REVIEW: Entertaining and mythological, Genshin Impact makes a positive impact

By Priscilla Lee,

BlueDevilHUB.com Editor–

Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action role-playing game that has gained popularity among Davis High students. It is the first open-world game developed by miHoYo, a Chinese video game publisher known for creating mobile action games in the style of Japanese anime.

The game starts off with some background storytelling — a mysterious god blocks a pair of travelling twins from moving on to the next world for unknown reasons. You are then prompted to choose between the twins, who will become your main character for the rest of the game. You and your twin are consumed by supernatural red cubes produced by the god, and when you wake up, you set on an adventure through the land of Teyvat to regain your powers and find your missing sibling alongside your sidekick Paimon.

Without much of a tutorial, it was a bit confusing figuring out what you are supposed to do in the beginning. However, the game uses a similar layout to other mobile RPG games in that character navigation is displayed on the bottom left side of the screen while action icons are displayed on the bottom right.

Several other components can be found elsewhere, including small side battles with enemies — mainly hilichurls and slimes — and a limited amount of stamina for use in actions like rushing, climbing, swimming, and gliding.

Wayfinding is simple, as there is a map in the top left corner and a golden diamond marking the destination for your current mission. Sparkles along your path indicate that you can pick up an object to add to your inventory, such as vegetables and mushrooms to be used in concocting recipes. 

The clear graphics of Teyvat along with the constant calming music and character voice overs in the background make you want to explore every crevice of the magical land, even if not on any particular quest. 

One nice feature is the selection of characters you are able to switch between that each specialize in one of the seven elements: Cryo, Dendro, Pyro, Hydro, Anemo, Electro and Geo. You gain new items through the gacha monetization system — meaning you can exchange primogems, the premium currency, for new characters and weapons through Event Wishes, which are essentially loot boxes. The team of characters you can bring on a quest and switch between at any time is limited to four.

The selection of characters serves as the amount of lives you get, and if you end up dying with all of them, you revive at the nearest waypoint with all characters on half health. This, along with the many resurrection points, encourages you to keep playing as you don’t need to worry about completely starting over if you fail to complete a mission.

Nonetheless, Genshin Impact still has some parts that fall short — mainly the limited responses to dialogue when interacting with other characters and the fact that Paimon keeps referring to herself in third person, which does get annoying.

Yet overall, if you’re looking for another game to play, Genshin Impact is worth the hours you put in. The game is also available to download on a PC on the game’s website.