Is Genshin Impact actually just a Breath of the Wild clone?
Disclaimer: This review was originally published through The Gamers Camp.
Ever since the pandemic, I’ve been looking for games to play that I wouldn’t get bored after a few hours of playing. Suddenly, miHoYo launched its newest IP, Genshin Impact. At first, I was skeptical of the game seeing many similarities from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but after playing it for a while, I found myself playing it since its public opening up to this date. I’m sure a lot of you have that kind of view towards Genshin Impact and I can’t blame you for it, though it’s time to change that.
This is JJ-kun of The Gamers Camp bringing you my review of Genshin Impact.
Genshin Impact, developed and published by miHoYo, is an open-world Gacha RPG for the Windows PC, Android, iOS, and Playstation 4, released in 2020, and soon to the Nintendo Switch. Seeing the game’s closed beta footage, I immediately dismissed the game as a Breath of the Wild clone with anime aesthetics and called it a day. Playing it for a bit, it immediately gives you the sense of a “new game” that you are sure to spend time on. There are enemies to destroy, resources to loot, or cook or craft, and there are lively characters that you get to interact with.
Genshin Impact welcomes you with an immediate fight-to-save-the-world scenario where you are given the option to choose between a pair of siblings fighting off a goddess-looking entity where the one you would not choose would be transported somewhere else. You are, then, isekai’d or transported to a different world called Teyvat. Two months after, you are greeted by your emergency food companion, Paimon, to start looking off for your lost sibling. Amazingly enough, just like any shounen anime, you are brought to different problems and issues or “arcs” in the game.
I did mention earlier as well that I was skeptical of the game, and yes I was heavily skeptical of the game and even have very low expectations of the game. In fact, I pointed out how these Hilichurls are just reskinned Bokoblins from Breath of the Wild, these waypoints and domains are essentially the same as dungeons in Breath of the Wild, the Statue of the Seven being Goddess Statues, the offering system, the Fatui mages, and the list could just go on.
Another one to mention as well would be the combat system. I heavily criticized it for lacking a smooth combat system. For one, in Breath of the Wild, while you can’t “sprint” to evade, at least you can attack head-on and perfect-parry the enemies, Genshin Impact does not have that. Breath of the Wild was just heavily over the top than Genshin Impact and that is a fact that I swallowed, that is until I reached Adventurer Rank 14.
The first half-a-day of gameplay may feel like a drag just because it might take a while for you to level up and get higher Adventurer Rank where the story is locked behind, and of course, unlocking other modes on higher ranks. By Adventurer Rank 14, you unlock Daily Commissions, 4 subquests that are given to you to complete that will give you an enormous amount of Adventurer Rank Exp, something that is very important especially in the late game.
Ever since unlocking these features, everything changed. See, if Genshin Impact was solely single-player, which it is for the most part, then I see no reason to not drop this and just pick up Breath of the Wild, but what distinguishes Genshin Impact from Breath of the Wild is its co-op mode, the gacha salt, its MMORPG elements despite not being MMO, the battle pass, and things that make you go back and not get tired of it. It gives you a reason to go back and play it. Although, of course, being a gacha game means there are microtransactions and energy system, which, for this game, takes form of resins. You only get a maximum of 120 and it restores 1 resin per 8 minutes, or you can spend primogems, the game’s premium currency, or Fragile Resins to recover 60 of it. Resin is basically your visa to do anything. Doing bosses, doing instances or domains, getting Adventurer Rank, and so on.
But you know what’s the best thing about this game? It’s free for most devices. Yes, there may be microtransactions, there may be RNG to the items you are getting, much like an RPG, and so on, but it’s free and you can play with anyone with the cross-platform feature. It’s not forcing you to like it, nor do you have to force yourself to play it, unlike Final Fantasy XIV, a subscription-based MMORPG where if you don’t play on the days of your subscription, it’s basically wasted money.
When it comes to presentation in visuals and music, I guarantee you that it’s one of the games that has given us one of the best musical scores of all time in a video game. As far as visuals are concerned, while it’s not everyone’s tea, it fits perfectly for the game. And speaking of visuals, whatever you see on the PC version, is what you also see on Mobile and PS4, which is interesting because seeing how great-looking this game is, to be ported on the mobile without any problems is such a huge step, of course that being depending on how great your phone specs are.
But, all in all, which would I prefer, Breath of the Wild or Genshin Impact and would I recommend the latter? I’d have to say I have two answers: If we’re talking about solely playing single player, then might as well just play Breath of the Wild, if you want to have fun with your friends, have waifus, gacha salt and more, go for Genshin Impact, and yes. Without any biases at all, I do recommend playing Genshin Impact even if you’ve already played Breath of the Wild. It is a refreshed take on what Breath of the Wild had in 2017.
REVIEWED ON PC
THE GAME WAS REVIEWED DURING 1.0 VERSION.
