People are like "Ew that's a child you sickos!" but like, bruh - Look at that thing. There is nothing human about those proportions. This isn't a human child. It's some kind of hideous changeling, a humanoid abomination from beyond the stars sent to infiltrate our world, subvert our governments, and presumably steal all our brains to be put in jars for further study. The fact that it doesn't reflexively trigger the uncanny valley response is horrific in and of itself. It's already overcome our instinctual defense against infiltration. It's already in our homes and the halls of government. It's already won.
(I know the lizard people from space control our government thing is a white supremacist dog whistle for Jewish people. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not to post this because the whole genre of "Alien infiltrators" stories is so tied up in white supremacy, anti-communism, anti-immigration, racism, and so forth. But, eh. Dumb jokes about Genshin probably aren't harmful? But feel free to call me out if you think I should take it down or that there's aspects I'm missing.)
I wish genshin impact were a real rpg and not some stupid gacha waifu collector bullshit wasting a game that's way too good for it
Some of my friends are saying it has the best story they've ever encountered. Sucks that it's monetized all to hell and back. Maybe someone will figure out how to run pirate servers or something.
im gonna say this as a weeb
it may be the best story our friends ever encountered but that probably tells us more about the genre than the story itself
I was just about to say this. Anime and manga stories are pretty much straight up put it in my veins trash, with the only actually good ones being ones that are deconstructing the story tropes in the other 99%.
This is because these games and shows are quite literally made for a primary audience of children. Doesn't mean it still can't be fun, but like, the story will rarely be that reflective or deep.
https://github.com/Grasscutters/Grasscutter
The monetization is actually way better than normal which is the sad part. For the most part the game is perfectly playable without putting any money in
I haven't touched it because my ADHD treat loving ass can't help but putting down for cosmetics and shit no matter how bad an idea it is, doubly so when I'm depressed and think nothing matters and I just want some dopamine. : p
Yeah, China has hard and fast rules for how exploitative a Gacha game is allowed to be. Genshin is right on the bleeding edge of that limit, of course.
I dunno I feel like the bit of the story I played through was mid. Writing wise at least. However for the big boss of the first story ark I was literally pogging the entire time. So I can see someone coming away with such a high opinion. Consistently above average with great moments is a wild success compared to normal games.
One redeeming aspect: they have a dogboy character :headpat:
Idk, man. One reason why it does so well stems from the fact that it really is a good game. Basically MMO-Legend of Zelda.
Yeah, the Gacha mechanics and the engagement pressure is annoying. But after you get past that, you've got a huge open world that's multi-player friendly. The story is engaging. The voice-acting is sold. The visuals are stunning. The cultural pastiche is adorable.
The only thing you're really getting grifted on is aesthetics. I sunk a few dozen hours into it and never really had the desire to spend a dime. If this was the worst thing a F2P game ever did, they wouldn't have such a shitty reputation.
Yeah, that's why I hate it so much. It would be so good if it were just a fucking mmorpg but I have 0 desire to play one where I'm not "my character," I'm collecting 1000 waifus to play as. I hate that shit.
I mean, you are functionally the central character. That's who the story revolves around. You've just got companions that you can swap to for their respective power sets and for the completion of sidequests. Its no different than any Final Fantasy game, save that you can only access one character at a time rather than your whole team at once.
You get a handful of these characters as the story progresses by default. But because every one has to be specially equipped and upgraded, I tended to focus on the four with their particular element specialization, then maybe grab one or two more if I was particularly impressed by their powerset. I'm not an obsessive completionist (particularly in MMOs), so I wasn't trying to get every single character by any stretch. And, in many ways, it was preferable to the traditional MMO system in which you'd have to start a new character from Level 1 if you wanted to try out a different role. In Genshin, you just have a team-wide Level, and the only thing you fuss about is the gear and upgrades to your specialty skills.
In the end, the game was more accessible and engaging than WoW, even. And that game was at the peak of the MMO industry for the better part of a decade.
If I actually had friends who played MMOs regularly and I didn't have $X/mo to throw at a game, it would have been a natural top pick for me. But I don't have time for MMOs, I don't have friends with time for MMOs, and I don't really care about dropping $20/mo on a game. The game still isn't as good as, say, Guild Wars or Star Wars: The Old Republic. But at the Free-on-Point-of-Entry price point, its hard to ignore.
Yeah i don't want that in an mmorpg, Iv wanna play 1 character at a time not have this whole thing going on
That's fine. But I'll keep drinking their garbage.
Lol