Here is it everyone, this is all what we've been waiting for, let's enjoy this game and have a good time with it!
Goodluck to everyone and let's have a great time playing with it.
Okay here's my first impression.
Warping system is similar to Genshin's wishing mechanics, as they both use 1600 of their premium currencies to initiate a 10x pull, but since this is a turn-based game, I found it weird.
You see, most turn based games are accessible with their characters but HSR is the same gacha hell as in Genshin, with domains, a carbon copy of resin system, and how characters 'ascend'.
Though, their turn based combat is unique but the rest are just quite uninventive, such as the relics basically another artifs system the same as genshin's.
Then, we have craft esse- I mean light cones. Self explanatory... And the restriction to use light cones on specific assigned paths on characters, it's a very ass move, I don't see them as weapons at all like genshin, it doesn't have a single aspect for it to be restricted to specific paths.
Now, the good points, they nailed it with the graphics yet again, as well the sfx and vfx.
I can't quite judge the story yet since I am just starting out but I could see it has a very familiar character set up, with Dan Heng being the Bronya, March 7th being the Kiana and the MC as whatever but it feels very familiar.
I did have high hopes for this game but it just went down for me, don't get me wrong, with all so many criticism, I would still play it to see how the story plays out mainly.
Overall score for me right now:
6/10
hear me out 📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢
this game is very good , graphic are best and Story is good too.
Characters are very likable , you can find top tier Waifus in this game 🥵🥵 , as a straight guy I don't care about male characters , i want to see big booba and ass 🥵🌚 , so if you are a waifu collector than this game is for you.
story - 9/10.
graphic - 9/10.
gacha style - 10/10
Characters - 10/10.
Hot waifus - 10/10.
Ass 9/10 , booba - 9/10 , please make them big.
We want more , all men of culture should play this game 🔥🔥🗿🌚.
I'm not mad, just disappointed.
Can't believe I waited years for this.
Pros:
- Good graphics
- Great animations
- Great optimization
- Good soundtrack
Cons:
- Dogshit gacha rate, it worked in GI due to it being an open-world action game and 4-star characters being on par with 5-star, doesn't work here, its turn-based nature means you need different characters to do different things and the stats check is much more heavy.
- Some of the worst turn-based combat systems I've ever experienced. You have no choice in combat, it's either NA to gain energy or skill to spend energy, and the skills are as bland as they get. The only choice you really need to make is when to pop ult. I'm not expecting the game to reinvent the wheel, but at least reach Dragon Quest level of depth, geez.
- Team building is extremely limiting, you either bring characters that can exploit enemies weakness or else it's a stat check. Debuffs, buffs, status effects ir hell anything that brings depth to turn-based combat mean nothing if you can't break.
Overall if you really want to play it, play it as a side game and never, EVER spend money on it, the value is simply not there
Hardware:
Mobile: ASUS ROG PHONE 6 PRO 18GB RAM
PC: ASUS TUF Gaming. Max Graphics.
TLDR: Genshin but in space. Generic story line with generic turn based gameplay disguised with beautiful graphics and big voice acting Japanese casts.
Long review below,
Hello fellow Honkai Star Rail players,
I wanted to take a moment to express my disappointment with Mihoyo's business policy on their games, Mihoyo is basically DENUVO. It's frustrating to see that they have adapted the same business model used in Genshin Impact, an open world game, and applied it to Honkai Star Rail, a turn-based game. This is really unusual, a turn-based idle game with ridiculous low rates.
I wouldn't be surprised if they used the same business model for their upcoming game, ZENLESS ZONE ZERO. Mihoyo is indeed a big corporation so everyone's blind to the issues, because Mihoyo.
The low rates and lack of opportunities to obtain the characters and items I want have made the game feel more like a chore than a fun experience. I believe this decision has impacted the game's balance and its players' enjoyment, leading to a possible and potential decrease in the game's player base, especially it being a turn-based game. Hence the criticisms.
I already gave up on Mihoyo listening to their customers, as a player who actually spends on games (PGR, Project Sekai, Eversoul, PSO2), I still hope that Mihoyo will listen to feedback and consider adjusting their business policy to fit Honkai Star Rail's gameplay style and audience. It's the bad kind of predatory, especially for a turn-based collecting game.
I encourage all of you to share your thoughts and opinions constructively and make your voice heard through feedback channels available.
basically remove the only enjoyable part of honkai
and then extended the worst part
not disappointed cause i knew it though
they just pulled a mini part of honkai3 made it into a game
Mihoyo CEO admitted use AI to do plot lines
They SKIP their work of filling plots
but force us to NO SKIP and watch their AI filled plot lines
Filled with tables and boxes in the whole map that trap the hell out of you
moving around in this is painful. so dumb so unnecessary
while people thought they put great effort in this
from the overdid animation that doesn't even fit
but you know it's a low budget shit keep reuse resources to fill a box and throw you init
other than the animation which they keep advertising
what they said better animation or facial expressions don't exist. In fact it's worse since they were pulled out from h3
while in previous works people can still making videos of their gameplay fighting challenges
now there's no content for creator to make video either
i hope they get a big slap from this
sadly they won't lose much since everything is pretty no cost
what's worse is seeing people paying and supporting this
This is a turn based RPG game. Everything that you wish they could improve more on Genshin and Honkai Impact implemented here. Much lighter game than Genshin. Even you can bring your starters to current late game content as they're really good. Hardly any downside I can think of other than it being a turn based RPG game which might turned you off if you're into action. Definitely recommended.
Is it worth trying?
I have reached a point where I need to wait for update to continue the story so I think I played a good amount already. Lvling up your account could take awhile sometimes.
It's a classic turn based game but with shield to break and genshin like system. If you don't know what it is then you have a weapon which is Light cone in here which is unit type specific. Relics, this game has 6 slots, a 4pc + 2 pc effect. Skill levels and dupe system for light cones and units.
Units have different types and typical elements. You could use same elements but it's possible that you won't be able to break shields which in turn could make a stage longer or even harder if the enemy has a strong special skills.
The story is unskippable as well as the ultimate animation which i get that it can get tiring for some.
The story is good for me. But I know some wouldn't like the style especially with other references from other stuff like movies, series, memes, etc. There where times when the main and side story isn't for me as well. But just a few for now.
Pity is similar to genshin which is 50/50 at 90 for units, 80 for light cones and guarantees rate up on the next 90/80 that carries over to next event banner. Standard banner has similar pity but it's separate count from event banner.
The game has energy system
Now what do we farm using energy here? It's relics(you can get basic purple rare relic set on chest on the 3rd main map and different set as acct lvl reward), skill lvl up mats ascension(limit break) mats. World boss can also drop some of those + currency for a few purple rare light cone on shop. There's a few yellow rare light cones and standard ticket on a different shop where it also has farmable currency. You can only farm those currencies a few times a week.
For now it's undeniable that it's a well made f2p mobile and pc game. It's still just not for everyone since people have different preferences.
I skipped value because I only value skins, I don't care about battle pass and that monthly thing but I know others would so it's better to skip it.
I normally don't do mobile game reviews because there usually isn't much to talk about, but this one is an exception. Not for how extraordinary it is, but for how painfully mediocre it is after being hyped up as one of the biggest game releases of the year.
Do I like this game? I'll be very honest: No. And there are a couple reasons why. Well, a lot of reasons why.
Honkai Star Rail started off very strong for me. I loved the visuals, I ADORED the music and the game would seemingly stick with me. External factors are incredibly done at first sight. Controls are well-established, and it ran smooth for me at least. After the initial hour though, everything started falling apart. This game left a sour taste in my mouth and is one of the most glaring example why you should never shoehorn an open-world into every game, or your story into the players' head.
Let's start with what is possibly the weakest point of the game. The open-world quite literally adds no positive value whatsoever to the game play experience. Sure, it is nice to go around looking at the new zones for the first time around, but other than that, it makes the game such a slog to go through. It trounced every good impressions it made by being so tedious to the point I fell asleep from trying to get around in the world. I honestly think this design choice is just to ride off the open-world trend. Sadly, as did many other games, Star Rail failed to encapsulate what makes an open-world interesting: player agency and exploration. Instead, the open-world in Star Rail only serves to make everything you do take longer, and you don't really have a choice to explore, because there is nothing to be explored. Random chests scattered around the map is not exploration, it's treasure-hunting; and incentivizing exploration by premium currency takes the fun away from exploring. The world at least has some form of livelihood for itself without your involvement, but this is immediately cancelled out due to how poorly arranged and designed the events are. There are too many examples but if I have to give one, it would be the Hide and Seek quest with the Moles. Seriously, who made this? Who gave it approval to pass through into the actual game?
To sum it up, the open-world is merely an opulent showcase of what Mihoyo can do, and how much digital land size they can put into a game, but they have a very long way to go to properly make the open-world an enhancing factor for the core gameplay.
As for gameplay, it's the second weakest point. It's uninspired, sluggish, dry and poorly balanced. To start it off, the break system is one of the most egregious break/poise/shield designs I've ever seen in my life, and I've played countless Dark Souls ripoffs. This just takes the cake completely for limiting the break meter to units whose elements (combat style) the enemies are weak to. This design choice is so cynical it seems like Mihoyo is actively limiting the ways in which you can build teams and heavily forcing you to use their content-proof formula: 1 ST damage dealer, 2 supporter/healer and 1 AoE damage dealer, however the damage dealers necessarily need to have the ability to break to do decent damage. Right of the bat, Dan Heng himself is the unit that exposes this design choice. He does very decent damage towards enemies who are weak to Hunt, but barely shows any number to the enemies who aren't. I'm fully convinced they made it this way to force you to roll for at least 2 units for each combat style and when your free resources would finally run dry, you will spend.
Besides the particularly bad break system, the other factors of the game play are nothing special. It is indeed just turn-based and nothing else, apart from the aforementioned gorgeous visuals. Stealth hits have been done better before, by Mihoyo themselves too. Elemental resistances and bonuses have the same multipliers as every other gacha game. Normal hit & skill & ultimate & passive, bog-standard. To be fair, it is hard to be innovative and unique in a very saturated market that is gacha games, but the way they put their spin into the game very severely hinders their potential. Star Rail could have had great gameplay, many beta testers like myself have had plenty suggestions, but we ended up with an extremely mediocre and lazy battle design. For how extremely hyped and advertised this game was, Mihoyo did not deliver. I am disappointed even though I didn't have high expectations already from playing CBT3.
The story is weak, barebone and it's not thought-provoking by any means. It shoehorned topics that the writers did not know how to write properly, and also threw a ton of exposition at your face. They just spell it out for you at every turn, not letting the players have any sort of theorizing before already being met with the conclusion. The drip-fed Cocolia lore is an example: they manufactured the conflict and told us where the conflict is right away. There is no subtlety. This is standard for a gacha game - to have a story just for the sake of having a story - but other games do not force you to endure their stories. I have absolutely no attachment nor did I feel any empathy or sympathy for the characters, despite Mihoyo's efforts at trying to conjure emotional reactions. The story is a merge of tried and true fictional tropes that did not glue together. And the story lost me when they mishandled the vagrant - miner conflict. Never have I seen such an on-the-nose, black-and-white plot being thrown at my face and never have I been forced to swallow that. It was so one-dimensional, in the sense that it was openly pejorative towards the vagrants - it was apparent they were wrong. There was no substance nor subtlety whatsoever. Poor writing aside, I personally feel that a lot of the dialogues are cringeworthy. They were trying too hard to be hip and cool just for it to backfire. Some moments were genuinely funny, but the rest are quite insubstantial, even for a gacha's standard. And what's more is that you are forced to read all of this. I won't get to the misrepresentation of science and astronomy as a whole but I feel like it's only a problem for nitpicky people, a layman wouldn't care if the science is entirely made up of jargons. But keep in mind, you still have to read all this.
Oh the gacha system. 0.6% for an SSR/5★/whatever you want to call them. 90 for pity and 50/50 for rate up unit. Make of that what you will.
After all that, what do we finally have? A game whose world structure, gameplay, story and user experience are all at best mediocre and generally woeful, fully carried by visuals and audio quality, yet those are normally not the factors for player retention. Do I absolutely hate the game? No. But I found it tedious, sluggish and boring to play. I absolutely love the external factors, but the core factors either need heavy optimizations or full on reconceptualizations. I desperately hope Mihoyo listens to the feedbacks and make large scale overhauls to make the game better because it's such a waste for how good it looks and sounds.
I overall have not enjoyed my time with Star Rail since CBT3 until now. What I want changed is already suggested by others. My final thought is that Star Rail broke my heart because of how disappointing it is compared to what it could have been.
i'm not really a fan of turn based games so i was a little hesitant from the get-go, but it's actually been pretty fun!
updated review: as a player of the "mhy big 3" (hi3, genshin, and h:sr) this one is probably my least favourite of them, mostly due to the combat system. the one good thing i have to say about it is that it has an auto option for some fights which is great for dailies. obviously, this is my own personal opinion, since there's probably an audience who enjoys turn based games or there wouldn't be a market for it.
really hate how they reused the artifact system from genshin. i'd rather it was more similar to the whole stigmata thing from honkai, or really just something new and simpler. since you naturally end up having to build more characters because of the turn based element with how there's type counters and such, having to grind exp materials, boss materials, talent materials and then artifacts on top of it is... something.
speaking of having to build more characters, i wish they'd have some kind of easier way to get more of them, i guess? i don't really play that many gacha games, if only for my own sanity, so i don't know if this is standard, but it just feels odd to have no easier way to obtain characters in a game where type counters and meta seem to matter much more. something similar to how sp valks are farmable in honkai would've been a good choice, for example having some farmable 4*s.
the story is good so far, i love to see both new and returning characters, really wondering what the fate of himeko will be this time
there's a decent amount of dialogue that you get for interacting with objects around the map which is always a plus for me. it's really neat how you get icons for some quests, my favourite is gepards portrait of mc (would love if we got all the drawings as icons, including the ones pela drew)
the music is, as always, great, that's become a given for mhys games.
over all, i'm probably going to continue playing it casually for now, if only for kafka.
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