Mihoyo’s Genshin Impact Is Off To A Great Start
/
MiHoYo’s free-to-play open world action RPG Genshin Impact is off to a great start. So great that it’s facing a good problem - they have people finishing the game’s initial content sooner rather than later.
And when I say “finishing the game’s initial content”, I mean hitting a wall where all the quests have been completed and the only means of further progressing your Adventure Rank is simply doing dailies, Ley Line activities (which needs limited timed-resources), and opening chests (also limited).
The game officially released for PS4, PC, and mobile on September 28, 2020.
There will always be those kinds of people eventually, but it’s crazy to know that this community has them this early on, required to master the proper chest routes, do dailies, pretty much squeeze as much of the experience as possible at this point forward.
But that just shows how great the game feels for a free-to-play gacha game, hitting huge viewer numbers on Twitch and is considered the biggest success story for a Chinese developer, ever. In a report from IGN, Genshin Impact is now past 17 million downloads with an estimate of $50 million in revenue since launch.
Even I got addicted to a point that in one week’s time, I’m well past Adventure Rank 20. That’s close to 20 hours of game time and it still boggles my mind that this is a free game that screams Breath of the Wild but slowly becomes its own game once you've upgraded your characters and fully understand how elements work in this game.
This game is massive and it’s crazy to hear people hitting a wall on what to do this quickly. Developer Mihoyo released Genshin Impact with two regions, complete with various activities, challenges, and other points of interest to satisfy any would-be explorer. Each region has a specific main storyline too and is packed with content that if this game had a price tag, I would have been more than satisfied with what this game has to offer at launch.
But Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action RPG gacha game that doesn’t feel like heavy on the gacha department. The option to make “pulls” in order to get the best characters/weapons are there but aren't aggressive or required to witness the core experience.
Free the Original Resin!
The only stressful feature that shows a heavy restriction is the game’s energy system called Original Resin, which replenishes 1 of the currency every 8 minutes, and has a cap of 120 for each player. Original Resin is needed to earn rewards from activities such as open world bosses, domains (dungeons in Gensin), and to even get loot from a specific container called Ley Line Blossoms. It’s a pain, but again, this is free.
If you put how Original Resin works aside, Genshin Impact is an addicting open world game that makes you go around to get more loot, lay waste at enemy camps with it’s satisfying combat, equipped with a group of your preferred characters, which are likeable and part of the game’s ongoing story.
They are off to a great start and Genshin Impact is a pleasant surprise as I never thought that a gacha game would be widely praised and hit the ground sprinting to a point that the future of Mihoyo’s latest title is bright. If you have people hitting Adventure Rank 30 and feeling the slow down simply because you did everything that’s currently available after a week, that’s a good problem to have for a developer. The big question now is if they can keep this momentum.
New to Genshin Impact? Here’s a few beginner tips to get yourself started.
It’s easy to describe Animal Well as a puzzle-focused Metroidvania eschewing traditional combat, where nearly every room is a puzzle room, but that falls so far short of describing just what this game is and how expertly it defies genre and classification that it feels like a disservice. Animal Well is a paragon of the art form, a game that simply must be experienced.