Genshin Impact First Impressions | Is Genshin Impact Worth Playing?.

Genshin Impact is a free-to-play action role-playing game developed and published by Chinese developer miHoYo. The game features a fantasy open-world with gacha game mechanics. It was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Android and iOS on September 28.

Nintendo Switch will also see the release of Genshin Impact, but there is no date for that as yet. The game is absolutely gorgeous - the aestheics of the world are vibrant, the combat is snappy and gets deepr the further you go into the game. Its an RPG style game where you can have a party of 4 characters and switch between them at will.

Each character is aligned with a certain element, for example, fire, ice or wind The combat is set up in such a way that the elements interact with one another, so for example,if you set a fire using one character, you can then use a wind ability with another character to spread the fire into an area of effect for added damage.

There are a lot of things to really love about this game, and a few things I'm not so keen on, but I'll get into that toward the end. You can craft weapons, pick up artifacts to add to your character stats, and equip set bonuses for health, defense or damage bonuses.

You can unlock and cook recipies for bonuses to your health and combat. The weapons for each of your party can also have bonus effects so that when interacting with certain elements they do additional crit or attack damage. These can also be levelled up This means that you can set not only the main character up with a certain build, but you can build synergies between the party members for additional elemental effects.

This gives the combat the potential for a lot of depth and choice about how you approach your enemies. The story at baseline is about 2x travellers, twins, who were separated on arrival. The over-arching story is that you are searching for your lost sibling.

With that as the backdrop, there are a number of sub stories to uncover as you begin to progress through the world. You start out with .... as a companion, who will direct your story initially and do most of the talking during cutscenes. Personally I find her a little irritating, but it doesn't take anything away from the gameplay itself which is really solid.

As you get a little further into the gameplay you'll see that the combat just keeps getting better. The more challenging enemies can be tough at first to figure out how to counter them, and which element will be the best to defeat them with. There is also a dungeon system which I'm really looking forward to delving into more.

When I first started the game I was surprised at how easy it was to level up the individual characters in my party - it seemed to let me progress too quickly, but then I realised that there is another leveling system working in the background called your Adventurer level - and its this one that you will need to progress in order to unlock various elements of the story or to unlock certain dungeons.

When you get to Adventurer level 16, this also unlocks the ability to co-op with other players. Overall the gameplay is VERY enjoyable, and I intend to play and cover this game in the future. In terms of critisisms though, I personally don't like their monetisation system.

Honestly guys, the game is good enough to be a pay to play game. I would have quite hapilly bought this game outright. The game is completely free to play so I see no reason why you shouldn't give it a try, but be aware, the monetisation system is a little like gambling It's also a little convoluted too - needlessly complicated with a number of differnt currency types which can be traded against one another.

The very basic explaination is that you pay for some currency and then trade this in for the chance of rolling loot and new party members to add to your team list. Now I've got nothing against spending some real money to support the developers - the game genuinely is REALLY good, but I honestly would personally prefer if they just put a flat price tag on different party members and loot items.

The way it works at the moment is that you have the CHANCE at rolling certain party members and loot when you cash in your chips but that seems like a dangerous practise to me, some people are more vulnerable to this sort of system and may end up spending more than they can afford when chasing a certain item.

Personally I'm definitely going to be playing this game for a while, and I plan on releasing some guides in the near future - but I just wanted to highlight the money system as a potential issue. You don't NEED to spend any money - you can go ahead and download the game for free right now and jump in.

I would highly recommend it. But, just be careful not to get too carried away chasing in-game items and spending more than you can afford. By all means, throw a few buck at the developers - they deserve it because the game is really good - just don't get caught up.