Should you play Genshin Impact in 2021?

[@mariobaic6180]

Biggest genshin trap is having a good team of 4 characters that are level 80, and then you get a random free wish, and its a new shiny level 1 five star.

[@waiyon1951]

Well a lot of 4 star Units are really really good

[@ThatguycalledJoe]

Really? I thought it was Venti.

[@keekydeeks3993]

Omg that happened to me with ganyu I went my pity is at 2 I'll just roll for xingqiu and at 14 ganyu was like hello I'm here and I wasn't planning on getting her and had to last minute farm

[@wansichen3743]

dude i guess you didnt make it far enough to realise you need 8 characters and sometime more to get the elemental reaction you need for some dungeon, mix and match to get the comp you want is one of the most strategic thing you can have

[@somerandomgamer8504]

Happened to me; LVL 80 or 90 or something with the MC, Amber, Qiqi and Beidou, and then I pull a shiny new Mona ._.

[@glitch349]

I like Lisa, she's good at climbing

[@kyotheman69]

better hope no one is at home when you do use her "Are you winning son?"

[@Cordovan]

"Wearing headphones may improve your gameplay experience."

[@Lovce]

Lisa is one of the best 4x Noblesse Oblige user for my Mona carry.

[@canadianblitz3468]

ara ara

[@someoneusedtobeknown2645]

I somehow knew I was gonna find this comment, but I did not expect it to be the first one I saw.

[@ragnarok1984p]

In most MMOs to progress you need to sell a kidney but a really pro gamer move would be to sell both and after that all your worries will be over .

[@mrmatrix7001]

lol

[@chukkie0001]

Or go cyberpunk 2077 mode and sell kidneys from other people.

[@dragonhearthx8369]

But does it have to be MY kidney?

[@chronosite]

They didn't specify whose kidney you sell on the market after all

[@Pet_Hedgehog]

this aint an mmo

[@eleanorsmith7152]

I’m somebody who really loves stories, and everything about Genshin Impact’s lore, world building and characters, screams of being something I’d hyper fixate on in a big way. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a game I can lose myself in to the point where I can almost taste the air, and I really miss that feeling… but I can’t let myself play this game. I know myself well enough to know that loot boxes and hyper fixations are not a combination I should explore. Instead I’m just left with a sad longing, standing in the weird position of wishing a game I want wasn’t free.

[@makovka33]

huh. there are no loot boxes ._.

[@aj1046]

Genshin has no lootboxes, only the simplest gacha system that you can even ignore, the story is great and the world is beautiful and detailed

[@Raicheru13]

@aj1046 Gacha are literally a form of loot box. It's an eastern term vs. a western term for the same type of mechanic. OP understands themselves well enough to know that they may succumb to buying premium currency with real money in order to gamble for items. There's a rush in the unknown even if you know your chances are slim. Don't underestimate how this type of game mechanic can prey on people. It's not a matter of willpower. Hyper fixation often comes as a symptom of ADHD and other neurological conditions that usually involve impulse control problems.

[@Raicheru13]

Same. I've been seeing this everywhere and it looks gorgeous, but I'd get overwhelmed by the layers of upgrades and my impulse control for something I'm fixating on is not good. Kudos to you for knowing yourself well enough to make good decisions even when they're disappointing.

[@FNLNFNLN]

@@aj1046 It's a generic Ubislop open world that looks gorgeous but has nothing to do in it but chores, and the story is your standard generic gacha short story collection that hints at something bigger but is so vague and infrequent about the hints you barely remember what's going on by the time the next hint drops. There are no original stories or lore universes in 2024, which makes execution everything - and Genshin has the worst execution I've ever seen from a game that is this recent with this much money spent, often relying on long ass unskippable monologues in uncontrollable cutscenes as if it was a visual novel instead of a proper 3d game.

[@edmundmondo1682]

10:56 That is incorrect. The only way to upgrade a character constellation is to wish and obtain again that same character, it will be converted to the appropriate stella fortuna. There is no way to upgrade constellation in dungeons or with world bosses.

[@ROMVS]

Yup, not a full review, seems incomplete.

[@MorbidEel]

He might have been confused by the system used for the MC which would also explain why he put so much significance on the anemo sigils. I did get the impression for a while at the very beginning as well.

[@koopagrandfleet]

I was looking for a comment pointing this out.

[@lordthruxawe504]

@Yasuo The unforgiven what exactly did he say that was bullshit?

[@CarmenMunteanu]

and that is not the only thing he got wrong, but he talks fast enough that u might not even notice =))

[@LeonY632]

After 60hrs and doing every story and side quest the true end game is waiting for the next content patch...and gathering materials

[@KoinzellGaming]

I mean as a casual game it's really nice, 1 hour of game time per day is more than enough. Far better than the games where you have to spend hours grinding dungeons, while you can clear most "dungeons" within 1-3 minutes in Genshin.

[@jonathansoko1085]

@@KoinzellGaming A "casual" game with this kind of predetory monetization is insane to me.

[@KoinzellGaming]

@@jonathansoko1085 Genshin is better than most other games, as it already has enough currency being given out by quests/events so that you can get together a good team and clear the whole content rather easily, without spending too much money. I would say that just by paying 4.99 for welkins you will be able save up for the character you want, get it and build a team you'd like. You can't get everything, but that's not an issue. There are pity systems, and all of that stuff as well, which is miles better than FGO. Genshin is one of the better "F2P" games, especially cuz there's no PvP, if you think Genshin is bad, then you haven't played mobile games. Genshin is a far better course for mobile games than 99% of the rest of the mobile games market.

[@jonathansoko1085]

@@KoinzellGaming Listen, youre the type of person that shouldnt be talking. Youre a white knight that will say anything.

[@Cenzurat]

@@KoinzellGaming problem is you'd proly have 80k as a f2p player by now, if you are unlucky, those primos won't do much for you, cause of the rates.

[@TNinja0]

Basic math: "Brain dead" Memorizing everything you need to upgrade all your characters: "Galaxy moment"

[@D3athW1ng]

this game is a bad look for my completest nature ... I just ... can't 😩

[@YouCantParkThereMate]

@@D3athW1ng then never look at the mmorpg called Life After

[@chenyu1452]

upgread chracter for what??? kill the same mobs again and again every day??...no thx i'm quiting😒

[@khaii1955]

@@chenyu1452 what game u still playing rn?

[@chenyu1452]

@@khaii1955 i was playing soulworker which is shot down, so now i'm playing phantasy star online 2 (PSO2) waiting blue protocol comes in :3

[@N0TS4FETTV]

been playing this game since day 1, burnt out of it twice, always came back because farming artifacts and exploring is addicting to me, whenever i play this game i just feel at ease, one of my favorite F2P games out there.

[@IntegrityGames]

I had a lot of fun with this game until around level 40. The 30's were a grind. Now that there is more content available, I bet there are a lot more hours of enjoyable gameplay, but still. Gambling addicts beware.

[@mandisaw]

Problem is, a lot of folks don't even know that they have addictive tendencies. My late hubby never went for casinos or poker, but once he got sick/disabled, and had hours to kill and money in the bank, all those flashy mobile RPGs really did a number on our finances. It can happen to anyone, especially if they're in a period of depression or loneliness.

[@whoami-vf5om]

sure there is more content coming in the future, the game is only 15% done

[@bestmilioplat754]

Same, i gave up at AR45 because the game became a chore, and i took the decision of playing it once per year to discover new areas and clear the quests then log off for a year. Sadly i think i'll have to grind even more AR before accessing the latest questlines when new areas will come live

[@yudhiadhyatmikosiswono9082]

@@whoami-vf5om Actually is less than 15%. Honkai Impact (another Mihoyo games) comes in 2016 and still have a lot of active player. Expect 5 years for at least 50% since Mihoyo plan is 10 years

[@namenotfound8747]

@@bestmilioplat754As it such be, you can get to ar 55 by just playing the game as is and spending 15 min a day on the game. No point of making new content for new players when the current world is fine for anyone under ar 50. A third of all players are at or above ar 50. And people still cheese the game by keeping their world level low to finish everything in game. Only to complain they have nothing to do. Then once they get to WL 7 or 8, they realize, they never bothered to learn how to use elements efficiently and Mihoyo is at fault for letting people abuse the WL mechanic. People get the wrong impression of how the game works, because when you hit endgame in the spiral abyss, and when you get for floor 12, you will find out, this not a causal game.

[@msnhao]

I think you were referring to Constellations when you were talking about “star sign charts”. Just so you know, you don’t get those from dungeons. You get them from the gambling. If you get a duplicate character, you can unlock one of their constellation abilities up to 6 duplicates. So to fully max out a character, you’re going to need to spend hundreds(and sometimes thousands) on gambling, hoping that you get a duplicate.

[@kiwikarp9509]

Is that the only way though? Most gatcha games have an item you can use in place of a character dupe.

[@matthewgunby5769]

@@kiwikarp9509 As far as I know Genshin does not have this yet, dupes are the only way. it isn't uncommon for a Constellation to have a massive impact on the unit's utility or damage potential, Baal and Hu Tao are solid examples of characters who deal far more damage at max constellations. Of course, most everything is "viable" at C0, but that won't stop you from wanting the best...

[@derekstapleton3396]

@@kiwikarp9509 the only character that does not require the gacha mechanics to unlock constellations is the main protagonist character. What Josh doesn't mention is that the protagonist character has the ability to change their elemental affinity, while all other characters are locked to one. The protagonist has different constellations for each element and the items needed for them are given to you either through questing, vendors or other specific rewards. All other characters require you to get a duplicate of them through the gacha to unlock the constellations. However, constellations are not required to make a character viable. All characters are designed to be played as they are and constellations only augment the abilities they already possess instead of giving new ones.

[@unicorndragondad9697]

@@kiwikarp9509 Nope, no such item

[@bryannaing6316]

@@derekstapleton3396 I think the reason he failed to mention that is because he didn't play long enough to get to Liyue, and the idea that you get more elements by touching statues of the seven isn't really that memorable honestly.

[@maxmustermann3938]

I've been playing this 100% free for a while now. The beginning is actually still quite different from what you eventually inevitably end up doing - all the fun exploration stuff ends at some point. Searching for the remaining chests is a chore at best. You can definitely play this game free, no issues. I rolled plenty of 5* characters, but I only use one of them in my team. Getting your characters set up takes a while if you aren't spending boatloads of money to be able to grind more for a day. So this game will not be your "main game". You'll login each day, spend your resin, do your daily stuff and work on any current event stuff. Rinse and repeat. You are looking at 1-2 hours a day, with some rare stuff where you can play more, like when a new area releases. Events often come with minigames that sometimes are actually quite fun, like the tower defense one or the hide and seek minigame. If you do not have a lot of time to spend on gaming, this may still be a fun experience for you.

[@prawngravy18]

You sound so brainwashed it's ridiculous.

[@YuYuYuna_]

The TLDR of what you said is basically the game gets boring after you do all the exploring and early to mid game content and then becomes a chore where you have to log in every day and "spend your resin, do your daily stuff and work on any current event stuff. Rinse and repeat." Sounds like a game to play for a short while and then drop it completely after you finish the mid game content.

[@arjunr2645]

@@prawngravy18 ...no? It really depends on what you want in a game. Doing daily stuff isn't really a chore, and the game is actually pretty fun when you're in co-op with friends. Yes, the gacha mechanics are pretty frustrating; but as a f2p I'm fairly happy. The thing about this game is that you don't have to pay to win, and paying gives you a VERY slight advantage (unless you're dumping tons of money in which case you can get a ton of rare weapons and characters; but technically, you can still get those as a f2p player, I have a couple of really good weapons that help a lot.) I don't know about people who pay for games, I've never been one of those. As a f2p all I can say is that it's actually fairly fun. Even at the higher levels, when it can feel like a grind; because I have a life outside this game, and dropping by once in a while to enjoy the aesthetics and combat is worth it.

[@zirkereuler5242]

@@YuYuYuna_ but isn't this the general way most mmorpgs are once you get to end game, you have to log in every day and "do your dungeons, do your dailies and work on any current event stuff" obviously a game like final fantasy xiv has a lot more options for these dungeons, dailies and events because it's been out for longer.

[@MyNameIsSalo]

@@YuYuYuna_ the part your missing is that "early to mid game content" is like 100hours long, so doing 2hours a day genshin can easily give you 2months+ of content before you run out of meaningful stuff to do and are just optimizing your team (the daily chore as you are calling it). And those 100 hours are lots of fun right from the first hour of gameplay. Thats already 10 times higher than your average single player game, and its entirely free, not $100. Its free to play, download it and see for yourself. There's no reason to be arguing over a f2p game you haven't played, atleast try it first for like 1hr and see.

[@riotangel4701]

Can't stress enough just how fabulous the music is. CHEN Yu Peng really put a lot of heart and soul into composing.

[@goober13579]

And the devs put a lot of heart and soul into the gacha mechanics to scam weebs out of their live savings.

[@mlhx9181]

@@goober13579 I believe the art form of music composition, visual design and by extension game development with all its intricate systems and mechanics is very much separate from the business side of game monetisation. Indeed the monetisation is where it starts to get ugly but the original beauty of the art beneath is preserved. All you need as a player to observe that beauty is some self control which is made easier by the fact that the game isn't very competitive at all.

[@riotangel4701]

@@goober13579 Yes the business model is questionable but the music quality is uncontested.

[@tomek111541]

he is a gigachad indeed. Every single piece is a masterpiece

[@kimschiavo2589]

Sooooooooooo to the original comment. Yes, I love the music! Liyue battle II is my favorite. Chasm first implemented stems, and I can't handle it! Just wanted to ask: is Yu Peng behind all compositions from day 1 to today?I thought he was involved after the first OST.

[@bewareofmountainlions4429]

Game is very fun to play casually. I love hunting for the treasure chests, and going through the story/world. I 💯%'d mondstat sometime last year, and had fun doing. Like josh said, if you have self control it's a fun game to sink some time into.

[@strobo308]

The anemoculus, geoculus and electroculus work more as a collectible than a currency, they are scattered around the map and you need to find them by exploring and solving puzzles, they have nothing to do with gacha since their rewards are set on stone, you can't buy them or make the process any less tedious and they are entirely dependant on your ability to explore, not on your wallet. Same goes for sigils, you can get them by opening chests and in Liyue's case, by picking them up off rocks as if they were fossils. I wouldn't call them currency persé, and you can in no way buy those two from the actual in-game store.

[@kurokikazenootoko]

I don't think it's right grouping anemoculos with the currency. They're collectables, and as far as I know you cannot buy them for anything. You can only find them.

[@Tymbee]

Yeah, he seemed pretty confused by the currency system. It's literally just Primogems that are the payed for currency (also Genesis Crystals, which are just converted 1:1 for Primogems).

[@travtravhaha]

@@Tymbee That just means its working as intended. It is supposed to be confusing. Don't get me wrong, I love this game far more than it deserves and is healthy for me, but the currencies and upgrade materials are very confusing and overwhelming for new players, or at least anyone unfamiliar with this kind of game. Considering the game's success it's clearly not all that bad (most people would give up if it was too confusing), BUT that same success also indicates it probably has the intended effect of getting lots of people to pay money.

[@Tymbee]

@@travtravhaha I mean, sure that could be the reason people spend money on it, but to me it seems more likely that it's just people knowingly gambling on characters. If their sales numbers were purely based on making the currency system confusing, then you wouldn't be seeing big spikes in revenue when new characters are released. Even if the multiple currencies like Starglitter, Mora, etc. are confusing, there's literally no way to directly buy them with real money. You can only directly buy the premium currency: Primogems/Genesis Crystals. I just have trouble imagining someone unknowingly spending 100's of dollars on Primogems thinking they were gonna get Mora. Although I guess there's no way to really tell just by looking sales figures whether people knew what they were buying.

[@Rayerie]

@@travtravhaha Genshin does get a lot of people to pay money, but not at all for the reason you say. It is very clear in the game what mora and primogems do. Upgrade materials like domains drops can be quite confusing but clicking on it tells you how and when to get it, and you cannot directly use real money to get those.

[@luipaardprint]

Genshin, compared to most other gacha games, is very simple and straightforward.

[@Hafiere]

Having watched this before I started playing Genshin and a few months after, I think this video oversells how complex Genshin's monetization scheme is. Aside from Gacha Pulls and a few character skins, more IRL money really only gets you more of the timegating resource, Resin. There's some stock of some materials that can be bought, but the game still locks many character/weapon upgrades behind materials that require actually hunting down mobs/bosses or picking up materials during exploration. Many resources are also completely timegated. Many resources have some sort of timer before they can be collected again such as weekly boss drops. There is no option to get rid of the timer using money.

[@saycap]

Of course you get used to it as you play it more, the confusion at the start when you see all the currencies is really where they try to weed out people who will pay vs people who won’t.

[@MiyashiruX]

Honestly, if you've played games long enough that has similar features, Genshin's currencies aren't even that complicated. Just spending a few minutes to just learn where to use where is all it takes.

[@walkermorales337]

The time gating is just to make it so players don’t clear all of the content too quickly. Even now genshin doesn’t have that much of an endgame, it’s just spiral abyss and building new characters or making old ones stronger.

[@Hafiere]

@@walkermorales337 That is so true. Another game I alternate with Genshin, PSO2: New Genesis, has no such timegating and players are constantly blitzing the content. To be fair, that appears to be somewhat intentional on the Developers part as they appear to want to retain long time players of the franchise with money, a job and too little time to grind content. There's a lot of dailies and weeklies that really help cut down the grind if you just want to get your character to level cap and kit them out before they release a new region and raise the level cap.

[@saycap]

@@MiyashiruX the point isn't to be unlearnable at all, the point is to be confusing to people who aren't hooked to get the to spend blindly. Also to disassociate the purchasable items with their real world value by adding many different currencies in between

[@JebsonofJeb]

It's so much easier to treat the game as a side piece while playing an hour a day. You get all the primo you can with dailies and events while getting the characters you mostly want or doing gear.

[@twelvesevven4678]

At that point are you playing a game or doing a chore so that you can play the game?

[@jagodaduda2976]

An hour a day, every day, is pretty much a side job. You'll be playing on weekends as well, amounting to 7 hours, every week. You could go clean someone's house for some pocket money in the same time and actually get way more out of it and I say that as someone who's been playing since release. There are events that cannot be completed within an hour of time you might have if they involve DPS check. The new fishing mechanics is made to make you wait and the upcoming fishing event will take you longer than it should, because of that.

[@jagodaduda2976]

And to continue what the person above me said, Genshin actually does feel like a chore after you play it for few months, because at that point you will be done with the mid-game and realize there's no end game content. Abyss can be fully starred with lvl 70 characters, there's no need to go beyond, but if you for some reason do then there's literally nothing that would reward you for going this far. There's no guarantee to get artifact piece you want or to reroll an upgrade for your artifacts that would benefit you. According to statistics you can take a year to get elemental damage goblet with 20% or more crit damage. You log in, get primogems. Then you just keep these primogems until there's gacha you want to spend these primogems on and you get a new character that changes your gameplay loop a bit, but adds nothing new to the game. The weapons don't have unique active skills whose timed activation could make things easier, there are only passives. If you do not like any of the characters that get added and won't do gacha for them, then you're left with barebones game that stops you from fully upgrading and maxing the characters you do care about and forces you to roll a dice each time you attempt to try. If anyone wants to play Genshin, yes it looks beautiful and yes it can be fun, but forbid yourself from getting attached as you might pay for something you will realize has no value, as no matter how many fun characters you have, the game issues remain the same. All that being said, the game is nearing its 1st anniversary as of writing this comment, there are small chances things will get better, but my pessimism is not baseless so keep that in mind.

[@twelvesevven4678]

@@jagodaduda2976 My cousin who plays it says the same. He said now he's rolled the newest banner character, or something, he has no reason to play. He only finds reason to play when there's something to grind for. He doesn't like playing the game itself, he just feels like he's put this time into it. Today, while we walked and talked, he spoke of how he's come to a sad realisation that the game will end of be abandoned one day, either by dev's or players, and that he feels he's prematurely wasting his time.

[@Sablus]

@@jagodaduda2976 honestly kinda gives off an animal crossing esque vibe with the daily requirement of logging to complete requisite dailies for nook miles and such. In the end both current games and F2P games are utilizing this style of content extender model (you can see that with the ubisoft endless Assassin creed questing grind and connected store as well as their plans for a assassins creed infinite i.e. a likely pseudo F2P model with a live service/purchase economy). God damn I miss just buying a game from blockbuster, playing it, and then returning it a couple months later... :/

[@velvetcrowe5478]

To my knowledge you get the most amount of sigils from chests in the world and some additional for upgrading the statues. But yes everything takes a long time in the game(looks at the 2 day regrow time for plants)

[@peterc.1419]

It takes a long time but there is other stuff that you can do at the same time. You get limited events and you get quests. There are now hang out events which give you free primogems. The only thing you have to spend money on is outfits. Those don't work with primogems but genesis crystals. Still if an outfit is really hot and you buy 4-5 Welkin's you get enough genesis to purchase one outfit. The game takes little time, if you spend. If you whale out the game becomes very boring. You have way overpowered characters and outside of the final 3 floors of spiral abyss the game becomes too easy and not at all challenging. The sweet spot is to spend $60 per year on Welkin and do the dailies and events and just plan ahead. There are enough leaks to tell you who will be on the banner in 2-3 months time and you can save up accordingly.

[@werse3710]

11:00 now imagine if we actually could get constelations by doing figths oh lord

[@GepardoS666]

I giggled at that part xD Oh goodness, if Josh only knew how to get those constellations~

[@viniciussoarespenha5568]

When I look at an youtuber account and see multiple 5 star constelation 6 characters I know they have suffered.

[@defaultmania3407]

You can obtain travelers constellation just by fighting so it's not completely wrong u can say

[@TheOneSin7]

@@defaultmania3407 He hasn't come to the point where we find out the Taveler has more than one element and needs to level his skills with each of it seperately ^^

[@MorbidEel]

That might become a thing in the future. Something like that is in miHoYo's previous game.

[@Arielelian]

I thoroughly enjoyed this game, less the gambling aspect for the different characters. However as all games go, the end game does become a grind (e.g. leveling up new characters, gearing characters, improving characters). It's a highly entertaining game if you have self-control and patience to resist the urge to throw your entire paycheck at it.

[@RP-dy5mu]

"I will not spend a lot of money on this game" *Spends 2k within the first week* "Fuck"

[@aaaaaaa6402]

@Monarker because you gain rewards for paying. And how exactly did you pirate a free game?

[@kartkibloczek]

@@RP-dy5mu story of my life brother :')

[@MrSunDragon]

10:58 star signs/ constellations are only through wishing. I know you meant character talents, but it is good to clarify for new players so they don't get confused.

[@AndresLionheart]

There were plenty more mistakes in his review.

[@mosesyang4222]

@@AndresLionheart doesn't even matter it's a pretty game but shit

[@Rain-hd8ev]

@@mosesyang4222 why is it shit its pretty much like any other gacha games that the end game is just endless grinding, also since the game is continuously getting updated you get new stuff to do every 1 and a half months

[@AlphaAceEX]

@@Rain-hd8ev for a channel that focused on mmorpgs, its baffling to see the viewers dont realize the grind is as much as a typical mmorpg

[@Rain-hd8ev]

@@AlphaAceEX thats true i have played a couple of mmorpg’s and in the end its all basically just grinding that couple of bosses for the mats or for that specific drop, and maybe grind some new events every now and again

[@toukoenriaze9870]

Ye i think u missread stuff Artifacts are locked behind the domains which are locked behind resin ... While the constelations or majority of char passives are the thing locked behind rerolling ... Weapons outside of a few craftables are locked to wishing (i think u mentioned that but ye)

[@Dante1282]

@@doomcookies it's just like many Korean rpgs. You have stamina /limited entry per day for dungeon. In dung you get randim artefacts of a type with random stats. Artefacts are basicly you armor /head gear etc. Weapon can be crafted with stuff you find in the overwolrd or get by mobs you killed. You can als get higher rarity weapon and chars by pulling in the gacha but you don't meet do since the free one are quote good.

[@karakiri283]

@@doomcookies like in every gacha, you have a limited actions you can do a day, it refill with time (or you can pay) to do your actions. And like in every gacha, farming your stuff is limited by the numbers of actions you can do a day.

[@besttrash6574]

@@Dante1282 it's a chinese game

[@Dante1282]

@@besttrash6574 I never claimed otherwise

[@sjakierulez]

@@besttrash6574 Chines or korean, what is the difference? They both are Japanese anyway

[@RodenoOMG]

NGL my brain started fogging over when you got to the monetization.

[@adamchoquette1937]

lol, was just a string of words with zero connection. "What is the ratio of Stanley nickels to Schrute bucks?"

[@TheHobbyExpert]

It's actually not as complex as his makes it seem. Primogems are the primary currency which you use for wishes or energy. You buy genesis crystals with real money which convert 1:1 to primos. Masterless stardust/star glitter isn't really much of a currency cause you just get it from wishing and use it on wishes, characters, or mats but it's not a big deal to keep track of. More like a freebie afterthought to spend if you have it spent up. Finally is gold/mora which you spend on upgrades.

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

@@TheHobbyExpert You forgot to mention and explain all the materials from low level equipments to skill books.

[@tut-4126]

@@JohnSmith-ox3gy do skill books count as currency?

[@Ravencr3st0998]

@@tut-4126 Normally, i'd say no. But as they're something that you can obtain by spending energy which is replenished via time or buyable recharges, I would say that they, alongside other crafting materials, can be considered a currency.

[@cheesyskin782]

The game is absolutely predatory, your enjoyment really depends on your individual mindset in my opinion. I've not spent a single cent, but I'm AR 55 with 7 five stars, in terms of raw power they are not different from 4 star characters. You ABSOLUTELY do not need to spend money in this game. But obviously many people are easily enticed to. The free player experience for me is sitting down a few times a week to play like 3 hours every time I do. Solve puzzles, do quests, do events if its interesting, explore, maybe do daily/weekly missions if I feel like it. I do approach it the way I approached BOTW, just playing a few hours every time and exploring the world. I feel like this way of playing is the way to get the most fun out of the game

[@emathias5]

Well Said. I too enjoyed it casually but then stopped when i couldnt figure out leylines but up to that point i worked up to the AR 16 to play with a friend and that is where it ended.

[@johnmaco]

An interesting fact. The reason why people don't complain about the p2w aspects of Genshin Impact (because yes, you can basically pay to get everything) is because there isn't any kind of PVP content. That's why people don't even call it a p2w game when it actually is. So yeah, you think you don't need to pay, because you don't feel the pressure to do so. You're playing at your own pace. It makes you think everything is achievable with enough time and effort. But imagine they add some kind of competition between players. You'd feel that need to pay otherwise you'd feel you're getting left behind. Everything is still achievable with enough time and effort but knowing your competition is getting things faster by paying, put pressure on you. Everything is a matter of percepcion. Then why people spend so much on GI if there is no PVP? Well, as Josh said in the video, they use the best tricks on the book to make you spend lots of money in a fluent way.

[@cnkfe1836]

ITs pay to win deal with it lol

[@its.mevlana66666]

F*%ck off dude. I tried to play the game on ps4 with that useless archer girl. It was absolute PAIN. Hard to aim, very low dps, useless skills. You can not say that 5 stars doesn't change much. They basically change everything about the game.

[@Johtho]

the problem is that all the content released for the game is locked behind a real life pay wall. even if you are lucky enough to earn multiple of the same 5stars like i have, you cannot gain access to the full scope of the abilities without like 10 dupes and thusly you pretty much cant even play them as they were intended period unless you are a whale. there is no possible way to earn anything without paying money within a certain time frame. Yeah there's characters you can earn, that doesn't take away from the fact that this game is updated by adding new characters every month that you cant earn. so basically its just a simple uninspired world that doesn't change that makes money off monthly waifus. this is nothing new, huge wasted potential if they had a catchup mechanic to unlock the constellations of any character that might be one thing that could help but last i played, they do not

[@jeremyevans1135]

AR 55 (pretty much at the endgame of endgame); played daily since the game launched. TLDR: early game is outstanding. Progression is a heavily time-gated grind. Gacha is wildly successful...and infuriating. If you want to experience an episodic story, I would recommend you this game. If you are competitive and want to become as powerful as possible, turn the other direction and never think about this game again. ==== Absolutely correct about what the game eventually becomes: a grind. Might I add that after you exhaust the story (i.e., cleared all of the quests to where you are left with nothing but the daily commissions) and explored the game's world, you are left with nothing but the stamina-dictated grind. Though Josh mentioned that the grind is intricately designed to encourage you to splurge, it is not like most games where you can play for 4 hours or more per day (or, to be exact, indefinitely) grinding out domains to level up your characters. The grind is roughly 15 to 60 minutes per day, wherein you decide what to focus on (artifacts for *A* character, talents for *A* character, etc.). What do you grind for after you can clear the story content and kill most of the monsters easily? The ability to clear the game's most difficult content (the Spiral Abyss, at this point). What do you grind for after you are able to clear it perfectly (i.e., get every star in every floor)? Good question... To put it more succinctly, I sank several hours per day at the early stages of the game (which lasts until roughly AR 35), most of it in progressing through the story (or leveling up AR to reach the next point in the story) or exploring the world (good god, there's a lot to explore). That experience was among the best I ever had as far as single-player story-based games go. After the early game, however, the game progressed to this: Log in, do daily quests, do event-specific quests (if any exist), decide what to spend energy on (resin) and spend it, level up account (character, weapon, etc.), progress through the spiral abyss (if I can clear it or it still needs to be cleared), log out. For me, the maximum duration of that loop (with event quests and the spiral abyss) is 60 minutes. Otherwise, the loop's duration is around 15 to 20 minutes (though this depends on how strong your characters are). I started playing out of curiosity (this is my first jrpg-esque, gacha game) and stayed for the content, though had I known what the game would inevitably progress to (especially after you are able to clear the Spiral Abyss with every star in every floor), I would never had picked it up. If I was unlucky with my initial rolls (and my rolls throughout AR 35 to 50), I would have quit the game at around AR 50, if not earlier. Now, having beaten the most difficult content the game currently has to offer, I continue to play to experiment with characters I neglected to build and for the story. Unfortunately (and reasonably so, one can argue), story development is slow. Most of the days consist of grinding for experimentation (or to enable my already strong characters to put out ever larger numbers...for no reason). But hey, the weapons and equipment lore seems interesting. I might start reading those to inflate my total play-time to 1 hour per day again.

[@ShiningDarknes]

I started just not rushing my daily activities. Just enjoying walking around and chilling. There is also the option to run around and kill specific enemies you need for mats and hopping onto lower level worlds using your lower level characters that just are not viable in your world beyond supports is actually quite enjoyable. "Every journey has its final day. Don't rush." - Broke god Zhongli

[@summerycast7936]

@@ShiningDarknes But how long can you keep that routine up? There is only so many roses you can smell before you finish the whole bouquet.

[@ShiningDarknes]

@@summerycast7936 mate I play it every day. Answer: indefinitely. Grow more roses

[@summerycast7936]

@@ShiningDarknes I'm tired of roses.

[@ShiningDarknes]

@@summerycast7936 if you don't like the game don't play. I am just telling you how I have found continuous enjoyment in it.

[@eekeey]

"Begin with finding a lost cat and end with killing a god." I'm having flashbacks of ff7 remake.

[@spencervance8484]

Also naruto

[@Demonmack0]

It's a great SECOND game. Play one game mainly and when you wanna relax or cooldown or multitask, pull up Genshin. Timegating is fine, I'll only play an hour or two every day and be happy.

[@user_Z-]

Everyday? That doesn’t sound like a side task/game 🤣

[@sageforasennight]

@@user_Z- That's what's wrong with 90% gacha games; they eventually become like secondary work/chores.

[@arjunr2645]

Exactly! Everyone's acting like us hih lvl f2p players are brainwashed lol. Im just not playing for the same things everyone else is, I guess? I'm happy with aesthetics, helping random people online, etc

[@guyinkognito2054]

Until you become an adult and can only play one game for an hour each day xD It's the perfect game to relax after work.

[@Rain-ro4qn]

Honestly why would you play something like this even as a side game, when you can enjoy similar games with no time gating, being single player and not requiring gacha to enjoy content (in this case Characters).

[@happybalint]

Just to clarify some things: constellations actually come from getting the character more than once from the wishes, except for the mc who gets it from quests and upgrading the statues of the seven. Also wishes have a pity system: 10 wishes= at least 1 four star, 90 wishes= at least 1 five star.

[@Nightkrowler]

When I was still young - and by young I mean VERY YOUNG - a nice and simple "MMO" caught my eye and left a very deep lasting impression. It was "Free Realms", now, unfortunately, closed. It was a colorful adventure MMO for Kids. What made it special was, that crafts like ore mining, cooking etc. were actually little fun mini games. I loved it and I loved the colorful world and atmosphere. Ever since I was looking for a game that could recreate this feeling of peace and tranquility that Free Realm gave me back then. And thanks to you, Josh Strife Hayes, I seem to have found it in Genshin Impact! Thank you for this! I actually don't mind the microtransactions. Free Realms used to have a free mode and a subscription model, which allowed you to play more classes etc. Growing up with no pocket money what so ever I learned to relish even highly monetized games. :) Enjoying Genshin Impact right now!

[@averonik]

oh how far into the game are you? and are you on the NA server? i'd be glad to help you out and teach you more stuff

[@Nightkrowler]

@@averonik thanks a lot, just got my 5th hero and my first one is lvl20. Playing on EU, though

[@AGreyAlien]

Omg i remember that game! I loved it. I was sad it closed down.

[@rabbitguts2518]

That game was my childhood! I know exactly the vibe you're talking about, I loved it specifically because I could just wander about and ignore the quests and still have so much fun and just feel at ease. I was heartbroken when it closed. If you ever find another game like that I'd love to know but for now genshin is my chill zone.

[@jokerswild2380]

@@Nightkrowler oh? Who's the new teammate might I ask?

[@SheikAshii]

Also, you can in fact catch up to the plot and defeat everything with the starter characters. “Good” in this game means higher numbers…BUT the game doesn’t let you make the monsters stronger if your characters aren’t good enough to fight them. So in the end, you really don’t need “good” characters. You start with enough

[@SwobyJ]

@Black Star I have not done that, but only out of playing other games. I have cleared up to Ch 1-2 Intermission content with the free team. Its enough to combo Anemo Aether/Amber(and others), Lisa/Amber, Kaeya/Lisa, Kaeya/Amber depending on enemy. Some gaps in combat roles, particularly healing, but food and buffs fills those gaps and if you keep your world level down its fine. Story's fine to do. Even every boss is, or at least I've done the first 3 weekly bosses with them (dragon/wolf/fatui). Any quest has been completable, the trick is world leveled enemies (Lv 80-90 can be tough), combat challenges (Abyss, map markers), and combat events (totally optional, unless you have namecard obsession I guess).

[@DarkFrozenDepths]

"good" is actually if stuff is dying, cause even multihit can shred enemies when done right (and some characters thrive on this rather than big hits). Simply put, if numbers don't show or they're doing chip damage, you're likely doing something wrong.

[@lefterismplanas4977]

My brother and I are playing for free and we have enough new characters to need to choose whom to upgrade already. He's been playing for just a week. You don't need to pay at all you just need to be smart

[@tonyoliver2684]

Did they remove level walls to access main quests? As far as I remember there were that kind of bullshit in the game

[@DarkFrozenDepths]

@@tonyoliver2684 nope. but then again, that's standard for basically any MMO or f2p game. It's even standard for regular RPGs. I mean, who lets a lv10 noob run into a lv50 area and expects them to beat it?

[@Nixahma]

In later levels, it honestly gets very simple and sustainable in terms of time. I can log on, do all my stuff in 30 minutes and log off. Some consider that a detriment, but I kind of like it this way. It actually becomes more difficult to progress if you keep on grinding past those thirty minutes, as you have no more resin to spend, exp gains are abysmal and commissions are daily.

[@Assassin21BEKA]

@@ZombieBacon13 not gonna lie, now i dont have that much time and being able to simply do everything in short amount of time while still having the feel of progress is really nice.

[@zentun544]

sounds like a chore

[@TheTGOAC]

The game is only fun for 30 minutes a day?

[@Nixahma]

@@TheTGOAC That's how long it takes to do the daily tasks. You can continue past that point if you want.

[@frosty8958]

Once u get to end game, which really only takes a month of your avg game time for a gamer (4hrs a day), you can keep up with just playing 1-2hrs a day...far from a full time job lol. But mostly everything else is spot on! Good review!

[@mr.izanami1796]

I still play on a daily basis, the thing with the game is tho. There is NO rewarding end game content. The game is super fun until AR 45. After that it becomes "waiting for updates simulator". After every quest is done, there is nothing to do besides doing the dailies for Primogems and empty the daily resin. The Gacha system is honestly pretty fine. If u keep playing the game over a long period of time, you can get even 5 star units that you want easily, due to the Pity system thats build in. You need to have control over yourself tho. The new characters that get introduced regularly are suuuper tempting to pull for. So yeah, of all the Gacha games i think this one is actually pretty fair, it feels like a chore sometimes thats for sure and lacks LAAAAAACKS endgame/ fun repeatable content. Solid video Josh! :)

[@PowefulLucy]

I agree with most of what you said but I'd like to add that even if you try to get characters using pity, it takes extremely long time to do so. W/o including timegated event rewards, doing "dailies" doesn't even give you enough to get 1 wish which in the end just forces you to have patience of a saint if you want to get some character on timegated banner rotation. Also you can get character duplicates in genshin. For most characters (especially 5* ones) they give big improvements to their overall performance, making you want to get multiple of them if you want minmax a character but that usually requires you to do even more gacha. All of that also doesn't include so called resin. it is a stamina-like currency needed to receive rewards in dungeons and pretty much all repeatable instances or "events" (leylines for example). it restores at very slow rate (~180 per day) and you need a lot of it to get various materials (20 - 40 for general dungeons and bosses and 60 for weekly bosses) while after playing for a while you can use up all of your resin in less than 15minutes. Resin can be bought with money so overall it makes you wait a long time or pay the money. At the same time I'd like to correct a few of things in regards of currencies that Josh said. I agree that there are a lot of currencies, however many of them can be obtained only through gameplay. Paid currencies are only: genesis crystals, primogems, resin (and resin requiring materials), mora (through use of resin) and fates (gacha pulls). Materials for cooking, monster drops, materials for statue of the seven and similar ones are obtained only through gameplay or are much easier to obtain through gameplay than spending money for them. Also quite a few currencies are needed only for one thing and after you finish with it won't matter at all (for example Anemoculus for anemo statue of the seven). It's still debatable if that's too many paid currencies but quite a few of them you can get only through gameplay and require yout to play game for a longer time and understand them to see slight difference... To be honest in game there's even a gadget called Parametric transformer into which you can put most of gameplay related materials and get small amount of materials that usually require resin to obtain and you almost never run out of monster drops or various food materials from all over the map

[@tut-4126]

,,You need to have control over yourself". I have control, I persume you do as well, but there are people that just do not XD

[@kevinlin92]

Spiral Abyss is the end-game content, IMO. Trying to 3-star every floor is what has been driving my wife and I to keep improving and diversifying our teams, as mostly F2P players.

[@gingerbeargames]

At endgame you don't even explore anymore, you log in, run through dailies and resin and log back out. Maybe do a few quests if there's an event up. I will say that as a f2p player I do have over half of the 5stars and but the amount of work involved to get there is nuts for a new player since the events are largely what progresses your account via primogems or upgrade materials. I gave up trying to play this game ages ago and just log in every now and then because I really like the combat system.

[@mandisaw]

That's the thing - it's a clever combat system, combined with gorgeous art, and as a cosplayer those waifus/husbandos are catnip. But you could tell right from the launch that this was going to be a monetization mess. Heck, the Chinese players from before it launched in the West complained because there was *too much gameplay* and thus it was too hard to identify the correct path to pay-to-win.

[@ExceedProduction]

This is baby's first gacha, as they all screamed when the game released. These types of games are a slow burn for F2P players. You play a little every day and sometimes you can try and get a new character. The game has very little content that is actually challenging, so you can get by wonderfully with what they give you for free... or just coop with a whale, lmao. Jest aside, the worst mistake people make with this game is trying to speedrun it. It's a marathon.

[@besttrash6574]

They are working on it in a pandemic ofc u can't do anything reasonable at the endgame but they are working on it

[@maxplaysgamez-sharesgaming1756]

I'm glad Josh gave us an early warning of not picking up on this game with his detailed explanation provided in this video. I should've known better that it's not even worth my time of giving this game a try when my friend tried to recommend me this discount Zelda: Breath of The Wild by sharing it's official trailer of the game in our chat group. No surprises there, happens to all mobile games discount rip off of Breath of The Wild, mixed up with multiple currency system and a hint of EA Predatory monetization on lootboxes they called "Gacha" model to exploit players' psychology, and it's made by the freaking Chinese, which requires players to treat it as a "second job" in order to make any progress in that game, that's just the worst combination of all things. This is why we should stick to good old decent PC and console games, that doesn't require us to treat it as a "second job". Mobile games are just the worst side of the gaming industry. Mobile games used to be in it's golden age of games such as Angry Bird, Fruit Ninja, Flappy Bird, Unblock me and etc. At this point in time, their existence is just downgrading the evolution and quality of the gaming industry as a whole in the global market.

[@toramaru2490]

me too, pretty much login, do dailies and get the heck out. i like the gameplay, OST and story but i really hate how slow their content pace is.

[@Joao-lw5pj]

9:34 you can get only characters and weapons from wishes. Accessories(artifacts) can be earned by doing dungeons(domains), BUT dungeons spend resin, which recovers over time or you can buy with real money.

[@jacksonploof2394]

I have been enjoying my time with genshin impact. The combat is fast and fun, the visuals are phenomenal, and the voice acting (though not perfect) is pretty great for this style of game... But I do worry for the people who cant control themselves getting stuck in gacha hell. Game is great, give it a try, KEEP YOUR WALLET IN ANOTHER ROOM!

[@Raterex]

To add on, it is kinda weird other people are complaining about getting bored due to completion of storyline, being left with only events/spiral/character upgrading/character collection. I mean, Genshin Impact is obviously still a work in progress (storyline is far from over, devs need time to create new content). Also, every game has to come to an end, whether gacha or not. *shrugs*

[@valnadis8577]

The voice acting is phenomenal in japanese, chinese and korean, though! (if you meant the English one)

[@jackross8075]

@@Raterex It's so stupid. "After months of playing this game I got bored" yeah no shit. How many hours of free entertainment do people think they're owe?

[@Carobug]

I'm AR 47 and the only thing that takes away some of my enjoyment is the community pressuring everyone to get amazing artifacts, one shot bossess without buffs, etc. If you fully commit yourself to the artifact grind, you'll be nothing but bored and angry. At least that's my experience. I changed my point of view and instead of grinding I went to coop with my friends, helping them, goofing around and solving some puzzles that can only be done in coop. Yesterday the game worked so fluently I just decided to put on my headphones and enjoy the soundtrack and graphics, just running around the map and gathering random resources. Or sucide missions when I tried to beat lvl. 90 boss with characrers that are barely leveled up 😂 I also have guaranteed limited character next time I have a 5 star, and I have enough wishes saved to hit pity, so I can confidently gather resources for zhongli, which is pretty enjoyable too if you don't haste it too much. So in short, It's all about your approach to the game. You can pass the game without getting a bunch of characters or godly artifacts. Just do what you feel like doing!

[@gridlock1637]

True. The genshin youtube community can be pretty toxic. Guides that show off maxed out characters and say "f2p players can do this damage too" is dumb. Just remember that this game is PvE and you don't need crazy artifacts and a single constellation on any character to beat the content. It can be a great casual game if you view it that way.

[@bobbytaraantino]

True. The game will be boring if you make it like a school assignment or school exam

[@shionuzuki5549]

@@gridlock1637 Most of them are liars. They claim they F2P but they actually spend money. They're hoping to recoup their spending from monetizing their streams (and many actually are able to). Most streamers on gacha games who have at least 25,000+ subscribers and 100K or more views on their videos make enough to spend $500 a month on these games. Some successful streamers drop $5,000+.

[@Carobug]

@Its hip to timetravel But there's a limit to just being able to kill something and having to one shot everything. I do pay great mind to character builds. That's my favorite part of genshin actually. I'm currently AR 55 and I'm raising my third team rn, where Ayaka is a main DPS. My previous mains, like Diluc and Yanfei have way below 200% crit dmg if I want to keep their crit rate relatively high, and they still did GREAT when I was playing them. Outside of the higher floors of spiral abyss, the game was a piece of cake for me. Now I main Ayaka and she has over 70% crit rate thanks to blizzard strayer, and over 200% crit dmg, but to some players these stats are STILL to low? Even though she still does absolutely great and can do most of bosses, outside of Ahzdaha and the cryo ones by herself? There's also this stupid stigma about using food buffs, Bennett, Sucrose, Mona... Like what, why? I mean, I don't have Bennett or Mona because of my shit luck, and I rarely use food buffs, but the game was MADE in a way that you can and should use such supports. So why do we shame people for using them??? Why do we expect that everyone will get insane raw damage, even though the game encoruages us to make team compistions to achieve said big damage? There's a difference between making the game easier for yourself or being proud of your characters, and pressuring yourself to endlessly grind just so the community can praise you for having some bigger numbers on screen.

[@ItsSwissBeatz]

@@Carobug Players complaining about bad artifacts are brain damaged, honestly. Whilst spending money gives you more chances to get better artifacts it's still entirely luck based whether you get want you want or not. I spent more money on the game than most people, yet every other f2p player I come across has better artifacts than I do. Thankfully I haven't personally seen anyone crying about other peoples artifacts, the community seems to be fairly nice in most cases, so that's a bonus.

[@FieryRed19]

Not only do I love this man's content, I just enjoy hearing his voice. Thank you for the great content, Josh!

[@Arielelian]

The voice makes the vids. Lol. Like you could binge his entire channel based on the voice alone.

[@bongochongopongo]

To me it seems that going in with the mindset of rushing to endgame content is kinda a recipe for disaster here. Even though it is possible to beat the hardest content which is a dungeon with rotating enemies and added effects (Abyss) with on an entirely free-to-play account, it requires good understanding of the mechanics. So taking your time here and exploring the world, going through quests is the most relaxing experience in a game I had in a long time, it is great if you are busy with work/etc and have an hour or two in the evening left for games. You will start to understand the upgrade systems eventually, and If you have a problem with a dungeon you need to clear for any power up material, let other players help you clear it. It is also inevitable to get the highest rarity of characters and weapons sooner or later just from the free currency you get from quests and events, they are not necessary for completing any content though. You can save up until you see a character on a banner who you really like. But IMHO, if you are an impatient person or have a weakness for gambling, do not touch the paid store at all, do not spend money. It is not necessary (the monthly sub is kinda worth it though). P.S. Lisa is best girl fight me

[@D0MiN0ChAn]

​@Alarge Corgi2 Welp, even if there aren't 15 different currencies, the fact that there's still 5 like you said, certainly doesn't incentivise potential new players like me to try it out because there's just sooooo much stuff to apparently consider and unlock. It's like information overload right from the start. And gacha/loot box mechanics are always predatory. It's gambling, plain and simple -- only that you apparently cannot proceed in the game without making use of this system eventually when it comes to upgrading/levelling up your characters.

[@CruelestChris]

@@D0MiN0ChAn Um, you totally can proceed without paying a cent.

[@LoisyAbigail]

Lisa is indeed best girl. High five!

[@carlosx8603]

@@D0MiN0ChAn there are people who have done True F2P accounts that never once touch the gacha and still beat the game. Still doesn't mean the gacha is good but the "cannot proceed" is totally wrong.

[@CruelestChris]

@@carlosx8603 Well you can even touch the gacha, it's not like the game is particularly shy about giving you free pulls. No-wish is more a type of challenge run, like default weapon only in a shooter.

[@Belzughast]

So wait, I get a good single player for free? That's a good deal tho

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Pretty much

[@sitter2207]

I played it for a week then deleted it, pretty much got a triple A open world experience for free. Good stuff imo! Whales pay the devs a lot instead of us while we're able to enjoy it too because it's generally single player

[@unwokesociety1624]

@@dariuschong4574 well...i have 1k hours in borderlands 2,thats my shit

[@unwokesociety1624]

I take it back,farming primogems for kazu left me without a soul but i will forever be f2p

[@zephyrdian2408]

@@unwokesociety1624 Sometimes, it's better to just wait for reruns. He says it isn't a long-term game, but it honestly really, really is. He didn't go over the housing system or anything, which I personally LOVE I have been progressing, really excited for it, which takes a really long time, but I suppose he easily could've just done research since material is literally everywhere.

[@tomdavis3878]

Excellent choice of Kurisu as the stand-in for anime waifu in the final rating.

[@stormshadow559]

Good review, but this video really needs some context and improvement: The game is a heavy grind. Like many MMOS. Like other MMOs you have covered on your channel. I don't think that should be a surprise, especially when the game is advertised as an MMO anyways.... You kind of misrepresented some aspects of the game. The multiple "currencies" point was weird; you bundled materials you get from killing enemies and just playing the game with real money currencies as if they both needed to be obtained with real money. They don't, and you CANT PAY to make ANY character OP, you must play and grind it out. You may feel the need to spend real money to get characters/weapons, but as you mentioned you can play completely free with the base characters and weapons. You get LOTS of free premium currency in the first 30-40 levels, so it really only becomes an issue late game, but there are many players who have reached end game content with the starter characters. Plus you get many free characters by just playing the game. But everyone talks about how the gacha rates should indeed be higher. This is a single player experience ultimately; there are no PvP aspects. Usually paying for strong characters and weapons is heavily incentivized when there are PvP elements in a game (the whole StarWars BattleFront 2 fiasco), but this game does NOT have those elements. Literally any character can be strong if you plan the right team comps and invest enough time into them (expect Lisa sadly). END GAME CONTENT CAN BE BEAT WITHOUT THE BEST CHARACTERS AND WEAPONS. There are so many vids and guides to help illustrate this point. Even Amber, who many regard as an awful character (myself included), has a dedicated fanbase who have used her to clear the hardest content in the game (Spiral Abyss 12). The game is a grind, but it shares that aspect with basically EVERY MMO and dungeon-crawler. If you don't want to grind or play, YOU DONT HAVE TO. Yes the stamina system sucks, it has been criticized since day 1 and the community to this day still pushes for a better system and hopefully the devs will address that. THIS IS A FREE GAME. if you reach the mid-point of the game and feel like you have experienced everything the game has to offer, thats great and you can stop. If you want to continue, thats fine too. People who spend thousands on the game HAVE NO IMPACT ON YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE GAME because it's a single-player experience.

[@DarkFrozenDepths]

"15 to 20 hours to reach rank 16" If that's the case, you're REALLY doing a lot of extra content or something cause making a beeline for AR16 should take a few hours tops.... That's the point where you're expected to decide on keeping the account or rerolling for better stuff.

[@AnArtistInAVoid]

I would like to state that the strengths of the characters is based on how you upgrade them, tho some characters are considered stronger, tho only because of the nature of their abilities compared to others. Seriously though, beginner characters can be super powerful, if you know what you are doing. I would also like to state that upgrade materials are super easy to get. Some you get from literally just killing enemies, or even just picking flowers. Also, the gacha itself provides no necessary upgrade materials, only optional special upgrades for characters, or upgrading weapon effects, which are also optional,both through getting duplicates. Also I would like to state that while I am saying that genshin impact’s negatives are not as severe as stated in the video, I do admit that the gacha is extremely predatory towards people with gambling addictions, and that the resin system isn’t exactly great either(tho it has been generally improved from the original resin system, trust me) Tldr: some facts of video were mountains made of molehills, but it isn’t technically incorrect. Also don’t get genshin with the intent of gambling. That’s a terrible idea.

[@zhouenlai2569]

While generally sceptical of free to play games, I consider this one an example of a really good one. Why - because if you do not spend any money, the game is still fun. A lot of fun, in fact. Also, the biggest bottleneck, the materails used to ascend you characters, is actually not monetized IIRC. Also, wishing for a character when that character is "featured" gives you a very, very high chance of getting one. I ended up with plenty of 5star characters (including Jean and Mona) without spending anything. The game is Gatcha for sure, but a scam or trap it is not. I also think real love and passion has gone into the world and characters. This feels less cynical then Diablo4, let alone Diablo: immor(t)al.

[@tsurara6820]

yes, it is a gacha game. but if you play long enough like me (AR58), I didn't even pay anything and got 8 five stars chars with some at E2 and 7 five stars weapon. Just do daily and event and save up for the one you really like. Also, some 4 stars are stronger than five stars. But then again, I do log in every day for at least 30mins to do daily commissions and domains.

[@one8119]

Tldr: don’t play it do not interact with any one that play it

[@PandalfXII]

I've been playing genshin impact since it launched so i think i understand pretty well how it works, i totally agree that this game is made to sell you gachas, you said that there are like 15 or more currencies asociated with the gacha system but it's not like that, moras, artifacts xp books, etc are not related to the gacha system at all, the last thing i wanted to say is about the daily missions, you don't need any material to do a daily mission, there's like 2 mission that require items, food to be exact, it has nothing to do with the gacha system, the rewards of the dailys are the ones related. I'm not saying that the gacha system is good, it is awful, i just wanted to clarify that the only currencies related to it are the fates, the primogems, the genesis crystals and if u count it as so, the constellations

[@nezkeys79]

It's a crappy gacha game. I played the demo until I saw the wish boxes then uninstalled

[@PandalfXII]

@@nezkeys79 i haven't said it isn't i just clarified some things

[@mrkampfcookie2118]

You can buy Resin with real money allowing you to get Mora/Exp-Books/Talent-Books faster and you can also buy them from the trader for stardust/starglitter you get as leftover from gacha-gambling. So they are absolutely tied to real money.

[@nezkeys79]

@@PandalfXII whatever small inaccuracies or obsevations you think josh made might be true if you're a long time player of the game, but the bigger picture is that's not the overbearing effect that is happening from the outset and beyond. Genshin is often compared to breath of the wild. Whilst it shares some similar aesthetics the comparisons end there for me and even that is tainted by the god awful lootbox (sorry "wishes") system

[@nezkeys79]

@@PandalfXII lots of my psn friends play this trash and I just don't get it. Well to be fair they play a lot of free to play games so maybe they are just playing them without spending any money at all but we all know that doing that in these types of games is stupid because it increases the length of time massively to achieve anything, and the thought that every moment you play without premium activated etc is "wasteage" will piss off 90% of players. For example if premium gives me double of everything and a crafting bag every single moment I play I get half of everything and have to mixro manage my inventory on a regualr basis because of encumberance. Trying to play these types of games fully free to play is dumb imo

[@blobbowo]

imagine someone starting genshin impact when teyvat is complete

[@roxithromycin4157]

that ll be awesome

[@bob513993]

The vets will never respect a newb who comes in to a full map 😂

[@Sanguiris]

Why would anyone care about a full map or no full map lol

[@bob513993]

@@Sanguiris Because it’s gonna be like, 200 years before it’s complete at the rate we’re going, so they’ll know nothing of the absolute boredom of having completed all of the content in the game and forcing yourself to farm daily, just to be ready for the next batch of content you’ll be done with in a week, just to wait three more months for something new to do. It’s a vicious cycle for those who have finished the current content lol.

[@blobbowo]

@@Sanguiris see this? this is great satire, and i love it.

[@janosturi6680]

Golden rule if you go F2P: in every party you level up and gear one character fully (main dps) the other 3 is elemental or/and skill support.

[@michael7904]

im f2p and my main team is pretty much composed of 1 support and 3 dps , ...coz why not ? its not as bad as he makes it sound , the events , pity system , the primos from quests , I have soo much good stuff and AR55(end game) and never spent a cent , and I don't even play everyday

[@emberhunter8872]

Either that or everyone is a sub DPS and they combo nicely with each other, OR you just use your favorite characters because it's possible :)

[@arjunr2645]

Fair, actually. I do concentrate on some core characters over the others. But I think the fun thing about the game is you can use whoever you want. Even Lisa, who is acknowledged as pretty bad - only because she won't hit those big numbers.

[@0btuse]

I largely agree with the overall impression of the game. As other have pointed out though, the part about too many 'premium' currencies is kind of overstated. The only 'real' premiums are primogems and genesis crystals. Everything else is either secondary (the dusts) or just extra free goodies (sigils). But I agree, the gacha is pretty blatantly gambling, as gacha tends to be. On the plus side the systems around it kind of recycle back into it and Mihoyo tends to be pretty generous with free primogems, so its never felt like playing F2P is impossible if you are smart about picking and choosing which banners to dump into.

[@iHaveGrudgeAgainstUT]

I paused the video just to comment this - THERE IS ONLY ONE CURRENCY AND ITS PRIMO GEMS, genesis crystal is basically primo gem paid through cash. Everything else is unlocked by just playing the dam game. Resin is just time gating and even buying resins are limited daily

[@peterc.1419]

The gacha is gambling but it's not pushed on you. There are no prompts to pull or spend money at any stage in the game. You log in, you play. You have your events. These events give you free pulls and free primogems, With every update you get free primogems. With every award Genshin achieves, you get free primogems. With hangout events you get free primogems. By levelling up each character you can get 3 standard wishes. By collecting chests, opening up the statues, collecting the oculi etc, you get free primos and as you upgrade the different regional trees and statues you get free wishes, some limited, some standard. You can be a low spender, namely $4.99 per month and get an additional 3000 primogems per 30 days, have to be collected piecemeal daily. But so what, log in and collect and then quit. This game has excellent graphics, excellent voices - you get English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. It has subs in many other languages. It has great music. It has great cut scenes. It has a decent story. It is not lewd. Given this is not a Japanese game, the lewdness and child exploitation is kept to the minimum. There is no sexual innuendo. Some of the girls have revealing outfits such as Mona but that's a minority of the characters, The only thing to watch out for is not to get pulled into the gacha trap which is to pull for new characters you fall for. Given that you get advanced warning of any new 5stars which will come along you can save up for a 5 star of your choice and stand a good chance of getting him or her when the time comes. A normal game costs $60, that's 36, 000 primos per year and that can give you 225 premium wishes which will give you at least 3 5star characters and/or weapons. By doing dailies, collecting stuff, getting update rewards, etc you will be able to achieve double that, so after a year you should have at least 6 5 star characters and several 4 star characters after spending the equivalent of one AAA game price. And the game constantly rolls out new content.

[@anna-flora999]

@@iHaveGrudgeAgainstUT can you convert that currency into other things?

[@iHaveGrudgeAgainstUT]

@@anna-flora999 Nope, the only currency it can convert to is primogem. Currently the only other thing you buy with genesis crystal (top-up) is skin.

[@dualwieldroxas358]

Josh, i love ya, but you were way off on the way currency works. 1. There is only one premium currency, and that is crystals. With those, you can buy fates, resource packs, or one of the baffingly small and overpriced pool of character skins (nodody thinks these were done well, and basicallg everyone sees the skins as astoundingly badly implemented). 2. Constellations are gained through duplicate character pulls. And duplicate pulls of ANYTHING gives you a currency you can use for resources and even characters on offer. You cannot buy this currency, it is only gained through duplicate pulls. 3. Mora is obscenely plentiful. Even if you want to upgrade every character you have, simply by the events, quest rewards, and exploration, you will likely never run low. 4. Refinement is done through using duplicates thaf you pull, ensuring any pull you get can be used somehow. Fodder pulls are still useful for upgrade materials, and are found through exploration as well. 5. The game stagnated with updates during covid, but has since increased the pace and extensiveness of what updates offer. Unless you play it religiously for hours each day, there is probably something to do (especially with the card game which is not affected by any premium currency). 6. It is extremely friendly to casual players simply due to how much primogems you can get with very little effort and no money. I play maybe once a week for 30 minutes to tw ok hours, and i can still pull 1 5 star every update, unless i am supremely unlucky. 7. The game is extremely F2P friendly due to artifacts usually being more important than characters. Get a good roll on artifacts from a dungeon, and unless you are min-maxing, you never need to grind for that character in a very long time. And even the base team with zero pulls is perfectly viable to go through the whlle game with without much grinding 8. You can use primogems to refill resin, but no one but uber whales who already have money enough to eat gold leaf steak, or streamers, ever do that. Instead, most use fragile resin, which you earn through quests or the free version of the battlepass. But really, so long as you don't use them all early, you never really need to grind more than your daily resin allows. Genshin Impact is still predatory, that is ghe nature of Gacha. But its systems are actually very good for totally F2P casual players and hardcore alike. I agree it has some problems (weapon banners and skins are big ones), but i disagree that it is anywhere near as evil as something like Diablo 4 or Fate Grand Order, where you NEED to spend money just to progress

[@animesenpai1163]

2024 I've only ever spent like 5$ I have over 10 5 stars all built along with tons of other 4 stars also built. Also you can play the whole entire questline with just the characters they gave you for free. And they give you about 8 or 10 free characters.

[@Erik-ip3wr]

Im looking forward to you utterly destroing one of my favourite games right now :)

[@tut-4126]

Well, he did not really shittalk about it and that is to appriciate. :D

[@SOOP_or_SWOOP]

Good video, however, I would argue that monetisation point is not very accurate. In reality the abandons of resources is not meant to be confusing, game uses the mentioned adventure book to teach a player how to acquire sad resources and how to apply them. Also you can’t throw money at the game to get power, yes limited time characters and weapons can help you build a strong team, but all the content is available without using gacha at all, and game throws so much premium currency at you for anything baying it is entirely unnecessary. Ultimately I have come to understand this game as an adventure RPG about story and exploration with some resource management mechanics for the late game that is completely free and accessible for everyone thanks to a bunch of people who actually spend money on it

[@Thanatofobia]

I've been playing the game almost since it launched (i was just in time to get a bunch of free launch stuff) and haven't spend a dime on it. Got insanely lucky with the wishes and got over 25 characters, including Zhongli, Ayaka and Raiden Shogun. But the grind is insane if you intend to stay F2P. To the point i'm on my second month or 2 long break. So why do i keep playing it? Well, apart from the great game play, i'm starting to notice the disturbingly dark layer under the colorful facade in the lore. And i really want to see here it goes, storywise. For one thing, all the major gods are named after demons from western lore, as Josh mentioned. I know a little about that and "Paimon" is actually a demon king, subservient only to Lucifer himself, with a massive amount of power. There is no way its accidental they named your little floating guide after a literal demon king. Another thing, a little spoiler, almost all the gods have participated in a massive genocide against an city/country that choose NOT to have a god. And the ones that survived that genocide evolved to the enemies you are fighting most of the time. Yes, those furry troll like enemies, the Hilichurls, where once humans. Some of the playable characters are suffering from all kinds of trauma, burn-out symptoms or down right depressions. You find that out when you raise your "friendship" levels with them. Although it's really obvious Jean is overworked and days away from a burn-out. On the other hand, it has really weird, but funny, lightheartedness. Like, at one point you fight a boss called Tartaglia. You defeat him, but he ends up releasing some HUGE ancient demon-god-thing that almost destroys the city of Liyue. Yet after THAT you get to play his personal questline and he has no hard feelings as it was never personal, considers you a friend of sorts (because you fought fought well and defeated him) and you even help him maintain the lie that he is a toy merchant when his little brother comes around for a visit, because he doesn't want his family to know the truth and worry, as he does incredibly bad things in a very dangerous line of work.

[@1Crivella]

Only ghe abyss order enemy were previously humans. The hillychurls are a different species

[@ectothermic]

@@1Crivella Nah, one of the Abyss quests talks about them specifically. They were originally human but are stuck in a messed up immortality where their souls degrade as they age. Dain's quest is pretty neat explaining their origins and stuff about the Chasm.

[@monikamoon14]

The one exceptional mobile game, i got a hold of... Josh makes a video. Lets see what happens.

[@YouCantParkThereMate]

Try life after. Or life after:night falls for europe The free to play mobile experience can last a few months before gacha. Or days, depending on your resilience to pretty things

[@cupcakegirljen7]

Been playing the game since October last year and I gotta say: I love this game. The lore and story are great, the character designs are stellar, the graphics are also good (depending on the device you use), and the music takes the cake for me. Yeah, the gacha system sucks and it can be very tricky to play if you have gambling addiction, but it is VERY possible to play in F2P. I only pull for the characters I want. For me, I don't mind the microtransactions (I always buy the BP once completed) because I know the developers are taking good care of the game content and that is my way to support the game. I just hope the developers will continue listening to their player base as the game progresses.

[@aleks_moldi]

yea i agree it is very f2p friendly gacha game at least in my opnion, cuz most ar40 have at least 3-5 5* and most of the 4*

[@TheVerrm]

This game is honestly great for people with limited amount of time to play. It is THE BEST open world game on mobile by far. The only issue is you need to be smart and prepared about your spending needs. You can play the game without paying anything. You can play it with sort of a monthly boost (welkin) that gives you most important game currency each day. You can also spend tons of cash. No spending = hard game yet requires more playtime and a lot of planning from you to progress at a decent pace. Monthly boost is pretty cheap, yet still turns this game into a monthly optional subscription, but the game feels GREAT with that one, like a balanced between time and effort vs reward. Then if you spend a lot the game is trivial. It has some mechanics like that but overall this game is super worth your time/effort however you want to play it!

[@yol_n]

"You need to be prepared about your spending needs before playing this game" game design 2022 jesus Christ

[@elixxon]

It's not this bad. The game is focused on story and exploration and you can complete the whole thing with only the free characters you get at the start. There is time gating yes, but using primogems for Resin is the dumbest thing you could possibly do, it's really only for content creators and spenders so rich they can shoot money into the ocean. It's also important to keep in mind that these kind of games are slow on purpose. By slow I mean the game is designed to be a character collector and an important part of progression is slowly building up your diverse roster to counter various obstacles and enemy types. The resin gating is not a bait to spend mad bucks on more boss or domain runs, it's just to keep you from running out of the grindable content too fast and make the game feel like a bigger commitment and accomplishment even though you only logged in for like 30 mins every day for the last month to dump your resin on whatever boss or domain, then did your quick daily quests. Well the whole grinding and big number of character building is secondary content not needing too much of a commitment. The main focus is the exploration and the story. On that front you will have several dozen hours at least especially nowadays with so much more story available than at launch. If you reach the "lategame" where everything of note is explored and story quests are all finished then it's just waiting much like you'd have to wait for a DLC or a FFXIV expansion. Which is another thing. DO NOT treat this game as your second job. It's made for an overworked working adult target audience in China with little free time a day, not as an absolute black hole of a time sink you must dedicate your life to like several western games. Do or play something else if there's no other content or just quit and return when you hear about a new patch with story coming. And for the love of god don't believe the KZbinrs and the metaslave kids trying to tell you how important the Spiral Abyss is... it's not. It's just an optional challenge mode pretty much with insignificant rewards. Both theorycrafters and content creators are in a feedback loop for some god forsaken reason about how it's the most important thing ever like it's some endgame MMO dungeon you MUST grind and full clear and everything that's not perfectly tailor made for it and gives a free full clear is trash, which a sizeable number of mostly kids I'd wager is getting highly toxic about every now and then.

[@DrkRyu]

to be fair, multiple people around me have said they play the game about an hour each day and they never felt like spending money. if you're an absolute casual, you won't have a problem with the game's systems.

[@RenShinomiya121]

@@DrkRyu an hour? i logged into the game, cleared 4 mondstadt daily missions, grab the daily rewards, and my genshin cloud says it takes 5 minutes. probably would take more if i actually bothered to do domains everyday but i don't need materials anymore at this point since i built all the characters i wanted to build. it turns into a nuisance because of how short each play session feels since playing coop with randoms is pointless, and most of your friends is too obsessed with 100%ing each region.

[@BobardeZanzibar]

So basically it punishes you for wanting to be good at it?

[@RenShinomiya121]

@@BobardeZanzibar It's a timesink, but once you got the good artifact rolls, you'll often find nothing to do anymore and enemies just die in one hit. Most people find pleasure in seeing those dmg numbers increase, but yeah the main game is laughably easy once you fully built 10 characters or so (considering you need 8 characters for spiral abyss, and assuming you built 7 dps, one for each element, and 3 of the most used 4* universally applicable supports Bennett, Xinqiu and Xiangling. 4 if you want a Dendro support/sub dps in which you can get Collei for free). Only grind from time to time is just whenever you wanted to use/build other characters, which is just more timesink basically. Or when new content drops, but people often finishes the new areas within 2-3 days if they play on the weekends.

[@mfoltran]

Preach

[@konkoly5183]

It's a genuinely fun game. Love the environments. I probably put 100+ hours into it before I got close to running out of story content, and that was about a year ago. All free. Might have to reinstall and see what all has been updated.

[@lisztomaniacenid]

i paused playing Genshin due to lack of content and went to play Guild Wars 2 lmao Happy that you're covering this one. I played it full f2p and i can say you'll enjoy it without cashing out any cent. Playing it long enough it becomes boring tho. I don't mind grind, but the grind here is kinda boring and not challenging enough. Still, love the anime aesthetics and the overall feel-good vibe (the music and art is great). There will be a new patch soon and another part of the map will be uncovered so exciting times are coming again.

[@MissPopuri]

How you explained the combo mechanics between your party members, I could help thinking of the game Baiten Kaitos. It wasn’t any type of gacha game, but it has some of the over world adventure stuff and some side quests plus bonus objectives for completing certain tasks. The only thing close to gambling about Baiten Kaitos was its card game style combat system had poker rules which allowed for straights, full houses, and four of a kind attacks limited by the elements that will cancel each other out like fire cancels water/ice.

[@wuixxxxeee]

I mean.. you make some good points but not nearly as hard as you make it seem to get 5-star characters and upgrade your characters. All of what money does is make your grind faster. You also have a pity system that guarantees you a 5-star when after a certain amount of wish. Lots of the best characters are also 4-star characters.

[@MetalGearRAY675]

I would have happily paid for a version of this game that cost £60 and didn't have the artificial grind, but that's not what we got. I had a lot of fun with it, but once the story dried up, I was content to walk away from it until there's a major expansion. Full disclosure, I did spend money on it. I bought the £5 pass once, not because I actually cared about what it gave me, but because at that point I had put more hours into the game that I do most full price ones, and I felt weirdly guilty about getting that for free.

[@sgt391]

Game is made for whales, don't feel guilty

[@AdamTheCoop1]

I ended up spending about $300 on bit heroes before realizing I had become hooked. I am an extremely economic buyer in these games, so I stretched what I did spend and I would say I got about $100 of enjoyment out of the game... the rest of the time was anxiety about my 0.01% drop I need to advance my dude. Compare that to spending $120 to get BoTW and the DLC. That was a solid purchase, I swear to god, overmonitzed and mobile games drove me back to Nintendo.

[@imo098765]

@@sgt391 Its funny the most optimised way to play the game is $15 per month like a MMO sub, except you dont pay for the expansions

[@tridinh1011]

@@sgt391 no it wasnt lmao, you can easily do abyss with fully f2p acount and casual play, this asshole forgot to mention you can get so much primos just by just doing some task in the game that doesnt cost anything

[@CityXV]

@@tridinh1011 Are you seriously arguing the fact that a gacha game isn't made for whaling?

[@henryhamilton4087]

The monetizations and different currencies are pretty much a standard for Japanese style Gacha games tbh. Also Constellations are boosts that are acquired when you get duplicates of a certain character. You only get them from wishes, except for the Traveler's (your character), which you buy from the town vendor or from leveling up your Adventure rank.

[@jingliyuan8772]

Bro Genshin Impact is Chinese.

[@shiin1314]

Agree with u usually but even tho y need to log in daily u can achieve everything only with ur starter team( even the hardest end game content) its not an insane grind like described. After 3 months of playing im level 55 wich is pretty much the last level cap and u can access any content. I have all 4 star characters and many many 5 stars. Many characters are lvl 90 and most supports are 70-80. Skills upgrades are for my main dps chars all 10/10. I've spend every month around 20 euro wich is fine in my opinion buying the battle pass and the 300 gem pack wich gives 90 primo gems every day. I got all 5 star characters i wanted. ofc with this budget spending u wont have every character maxed out c6 but its not needed anyway. In the end I think reaching complet end game after 3 months of playing 1-3 hours is fine.

[@NoNameCherry]

When my friends invited me to play Genshin, I not only came into the game a year late, I also watched this video. I eventually ended up playing Genshin and, now, is already 544 days in to this comment, and have loved it thus far. The lore and story are great. Exploration is amazing. I have my fave characters. And I also have perhaps the unholiest, luckiest account in the gacha because I have not lost my 50/50 yet. Which means the wishes I save from events (in-game and online in the community) and through exploration (I'm a completionist and clear my maps for loot every nation) is enough or even more than what I need to get the characters I wanted. It's proof enough that going F2P in this game is very very possible. I have friends who are purely F2P as well, but have great, amazingly built characters. Now I was purely F2P for 8 months before I finally decided this was the game I wanted to run with to its end (three more Nations to go, or 4). I became semi-F2P, threw in a few dollars to buy a Welkin if I was lazy or a lower tier of the Battle Pass if I wanted the materials. But these were no way mandatory spending, like I was forced to just so my characters became stronger. No. Nor did I feel obligated to. I will clarify that what I SPENT was spent because I feel I got back more than I'd thrown in. 20 wins (20 5* characters obtained from the gacha through sheer luck alone) is already a steal for me imo. And it's a game that makes me very happy, so... hehe. I have my wins chronicled in HoyoLab if you want to see it. As well as all my misadventures.

[@damien27]

I feel like this is one of the most under researched videos Josh has done. From calling the oculi "currency" to constantly missing the "m" in primogems. Very poorly done.

[@deathblite9806]

ok, as a genshin player, I must correct you: many, many characters you can get for free, just by playing through events. And upgrade materials are not found in wishes. Weapons and characters are, and you can sacrifice weapons to power up your weapons. But it should be noted that you don't have to, and the game never requires a character from any of the banners to succeed

[@RocksonPlaysGames]

I've been playing since release and even if you don't spend money, there is a lot of good about the game. One thing that I've come to respect is that every single event since day 1 has been 100% free to play friendly. You can get every single event weapon and character without spending a dime. When looking at a similar game like Tower of Fantasy, where their idea of an event is giving you another gambling system for limited time cosmetics, it's clear which game is more player friendly.

[@skeletron1091]

artifact grind is an inescapable pain, but god i love the music

[@blade45678910]

firstly i'd like to say that i enjoy most of your videos and i usually agree with you on most things including the stuff from this very video i don't mention in this comment. you're right on most points however: 1. less than 1% chance on a 5 star - technically true, but you are guaranteed one every 90 rolls which bumps up the probability because you can just hit the pity timer 2. you are correct that the process of getting primogems is long and grindy in normal play for free, however nearly every month genshin has 1 or 2 events in game as well as a web event to give out primogems, experience books, talent upgrade material, and 4 star weapons. as to date the only thing i would consider to be a part of an event that you had to pay for was an alternative outfit for jean during the summer event 3. i feel like calling anemoculus and anemo sigils, as well as the other -oculus and sigils, in other areas currency is a stretch as you can eventually collect all of the oculus in a zone and you can eventually only trade sigils for mora after you clear out everything else in their respected stores. they mostly act as an exploration incentive. 4. you said it's a monetization trap to have as many "currencies" as the game does, however the only three that matter for throwing money at your screen are refilling your resin, buying rolls, or buying the two previously mentioned ones. i admit the currency juggling can be annoying, but with how long I've played it feels more like they are leaving open ended currency usage systems that they can change later for better or worse rather than intentionally be pushy. 4a. i have a problem trying to visualize some of the things you identified as currencies being a problem as they are really only currencies in the vaguest of senses in most of the cases. it would be like calling the stones of barenziah from skyrim a currency because you use them to turn in a quest to exchange them for the crown of barenziah

[@justarock9553]

Or just make the game 60 dollars plus extra for expansions. 90 rolls is a lot to just get one character for free at random. 900 single rolls is insane. This is why I'll never kneel to Chinese cash grabs.

[@blade45678910]

@@justarock9553 you say that like they are locking the zones and quests out behind rolls, idk where you got 900 from as that doesn't correlate to any metric of the game that you would need to roll 900 times. on top of that you don't need every character to play the game or to even optimize a single team to easily clear almost any content in the game. The only way it comes off as predatory is if you want to force yourself to solo group event content or collect AND max everything in the game, if you just want to collect everything the only things i would say could use improvements is the weapons from events because after the event is gone, that event may never come back so the weapon may not either which puts you in a situation where the game demands time you may not want to spend. i personally am not an item collector so that doesn't really effect me, but i will admit that issue exists for those who are

[@echo5440]

@@blade45678910 bro why are you dying on this hill. you can love the game and admit that the lootbox system FUNDAMENTALLY SPEAKING is predatory as fuck. its this games biggest problem that you cant just grind for the new characters. it isnt pay to win its pay to play.

[@echo5440]

making it a massive grind to get new characters is fine.making it a massive grind for a 1% chance isnt. the free 5 star isnt the brightside you think it is. grinding in this game is incredibly fun and easy to get lost in but...eh

[@echo5440]

making it a massive grind to get new characters is fine.making it a massive grind for a 1% chance isnt. the free 5 star isnt the brightside you think it is. grinding in this game is incredibly fun and easy to get lost in but...eh

[@temjiu9915]

I'm impressed! you dug into a gacha game! Always love your vids. I enjoyed this one as well, especially as a player who has played it since it came out (a few months after it was released). I play other gacha games, and It's very good to point out that this is a gacha game with RPG elements, not an RPG. And gaacha games revolve around their monetization. That being said, Genshin is better then most of them when it comes to the predatory mechanics, but they are still there. I would only point out as a counter to the time investment, that even if you have to be careful to stay f2p, you can still progress, complete everything in the game, AND even get some of the heroes that you want from the "gacha" system. and you don't have to spend your life if you don't pay...In all honesty it's actually better as a casual player to not pay any money. you can get an hour or so of play out of the game every day quite easily at end game, and still progress. Even though there's allot of stuff in the game, once you've explored everything, your gameplay will boil down to about an hour or two at the most every day. I can speed through the daily stuff on 20-30m If I lack time, or I can flush out 2 hours or so by adding other things to my dailies (like grinding certain tougher world fights for resources). To be honest, if you want to play more then that that's when it costs money, or you have to spend horrid amounts of time grinding stuff that's really not worth grinding. But if you stick to that core loop + possibly a bit more, you progress at a decent pace. The problem is that threshold...if you want more, then you will have to resort to spending your gems on just playing. They have banners (the thing you spend gems on) every 3 weeks with a different hero focus. On my f2p account I can usually roll on every 3rd or 4th banner with enough rolls to get that hero (it's about 70 to 75 rolls if your unlucky, they call it a pity system). And they repeat banners, so you're not missing out forever if you skip one. So I have enough of the cool new characters on my free account that I have no issues. There's even a youtube streamer that specializes in only doing this f2p, and he's beaten the game, and rolled on several of his favorite heroes. But it takes focus and control. So for players that want an exploratory game with good action combat I highly encourage them to play as well....but you need to be careful! It's still a gacha game, and spending your gems, even the free ones, can hook you into that loop. "oh man, I didn't get the hero/weapon that last roll...I just need a few more!" If you have a hard time setting your own personal limits when it comes to spending, avoid this game. If you are a recovering gambling addict, this game is cancer, avoid at all costs.

[@karolisn7956]

I played GI almost daily from pretty much 1.0, I have spent a grand total of £4.99 on this game and I can say with certainty that paying money in this game is unnecessary, play for 1h a day and you will EVENTUALLY get all the good stuff, but you really don't need the rare stuff to enjoy the game. The game is balanced for f2p and all content can be done with relative ease, The only advantage of rare and expensive stuff is to get more rare and expensive stuff. What I love about this game and why I play is the story, the world and the frequent events that give lots of free stuff (I am AR 54 with 5 lvl 90 characters incase anyone cares)

[@tukangojek1335]

These dudes complaining about gacha stuffs didn’t know how to store the primogems smh *looking at ready to pull 170 intertwined fate*

[@italojigsaw]

i have been playing around 6 months right now (Start almost on Xmas of 2021) and i have put a very little Quantity of money on the game (Just for Blessing) and from my perspective, is not so "predatory" as it looks. First Primogems are almost Common as mora, you can get it from Regular chest to luxury chest (from 2 primos up to 25 if im not wrong) + events (events give around 4 to 5 wishes + extras. and you can complete the event in around 4 to 5 days) + daily commisions + serenity teapot (From Characters) + spiral abism... i think i made my point about Primos. The game as it is rewards you for exploration and combat more than paying that's because you can have 5-star characters from the beginning but you are not going to lvl them up until you explore, discover o progress through the main story quest. as and example In my playthrough i got Thoma (4 star) very early in my game and he is from Inazuma... i got to play him until lvl 30 or so because he need a certain lvl up item from a boss from there... This game have so much content, The characters are so complete with their own personality, the map is so great, the music so awesome... if I have to give it a score, for the audiovisual i will give it a 10/10. For character design 10/10. for Gameplay 9.5/10 (i would like a soft reset option just to revisit certain zones again and to meet again the characters). The only problem i see in this game is that it cannot be replay. because the first time you get through the game you got so much things to do, that doing it again just overwhelms you. I disagree with the gacha system just because you can't get the character that you like, you must wait until a new banner appears and pray that the new character in the banner will be the one you want, i really don't like that. For example i want Kazuha, he got released around 29 jun 2021 he hasn't have a rerun until 2 months from now (11 jun 2022). and even when you have the rerun you must pray that the character that you will get as a 5 star will be the one you want, the game gives you something call "Pity 50/50" it consist that every 5 star you get if not from the banner like from ayato banner, if you don't get ayato the next 5 start you get will be the one from the banner. so you must pull for 90 or so wishes more for a guaranted 5 star character. (90 from the first 5 star that is not from banner (Like qiqi) + 90 more for the guaranted banner character).

[@robinchirps1775]

I got sucked into Honkai Impact 3rd for a while and sunk a lot of money into it before getting off of it. This company is amazing at making these so addicting and getting you to spend money. Their art is absolutely incredible though!

[@chronohax7186]

yea mihoyo artstyle is the only artstyle i can simp rn, other game just lacking for my taste

[@matilozano96]

I've been playing f2p since launch. After you're done with the story you just need to finish your side quests, explore a bit and then you just need to complete your daily and weekly tasks. Which are: - Daily: Do your 4 daily missions, and use your resin for the day so it doesn't waste. You decide how to use it. Artifacts, level materials, money. Up to you and your objectives. Manage your player house stuff. - Weekly: Do the world bosses for level material and weapon material drops. Farm your region rep. - Monthly-ish. The Spiral Abyss, which is the hardest content in the game and the battle pass thingy (there's a f2p segment that awards wishes). In my experience, just playing the game normally is enough to complete the battle pass at every cycle. No need to obsess over getting every weekly objective. All in all, the f2p daily grind doesn't take more than half an hour once you're used to it. There's also events every other week with decent rewards. Once you play for a bit you start hitting your pity counters and amass a collection of 5 stars. I've all basic 5 stars except for Jean, and some of them haven't even bothered levelling yet. Right now I have 3 or 4 five stars to usable level, and just grind whatever artifact upgrade seems easier to get. The game is definitely playable as f2p. You just need to be patient and realize that at times you won't have much to do. You can't nolife the game as f2p (and I think that's a positive tbh). Really, you can absolutely enjoy the game as f2p. You WILL be limited, mostly at first, to which playstyles you have available. You'll have to work with what you have, and sometimes a lucky wish will just change your plans altogether. Can't have every 5 star character, can't level every 4 star. Gotta choose.

[@davidloya4691]

just play for the story and colectibles in the map. you dont need to spend a single cent to enjoy the game, the endgame is just a 1 room arena with monsters.

[@TanonHD]

you only need to spend money if you want to 9star floor 11 and 12

[@joshbrosh6626]

@@TanonHD no u don't u need to know how to build your characters and use the elements to your advantage I'm f2p and completed the spyral abyss

[@TanonHD]

@@joshbrosh6626 you completed it with 9 stars on each floor? i wasnt talking about just completing it which is easy as f2p, but if u want to 9 star everything it is nearly impossible as f2p

[@davidloya4691]

@@TanonHD yea, but why would you want to do that?

[@TanonHD]

@@davidloya4691 to get all rewards that are available, for example the 200 primogems each month that u cant get if you dont get 9 stars in floor 11 and 12

[@___Hermitage]

Paimon, it is written, is the name of one of the friendliest infernal demons (Princes of Hell) recorded in the Ars Goetia, the Lesser Key of Solomon. When I installed the game for the first time and met a happy floating cherub called "Paimon," I already knew that they were after either my soul or my money.

[@Sytagzi]

I played Genshin Impact (GI) quite faithfully and completed all the daily events almost every single day from October until March. As you mentioned in the video, it is indeed possible to level characters and weapons to a pretty high level. However, this takes a lot of planning, resource management and patience to pull off. There are plenty of events to give f2p players the primogems to spend on premium items, but these are extremely limited on a daily basis. The game really plays into your FOMO, fear of missing out. As resource management is crucial in GI and you only get a limited amount every day (it doesn't add up if you miss a day or two), I felt like I had to play it every single day to not fall behind. Furthermore, the extremely rare 5-star characters are on a limited 'banner', meaning that if you don't get the character there and then, there is no guarantee to that character will make a return in the future. Halfway through March, I quit the game as it became extremely stale and felt like a daily chore to spend my limited resources. In the beginning, I felt like I was missing out on so much. But now after a month, I am so glad to not having to worry about my resources in a virtual game anymore, that made me plan my daily routine around it. It almost feels like getting out of a toxic relationship without realising how toxic the relationship actually was.

[@ayonce9894]

I feel like the best way to play Genshin Impact is just to return everytime there is a major update (e.g. lore/area).

[@bryy-r3p]

Yeah, I might return in 1.5 or Inazuma.

[@toramaru2490]

@@ayonce9894agreed

[@captaingabi]

All 5 stars can be pulled in every char banner so there is no FOMO at all. Maybe it is your OCD that is toxic? As an experienced engineer, this game is pretty good for me and my brain. But you need to let these toxic feeling go and be content what you get in the game, and then it is fun. It is basically a pretty good self disciplinary activity...

[@Bryan-ry6it]

@@captaingabi All i can say is "Take whatever the gacha gives you" by the time that you dont really care much about what you get is when the game actually becomes really fun

[@paj5529]

I think you overstated the importance of some of the currency You can get Fragile Resin for free with the battle pass, and if you're careful with how you spend it you can usually blaze through any grinds you need to do Artifacts can't be bought and are more important than weapons There is a built in system where after 90 draws you are guaranteed a 5 star character or weapon 5 star characters are usually only considered broken or gamechanging when they release and mellow down after a while Honestly it's not that bad to be honest, compared to other Gacha games

[@cristoph474]

Yeah, was about to comment on that. The review isn't bad per se, but it does contain some slightly misleading information

[@paj5529]

@@cristoph474 I think he didn't play much into monstadt, so he might not have unlocked the battle pass or done many draws

[@cristoph474]

@@paj5529 I wouldn't really consider Battle Pass as an option, as it is a form of monetisation, so not everyone would be willing to use it.

[@paj5529]

@@cristoph474 I'm not talking about the one you have to buy, I'm talking about the one you get for free-

[@OpticalArxenal]

@@paj5529 The free battlepass is pretty shallow. You get more than double by paying.

[@spacetaco048]

Every NPC ever: "Small floating child entity" Not even making this up, they all call her something along these lines lol But anyway epic gamer tip: You don't need to have self control if you don't got money in the first place :D

[@YayaBunWa]

Nah, you basically need to get rid of your credit card (or be in a position to 'never own one in the first place') for this to be true. I've seen drug addicts on the verge of homelessness who've had killer gatcha accounts in the stupidest of things... (Cough, definitely wasn't talking about myself. Definitely.)

[@spacetaco048]

@@YayaBunWa I don't have a credit card tho lol

[@kenpanderz672]

right. ive got 20 characters and almost all of them at/over level 50. id say ive only gotten actually tired of the game in the last two months, but i get the desire to experience the game again atleast every other day on average. its gameplay is everything i wanted from BotW but even faster and more varied. the environment interaction might be lacking, but i didnt expect this game to be physics-based at all anyways.

[@YayaBunWa]

@@kenpanderz672 Erm, you post in the right thread, man? Ain't no one talking about the physics engine nor how good/interesting the game is... :/ Welp, glad to hear that you like the game, I guess? Good for you.

[@YayaBunWa]

@@spacetaco048 I mean... You can be poor and own a credit/debit/whatever card, or you can be rich and own none. Besides that too, even without a credit card, you can still spend money online - cancerous shit like Afterpay exists, after all. Even just PayPal will do the job, know what I mean? Hypothetically, not owning a credit card can't stop you from buying & rolling 'dem sweet, sweet SuperUltraRare waifu-boxes, kek. lel, so much derail... You two know each other or something? My illuminati senses be tingling~ lmao

[@MySockSticky]

ive spent maybe $30 in 1 year of playing genshin, and it was for the daily primogems. i progressed a lot by doing dailies and powerquesting sidequests, 100% exploring earlier areas. even before i spent money i had multiple 5 stars. i now have 6 5 stars and havent spent any money since the last welkin moon which keeps me at $30 for over a year. you can progress and enjoy it without dropping a dime

[@toukoenriaze9870]

Lowkey would love to see him analyze elsword oof *also in one of the recent worst mmos or whatever u mentioned it was made by gameforge but it was actually made by kog games and nexon ... And gameforge is just one of the like outlets (they are also like 6 months behind)

[@asrea9704]

Spent 5 years of my life on Elsword. Josh if you see thus PLEASE review Elsword! 💚

[@mibi2509]

since voidels shut down there is no reason for anyone to cover elsword.

[@RennSakayagi]

Concerning the monetization, it's true that many things can be sped up by it since it can be used to by Resin, although not unlimited. However apart from new Characters and some 4* and up Weapons, there's nothing in the game that requires spending money. The game is designed to be played daily for about 10-30 minutes. I wouldn't call that a full time job. Also a little correction concerning 10:57, there are no dungeons dropping anything related to constellations. Those are gacha-exclusive and are obtained if you get a character you already own. My own opinion would be, it's a great exploration game for a while before it becomes a daily activity of about 30 minutes to improve your characters and adventure rank. It can be dangerous if you're leaning towards overspending but in general, it's designed well enough that you don't need anything besides a little dedication to finish all the content in the game.

[@LuckyNumberSlevn]

That's a good summary^^ Even if you don't want to play, but dont want to lose too much stuff you could just log in on the phone, craft the 4x Stamina store resin thingy, and call it a day

[@burningpapersun1]

I never spent money on the game but there were times I was very tempted to. I had a lot of fun with it. It's like that thing you have a fling with for a while and then leave but you always come back because it's just that good.

[@Toca_Moca]

Sums it up perfectly! Glad to see someone else mention that it is meant to be played for short periods of time daily and that spending money isn't necessary. A lot of people make it out to seem like spending money is a necessity to get anywhere or get anything good

[@YuYuYuna_]

"However apart from new Characters and some 4* and up Weapons, there's nothing in the game that requires spending money." Sooooo literally everything that is fun about an Action-RPG game lol... Getting new gear and characters/abilities and powering up is literally what Action RPGs are about.

[@TheChocolatBlanc]

I’ve been playing it daily since day 1 My thought: •The game is amazing, beautiful, the music is top tier , the characters are awesome ! •After playing for about 2/3 month you’ll get to the end game The end game is empty , even as F2P once your units are built and you’ve beaten the Abyss the game becomes empty nothing to do , the update are mostly “useless events” . •The game is therefore way too easy , no challenge , •Resin system (Energy system) : after using your 160 resins + daily commissions (5-30 min) there’s nothing to do , So my advice : Play the game for the main story (as a main game) (until ~AR38) After AR38 2 choices : -Quit the game and come back in 3-6months when we’ll have new story’s quests (The story is pretty enjoyable btw really worth) -Or Become a sl-ve and play everyday to get those primo+xp(currency to pull units) , upgrade your units (Until they crush the game ) therefore the game will (prolly) becomes a secondary game . But as I said you can clear the whole game’s content with the base units(Without even pulling after the tutorial) but surely it’s frustrating to not be able with the new “cool” units .

[@kyotheman69]

totally agree with this comment, i wish i followed this advice i should of quit around AR40, because AR45 there is nothing to do but artifact grinding and abyss it gets old quick and you run out story quests by then.

[@DarkCulex]

It's pay to win

[@HelloOnepiece]

@@DarkCulex against what?

[@DarkCulex]

@@HelloOnepiece You pay money to get more power doesn't matter against what it's pay to win

[@HelloOnepiece]

@@DarkCulex Maybe pay to get stronger fater, but not purely stronger. Still by your definition almost every game is free to play

[@tardarsauce1842]

Genshin Impact is still my favorite casino game in 2023, hell even in 2024

[@lloydalvarez2819]

On the one, I'm excited for you to rip into my sunk cost falicy rpg game, but on the other, I'm afraid to hear what this says about me

[@clear5136]

Facts, I love genshin but it does have flaws

[@uhk9428]

Gatcha games are based on sunk cost fallacy but at least genshin can be a super casual game that doesn't gatekeep content except for abyss 5-8 which gives an ok amount of rewards but can be impossible if you're a f2p and have very bad luck. For example I've only ever purchased 2 5€ monthly bundles which I suppose is fair for what genshin offers and got lucky by pulling 6 Bennett and 2 fischl. Knowing about eula I just saved up around 140 pulls and now I have 1 super good team and 1 good backup team mainly because of pure luck in the gambling aspect of the game. A friend of mine which is f2p too is struggling to get to the pity for zhongli but if he gets that he'll have both ninguan and zhongli which is going to be a super good comp.

[@clear5136]

@@uhk9428 Enviosity did it with only the base f2p characters, lvl 6 talents, and all f2p weapons.

[@uhk9428]

@@clear5136 ye, too bad nor me nor my friend have enough time to try the abyss 20 times per day untill we get the one spot in which we don't get aoecd by ducks or oneshot by squirrels. No doubt it's possible, it just takes too much time to have it being worth it with trial and error

[@sleepysera]

@@uhk9428 He did it literally just to prove it's possible though. In reality, no one is forced to stick to only the starting characters due to the inbuilt pity systems (4* ever 10th wish, 5* every 90th wish with soft pity at 70 wishes) so even if you are the most unlucky person in the world, you are literally guaranteed to get a decent roster of characters after playin for a few weeks. Of course, if you don't spend money you gotta plan ahead more which banner you'll go for, like you did with Eula, but in the end it's not like you can just get unlucky and end up without a wide range of characters due to the inbuilt pity systems :)

[@Coziest777]

Honestly, if you're prone to gambling addiction or have a strong compulsion to collect and complete all characters in a game, it's probably a good idea to abstain from this one If you were to only play the game every time there's a new region, new quests, or a new interesting event, then I'd say it's pretty great The problem arises when you want to try to optimize your characters to easily clear the Spiral Abyss, the bi-monthly end game challenge, then you might be compelled to shell out to do so 9:35 Actually wishes (the gacha rolls) only give you characters and weapons, not artifacts or materials... not that it makes much difference

[@Tymbee]

I mean, sort of indirectly, you can through the Starglitter. But that would be a pretty bad way to spend Starglitter, and I think he just misunderstood.

[@VictusPrime]

I played Genshin Impact for a few months when it initially released, haven't played in a couple months tho as the game was lacking content and I was getting bored. It's a pretty good game, honestly. But I think you made the whole currency thing way more complicated than it actually is. The only currency that actually matters in so far as "making wishes" (rolling for characters/weapons on the in-game slot machine) are the Primo Gems, every other currency you glossed over has no impact on making wishes and is obtained from playing the game for an hour or two each day. Don't get me wrong, the monetization of this game is predatory as fuck, but you definitely make it out to be worse and more complicated than what it actually is. Apart from that, decent summary of the game.

[@SaveMeXenu]

I actually was scrolling the comments to see if anybody pointed this out. Also him calling Anemoculuses and Geoculuses a currency made me laugh. It's an upgrade material, not a currency.

[@JUstMoveee]

Can confirm. Also if I heard right he said the stuff dropping for constellations comes from higher level dungeons. Which is wrong, they come from wishes aka real money aka pity for a duplicate.

[@claraestrada5080]

i played when it first came out and played the whole available content (wind and earth kingdoms). i never had to grind and i had a pretty good team. i got to do many many many wishes just from the primogens i got while doing the quests and exploration. yes, it is heavily monetized, if you want it to be, but it never feels pay to win as you arent really in direct competition with anyone other than yourself (as in how far you can reach on the different floor challenges).

[@Kasia_Luna]

I really enjoyed this game but I wish it was truer to an MMO. I'd love to be able to party with friends.

[@finnmurtons8727]

You can. Just no PvP. And for the love of god don't ask for it.

[@onigirls]

Thing is. Genshin was never advertised as an MMORPG. The community and youtube """"reviewers"""" ie people trying to build as much hype as possible to make $$$ misled people into believing it was. The company had no hand in that. So that's another detail that he got wrong in this review :/

[@BritishEcho]

AR 56 here. I recommend this as a side game to anyone who is playing or might be interested in playing it. I say this because while at the beginning there is plenty to do you will hit content walls constantly later on, to the point that all you will do is login to do your daily commissions to get your free Primogems. Don't go into this game hoping it will be your main, you will burn yourself out VERY quickly. There is SO much content planned that there is no reason to rush through it as there is no end yet, no where near. Just enjoy it as a casual experience. That's what im doing now and it's made me love the game again after I hit the burnout stage.

[@zoiwill123]

As someone that played every single MMO and MMORPG out there, Genshin is the game where I play the most with my friends even though is not a MMO game. Playing Co-op with my friends doing domains and events is the most fun I had with online games ever since I was a kid playing WOW or Ragnarok Online for the first time. The monetization is garbage but I've spent less than 30 USD playing it for 6 months, so I would recommend this game to anyone that wants to have fun and maybe co-op with up to 3 other friends.

[@Tharansis]

Let me rewrite your comment. "As someone that played every single MMO and MMORPG out there, Genshin is the game where I play 5 min per day with my friends because it is what daily resin allows me to. This is the best experience ever since I was a kid playing WOW" or Ragnarok for the first time"

[@zoiwill123]

@@Tharansis As someone that works and have a family to take care, I have 1 maybe 2 hours for myself everyday. I spend anything from 40 minutes to 1 hour playing with my friends, fighting bosses, doing domains, talking while farming stuff from each other worlds. So yeah, maybe I can't play for 8 hours straight farming mobs for 0.02% exp so my warrior get to the next level and I get 1 skill point which increase 0.05% of my DPS, but for me those 40 minutes worth more than the 8 hours of grind.

[@MyNameIsSalo]

this game has a lot of content you can access free to play, up until around adventurer level 25-30 the grind is smooth and you never feel like spending money. And the game does this by making it so the main way you progress is through those adventurer levels, and you cannot speed these up with money. Sure getting stronger means fights are faster so technically its faster to level, but its such a small difference as a lot of your time is travel and exploration and quest dialogue. And these factors are excellent, they do travel and exploration better than every open world game I've played besides botw. And the point where it slows down depends on your daily played time. If you only play 2 hours a day, you'll never hit a wall where you need to spend money, ever. Money will just make it so you have more characters available, you wont be much stronger. If you play 16 hours a day, you'll hit that wall on the 3rd day and spending money makes an insane difference. It's because the currency used to get boss and dungeon loot used to upgrade characters and items is recovered over time for free. You can spend money to speed it up. So treat this game as more of a few hours a day sort of thing, not an MMO, and you can enjoy it for months for free. Just don't allow your wallet to ever touch the game, if you have gambling tendencies then have a system in place that prevents you from spending money.

[@cicisstormshelter1076]

I was wondering whether to play this game because I am a FFXIV homie and spent $200 to get the gil for my quests, but this might be a good game to fall asleep on after a long day of grinding out FATEs and since I can get it for free, another free platinum. :)

[@r3zaful]

@@cicisstormshelter1076 you can just play the game 15 mins to get 90% benefits You can murder entire tevyat for artifact fooders if you are a f2p try hard, but for only 10% benefits.

[@lv100Alice]

i played for about 20-30 hours and had fun. i mean if free to play games all are this good i'll take it. didn't spend any money on it since 20-30 on a game is a long time for me and i need more than 1 game

[@peacefuldawn6823]

I'd love it if you did a video on Aion. That was my favourite MMO as a kid!

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

I will cover aion at some point, its on the list :)

[@peacefuldawn6823]

@@JoshStrifeHayes Awesome :D

[@timjack4650]

If someone saying they need to play Genshin Impact as a second job , i'm actually happy for them . Enjoy it to the fullness , people , until the game turn into 1 hour of game play daily.

[@havenprice]

It’s more like 20min now lol

[@peacechan4500]

@Hatwox especially if you need to wait to grind

[@smelyspartan]

@@havenprice The *least* they could do is make some kind of auto system for the super repetitive stuff like the dailies (and throw in a free daily pull, you know, that thing that most half-decent gachas usually have). Might help with player retention, considering how much of an absolute chore for the smallest drops of primogems the dailies are currently.

[@pixel9256]

@@smelyspartan I agree with the daily free pull , but i really dont think we need auto for anything ingame

[@TAKOHUMU]

In 2023, I've played almost since day 1 and took a 3 month break late in. This is one of the most exploitative games I've seen, but I gotta admit the world and story content doesn't disappoint, the combat has a lot of depth, and the quality of new updates seems to get better each patch. Fortunately the story content doesn't require insanely strong characters and you can definitely get by without spending a dollar, but you'll need a long term time investment if you want to guarantee gatcha pulls or have optimal builds. I think something Josh didn't mention is time gated events, they'll sometimes provide exclusive weapons that as of now, the developers have no intention on making available for newer players. There's an argument to be made that these would take up too much storage if they were all available, but I think its more of a problem of creating FOMO for players and that they can't miss a single event. If you have a lot of self control I think this is a great game to pick up and play, but I can see how its easy to fall into the predatory practices if you're the type to feel left out on exclusives.

[@LazySuperVillain]

Correction to Starsign/constellation: You unlock more stars on the Constellation if you recieve the exact same character when you wish, not by doing dungeons. So if you want to get Amber's constellations, you have to use some wishes and recieve Amber again and again and again. That being said, it is agreed upon in the community that the constellations are not necessary to be viable, BUT it does boost the characters power a significant amount. The only character that this doesn't apply to is the main character. Regardless, it is still pretty predatory.

[@skeletonwar4445]

Yeah, the Constellation system is by far the most predatory thing in the game... and he didn't even mention it, instead talking about a bunch of unrelated currency systems. So far, constellations haven't been necessary on any 5*, but the fact that they exist and there's no way to upgrade them without a dupe (for now) opens up the ability to lock character's playability behind paywalls.