Hey Folks! I thought I would take a detour from my usual ARPG nonsense to talk about something else I have been playing the last few nights. I realize that practically everyone has been talking about Honkai Star Rail, but I’ve also dipped my toes into those waters. In truth, I started playing shortly after the game launched but apparently did not play long enough to save my progress. This was a little weird to me but it seems you have to complete the entire first tutorial segment… which is not exactly short… before the game actually saves your account. I am not exactly certain at what point this takes place, but my guess is once you’ve defeated the first boss and been presented with the choice of staying on the station or riding the rails.
As a result, I have a much high UID in the sequence than I thought I did, because my account was not actually finalized until over the weekend. I need to install the game on my phone to see how well my roughly five-year-old device handles it. In order to do that I will probably need to uninstall a bunch of junk that I am no longer playing. I have this bad habit of randomly installing games when I am bored… playing them for a day or two and then wandering away like a bored toddler. I think this game will probably work much better as a mobile game than Genshin did for me, given that everything is turn-based and high-speed inputs are crap on a touchscreen device. I remember when Genshin launched there was talk of a Switch version… and I really wish that had come to fruition because I also feel like Honkai Star Rail would be a perfect fit for that device. I suppose I could sort out how to launch it on my Steam Deck because there is very likely a solution for that just like there is for Genshin.
Anyways if you are playing feel free to friend me up: UID – 604908816
I think what I dig the most about Star Rail so far is that it feels like a really good turn-based JRPG. You can definitely see how far Hoyoverse as a company has come since the release of Genshin. Admittedly I have not played Genshin Impact really since maybe the first or second major content area was added to the game. The last region that I explored at length was Liyue and I never really got into the big mountain region that they added after that. I am sure that likely Genshin has also improved its storytelling, but from someone who heavily played that game at launch and then walked away… Star Rail feels like a massive boost in quality levels. The combat and designs are also pretty great and so far I am pretty happy with the default cast of characters that you get handed to you along the way.
I am not very deep into the game and have just landed on the first planet after the tutorial space station. So far I am digging the story enough that I would probably keep playing the game just for that alone. I am also really enjoying the turn-based combat and setting up combos that feed off each other to try and burn through encounters quickly. I do however wonder if part of the reason they decided to go turn-based with this game was so that they could add the ever-present mobile game auto-battle option. I’ve not turned that on so I have no clue how successfully it actually does at managing combat. What I really dig is that the game is a TRUE turn-based, and not that active time battle type system that Final Fantasy games shifted to. You can sit there mulling over your next move for as long as you like and the game does not seem to hurry you along in the process.
Combat is flashy as heck, and this goes for your moves as well as those of the enemies you are fighting. This makes everything feel sufficiently epic, and I really dig the main character this time. Pretty much the entire time playing Genshin Impact I was using a cast of side characters and never actually using the default Traveler. The game gives me enough options in the dialog to feel like I am having some impact on the type of character that I have chosen to be, without getting bogged down doing so. I also really like that I am a melee… but that is probably not going to sit so well with my finger-wiggling friends out there. You can of course create a party NOT including the main character just like you could in Genshin but you will ultimately have to wait until you get enough side characters to make that functional.
I think ultimately my fate with Honkai Star Rail will be determined by if I can manage to play it casually. I do not want to spend any significant sum of money on this game, which means I will be relying on the slow drip of cash shop currency and free pulls in order to get additional characters. I’ve picked up a few new options but so far none of the much coveted five-star champions. I think my frustration with these games in general is the power difference between getting a five-star and sufficing with the much more common four-stars. Since you spend so much time and resources in leveling characters up in a game like this… getting a very powerful character early on really improves your overall experience in the long run.
If I can manage to play this as a casual story-driven turn-based RPG… then I think I will be happy. However, I have this bad habit of trying to go deep into the game as I did with both Genshin Impact and Tower of Fantasy, and when that happens… I get frustrated by the artificial walls that are put up as barriers that require you to dig into your pocketbook in order to get through them. So long as I can keep the mindset that this is like a Final Fantasy single-player game… I think I might just be okay. It does not really FEEL like an open-world loot-grinding game which probably helps my enjoyment. We will have to see what this game looks like once I have depleted the main campaign for content. I noticed there is a similar system to Genshin in that you can only do so much in a given day without paying for additional turns, so we will see how badly that impacts my progress.
Ultimately this is like every other one of these Gacha games in that they are free-to-start, but likely not free forever. We will have to see just how much FOMO is baked into this particular game, and how hampered I feel by things that I can ultimately gain for free. It isn’t that I mind spending money on games, I just don’t like the sort of spending that is attached to gacha mechanics. I would rather a game like this launch with an honest $50-$100 price point that allows you to feel like you have everything you need in the game. That is unfortunately fundamentally against the design of this type of experience because they are “Gone Whaling”. So instead my mindset has been to try and get as much fun out of them as I can until I hit that paywall and then wander off for a while, maybe to return at a later date to gobble up more free content.
Like I said above, if you are also playing this game feel free to friend me. Not sure if there are any passive interactions between players like there are in something along the lines of Pokemon Go or not. I can’t guarantee to be terribly active because this is absolutely a side game for me right now.
