshin Impact? Yes, but only if you have any restraint at all. I’ve been told that, with the exception of Blessing of the Welkin Moon, it’s a completely waste of money to purchase anything with a real currency. So as long as you can excerise restraint, you’re be set to have a good time. If you’re looking to try it, go do it. You can literally only lose time with this recommendation, this game is free, just like the porn.