Should you play Genshin Impact? Raising the bar for Free-to-Play Games

Genshin Impact may appear to be nothing more than a clone of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but does so much more so differently that it can stand ...

For the past few years, I've been looking for that one game that I can just pop in for a few minutes and leave without much commitment. A game that doesn't need a lot of my attention at any given moment and something that I can easily drop if something were to come up. With the inception of Genshin Impact in the gaming mainstream, will this new title be the one that fills the hole?

Nowadays, we have access to so many different games on many different platforms that we're spoiled for choice. But a lot of games, especially on mobile, are built to hold your attention over long periods of time to maximize engagement. While others require at least a minimum time commitment like say an online game where matches or raids can go for as long as an hour per run and leaving midway would have consequences for you and your teammates. Playing for an hour or so might not sound like much but for some, that might be the only amount of time they can allot for leisure, or in this case, gaming. The latter of which I find to be the case more often than I'd like.

For the longest time, my go-to game was Overwatch. And while I still love that game to bits, interest has waned over time. Since then, I've been trying out various titles on different platforms to see which one would stick. MMOs aren't my cup of tea but I tried out Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn after it got that major update that expanded the free trial and because a know a lot of people who play it on the regular. 80 hours of warrior of lighting around later, MMOs just don't click for me.

I like my action games. Running, jumping, and dodging, while swinging weapons around dishing out damage in any way I wish. I'm not opposed to more tactical based combat. I just prefer it when I press a button, my character responds with an appropriate attack.

I then revisited Warframe since, by all definitions, that game should appeal to my tastes. Action combat, robot ninjas, bullet jumping, yadayada. Over 30 hours later and seeing how the grind works there, no dice. I took a gander at a few Battle Royale style games and either don't like the more open PUBG/Fortnite style approach or simply don't have the patience to learn the intricacies of something like Apex Legends,  which I actually did enjoy.

I've dabbled in a few mobile titles as well, a few of which have grabbed me enough where I have yet to uninstall them. But if you've been around the Apple or Google Play Stores, a lot of these free-to-play games are structured in a way that you eventually hit a point where it starts asking you to pay to keep playing. Whether it's on expendable resources, unlocking relevant features to help you progress, or simply to replenish the currency/energy required to keep playing the game. It eventually devolves from me actually playing the game to simply booting it up to claim my daily login rewards to doing a few games in whatever auto-pilot mode it has and then ignoring the game until the next day when the daily rewards reset.

In comes Genshin Impact. I remember seeing a trailer for it back in 2019 and again during PlayStation's State of Play stream in August 2020, thinking "Hey, cool. An anime Breath of the Wild.". A few weeks before its release, I came across screenshots and streams of it from people playing it in closed beta, thought it looked pretty good and also found out that it'd be free to play. The combat looked like something I'd be down for given that it looked like something out of Platinum Games with its NieR Automata like dodging and overall action combat. I signed up and eagerly awaited its release.

Genshin Impact obviously takes heavy inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when it comes to its world exploration. Wall climbing, gliding, item pick-ups, a stamina system, etc. So why don't I just play BotW instead? I love BotW and have put over a hundred hours into that game. This is just a different game with a different appeal. Sure, there are a lot of similarities but the differences are unique enough that make each standout on their own.

When we hear the phrase "free-to-play", we immediately associate it with a lot of negativity. Sure, it's "free". Just how free? With that in mind, I was fully expecting to hit that pay-to-win wall but wanted to see how long it'd take to get there and of course see if the game was actually fun. Upon booting the game and getting down to playing it, I was surprised to see how much freedom you're given to just explore the world. Granted, certain sections are closed off until you progress in the story but what is accessible to you is already pretty vast.

The game does try to veer you towards the direction of story progress but it's more of a suggestion than an active requirement. Most free-to-play titles out there are extremely handholdy and force you into trying out all of its features within the first hour or so. Genshin Impact just lets you... play.

I was also expecting little to no story from this game but was surprised by an intense intro sequence that would lead to me picking my starting character. Moving a bit further and I'm again treated to high quality cutscenes and a surprising amount of fully voiced dialogue. Truth be told, the first major storyline of Genshin Impact is pretty sizable. I jokingly tell people that Genshin's opening storyline is the entire plot of Dragon's Dogma. And it doesn't stop there. More and more story sequences, characters, new areas, and even world bosses are being added to the game almost every month. Getting better and better each time in terms of quality. I can go on about how drastically different Liyue's gorgeous map design is over the very flat and barren Mondstadt but that'd take too long.

When it comes to playable characters, you're pretty much covered in all grounds as you're given a character wielding each elemental type pretty early on. And while those other gacha unlockable 5-star characters are plenty strong, the starting roster is perfectly capable to get you through whatever the game can throw at you. As far as gameplay goes, I like how Genshin Impact handles elements and how they all interact with each other. Going off of Spell Break, the battle royale where your primary methods of attacks are slinging elemental magic and mixing them together, you'd think that Genshin's version of this concept would be a tad more simplistic since swinging a sword is a more common means of dishing out damage.

I'm vastly more impressed with how Genshin Impact handles elemental reactions. It's more than just freezing a wet enemy with an ice attack or causing an explosion when hitting an electrocuted enemy with fire. It's how the game calculates the damage of mixing these elements. From taking note of which element was applied first, who applied them, what reaction happened, what move triggered the reaction, who triggered the reaction, and taking into account each party member's individual stats before registering the damage.

Another thing that I do like about this game is being able to build your characters in many different ways. While some characters excel at certain traits more than others, it doesn't hard lock them into that archetype. Say I have a character that has a natural stat bonus for physical damage but is too under leveled for me to properly benefit off of this bonus. I can sub them in as a support type and work around whatever elemental skills they have that can compliment my current team as I slowly build them up.

Let me get this out there. Genshin Impact is one of the most generous free-to-play games I've ever played. There's so much video game for you to explore before you even start encountering its many systems. You play a pretty sizable chunk of story before you get introduced to this game's version of an energy system in the form of Original Resin. And once you do start to unlock the farmable domains to use said resin on. I believe the idea is that once you've expended your resin, then you continue doing story quests until your resin replenishes.

I keep mentioning this "wall" that I kept expecting to hit in Genshin but after playing countless hours of it, I can say that there isn't really one. And while it's true that this has also turned into the usual "login for your dailies" type of game, that's only because I've played so much of it that I've literally run out of things to do until my resin resets. Making me all the more excited whenever there's news about the next update or new additions.

The amount of care and quality put into this game is crazy. Even more so that it's a free to play title across multiple platforms. It's had its ups and downs but the developers  have shown that they listen to feedback and have vastly improved the player experience since release. I honestly thought that I would've gotten bored of the game after a month or two but here I am, still logging in at least twice a day seeing how I can improve my characters or trying out a new team composition.

Genshin Impact is the game that I've been looking for. An easy to jump into online title with action combat. The intriguing story, coupled with the lush and ever expanding world was a wonderful surprise that keeps me coming back for more. On the surface, it may just look like Breath of the Wild with waifus, to which I won't disagree with you there. But I assure you there's so much to more to this game than just that.

New to the game? Here are a few Genshin Impact beginner tips to get you started on the right track.

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