For some context behind this review, I've logged many hours on the official client before the Steam version, but on multiple occasions I've stopped playing and attempted to give it another shot.
I think this review reflects my experience with ALL of Hoyo's games, unfortunately. The game world they've built here is very cool. The music is super catchy, the character art is incredible, and the combat is pretty fun. But I'm really not a fan of a few things:
- if you're not actively keeping up with the game, returning can be very overwhelming. New systems, new modes, and often locked behind hours of new story missions you may not care about in the slightest. Nowadays it feels like there are way too many menus to navigate and it can be hard to find what you're looking for.
- The story. Subjective of course but it's never hooked me. Hoyo is hellbent on forcing players to watch and read SO much, and very little of it can be completely skipped. For me, this is a huge issue with Hoyo games where the gameplay can be fun, but the story is meh and there is an ungodly amount of unskippable dialogue preventing you from getting back to the gameplay itself. Events are the worst offenders at this where gameplay is constantly interrupted by inane, forced dialogue with characters. If this is a dealbreaker for some players, and I've certainly seen similar opinions online, it's very odd that the devs would rather players quit than allow them to spend their time how they want.
- The gear system has always been a cancerous grindfest in their games. They might add QoL that let you minimize the rng elements but 90% of the time it's not enough and requires special currency (of course). I'm not exaggerating when I say I've spent upwards of 10,000 stamina to get the discs I need for a *single* character. With the ~250 stamina cap I'd typically log in to each day, it would take me 40 days in this scenario to equip a single character with discs. I haven't even mentioned the multiple other resources required to power up a character, which all require stamina as well!
- Characters kits get ever more complicated as the game goes on, to the point that individual skills can have paragraphs of text explaining them (poorly). As someone who only plays Hoyo games casually and admittedly has a terrible memory, I legitimately struggle in combat with certain characters because I can't keep up with how all their kits interact on top of memorizing a decent rotation. It also doesn't help at all that Hoyo seems to struggle with keeping explanations and tutorials brief and simple to understand.
I do wish I could get into the game, but these sorts of issues are rarely changed, being very much apart of their studio DNA and design philosophy across their games, and of course, I'm only one person among many.
