Intro

Genshin Impact is an action role-playing game developed by Chinese gaming company miHoYo and was published in 2020. Players get immersed in an anime-like open-world setting and fight by casting elemental magic as well as character-swapping. It is free-to-play and its gacha system is its main source of monetization.

Genshin Impact takes place in a fantasy world called Teyvat. It is divided into seven nations all with different elements and their respective gods. The player, who is the traveler, is in search of his/her lost sibling alongside with a companion, Paimon. Throughout the journey, they have also involved themselves in the affairs of Teyvat’s nations.

Website Link: https://genshin.mihoyo.com/en/

Lens of Elemental Tetrad

Mechanics

In the game, each character has their own unique damaging abilities. Some characters inflict physical damage using their normal, charged and plunge attack, whereas others inflict elemental damage. By attacking at a certain altitude, normal attacks are converted to a plunging attack. Charged attacks are stronger than normal attacks, hence a stamina system is implemented to limit its usage. Stamina recovers over time when the character is not depleting it.

There are seven elements in the game, namely, pyro, hydro, cryo, electro, geo, dendro and anemo. Each character is associated with one of the seven elements which corresponds to the elemental damage that they are able to deal with their elemental skill and bursts. The elemental burst is significantly stronger than the elemental skill and hence there’s an energy system for it to prevent spamming. Cooldowns are also applicable to both skills and bursts. By mixing two different elements, powerful reactions called elemental reactions will inflict a status effect, deal more damage, lower damage resistance, and etc.

Story

Each character has their own unique background story and development throughout the game. The development of each character has yet to be concluded as it is still being written and the game is actively being developed and improved. These stories can be accessed by finishing quests and chatting with NPCs to learn more about the game’s lore.

Aesthetics

The visuals and graphics of the game speaks for itself from the trailer and it is really appealing given that it’s free-to-play. Each character has their own unique outfit and look to complement their behavior and personality. The game’s original soundtracks compliment the environment and scenario that they’re in which includes neutral soundtracks and battle soundtracks.
Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4jodtP1gXnHd8aU4hQiXHL?si=4LT04uYRSSusiwFudeap5g

Technology

Genshin Impact is developed in Unity and it supports multiple platforms which currently includes Android, iOS, Windows, PS4 and PS5. They are working towards releasing it on Nintendo Switch as well sometime in the future.

Lens of Emotions

• Great individual character development and storylines that brings out certain emotions.
• The original soundtracks composed by Yu-Peng Chen greatly accentuate the emotions escalating it to a whole different level.

Lens of Venue

• Each nation has its own unique designs and themes to create to right atmosphere.
• It has nation-specific mechanisms required to reach certain goals and rewards.
• Some areas are more challenging as you are constantly inflicted with a status effect such as in Dragonspine where you get inflicted with Subzero Climate taking continuous damage after an extended period of time without a heat source.

Lens of Curiosity

• Each character has their own unique set of voice lines that remains locked until it reaches a certain friendship level. These levels can be increased by gaining friendship exp via quests.
• Each character has an untold background story that is still being told.

Lens of Endogenous Value

• Story quests and events give lucrative rewards to players necessary for character progression
• In order to progress through the game, certain battle power milestones have to be reached unless the player is mechanically good and patient. Artifacts, which are pieces of equipment, can be obtained via Domains, which are dungeons, to power up each character further. Weapons can be obtained via chests or their gacha system. Upgrading these require resources scattered around the world of Teyvat.

Lens of Problem Solving

• Challenging puzzles are scattered throughout the world of Teyvat while players venture around the world where promising rewards are awaiting them.
• Certain areas require piecing together fragmented information and observation of the environment in order to reveal or unlock, e.g. a cannon utilized in a separate quest (there are actually 3 cannons in total) can actually be used to break open a cave that leads to a hidden domain, no clue was given whatsoever.
  p.s. I actually looked up the Internet for this.

Conclusion

Overall this is a great game and it is still being actively maintained and developed. If you have the time and like anime RPG, I would recommend trying this out as their cutscenes are just phenomenal. Gameplay mechanics are well thought-through, the art style is visually pleasing, amazing soundtrack arrangements and so much more.