Let me show you the kind of sentence I look forward to after 10 years of game journalism. Genshin Impact feels built for console and PC but also looks great and runs well on your mobile phone. A colder take would be hard to produce, but this is an important part of Genshin Impact's legacy. The best mobile games have been so good for so long that it's rare to get that kind of surprise anymore, that technological whiplash and disbelief, but Genshin Impact can still pull it off. What a treat. It's an exceptional open-world action RPG despite several progression and monetization hangups endemic to the free-to-play gacha space that Genshin helped revolutionize. It is quite simply some of the most and purest fun you can have on a phone in 2024.
It's hard to evaluate Genshin Impact purely by the standards of either open-world or gacha games, in part because there are two distinct ways to experience it. Treat it as a normal, premium open-world game and you'll find hundreds of hours of adventure waiting. Explore the rich, colorful world to unearth secrets and side quests, complete combat challenges, solve puzzles, and collect materials. Blast through the main quests to unroll the origins of that world and the journey of your hero, one of two blonde, otherworldly twins chosen at the start of the game. Absorb one of the most diverse orchestral soundtracks to ever grace a video game. Cozy up to dozens of memorable characters that would fit right into an anime – cute and cool and tragic, sometimes all at once.
From hours to years
Release date: September 28, 2020
Platform(s): Android, iOS
Developer: In-house
Publisher: HoYoverse
Approach Genshin Impact as a live-service, gacha-first experience, however, and you'll find a whole other beast that can devour years of playtime and, if you let it, inadvisable amounts of money. (For the record, I spend less than $15 a month on it.) You can only explore that world and complete those quests once – so please, savor it – and once you run out of new content, repeatable content becomes your home. Which rare characters and weapons are on the current, rotating rate-up banners? How many days do I have to try and pull them? Should I pull my favorite characters or the strongest ones? (Always your favorites.) Which unflinchingly stingy equipment or resource domain will soak up my daily allowance of time-gated Resin? Did I finish the events and claim all the rewards? Have I done my daily challenges? My weeklies? My monthlies?
There is no need to engage with Genshin Impact on this level, and you'll know pretty quickly if you want to. You have to love this game to put up with its barbaric RNG and find some kernel of fun in the smallest upgrades and unlocks. I've been doing it for four years, and I'll keep doing it, not just because there is unassailable brilliance under those grindy trappings, but because Genshin's gacha bones don't obstruct the moment-to-moment delights.
Strip away the math that definitely tickles my brain, and the updates that I can only experience once, and there are still two things that keep me coming back to Genshin Impact after thousands of hours. The big one is a third-person, element-infused combat system that's almost too good for its own good. That is damning with fine praise, but this system is crying out for a full-fat, buy-to-play game that can just let loose, player retention be damned. It's that strong. Building a team of four characters presents a fascinating balance of skills and attacks, plus healing and shields. The secret sauce is the way you layer the elements of this world – fire, water, wind, earth, lightning, nature, and ice, for simplicity – to trigger inventive, explosive reactions.
More than anything, it's a pleasure to see Genshin Impact evolve and improve year over year, and to feel those improvements in regular play. The world design and storytelling, especially, are worlds apart from 1.0. The latest patch, version 5.0, is handily the best and most approachable one yet. So you don't have to spend any money, you don't have to worry about any monthlies, and you definitely don't have to do any math. Genshin Impact is a game. Play it! It's a fabulous world, a fantastical concoction of delicious oceans and enchanted forests, obsidian mountains in the jaws of violet lightning and deserts hiding ancient ruins under paws of sand. Drink it in. Chug it down! And if you've had your fill, if there's no more new content and the repeatable stuff doesn't do it for you, put it away – until the next update or forever, knowing you've had your fun and that it somehow didn't cost you a dime.
Genshin Impact was reviewed on a Samsung Galaxy S23+.
