Genshin Impact PC Review – Test – Anime Open World RPG with Coop Multiplayer

In the Asia Fantasy RPG Genshin Impact there is a huge open-world to explore, and that as a free download (with item store)

ZapZockt Genshin Impact PC Review / Test. In the Free to Play (F2P) anime open-world role-playing game Genshin Impact, four heroes play through an extensive story in a highly detailed world. It is available as a Free Download for PC, PS4, Android & iOS. We explore, research, and solve quests and puzzles. Genshin Impact is a single-player game, in co-op mode, you can invite friends to your world.

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This article is available here as text, but also as a YouTube video (German voice-over, many subtitles). This way you can choose how you would like to enjoy it most.

Genshin Impact Review Video

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

Genshin Impact Review – Intro

Hi there, here is the Zap. In this Genshin Impact review, I’ll show you some interesting things about the Asia Multiplayer RPG, tell you about my experiences after tens of hours in the game, and whether I had fun with it. In the end, there is also a rating from me, but above all, I want to give you all the info with this review, so you can decide for yourself if you might like the game.

Genshin Impact – Background

Genshin Impact has been in closed beta since 2019 and then officially released in Europe in October 2020. It is developed by MiHoYo from Shanghai and self-distributed worldwide. This studio has previously released several anime games, mostly mobile titles, such as FlyMe2theMoon, Zombiegal Kawaii, Guns GirlZ, Honkai Impact 3rd, and Tears of Themis.

There are variants of Genshin Impact for the PC, for the PlayStation PS4, and for iOS and Android. The PC and mobile variants can also be used in crossplay, meaning you can log in with an account on both devices alternately and use the same game state. For PlayStation, this is, at least so far, not yet possible.

This test is based on the current version 1.2 Circles and Dragons. I have tested on PC and on Android. There is a major update coming soon titled Genshin Impact All that Glitters. I’ll link the trailer for it below in case you’re interested.

Genshin Impact – Game Type

Genshin Impact is an anime RPG that has a lot of single-player portions and also gets a co-op multiplayer portion later in the game. It can be compared to the popular Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. So it’s not a classic Asia MMORPG in the sense that you farm monsters endlessly or even do any quests that run automatically, as is often the case in Asian MMOs.

Here, Genshin Impact takes a completely different approach. We start the game with one half of a sibling pair, where we get to choose whether we want to play the brother or the sister. After that, we reach an alien world and can explore it. Along the way, we are accompanied by a little fairy named Paimon, who not only cheerfully comments cheekily on many of our actions but also likes to chatter cheekily in the middle of the conversation.

Genshin Impact offers us not only an extensive open world with many secrets, stories, and hidden treasures, but also a very detailed main story and numerous side quests. These stories are accompanied by video cutscenes and a lot of voice acting. In addition to the Asian languages, English is also offered. However, the game is additionally equipped with German subtitles and on-screen text. So it should be well playable even for gamers without extensive English knowledge.

Another highlight of Genshin Impact is the very detailed and pretty world. Here the game waits for us with very pleasantly varied areas and there are incredibly many hidden little things, small puzzles, and challenges. The monster density is not too high, so you can often just explore without being attacked all the time. The respawn rates are also pleasantly low, so once you’ve cleared an area of threats, you don’t have to constantly reckon with enemies appearing at your back.

Not only can we walk, run and run, but we can also climb up most rock walls, houses, ruins, and even trees. We can swim and after a very short time, we get some sort of gliding wings that allow us to hover like a paraglider. The game also uses many of these elements again and again in the puzzles and challenges. Many secrets can only be found by cleverly combining all the movement options and also the seven elements. This often results in gameplay that also stimulates the mind a bit and doesn’t just consist of blunt monster thrashing.

Gameplay – Characters and Combat

There is no character creation in Genshin Impact. In the intro, we choose either the male or the female part of a sibling pair in a rather unspectacular way and then give this predefined character a name. And with this character, we start directly into the game.

Together with the character of our choice, we can gradually unlock more heroes and heroines or buy them later, more about this is in the section Itemshop. Roughly divided, there are one-handed and two-handed swordsmen, lancers, archers, and mages. And all of them are assigned to one of the Seven Elements.

In the game, we can then play only one character at a time actively, but at any time, even in the middle of the fight, freely switch between the maximum of 4 heroes and heroines available in the group. Thus, a lot of variants of combat tactics are possible and powerful combos can also be developed from the elements of the heroes. At the moment there are about 30 different characters available and with at least 15 more it is very likely that they will come into the game very soon.

During battles, our warriors and heroines have standard attacks and special elemental skills. The normal skill recharges on its own with a cooldown, the big Ultimate special requires us to have killed a certain amount of enemies with the element. Besides that, we have a Dash to dodge or chase fleeing enemies faster. Since we can also hover, it is also possible to attack from the air with dive attacks.

Gameplay – Roleplay and RPG Systems

Let’s move on to the role-playing systems. First, so to speak, we ourselves have a level or an account level. This is dependent on how much of the story and world we have already explored. This so-called adventurer level also very often determines whether or not we have certain quests, dungeons, or areas available to us. And if the adventurer level is too low, we first have to level up with other content before we can then play that particular content.

But this is not a problem at all, because you’ll get adventurer experience for almost everything, new areas, crates, monsters, puzzles, quests, dungeons. So there is actually always something to do. Later on, there are also daily quests, challenges, and many more activities that can help us progress.

It is in this area that Genshin Impact offers a huge range of different gameplay elements, and this also provides part of the good gameplay experience. Because we constantly have a choice between many different options of what we want to do next and this feels very enjoyable in the game.

Then there are the character levels. For all actions, we get scrolls and books of experience, and we can then determine in a menu for ourselves which of our fellow players we give this experience. So all the characters go up in levels according to our wishes, which then improves some of their stats. And every 20 levels we can then also upgrade, which activates additional skills as well as additional benefits and the next 20 levels for the character.

And since that’s not enough, we can also upgrade our weapons and equipment in two ways. First, each item has a level that we raise by merging smaller items into them. And if we get the exact same item again, we can fuse those two items into a better version, even multiple times.

Should these many upgrading systems always not be enough, we can also still advance in the adventurer guild, complete collectible item collections, collect Achievements, etc., etc. And for everything, there are rewards and experience points again. Here the game offers plenty of fodder for the reward center in the brain.

Genshin Impact Gameplay – World and Story

The world of Genshin Impact is ruled by seven deities, which are assigned to the seven elements. To match, there are seven regions, each with a capital city, each of which is, of course, particularly devoted to one of the deities.

During our travels we discover these zones little by little, searching for shrines, locations, and NPCs, beating up the monsters, and looking for crafting materials, collection items, and little secrets. There are also numerous small dungeons that then await us with repeatable content, monsters, traps, and other dangers.

We unlock teleporters in the process, which can be used for free afterward to conveniently jump across the country via fast travel. This is also how Genshin saves on our precious game time. Rarely did I feel like I should be unnecessarily delayed here with any grind or forever-long pathways.

The world design offers plenty of variety and a really interesting level design. The individual regions are very three-dimensional in design, almost always including climbing and hovering mechanics in the plan to explore all the locations. There are tons of hidden treasure chests that sometimes just need to be found, but sometimes they are blocked off and need to be unlocked through a fight or a puzzle.

These puzzles are then also enormously varied. This goes from simple “activate three pillars with the correct element” tasks to puzzles where you have to float a certain distance along with waypoints or follow a will-o’-the-wisp to its destination. It goes on to challenges like “kill 10 XYZ monsters in 60 seconds,” to text puzzles where certain switch combinations must be read from a story.

Here, Genshin Impact offers an enormous amount of gameplay depth and variety. It’s just fun to roam the lands and discover all the secrets and locations, find the many treasure chests and special features, and, after solving the tasks, bag the treasures. So you spend most of your time discovering the world as well as gradually equipping and leveling up your cute anime army better and better.

Genshin Impact Gameplay Screenshots InGame (Part 1)

Click or tap on the image for a larger view.
In the enlarged view, you can scroll right and left on the edges

There are more pictures at the end of the post.

Multiplayer in Genshin Impact

Is Genshin Impact Multiplayer? Genshin Impact is not an MMORPG. That’s to say right up front, because I’ve seen it referred to that way several times, and that is completely false. Genshin is primarily a single-player role-playing game, where each player has their own personal world. And at the beginning of the game here you will also first at least, depending on the pace of play and how you play, between five and fifteen hours of solo running around.

When you reach adventure rank 16, which really takes some time, you unlock the ability to invite other players into your world or visit them in their worlds. So Genshin Multiplayer exists, but it is limited. You can conveniently set whether you are free for any visits, let other players into your world only after request and confirmation, or just don’t want to see anyone at all and play solo.

A maximum of four players can travel together in one world, so this has nothing at all to do with massively multiplayer. So if you ask yourself whether Genshin Impact is an MMORPG? The answer is clearly no. Genshin Impact is a single-player game with coop elements, nothing more, nothing less. On the one hand, this is a limitation, but on the other hand, it also gives the game an extremely calm and cozy atmosphere. You can do everything at your own pace, explore and enjoy the world completely at your own pace, but still play together with friends or even strangers if that’s what you want. And you can always be safe and cozy, there is no forced PvP in Genshin Impact.

If you then travel in a team, you can fight together, visitors can help the world owner and travel around together. But the quests, containers, challenges, and a great many other things are still only for the player in whose world you play. And any progress, aside from experience and loot, is only for that account. The game does offer some extra rewards for helping other players with their quests as compensation.

A particularly stupid thing then is that very many quest NPCs don’t even talk to the player when you’re in multiplayer. So joint questing is actually almost impossible because even as a world host you can’t see that an NPC has a quest and can’t accept it. What the developers were thinking with this crippling of the Genshin Impact multiplayer mode is beyond me. This is really not very clever and not intelligently solved.

Genshin Impact – Free to play – Itemshop – Gacha System

Genshin Impact is Free to Play, so anyone can download the game for free from the developer’s site and start playing. It also offers extremely few restrictions for an Asian Free to Play game, in terms of game content. Neither are certain regions blocked nor did I notice that you would be restricted in any other way, such as limited instance runs or scarce inventory space or the usual game crippling that many other Free to Play games use to motivate their players to spend real money in the store.

Note: All links to downloads below under Links & Sources

Genshin Impact has a so-called gacha system for this. This means it has an enormous number of different characters that not only look different but also allow for very unique and sometimes really interesting play styles. Like Pokémon monsters, you can now collect these characters and level them all up individually.

I haven’t been able to try out all the figures, of course, but it’s safe to assume that this will include some figures behind pay barriers that are slightly better than the standard heroes. But that’s just a guess on my part.

You almost never acquire these characters with a one-time purchase at a fixed cost, though; instead, you need certain tokens that you have to buy for real money. With these tokens, you can perform so-called prayers, which have a chance to unlock certain characters. But for some, this chance is really very small. And then the game encourages you to repeat these prayers in order to get the great mage or the longed-for sword hero at some point.

You get a basic set of characters for free as a reward through the story. So, in theory, you’re able to play through almost all the content with them for free. You can also provide yourself with a certain basic supply of item store currency through quest rewards and especially through daily quests as well. So you can treat yourself to something in the store from time to time even without using real money.

This system makes it very easy for players who have a good handle on their item store spending to play a lot with little real money commitment. However, if you are someone who can’t control yourself well here, and may even be prone to gambling elements, Genshin Impact can carry some risk of spending a lot, a lot of money here.

I would like to give this explicitly as a warning here. The money spending rate in this game can range from absolutely zero to a few thousand euros, depending on how well you get along with such systems.

Crafting and Gathering

The game also offers extensive materials, such as herbs, flowers, meat from animals, ores, gems, and rare materials as drops from bosses or from treasure chests. Since the characters do not regenerate on their own and constantly lose life energy in the normal game due to monsters, falls, elemental effects, and many other dangers, we need to eat a lot.

Here the cooking system offers a very extensive range of remedies but also food and drink that improve certain stats for some time. Cooking is thus a frequently used option and playing the game without this feature is likely to be difficult or at least require a lot of in-game gold for buying food in the NPC store.

Besides that, we can also craft equipment, but I haven’t really used this option much so far at least. Because on the one hand, this is quite time-consuming and then that was, at least up to adventure level 20, not even necessary. Because you can find plenty of equipment and through upgrades, this can also be greatly improved. But I can well imagine that this turns exactly in the later course of the game and the collection of materials and crafting equipment then becomes very important.

Tech, Graphics, Sound

In this review, I have mainly tested the PC version. However, the game is also available for PlayStation PS4 and the mobile stores Google Playstore on Android and Appstore on iOS for Apple devices. The PS4 version is not crossplay capable. But the PC version is capable of crossplay together with the mobile variants. This means you can alternate between playing on your computer or on your phone or tablet, using the same game state with one account.

On PC, Genshin Impact comes with its own launcher and is not currently available on any of the major stores like Steam or Epic Games Store. The game runs extremely stable and can handle many different hardware requirements well and can be customized via options menus. Different resolutions, detail levels, shadow and texture qualities, etc. allow the game to run on poorer PCs.

The graphics of the world are good middle class and offer a lot of variety due to many detailed models and clever level design. There is a good wide view, which is quite important in open-world games, and I didn’t notice any muddy textures even in the close-ups, for example when climbing up a wall.

The soundtrack of the combat and world is okay. No groundbreaking effects are cranked up here, but everything seems believable throughout and it’s never too quiet in the game. The music tracks, which run softly in the background, fit very well with the rather relaxed and calm atmosphere of the world but can get more energetic in the battles.

The game has about 50% voice acting, and the English voices are easy to understand and pleasant to listen to. Even though the squeaky voice of the fairy that accompanies you can be a bit tiring at times, but that’s just her way. I didn’t really notice any bad samples in these voice-overs, many are mid-range and some really well done.

The same goes for the English and German on-screen texts. Everything is translated to a high standard, with almost no spelling mistakes or linguistic oddities. There are very few bloopers where the meaning of words has been switched, but you need to look very, very precisely for that.

The Android version simulates a kind of twin-stick control, with which you can get the character controlled quite well after some practice. Otherwise, graphics, sound, and all controls are almost 1:1 as in the PC version. The actual gameplay is exactly the same.

I would like to note here that the game requires just under 8.5 gigabytes of memory on the phone or tablet. For one thing, you should have this space free first, and of course, you should make sure to pull this amount of data via WLAN, not via a volume tariff. Just for comparison, the PC version occupies 18.3 GB on the hard drive.

Genshin Impact Test – Opinion and Conclusion

When I installed Genshin Impact, my expectations were not particularly high. I was bored and just wanted to check out the title for an afternoon. I have actively played a lot of Asia MMORPGs and tried many more, and uninstalled most of them very quickly.

As for my positive examples, I just mention Lineage2, which I played actively for five years as a guild leader of a 20+ player guild or Aion, in which I spent at least two full years. But I’ve also come across dozens of negative examples, which were often so shallow and full of dull grind that it usually made me yawn really quickly, or those with auto-combat, auto-travel, and auto-everything spoiled my gaming fun within minutes.

All the more I was amazed by Genshin Impact with its detailed and very lovingly designed world, polished characters, meaningful and beautiful story, and interesting and varied gameplay options. Even as a person not particularly fond of anime, the design of the characters never bothered me; on the contrary, after a while, I found them really chic. For real anime fans, this will certainly add up to even more plus points.

The puzzles are stimulating, but never dauntingly difficult. The battles are ranging from easy to challenging without really becoming unfair. The amount of content in the game is already good for at least 50-100 hours and is also constantly expanding, not only with purchase characters but also with real game content.

In addition, Genshin Impact offers an actually very nice co-op option, which can enhance the game enormously once again if you want to dive into the world together with one, two, or three friends. However, many things could be made more suitable for groups. An option for joint quest progress and a bit more advantages of the visitors through the world unlocks would be desirable. Here I still see some potential for improvement. Unfortunately, this is implemented rather half-heartedly in the current version and only really suitable for instances.

Genshin Impact Review – Rating

Summarizing briefly, I can only say I really had a lot of fun in Genshin Impact and will certainly continue to play even after this review. Rarely have I had to accept so few limitations as a free2play-player who has his expenses under control.

However, I also have to strongly warn at this point that the game contains gambling elements due to the Gacha system, and players who can’t handle such mechanics might be strongly triggered here to leave a lot of money in the game. If you belong to this category, I strongly advise you not to install this game.

Genshin Impact offers a very nice, rock-solid world, extensive role-playing, and story elements. With the numerous and varied gameplay options and the option for co-op gameplay, there are other fat pluses. As a basic rating for the actual game, I would therefore like to assign a 90% score.

There is a 6% deduction for the annoying limitations and flaws in the design of the co-op game, and I have to deduct another 5% from that for the gambling elements in the item store. This brings me to a final score of a respectable 79% for Genshin Impact. I hope that the developers get the multiplayer better implemented at some point, then there is a chance for an upgrade to over 80%.

Outro

Do you like anime characters and gameplay a la Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Or do item shops and Asian fantasy scare you off a lot? Write me your opinion in the comments or feel free to do so in Discord via https://zapzockt.de/discord

Links and Sources

Genshin Impact Website

Genshin Impact Twitter

Genshin Impact Facebook

Genshin Impact 1.3 All That Glitters Trailer

Genshin Impact Free Download

• Genshin Impact PC Download
• PS4 Download
• Android / Google Playstore
• iOS / Apple App Store

Genshin Impact InGame Screenshots Gameplay