Are you a victim of the Gacha disease, do you need some help in someone telling you to find greener pastures? Maybe my input here will finally put you away for good. Though in some ways I have to admit, even if it seems anemic in certain areas, this game has a unique presentation and certain charm that holds up a lot.
Especially if it's a F2P release, a free single-player game that carries the budget of AAA Japanese titles. Who would have thought? Well, not without its caveats and certainly not the merits coming from its gameplay.
Honkai: Star Rail is certainly a move forward for Hoyoverse, and the developers of Genshin Impact. I never played Honkai before, but looking into this game and Impact 3rd, they have some rather bodacious girls/women here. But I am sure the husbandos are something to ogle about as well. So I want to tell you, from my experience, what playing a F2P gacha game is like.
If style over substance has a way of showing itself, it would start with a character mimicking herself playing a violin of a classical symphony while a ship is being invaded by space monsters. She gets the wake-up call from her partner and makes way inside the ship.
Her friend Silver Wolf spends the next 5 minutes chatting, but I've noticed a few things: one is the dialogue is annoying, two is how nonchalant they're being in the conversation, and next is my dwindling interest in it. Suffice it to say, I wasn't digging this scene, maybe because of talking slow, and acting like you have it all sorted out kind of takes everything else out of it.
And yet my fascination is drawn to a number of things like the visual style, character animation, and the overall finesse of the game's production value. The level of detail here makes any other AAA Japanese RPG games really put to be shamed. And I guess that's what got me to continue playing, I really wish more games were like this.
Then there's the combat. This is a Tactics based game and has little bearing of Honkai's other games in terms of mechanics. Actually, I wouldn't know to what extent since I never played any of the other games, but from what I've seen this is a different take.
You have two attacks, one is the basic and the other is a special attack. Special attack consumes action stars, which replenishes if not used and shared by everyone. Taking damage or hitting enemies built up ultimate ability meter, and then unleashed anytime after team characters or enemy's turn.
Damaging enemies isn't the first priority to winning, it's stunning them. By taking down their poise meter using the elemental damage from the playable characters. Enemies are weak to certain elementals. Kafka's special mainly damages one enemy, while affecting adjacent ones by small degree. The tough part is taking ones you can't because you don't have the elemental attacks needed to weaken them. Hence, the need to strategize better.
I like this, because as minimalistic as it is, it relies on me checking character stats, level, and creating the best pattern of attack moves to get as much of a good result. This feels like a no-brainer at first, as the game goes on, more is revealed and newer characters are unlocked to find out how to prep for tougher fights.
The real game actually begins here, after a somewhat impressionable tutorial phase, I had to choose between two similar characters of opposite sex, and write their names. Now, I don't know the right lingo to use when talking about this. Honkai is a Sci-Fi fantasy, with a lot of anachronistic design placed in futuristic space settings.
The MC meet a group of Trailblazers who are responding to the attack on their space vessel. And so far, this part of the game reveals the kind of playable characters you'll meet and unlock as the game progresses. Those characters are unlocked by automation, but there are still more out there to grind for and win by the power of the gacha RNG.
One issue I have with the introduction is how slow the characters talk, it's not that they sound uninteresting to hear entirely, but the JRPGs I've played from provided better voice acting with the dialogue provided. Just someone like me who doesn't like putting so much time into dialogue sections of the game, and wants to get into the action really quickly, don't have patience for it.
It doesn't even help that they keep holding personality back with these conversations that sound like drivel. There's situational context for the story, yet man, I was losing my patience with it at times. If this is how Chinese RPGs work, then maybe count me out for the foreseeable future.
But there's plenty of action alright, the main gameplay is more expanded on as rosters of characters are unlocked. The girl, March 7th does freeze damage, but her special creates a shield for her allies. While her ultimate goes full AoE. Dan Heng's a hunter with wind based attacks and he targets single enemies. Meanwhile, mine is chaos and has the same attack effect as Kafka's.
And each enemy has multiple element weaknesses at times, perfect for team combos. It's fun seeing so much visual flare on the screen while damage numbers pop up, and status effects incur. Well, there's that whole stylized flashiness amidst the pensively challenging gameplay.
Play time's over, when one of the enemy groups I've attacked are higher level, and is where things start to get challenging, and I have to figure out how to proceed with these kinds of fights based on not what I've learned, but how I've developed each character's stats.
It's the same with the boss, and though, just like a few other games I've played and had a distaste for, level grinding in continuous monotony is required to progress ahead. As well as for collecting these crystals that are used for summoning more Trailblazers.
And these summons are expensive, I've only managed to save up for about 2 heroes summon so far. But I thought maybe farming and progressing till I could do 10 summons at once in just one good day would have done the trick. Probably would take 20hrs of it to get that much.
Honkai: Star Rail is a fun game to play, but it's certainly not for me. It's F2P, but there's a lot of time needed to in dedication to get the most out of it. And obviously to do that, you have to put in some real money into it too. It's obviously predatory, but that's the market. I think the story is something worth investing into, and the waifus/husbandos to ogle at.
They take bold steps into creating emotional moments for the story, which I can't spoil and certainly makes Genshin Impact looks tame in comparison. Also, this may be a joke in a way, but the gameplay overall just kind of feels barebones as Tiberium Twilight. They're both strategy, so the comparison makes sense I guess?
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