4.5/5 ★ – Parrots's review of Honkai: Star Rail.

Where do I even begin? Fixed so many issues that Genshin has. Yes it's 2023 and there's no skip button still somehow but all the other issues are legitimately addressed in this game and it's much more superior. To sum it up shortly: The story is entertaining, music is quality, characters are very likable, VA's did a excellent job (EN), QOL changes that make the game a million times better, etc. Pros on the long list: - Creator is a fan of the amazing Legend of Heroes series. (Crossover when?) - No annoying little flying fuck speaking for me - Crafting, Dailies, Assignments, etc. All done from the menu, where as Genshin you need to spend extra time for no reason "AD ASTRA ARBYS SAUCE." Just to do simple things. - You don't need to waste time "Shopping with Nilou" to progress with quests, you can easily change their location with the "Navigate" option. So it saves you having to waste 2 hours of non-sense that adds nothing to the story. Side quests are side quests and shouldn't ever affect main quests. This game easily fixed this stupid thing from Genshin. - Auto-play. Allows me to get through grinds easily. - Drops from enemies never run out. So yeah thanks to things like the Simulated Universe, despite killing everything on field, you have more to gain from which is more fun than running 100 miles location to location for POTENTIALLY ONE DROP. - Story actually makes sense. Nothing stupid so far like character caring more for a TRASH SIDE CHARACTER like someone named Tape? Tips? Tippers? Strippers? Teppei? Who cares. They care more for main characters than boring ass side bitches that have death written all over them. - Can fight bosses instantly without having to wait 5 minutes for them to respawn with a instant re-match button - Can change your team quickly on the fly and not have to wait - Can change your team instantly before entering any non-field battle - Actually has items to change your main stat. Genshin still doesn't have this despite allowing artifact re-rerolling which makes it completely pointless there - Enemies are a million times more balanced without everything feeling too much like a chore. Even the toughest enemies feel rewarding and fair. - Daily grind can be done in a minute if lucky, almost never more than 5 mins. Also it's one Daily Quest VS 4 stupid ones that can be super far away from Teleporters. - Infinite sprint with no slowdowns while changing teammates. Genshin they stand still like a moron. - Double Speed option - No stupid animations to boss battles. Quick and straight to the point. Imagine having to watch a Cocolia scene a million times just to do a weekly. Genshin forces you to watch or press skip every single time with many just stalling wasting time with un-skippable mid-battle transformations. - No enemy animations taking a million hours to go through with. - Timers are done really well unlike the "3 Mins Abyss with enemies lazily tossed in there". - Despite the re-used NPC models, lots of them look so much better unlike Genshin where everyone is Tapeworm, a favonious knight or some other copied thing. So lazy can't even make characters look decent there. - BP Rewards are solid - No stupid card game. Go play Yu-Gi-Oh or something else seriously. - Events that have passed can actually be replayed. Boulder Town Super League can still be played despite ending. Genshin is picky and only brings back those crappy events no one asked for like Prop Hunt. Genshin? Hah Unreconciled Stars? Haven't seen it since 1.1. All those past events you missed are gone. So yeah you miss part of the story and that's gone for good. Star Rail destroys Genshin with this. - Event rewards are much better. Not to mention there's no "Hardest difficulty for no reward" BS like Genshin. - Controller controls are excellent - Can directly teleport to bosses, domains, enemies, etc. - Guess you can count Abyss and Simulated Universe as endgame content. More so Simulated Universe since you can complete everything and still gain drops. How sick is that? Beautiful. - Still no Sesame street endings where everyone's magically best friends like Genshin Update August - Actual new Abyss challenges. Holy fricken crap. Shows off the newest enemies and new rewards. A third menu is unlocked and you can challenge them there. Genshin has the same garbage since 1.0 with only updating floors 9-12. Update 2 for 1.3 - Another increase to in-game energy. From 180 to 240. Genshin fanboys punching the air right now. Also reserve energy jesus. The only real cons to me are: - Still no skip button - Lack of characters at launch. I would give at minimum 3 characters of each element. Lack of imaginary users is a perfect example of this atm. - Give Clara shoes - Still has Website login rewards. Again put these in the game, there's no reason for it not to just be automatic login rewards. - 60FPS lock still - Weekly BP EXP still exists. No reason for this ever to exist in any game. - Give Clara shoes - Give Clara some damn shoes - Battle Pass still ends at 50. Naraka Bladepoint got the battle pass right and added 100+ extra tiers albeit with minor rewards which basically makes it endless but guess what, it allows you to grind more. Still 100x better than Genshin. Star Rail is a excellent game. Most casual gamers won't like it because it's turn based. If you enjoy quality "JRPG" and turn based games, definitely play it. (Note JRPG is a doesn't mean made in Japan always. It's a term that can also mean made in the style of it. Cosmic Star Heroine and Breath of Death VII are major examples of this. Called JRPGs by everyone, made in the style of JRPGs but are Western Devs.) I know most of this review is shitting on Genshin but let me tell you, Genshin addressed only a handful of issues since launch. Star Rail fixed so many of them in one update. Star Rail deserves the praise. These are legit issues that grew overtime to the point where it stopped me from playing Genshin. If you like this go check out: FF Series before going Action, Suikoden, Dragon Quest, Persona and SMT Series, Trails of Series, Paper Mario, etc. All beautiful turn based games that destroy majority of AAA games any day. Heavily slept on games.