3.5/5 ★ – Elesh's review of Genshin Impact.

I like to describe Genshin Impact as 'what if Breath of the Wild was fun and had some actual colour?' The game is a beautiful, sprawling masterpiece of exploration with probably the longest draw distance I've ever seen - there are places where you can literally see landmarks on the other side of the world with the only limitation seemingly being that eventually there's too much in the way to see details. The game world is full of optional puzzles, treasure chests, collectables, and other such fun for you to find. Every time a new area is released, I cannot stop myself from just... walking into the new zone and explore every corner of the new region for no reason than to see what random stuff I can find. An absolutely gorgeous world that you can see for miles around is accompanied by what is, in my opinion, the best videogame soundtrack I have ever heard. Which certainly doesn't hurt to make exploration enjoyable - afterall, who doesn't want to wander a beautiful environment to some of the best music you've ever heard? Of course, if not for how incredibly satisfying the game's dynamic element-based combat system was, the exploration would be constantly interrupted by boredom. Fortunately, the combat is incredibly fun with a ton of distinct interactions between elements and characters that allow for near-infinite creativity in terms of team compositions and playstyles. The game is not perfect though. It has a few critical flaws, that could definitely be gamebreakers for a lot of players. The obvious elephant in the room is the gacha system. Having an incredible combat system locked behind a paywall is not something some people can tolerate. While they don't directly lock power behind cost, since you can farm the materials to summon units by just playing the game, you do have to be very frugal with your resources if you're not willing to pay, and you most likely won't get more than one new unit every few months as a free player. The game's less predatory than some as the free roster is almost enough to complete just about any content, but gacha is inherently a frustrating system for many people and I won't try to convince you it isn't going to get in the way of your enjoyment. The other critical flaw is a simple lack of repeatable content for you to enjoy the units you've invested your time - or money - into. There's a bit of repeatable combat content, and a lot of stuff you can farm a bit a day (restricted by a slow generating energy system), but the long and short is that once you've finished exploring everything, the game can really only be played 15-30 minutes a day, even if you would want to do more. There is a massive world to explore and a ton of stuff to find, but the lack of repeatable content is a major issue and one of the biggest frustrations I experience.