Genshin Impact by developer and publisher miHoYo—Sony PlayStation 4 spotlight article written by Nick with a free-to-play copy downloaded from the PSN.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Gaming is about having fun. That fun for gamers comes in a variety of ways, depending on what they are looking for. Maybe it’s the thrill of beating a difficult boss in a Souls title, or coming up with the best kill / death ratio in a shooter, or feeling the emotions that come with the ending of a deep roleplaying game over dozens of hours of play.
Genshin Impact is one of those titles I find myself coming back to time and again – but one of my favorite aspects of this game? The exploration. I’ve written a review about it earlier last year if you want my more detailed thoughts about the game – but for me? It is a lot of fun. The game is free to play, but yeah – there’s plenty of opportunity to drop real money into it as well. This is most prevalent in the randomized draw of weapons and characters.
I’ve gone ahead and spent about $20 in total on it since its release, doing a handful of the month-long $5 daily rewards options. I never really feel pressured to spend money on Genshin Impact – and really, I seldom feel any real pressure to play either. I just pop in near-daily to collect any potential login items or to do a couple of quick tasks. If I’m in the mood to do more? I will. Some days, that turns into me playing eight or more hours straight. This tends to happen most for big events or a major new content drop.
That’s one of the things to know before you get into Genshin Impact. The world and the game itself are not complete. The game has been live for just over a year, and they’ve had numerous smaller events ranging from some week-long fetch quests to a more involved story about a lantern rite ritual. There have been entire new regions added, each with its own quirks and new gameplay wrinkles, often introducing a new primary element along the way (Inazuma is the latest of these, an electricity / lightning themed zone that came out midway through last year).
This will be the first of two articles just showing some of my explorations over the first year and change of playing Genshin Impact. Images come from all over the map, with a variety of the characters I have collected. Some characters show up more than others, as I certainly have a preferred five or six that get regular run out of me. Hopefully you enjoy this peek into the world that I’ve been steadily exploring.
