A couple days ago I got sucked into Tower of Fantasy (I'm still embarrassed to say the name of that game by the way) and talked about how I really should try Genshin Impact since I was enjoying myself. Yesterday I decided to do just that and spent a few hours running around there.
The first difference, obviously, is the lack of global chat. This feels like a solo play experience, and so far I've yet to run into anyone else in the open world. I did a little researching, and, yup, it appears that unlike Tower of Fantasy, Genshin Impact is mostly a solo play experience . . . at least up until Explorer Rank 16. After yesterday, I'm at Explorer Rank 8, so I still have a long way to go to get there.
Unlike Tower of Fantasy, there really wasn't much player avatar customization, you just chose boy or girl and even then "you" can only use a sword. It feels like you're a default skin that's kind of boring. The characters you pick up along the way and have join your party are each proficient in different kinds of weapons and are much more exciting. In this way, Genshin Impact seemed more straight forward about swapping skins as you literally hot swap to a new character and become them.
The similarities between the two games, however, are uncanny. I have no criticism of that other than it's just an easy observation. Oh well. *shrug* As a consumer it matters little to me if I go to McDonald's or Burger King, I know either way I'm going to have a weird aftertaste and regrets later.
It's kind of funny because as I played through Tower of Fantasy and now Genshin Impact, I kept thinking . . . you know . . . these games really are a lot like the Wizard101s of this decade: story-based games in a massive world. Sure it's a little apples and oranges, but is it? Whereas Wizard101 makes its money with microtransactions, pets, and horde packs, these games seem to make their money solely on Gacha. Maybe? I guess I'm not deep enough in gameplay to really make that big of a sweeping statement.
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So what that leaves me with is . . . do I like the story? Is it intriguing enough to keep me playing? Again, I'm not deep enough in gameplay, but I did like the lost sister / lost powers angle. I like the giant dragon you fight. On the other hand, can we talk about this Paimon chibi companion who always refers to herself in the third person? Paimon thinks Paimon can be slightly annoying yet somehow slightly charming? Do . . . y'all . . . like . . . this . . . character?! Does she stick with you through the whole adventure adding commentary all the time? At least in Tower of Fantasy the chibi doesn't do ALL the talking for me. It felt like she literally did 90% of the heavy lifting in the voice over department.
I didn't find the gameplay to be terribly difficult, and at the same time I don't know if leveling and powering up makes that big of a difference yet? So, while I can't say I didn't enjoy myself -- it was fun -- I also can't say that I'm completely in love with the game yet. Alternatively, I think I could go back to Tower of Fantasy and play a bit more as long as I didn't have to read global chat and say the name of the game out loud in the company of my friends.
Happy Dueling!
6 comments:
It seems to have become the norm to refer to Genshin Impact as an MMO but when it launched I don't remember it being promoted that way or being reviewed as such. In fact, I seem to remember there being some news items and reviews that specifically made the point that GI wasn't an mmo.
When I played it seemed to be very much a single-player game with some multiplayer options - instances etc. I don't recall ever seeing another player in the open world. As for how tough it is, I stopped playing because I couldn't get past a fairly early story instance that gated further content. Around level 30 or so iirc. I am terrible at any game that uses action-mmo controls, though so I don't imagine it would be as challenging for most players.
One of the reasons I like Noah's Heart so much is that it uses a recognizeable variant of traditional mmorpg controls, including tab targeting, full cursor control and clickable attack buttons. They're in odd places because they've basically put them in the same place they'd be on a mobile device, but it's way, way easier for an old school mmo player like me to get used to than GI was.
With everyone talking about Tower of Fantasy I decided to give it a go. It seemed OK but it reminded me I don't really like gaming at my desk so... since Genshin Impact is on console I decided to try that again. I'd played it a bit at launch on Playstation but of course remembered nothing about it and... you can't reset your progress on console, short of creating an entirely new Playstation account. So then I bounce back to the PC and installed Genshin there because I felt like it'd only take me a few sessions to get back to where I was on console, after which my brain would be refreshed and I could jump back to the Playstation and continue.
No, I do not like Paimon!
I don't really get the wishes/gacha stuff. I have 3 characters now without doing any wishing and I'm not sure why I need these gacha characters... my team is doing fine. Maybe it's just a preference thing?
I've been playing GI since launch and can field some of the questions from comments and the post itself.
Aether and Lumine (the twins) are not customizable, but do fill an interesting position in the roster. I won't say more on that because ~spoilers~. In general, I find the voice acting and the story to be far superior in GI over ToF (even comparing 1.0 to 1.0). The majority of income for hoyoverse is from the character gacha, though they also have a battle pass and the "welkin moon" which gives a small daily login bonus for basically $5/month (which by most estimates is a pretty good value). Oh, and their special events are super fun and unfortunately often have additional lore that you just...miss...if you weren't playing when that was live. That's probably my biggest gripe - for a game with such rich lore to gate a bunch of it behind time limited content is sad.
Yes, Paimon is with you the entire time. That said, her VA tones down the pitch gradually and in general I find myself agreeing with her more and more often.
The challenge does amp up as you reach additional regions. Monstadt and even Liyue are pretty forgiving (mostly) but there are some challenging fights to be had. It's also true the only co-op is realistically some instances and open world boss fighting - GI is certainly not an MMO.
As to the "why wish?" question, sometimes puzzles need certain elements (there are 6 at the time of writing, and a 7th to release by the end of the day with the 3.0 patch). Sometimes you may want someone with a different playstyle. Each character brings a wildly different playstyle, and a lot of the fun is finding team compositions you don't expect to work and getting them all to click into place.
@John Lifeglen -- Thanks for answering my question about why to Wish (and for all the other info you packed into your comment)!
Just to add - I did like Paimon while I was playing. I thought she was witty and amusing and the voice actor did a great job. I also found myself agreeing with her take on what was going on more and more as time went on. She clearly has a better idea what's going on than the player does so it's probably a good idea to listen to her.
Actual comments and discussion on my blog . . . what is this renaissance?
@Bhagpuss -- downloading Noah's Heart! You convinced me!
@Nimgimli -- Sounds like John came to our rescue with some answers! hehe.
@John -- Great info! Thanks as always!
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