Genshin Impact

An adventure game that lets you dive into the thrilling events of the fantasy world of Teyvat. Alongside a group of brave companions, you’ll explore the ruins of ancient empires, use forbidden spells, test your strength against fantastical creatures, and defeat incredible bosses. This is a hundred-hour journey.

The graphics don’t aim for realism, but they’re a feast for the eyes. Simple, easy-to-read object shapes, high-quality artwork, colorful effects, and real-time rendering create a unique art style. The characters are well animated, move naturally, and react to hits during combat. Lighting and weather change dynamically, bringing the visuals and gameplay to life.

Genshin Impact is a single-player, story-driven, third-person action RPG set in a vast open world. It’s a gacha game focused on collecting characters, building a team based on their abilities, and endless progression.

At the same time, it’s a free-to-play grind game, a live-service game with a long development cycle. You can mix up your solo play with co-op by inviting one to three friends into your world. Regardless of the mode you choose, the game requires an internet connection to run.

In the first few days, players are showered with resources, rewards, and characters, but after a couple of days, the freebies dry up and leveling slows down considerably.

For the game, the studio miHoYo came up with the medieval world of Teyvat and carefully established its basic rules and laws, the timeline of events, and the current state of affairs in its nations. You can learn more about this by visiting the in-game library and listening to dialogue.

Teyvat is ruled by seven gods, or Archons: Anemo, Geo, Hydro, Pyro, Electro, Dendro, and Cryo, each representing a familiar element. The game map is also divided into seven regions, whose inhabitants worship only one deity. Each region has a major city (its capital) and several settlements, farms, and production sites.

Each region has a unique style based on the medieval culture it represents: Japan, China, India, Russia, Ancient Rome, Germany, and France (including national and climatic features). There is also a sort of ideology: some value order, others freedom, and others financial prosperity.

The world of Genshin Impact is truly vast and spacious. You can explore it not only from side to side, but also up and down. Teyvat is filled with many activities: daily and weekly tasks, killing enemies and bosses, opening chests, and solving unusual puzzles.

In the spirit of an MMO, each region's map is divided into zones with levels, which determine the available quests and enemies. The greater the difference between a zone's level and a character's level, the harder it is to defeat even a basic mob.

Genshin Impact inherits its gameplay and controls from mobile games. One button is used for the basic attack—pressing it several times performs a combo. Another is used for elemental attacks. There's also an "ultimate" ability that charges over time.

The basic combat system uses one-handed and two-handed swords, as well as bows with magical arrows. Characters gain abilities from the elements: fire, water, wind, electricity, ice, earth, and living plants. Besides offensive spells, there are support and defensive ones, such as a healing aura or summoning a pet. The environment also reacts to magic—you can freeze water or set grass on fire.

During combat, you directly control only one character, but you can switch between party members instantly at any time, making use of all their weapons, abilities, and “ults.”

The abilities of different characters can be combined. Dousing a target with water and then hitting it with fire triggers a “vapor strike.” Freezing a target and then hitting it with lightning causes “shattering.” Or you can douse a target with water and hit it with lightning to spread the damage. Earth powers help with defense and crowd control, while air powers strengthen attacks.

By using combos, you can deal significantly more damage to a target than with a basic or magical attack. This is especially useful since some enemies and bosses are immune to physical or magical damage. Movement also includes climbing any walls and ledges, dashing to dodge, and flying through the air. There is a stamina system.

Putting together a powerful build in Genshin Impact that can destroy everything in its path isn’t easy, because classes are tied to specific characters. And those characters are tied to the gacha system. It’s a monetization method where players receive a random set of items for a set amount of money. In Genshin Impact, the chance of getting a five-star (ultra-rare) character is 0.6%, and if you want someone specific, such as an earth mage, the odds drop to a fraction of a percent.

Technically, you can complete the game with the free characters given to you in the first few hours. But tackling dungeons or completing co-op quests with them will be tough—you’ll need better heroes. That means opening quite a few loot boxes, which takes hours of grinding or spending real money.

At the same time, the game has many manipulative mechanics that encourage you to collect characters or even want to get them all. Limited-time heroes are sure to be a long-awaited surprise. This creates an addiction and makes you spend a lot of money on cute anime waifus.

The story of Genshin Impact is simple and full of clichés. In the prologue, the main character’s sibling is taken away, after which they do everything they can to get their loved one back and defeat the main villain (who is evil just because the plot requires it). But the story also includes unusual plot twists and well-developed characters.

The side quests are simple, but their unusual approach to completing them makes them enjoyable. You’ll have to use your wits, unlock a certain skill, or save up in-game money for a bribe. The game also has character-specific quests, which can be quite lengthy.

As they complete quests and explore the game world, players earn several types of experience, increasing their character, friendship , or Adventure Rank. The latter is the main measure of progress, unlocking further story content, access to challenging domains, and various other features.

All the collected content is used to upgrade what you already have: players feed unwanted weapons or equipment to useful items. The same goes for characters—if you get a duplicate, you have to “apply” it to the character you already own, thereby powering them up. This greatly boosts their stats and unlocks an additional talent.

Upgrading any element is further divided into stages, so you can’t just level up weapons or characters; you need to develop everything in parallel, or your progress will simply stop.

It unlocks at Adventure Rank 16. The mode is cross-platform, so your team can include friends playing on any gaming device. Characters are divided among players according to the number of participants. Co-op offers its own set of quests:

Successful co-op play requires knowing your abilities and how they work with other characters, as well as having good equipment. At the time of its release, Genshin Impact was not planned to have a PvP mode.

In co-op, the «Spiral Abyss», story quests, and side quests are unavailable to the whole team. Only the host receives rewards for challenges; they can also open chests and collect collectibles.