Why Genshin Impact is Worth Your Time

free to play mobile Chinese gotcha game AKA garbage for any self-respecting gamer I mean really who in their right mind hears that and things gee I better strap myself in for an unforgettable story experience and a meticulously crafted immersive world with Fair mechanics and balanced gameplay like that's like stepping in an unmarked van and expecting to go solve crimes with Scooby-Doo oh but this game is different wait who the are you I'm you from the Future No no no I played gentian I fell in love with all the husband does God how much huh how much money did you spend actually that's why I'm here because tartaglius Banner is next week so I was wondering if you could lend me 200 because he's the best and I need him at C6 and I want to give him a signature weapon because he likes whales and I like to think of myself as this little whale what's that is that is that him is that tartaglia well yeah but I like to call him Ajax Ajax huh hey buns so it's been about three months since I decided to play gentian impact a game that I had been actively avoiding for years at this point because it's a mobile free-to-play gotcha game which really told me all I needed to know or so I thought before I left Europe I gave my friend my old Ultra wide Monitor and he thanked me by spending the last year sending me screenshots from gangstan Impact even though I told him many times I'm not gonna play it why are you even sending me these screenshots I'm not going to play this game it's a gotcha game and I'm gonna play it and he's like oh yeah that's fine but look at this screenshot it's the remains of a dead God slain by the writing Shogun AKA The Electro archon aka the god of Eternity being slashed in half including the island itself with one slash after the god went to war with his people against Inazuma I was I was like okay cool story right and he says oh but but here's the surface of the chasm sub-region it was released in 2.6 and it has the entrance to go deep underground according to Legend it was created by a huge meteor that eventually made its way back into the sky during the archon war while the surface is beautiful and calm the underground can make you feel alone sad and isolated like tragedy is awaiting you that you're being watched with mystery surrounding every single thing you see where you can only ask yourself what has happened here with a sense of fear of the unknown I guess he just wore me down over time but I still didn't have high expectations because I tried it back in 2020 and well tried it's the stretch I I dropped it after about 30 minutes because I went in with the worst attitude possible I was mad that oh Amber is not a real bunny girl and I didn't appreciate Kaya and I was annoyed with Lisa calling me cutie and hi sweetie and I still don't like her calling me that but now I can just send her to work in the mines I was unfair to it uh and I just jumped to the conclusion well you know this game is just not targeted at me but how very wrong I was what that said Dodger games have earned their bad reputation it isn't just oh we were being so unfair to this type of game and we're gonna judge it so harsh no it's obviously to have the best Loot and the hottest characters locked behind pulling the crank on a slot machine it is hardly distinguishable from gambling only with real gambling you actually get money back when you win it doesn't even look cool like real gambling you're not like James Bond at the casino De Monte Carlo rolling the dice in your fitted tux while the line of the crystal chandeliers dances across your Vesper Martini no you're hunched over the screen tapping your vacant expression Oreo crumbs sweating and possibly crying so one more pull then you pull and you get like Chichi or ninguong again and you're like well how much money did I just spend well if I keep going and I'm guaranteed the five star that's on the banner so at this point it's a waste not to do it I mean it's just like casinos where these mechanics Target your brain's reward centers so whenever you get lucky or you win something good you get a huge ratchet dopamine because it worked see it worked now I'm glad I did those desperate single pulls because if I had stopped when you guys said I should have like it's horrible it tricks your brain into thinking that's actually so easy to get I mean it could be easy you don't you can't win if you don't play you don't know if you don't try it's a 800 value now before you get worried about me an ADHD person whose brain makes dopamine about as well as McDonald's makes ice cream I have poor impulse control uh Tennessee tours addiction and engage in destructive thrill-seeking behaviors like writing in MMOs so I'm especially at risk to lose my ass in gambo that's the main reason I avoided engaging impact for years but I had a little sit down with my team we discussed it I set spending limits we got someone monitoring my spending in the game still and that has worked really well but only you can prevent forest fires and judge these risks for yourself and you should but before you say oh but why don't you just stay free to play them well because I know myself better than that I don't want to set myself up for failure it's like the time they made the Cookie Monster eat fruit salad and he couldn't even make the damn thing because he ate the grapes where they could even put them in the bowl because they're small and round like cookies and we're all like damn how long is this Gonna Last whenever he relapses it's going to be real ugly so in my case the moderation works better than abstinence here's another thing it is fun to watch someone piss away hundreds or thousands of dollars on meaningless that is why this stuff does so well on social media and on YouTube the people who do it and I've done it myself included uh can offset those costs with advertising Revenue though and subs and sponsorships and donations they can write off their Prima gems as a business expense on their taxes so don't get the wrong idea about what is a normal amount to spend uh the most normal amount is probably zero dollars or like five dollars I do wish it were different and I could just buy my husbandos at tartavlia's R Us but uh it's not and it's not going to change I finally get why people are stealing cardboard cutouts some of these characters it's just a lot cheaper than pulling it sucks that yeah we've answered an age where the overpriced cash shop seems fair in comparison so I will not defend gacha uh but it's here to stay against impact made two billion dollars in its first year it is first year it's unheard of this is insane the gotcha games make up over half of all the mobile games Revenue in mobile games make more money than console and PC games combined kitchen impact is not only successful because it is a gotcha like not by a long shot but you gotta admit most gotcha games don't even try to make a good game because why would they if they can just print money with way less effort they're probably gonna do that and there's so many low effort piles of trash in this genre that exists only to hook a few whales so of course when gentian impact came out Gamers were pissed that it took so much inspiration and ideas from breath of the Wild which is an open world Masterpiece is beloved by everyone because it has so much care and attention that is evident in its beautiful world and it's just the height of we put up on this incredible pedestal that had earned so much Acclaim for and Just Breath of the wild felt like a love letter to gamers and gotcha is more like a you so for some gotcha to come up and copy ideas from breath of the wild it was like an affront to Nature like something sacred had been violated I was sympathetic to the guy who had smashed his PS4 in protest over a breath of the waifu I mean I wouldn't do it but because that's really dumb but I understood gotcha had established itself as a blight upon the land as a plague at odds with the spirit of gaming especially RPGs which are supposed to be all about the adventure the journey growth learning progression like all these core elements don't mean diddly squat if you can just buy them with your credit card there's no shortage of gotchas like that so why would this one be any different and maybe it was worse when it first came out but uh for me it was unfathomable that a free-to-play gotcha game uh could even begin to follow in the footsteps of a giant like breath of the wild and draw inspiration in a real way becomes something new all on its own and not just feel like a cheap copy the fact is uh I play games to escape uh if I wanted to play a luck based game that constantly pressured me to spend money or grind I would just go outside and get a real job so let's talk about the pressure uh to spend money thankfully against an impact has not felt like a used car salesman followed me around a lot and breathing down my neck like what can I do to get you to buy today you don't want to miss out this deal is an 800 value no if it were like that I would not be blank obviously games need to turn a profit but if the game isn't giving me anything good in return for the time that I put in which has value amount but in genshin um all the content all the story the whole map all of that is free you can clear the hardest content in the game with just your free characters and your free weapons there is no PVP there's no competitive stuff that might make you want to flex the only thing that you will miss out on is that you won't have all of the characters you won't have all of the weapons but you really don't need them like playing Gene and eating packs of mobs off the cliff might be fun but it's not necessary and as a new player I should add that you will get showered with Prima gems all the time like I can't hardly sneeze at the game without getting a prima gem for it even if there's a maintenance you'll get a buttload of Prima gyms in the mail as an apology from the deaf so saving those Prima gems and not swiping you should be able to get a five-star character from their Banner about once every two months so that's because of the games pity system which will guarantee you a five star after a certain number of wishes on the banner but if you do want to save more Prima gems and get more characters more often and not rely always on the game's pity for you then I would recommend that you just be more lucky it is low pressure you don't need to swipe or even think about swiping if you don't want to which is very strange isn't it very suspicious if it's not pressuring you to gamble your life savings away then how pray tell does it manage to pull in six million dollars a day how did they make four billion dollars uh without it feeling like a cash grab that nickels and dimes you at every turn well I'll tell you how and it's actually genius they are not trying to steal your wallet what they're trying to steal is your heart and I know this is really cringe I know it's cringe just hear me out okay because I did not see this coming at all I was ready okay I was prepared to resist pay to win that's what I expected from a gotcha but what I didn't expect is paid a simp which is way more sophisticated and more dangerous they have figured out every archetype every preference every taste every type and they have made a character like that and put them in the game you got goth girl check nerd check Legally Blonde spaz badass check check check check and I I'm still safe from all those right like I am surely immune to the pitfalls that degenerate Gamers fall prey to I don't need an anime waifu I mean come on right I don't need that and so hot but it was there letting my guard down I got blindsided it's like they studied me and knew what kind of a situation to put me in that would force me to simp me let's just say my character the main character that you choose at the start of the game to be male or female let's just say she gets in trouble with the law okay I'm gonna be really vague no spoilers and a shady guy rescues me and he seems very powerful and then he hands me a big bag of money and we talk and he shows me lots of red flags and then later I find out that he's got a dark side but he might have a soft spot for me oh boy so stupid but I remember the moment that they played me like a fiddle like I'm sitting there I haven't drinking water I have to go open a window it was so embarrassing it's so embarrassing so down bet down horrendous I know I made it sound really stupid just trust me okay Trust laugh it up okay laugh it up exactly oh she got two involved yeah yeah well guess what it's gonna happen to you it will the story will put you in a situation that will make you fall in love with these characters and maybe not all maybe not every time maybe not lust but respect admiration you know I was honestly so toxic and judgmental before like I looked at yai Miko and thought Oh okay a cat girl pink hair Fox girl yeah I'm sure that it's a really strong character because in my mind only Final Fantasy can write good cat girl characters and but you know what she is a great character and she's not a yeah I'm a fox girl that's what I have character like I expected no she's she's like a say and it's believable or rather Kitsune um of the the sky Kitsune Clan all right she's disinterested in human Affairs she's aloof but incredibly cunning she always seems to know more than she lets on and so calm and collected on the surface but she's actually holding back hundreds of years of pain that she's ah having to live now almost is she the last of her kind where are the other kids where the rest of the sky Kitsune can you imagine what it's like to live so long and have to say goodbye to so many people that you love you have any idea and then like with a ride you know here's an anime waifu with big booba jiggle physics pulling a sword out of her cleavage but then you play and you're like no she's a warrior who has never processed the immensity of her loss do you have any idea what that sword even means you even know why it should of course be drawn from her heart God and a lot of the cutscenes and music that goes along with these stories is so badass that you will just you will simp you'll be defenseless against it and then you're gonna be pretty high wisdom IRL to win the saving throw and not get Charmed to the point that you end up breaking the bank on one of these limited time banners right which by the way yaimiko's Vader is about to come up and that's the whole problem that's the danger of pay to simp I don't need that character but I really like the character and here's the worst part through the story of things that you see and do some characters you thought you'd be safe against they become even more cool later on as you learn more about them like Kaya he's cooler than cool and uh I brought him to my house even the housing in the game is great too and here's what he said what an interesting metaphor I hadn't looked at it from that angle hmm your analogy seems largely correct save for one small detail you of course are the main ingredient in said cocktail they know what they're doing okay they know exactly what they're doing and they're very good at it Kaya is actually a free character that you get early on but now I'm like oh okay he deserves the best maybe I should give him this legendary five star weapon I should level him and give him everything he needs don't do this okay but aside from simping I mean not just simply but DIA Beto nahida Clee like I rolled my eyes when I saw these characters but you get to know them and you love them because it is written well it is voice acted really really well so unlike in many games that pressure you into spending money and maybe you do it and then you feel bad after because oh gosh what have you done this is pointless and you fell for one of the classic blunders this is garbage you could actually feel justified in spending money and yes that's really really dangerous it's like it's more good and it's more evil at the same time I fear the day that the tartarly a banner comes around like if you ever see me on Twitch in a hot tub you'll know why so anyway yes let's talk about the story I cannot be specific but I'll say this I got roped in hard to the lore crafting which I did not expect I had I didn't get this involved with trying to dig deep into lore since I um got obsessed with Lord of the Rings actually because there's just a ton of mystery surrounding the opening cut scene of the game so if you're gonna play burn of that cutscene into your mind remember it all remember it because I'm so involved still with trying to find hunting down any little pieces of Truth and any tooltip any dialogue any book that could shed light on this mystery Who Am I who is she what the hell really happened here why did why did she put him in the Box what if I was in the Box will I be in the Box later I actually went on an expedition down to this place like Atlantis in the game and I've searched through their desiccated ruins for their library and I'm doing all kinds of complicated to find the book the book that was banned by Celestia from ages past that has the secrets of the gods and their sins and the cosmos and I'm reading it and I realize it's all in riddles hey what I'm trying but I can kind of piece together what it means and oh my God I just realized something holy I just realized something right now about why it's in riddles that's what I'm saying that's what I'm saying oh my God I understand how ice and riddles I know why it's in riddles it has to be in riddles God the AHA moments that I've had just like that I just said putting these little pieces together has been so much fun for me I love that they seem to encourage speculation they give you enough so you know what's going on of course but always a little more to keep you wondering the archon quests uh basically that's the main story it's all voice character quests are all voiced and they're all really good I only did maybe two character quests that were subpar in my opinion archon quests are really solid drags a bit in the first part of Anna Zuma but it picks up and ends really well and then sumeru like I won't say anything about sooner I'm not gonna give you a hint I'm not gonna say anything besides it is so so so crazy I would have never imagined that it would be this I don't even want to use a descriptive word because it's gonna be a hint I would put sumeria's story on par with a final fantasy quality of writing and storytelling and that is the highest praise that I can get I actually listened to one of the songs from Scenario in my car uh the other day just wanting to hear the music invention and I unexpectedly burst into tears I could not believe I was surprised myself because it just brought up so many emotions from the story it was such a wild ride this song and uh just thinking about everything that she went through not don't ask me who don't ask me I just went to go pull up another song that I loved uh and hearing it again I was taken right back to that scene that's one of the most beautiful cut scenes in the game without letting go and being at peace with that and even taking joy in that and I can't talk about the music I'm gonna get emotional it's actually amazing how well the music carries the soul of the story in it and can breathe so much life into his own or even death into his own like the economia soundtrack now that's the area I went to that I called Atlantis before which is this place below the depth this is long lost ruins in the dark sea has left her rot as the eons passed and it's haunted by the ghosts of the Forgotten abandoned by God and there's nothing left and you don't expect that do you no when you start the game and it's so bubbly and happy and monstad and the sun shining you don't even know what's coming how dark it's gonna get later on like uh the Ryden theme song how can I even talk about the music without mentioning the ride and theme song I think um I heard that song in the demo before I started and that was one of the things that made me interested in the game is probably when I felt like well maybe Hoya versus a music studio that makes games uh the music director actually said that the ride and theme was inspired by the Japanese folk song Sakura Sakura and listen it's just a banger it was a banger truck there's really not enough time to talk about all the best or even my favorite music in the game so you should really just Discover it as you play uh but some of the YouTube comments are hilarious before you ping Chen composes Boss music in order to get into the mood a 12 pack of Red Bull is down and their Consciousness is ascended this sounds like final boss material for most games it's not even part of the main story incredible so does this big world with its Banger soundtracks feel alive as more than just Pleasant backdrops for cutscenes is it in open world that calls you out to the farthest reaches like a true adventure wanted to go explore it all uh well I mean of course there are lots of hidden treasures and fun little things to find in the nooks and crannies and cracks and holes of the world I like not needing an objective to just look out and just looking out and see oh there's a box and I want to know what's in the box so I'm going to go to the box like that's fun but I think for me it was Dragon spine which is this huge terrible dangerous mountain in the first Zone um that I should not have been at when I was there I was warned against going there and of course this made me want to go there that's when I first realized that connection impact is actually a great game like I'm out there brand new I got no idea how to play hardly it is freezing I'm taking cold damage I'm fighting for my life because I don't understand that the teleports are hot and can warm you up I don't know I don't know that so I'm looking for the Billy troll camps so I can light a fire there they're little pot for cooking I had Barbara in my party healing but I didn't understand that her heels make you wet don't even say anything because it wasn't funny at all that I'm out there I'm getting Frozen every five seconds because of the heels are making me wet and I don't understand why I'm freezing constantly the mountain is also enormous it's huge there's this little red rocks that are hidden around and uh you're supposed to get them and at one point I stumbled into this terrifying chamber and it's like this red Beating Heart thing and I don't know I'm it's like uh that definitely shouldn't be here then at some point I learned to make goulash and this was a game changer because then I'm sitting here I'm at the base camp I'm getting ready I'm cooking my goulash so I'll be warm and I'll die as much like this whole Expedition took me weeks give me weeks and it honestly it reminded me of Skyrim when uh how it felt to encounter yetis for the first time like meeting this horrible ice monster or actually it was worse than I sponsor the pig the pig it was really there that I fell in love with the open world of gention and uh I knew that they nailed it like they managed to create a world that makes you truly feel like an adventurer in the same way that Skyrim had made me feel and uh man I've barely scratched the surface of the map there is so many other places in difficult zones like that that they've added in later regions that I have not even gone to there's big pieces of my math that are still unexplored so it's amazing it's like the open world is basically a huge playground that rewards you for getting off track and encourages exploration um until pymon tells you to turn around inevitably I wanted to talk about the combat and Gameplay at the same time that I had mentioned the open world now you heard me talk a little bit about Barbara and her heels are water so water when it is cold will make you freeze right so each character wields an element and of course nature is made of elements as a new player it should be intuitive that fire on grass makes the grass burn or that fire on Ice makes the ice melt your water on fire makes the fire go well right but I think I was just maybe trying to absorb too much information at once because I just remember being like laid what happens when we water a cold does it freeze is fire hot I actually have the reactions guide uh infographic out here right next to the computer for a while on my phone because I'm just trying to figure out all the things happening at combat I'm like can rock get lit yeah it's not complicated at all uh but the reactions are fun to make and so I wanted to make them happen as much as possible it just feels really good to make them happen that's what makes the combat so addictive uh maybe that's why I've had no problem resisting the gotcha in this game is because there are a lot of free sources of dopamine just built into the game the game itself is fun and uh like for example I I tend to play a lot of dendro characters when you mix dendro with water it blooms which means that whenever it starts raining this little girl this dendro character is an absolute death machine I also didn't understand right away that you are meant to be swapping between your characters a lot to make these reactions go off I was just sitting on my bunny girl all the time to make fire because bunny girl good fire good but uh then someone wrote me and was like Hey I noticed you're just making fire and leaving it you want to do more with fire than that okay you want to mix it up with other stuff swap it up make reactions you're going to react content so I want you to do so uh for example Kaya has a burst that's these ice crystals that stay and they keep doing the cryo damage and follow you on the other characters so this way no matter what I can be his little ice cocktail that's what he said that was his words not mine so just to sum up here with the general pros and cons gotcha sucks but it's not going anywhere and at least it makes money that they put back in the game I've heard they got a big budget increase for sumeru and having played it it shows so production quality is really high at least they're not pissing away money as ineffectively as a lot of their players do when I did spend it felt optional like it was my decision and I don't need to honestly it's gonna be a really hot take but I felt more pressure from blizzard to pay for Wow tokens in World of Warcraft or other like server transfers than I ever did from Hoya verse but maybe it's just a sparkly horse of a different color because that's a more much more multiplayer game against an impact I mostly enjoy solo so um this makes it very much easier to not feel pressured to buy stuff there's no flexing my number one issue with the game is that you cannot pet the dog or cat they even made a cat cafe where you cannot pet a single cat get it together really now my other number one issue is related to a thing that I love which is the events so uh the game has spectacular events and another great thing is that they release new patches every six weeks which feel amazing a lot of the patches are you know they have these amazing events or sometimes they'll release whole new zones with new music and enemies and bosses like inconomia was in a patch the chasm was a patch so the patches are can be very substantial a lot of times and every six weeks with a new patch that's great right but let's talk about the events that can sometimes come in the patch that are so good they are time limited and they don't come back so far I've done one major event and in this event I got to know a character that after having completed the entire our Conquest main story I did not know him very well but through the event I got to know this character very very well I got I learned to love him I understood his flaws and his strengths and he was very likable it was it was fantastic there was also a amazing choreographed high production quality cutscene there that um showed off a lots of different characters and it just felt like it's a regular story patch it felt like extra story uh content and the same level of quality as the normal main quest and then after the event's gone it's gone it doesn't return and so if you missed that event you are screwed you will have to go to YouTube to find out about this character and this is completely unacceptable to be honest with you because there are some characters that they were introduced in an event or their lore was all in an event that happened a long long time ago that uh there's no reason I would know about that like official she's a perfect example of a character who's all of her lore was was in an event and so people that did the event they understand why she says that she's the princess and like she says that she's From Another Dimension or something to me she seems like an insane person I don't know any of this stuff I don't know who she thinks she is I don't know who other people think she is but she seems completely insane to me okay she's like oh I am the princess and and everyone needs to I need to go back to my castle who the are you what Castle she has this like talking Raven that's made of electricity that follows her around she can shape-shape and what the is going on how can you shape-shift who is he loves this is not stuff that should be in an event because uh I got it's really weird it's really weird they need to figure it out now I hear people saying oh the reason that they don't keep the events in the game is because um it would be two big file size to keep it in the game for who cares just let me download it uh maybe put it in its own I don't know that's not my job to figure out they need to figure it out they need to figure that out um because that's a stance it's completely unacceptable that you cannot replay the events and it's fomo so not cool not cool at all that's my biggest biggest complaint so yeah uh finding out that Kenshin impact is in fact a good game in spite of being a mobile free to play gotcha game has turned my whole world upside down it has been weird really weird is I kind of felt like an for judging it so harshly before but then again I mean gotcha of course we're going to judge that harshly but um as far as gotchas go it's not it's really not too bad it's not up my butt about it it's not bothering me or pressuring me about it honestly finding out that the game is good has been like getting abducted by aliens pretty much No One Believes Me except other people who have been abducted by aliens I'm just like no you gotta believe me I've been on this they took me to this is a different planet and the planet is so beautiful and all the people I met there is so cool and my friends are like uh-huh okay oh and you're telling me that the oh there was there was Fox girls there they show you the fox girls and she's really smart and cool is all right yeah you've got to believe me please believe me I have been having a great time in kitchen impact uh playing it casually and um it's been nice to try new things for once uh so yeah I really hope that you like this video if you did please consider supporting the channel on patreon or on Twitch you can also support the channel for free by clicking the Subscribe button or by sharing this video with your fellow bun buns thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time I hope to make some other videos sort of like this one about other games that I've tried and I would of course like to make FFA 14 videos still um I know there's a new patch coming up soon so I would like to see what it's like and possibly make a video on it if there's something really interesting that I want to share with you so again thank you for watching I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Zepla HQ

Views: 28,883

Keywords:

Id: SIHAMnMPeeM

Length: 36min 37sec (2197 seconds)

Published: Sat May 20 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/LordSinstar]

The most worth goes to the parasocial relationships the game promotes, more than the casual player.

[u/Neugassh]

Its not worth.