Genshin Impact : The Arbitrary Destruction Of The Open World Game That Could Be

Last updated : 24/12/2024 (More masochism, courtesy of a totally not jealous comrade)

Introduction

Before 2024, my impressions of Genshin was a shitty one. Somewhere before July 2024, Lukas lent me a full Genshin Impact instance to play (complete with Goolag account), which I disliked, but took up for a barely authoritative experience. I eventually returned it at early July (can't exactly remember when because at that point I stopped caring), and I moved on, at least until late July, where I got enlisted in a team match. Though it wasn't until a certain date at September 2024 when goodoldtuner21 initiated the 2GAS & I got eventually tangled into this thing. In retrospect, GOT21 might have done this to get my attention (which definitely worked), but at the very least I had some sort of a backup server to download my ROMs in case my storage somehow failed.

After showing up one time too many at Ed's hangouts (mostly business with GOT21), he decided to commission me to "experience" Genshin once again, except with GOT21's abandoned account (which was a hoyoverse account rather than a Goolag account, making it somewhat better for me than going back to Lukas' Goolag instance); and write this review. Short to say, it was revealed that I am a masochist for these crap hell. But it also presented me with an interesting opportunity to commit another experiment, this time at my otherwise barely useful Poco F1 (and I did borrow Lukas' X3N for this one, but he needed it & I had to use my F1).

As always with my reviews, expect spoilers.

Assets

Audio

For the background music, I feel they're mostly decent, with a few shining exceptions like the Raiden Shogun boss battle (by God, that one fucking rocked). I'd say 7.5/10 for this one as I don't have anything else to say.

For the dubs, I feel they're a bit all over the place, ranging from mediocre to weak.

• First off, I'm getting these out of the way : Currently, I have no comments on the Chinese or Korean dub for now, mostly because nobody in my area has ever understood either (most of what I knew about the Chinese language was long forgotten as I never used them). But you'll be hearing Chinese dub at the end of a certain Liyue interlude.
That said, some r/Genshin_Impact redditors claimed the Chinese dub is great (which is natural considering Hoyoverse's location) so I'll just leave it here for obvious reasons.


• The English dub (which is provided by default) is boring & generic (and sometimes made some characters sound a bit closer to the dubbers' ages than their in-game age). But at the very least they mostly match the English text, so 4/10 it is.
• The Japanese dub is a bit all over the place, with several "unique" texts translated to their boringly generic version, as if the dubbers were handed a more basic translation of the English text. But then again I "learned" Japanese like an average weeaboo, so take this comment with a barrel of salt. While I liked it more than the English version, I can't give it anything higher than 5/10, especially when there are blatant mismatching of speech & text.
In a certain part of an early-game character story quest (using the JP dub), "Captain Pyro" gets dubbed as "Emiya" "hero of justice" (seigi no mikata, in case you know nothing of the Mushroom Eggplant's franchise). Or here's something you will always encounter once you put Paimon in Serenitea Pot : her first line text is "(insert Traveler nickname), you're back!" but gets dubbed as "Paimon best companion!". At least Paimon's JP dub has several cute moments, including "ehe te nandayo".
24/12/2024 Update : Since I did not reach Sumeru's storyline when I quit GI, I missed this. However, Lukas took my account there (before he took my account to some OOM shitbrick) and showed me that I missed Creuset.


• As for where the dubs were applied, they mostly keep to the Archon quests, character-focused story quests, cinematics, & some event quests; with most side-story quests not having any. There were also dubbings for some human enemies as well.
• Traveler.
• All in all, I'd rate the dubs a 4/10. It's nice (and should have been at least 7/10), but there are blatant flaws that actually ruins it for me.

The sound effects mostly serve their purpose, except for one little flaw. When a claymore-type weapon hits an enemy, the sound it makes wasn't one for cutting or slashing, but rather for hitting with a blunt weapon. Kind of makes sense on some situations (like hitting something harder than flesh, or using a blunt weapon), but I'm not sure how this really works on humans (particularly those with cloth "armor") & slimes. But then again, those "claymores" tend to be mostly blunt weapons, so I'd consider this a minor flaw, and GI's SFX section gets the average 5/10.

Taking everything & averaging them, GI's audio score reaches 5.5/10, which is... almost above average. The music is occasionally nice, but the rest kind of dragged it all down to mediocrity. Nothing to note on the sound effects.

Graphics

For graphics, GI uses the Unity engine. And GI uses this engine well enough - stuff looks good even at low resolutions & 30fps.

And every area is themed with some real-world inspirations.

• First off, the 2nd easiest - Liyue. Its name is already a dead ringer for China (more specifically the wuxia ones?) - not to mention the mountainous cliffs & farm fields (I vividly remember seeing the latter in Chef Wang Gang's videos).
• Then, the easiest. Inazuma - dead ringer for Japan in many ways... but then we have Enkanomiya, which is straight-up based off Atlantis / Greek - with the sunken former & the latter's names.
• Despite not being present at the moment, Snezhnaya seems to be inspired by the Slavic regions. Though some of their characters seem to take on Greek / Italian / Latin aliases.
• Fontaine takes from the French, then adds in some steampunk tech things.
• Mondstadt (the starting region)... I'm kind of confused on it. On one hand, it takes inspiration from German culture, but then mixes in some stuff from some parts of Europe, like England & Rome. Which now sounds ironic & weird to me, as some of my favorite characters are from Mondstadt.
• Sumeru seems to be a blend of Middle East & South Asia. But to me it seemed like Aladdinland got its eastern area forested & southwest desert mixed with some Egyptian ruins (plus some weird tech?). Either way, I am unable to really appreciate whatever Sumeru thought it wanted to be, but not to the same degree of...
• Natlan (a.k.a. the newest region revealed in GI as of this writing - 28/11/2024) just doesn't know what it wants to be. On one hand, it takes pages from a good chunk of the older American continent (Aztec, Inca, Maya, Polynesia, Quechuan) before the Europeans' discoveries & invasions. On the other hand, we get a biker-themed Archon, pixel-themed characters, DJ thingies, random Jurassic dinosaurs, and various stuff from other places including Africa & Java; all of which got wangjangled together (like pesto made with a semi-broken food processor instead of mortar & pestle) to form... whatever Natlan thought it is. Not to mention some don't appreciate their cultures being horribly represented like this, but as someone NOT from any of these cultures (and whose familiarity of Mexican culture is unfortunately derived from Forza Horizon 5... which is to say I might as well consider myself still in the dark about Mexican culture of any kind, in any way), I only feel confusion for this one.

That said, my F1 (which uses Helios' performance-focused build) gets really hot whenever I play GI for at least 1 hour, despite setting things like this :

• Off : Motion blur & Bloom
• TAA Anti-aliasing
• 30fps
• Medium render resolution & environment detail
• Low for everything else, and enabled co-op teammate effects (which shouldn't matter as I don't play co-op, but somehow still counts towards the performance load bar)
• GI's performance load bar claims "Smooth", which it kinda is. But my F1 is still slow-cooking itself to death while greedily gobbling up its battery without some additional cooling.

In addition, GI's graphics has several additional glaring issues.

• When you look too closely into the character or look at them from certain angles (like directly below the character, or pointing camera closely to characters' butt), sometimes they de-render from the game, only to re-render after camera angle returrns to normal (behind the character). I agree with the internet claiming this is a cheap form of censorship.
BotW/TotK also de-renders characters on certain angles, though at a far more extreme angle (such as when you really need Link out of the way to look at the sky for some reason). Also smoother de-rendering compared to GI's choppy implementation where the character seems like they're losing pixels.


• If you don't like your OLED display with no burned-in images (or wanted some shoulder browser to be able to get your personal data in this game), good news - your UID will always be present (in clear numbers) in the bottom-right corner, waiting to eventually burn itself into your display (and/or said shoulder browser to find uses for your UID number, including the good old Mr.McUgly permanent session).
• Over-exaggerated breast jiggle. I'm not exactly in the circle for R34 stuff (let alone most of the folks of the fightclub I'm in - but then again I don't think we'll be missing out on much (aside from some mental traumas?) considering just how much those guys at the R34 club seem to hate GI...), but even I felt those breasts shouldn't jiggle like that considering the characters' outfits (which should've limited them).
• Horrible OOB (out of bounds) implementation.
• In BotW (whose maps are already complete), its OOB implementation was one invisible wall, placed so far away from the actual map that you are unlikely to encounter it... unless you somehow flew far enough to reach those walls in the first place.
• As GI's map was not completed, there are areas with red borders around the map, which indicates the OOB zone. However, as you go there, the minimap flashes red, making it difficult to use the minimap to evade the OOB zone.
• Go slightly deeper into the OOB area (which is easy considering your minimap has been freaking out there) & the screen darkens, making any navigation away from the OOB area even harder. At some point after going anywhere deeper within the OOB borders (which is even easier as your display got ruined by GI' OOB implementation), you will lose control of your character as they back off the OOB zone - and Paimon will also appear for one voiced line to "suggest" us to explore that area later.

As I couldn't be bothered to comment on this any further, I might as well drop a 4/10. It would be 7/10, but I slashed 3 off for the issues.

Lore

By God, Genshin has a ton of lore dumped in, both implied & explored. However, in terms of quality, they tend to fall between 3/10 to 7/10 (mostly 5.0 though), so I might as well drop a 6/10 for this one (at least for now, since I just reached Inazuma) - there's a lot of them that I always wanted to come back for more. Though this time I won't be spoiling anything for now - parts of the internet already did them for me, so... I might as well leave you all to search for them.

That said, I have a few issues against GI's story.

• Traveler. (I use the Male Traveler & refer to him as "him"; but for this one as I'm mentioning both I go with both pronouns at once - less awkward than "per/perse/them/they".)
• Right at the start of the game, these 2 are sighted as their own characters. And you pick 1 (and his/her nickname) while the other eventually becomes one of the villains. Therefore, both are their own characters, waiting for you to decide who takes up what role.
• But as soon as that opening movie ends, Traveler barely spoke anything, and if he/she spoke it's usually not dubbed (usually texts from whatever he/she is allowed to "speak") except for certain instances (including combat sounds & voice-over section). The silent protagonist thing doesn't work on a dedicated character, like Traveler here. Even accounting for Paimon being Traveler's improptu "speaker" for the most part.
• And these characters get their true names revealed in the storyline - Aether & Lumine. Therefore (AGAIN!) concluding both are their own characters, not really something any of us can just self-insert into.
• Not exactly a Traveler issue, but every NPC talks like Traveler is talking to them, instead of the character we're currently using. Granted, sometimes the active character is shifted to Traveler for the conversation (which somewhat alleviates this issue, but also turns her/him into a figurative lightning rod in some cases), but this shows some lack of care in the conversations, especially when we're using a non-Traveler character to converse with some NPCs.
• Traveler can probably be considered a Gary Stu / Mary Sue character - most characters tend to really like (or dislike in case of most enemies) her/him, there are (mostly, for now - who knows what Snezhnaya and/or the Abyss folks got on her/him) no permanent negative consequences held against him/her for whatever he/she did in the world, and world developments (as seen in the storyline) all happen in her/his presence.
• In-game story delivered via layers of layers of layers of textwall (kinda like FGO, except in the same world as the game itself). And if you just want to get the story out of the way & be done with the quest? HoYoverse screams "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" & skipped the skip button (except for certain cutscenes - all of which are unfortunately at the farming section, which takes a few seconds to execute), forcing us to read everything whether we like them or not. Trust me, this will rear its ugly head soon...
• No replayable story cutscenes. Sucks, but not as bad as FGO's lack of replayable story boss fights (except in certain recollection events where they are brought back for an event & also given an optional ultra-hard mode, but only as long as the event was ran & the player had progressed far enough to be eligible for the event; or certain former event final bosses in the Main Interlude).
• For a "teen-rated" game, the story seemed to be aimed for kids (or pre-teens at most) from the dialogues. But then again it could be just me.

Development stuff

As expected of most game nowadays, GI is closed source. And while I could easily dismiss it on its own merit & dump it a 3/10, allow me to add a few oddities.

• GI supports external controllers on iOS, but not on Android. And I can (kind of) authoritatively agree on this claim - I attached my DualSense to my F1 (like I did my X3P) & didn't see any option for controllers at all. In addition, on iOS (as claimed by some redditor (archive.org) ), it isn't enabled by default & enabling it disables all touch functionalities.
• Android build works without Play Services, but cannot do in-app purchases.
• While some claimed Genshin contains some sort of anticheat measure, I've not triggered them yet, even with KernelSU (and its app) installed and USB debugging accidentally left enabled (I forgot to disable it).
• 24/12/2024 Update : Lent my S9 to Lukas (who now uses what used to be my account from Sir Ed, and also got invited to our little holiday), who just so happened to get curious enough to try playing GI in there, in my setup. Only to repeatedly face out-of-memory issues while playing as GI force-closes along with every apps that are still open in the foreground, despite several attempts of mitigations (hiding Magisk app, enabling Zygisk & denylist, returning to stock launcher, and fully nuking Magisk; all in that order); whereas my crDroid instance of F1 (which has both KSU & 2GB more RAM) somehow does not.

I will conclude GI's final development score as 1/10. Obvious blatant flaws, but one (or maybe 2, considering that anticheat) of those issues kept the game playable even for ungoogled Android players. That said, ≤4GB RAM device owners seem to be cockblocked out of this crap, so I might as well round the score down.

Installers

GI is available to several big tech platforms, so I'll be listing them below. By the way, all of the installers are gratis.

• Android builds are only available in Play Store, and extracting via Aurora Store results in split APK that SAI can install, but with a warning about the package being too large. APKPure somehow managed to extract a whole APK for GI - which would have simplified the installation process, but I cannot count this towards the final score (except as a mention) as APKPure still relies on Play Store.
• Apple (iPadOS & iOS) is welded to the App Store.
• PlayStation 4 & 5 has them from the PlayStation Store (or whatever PlayStation's app store is named).
• Windows builds are available from either Epic(FAIL!) Games Store or HoYoPlay (provided by 1st-party). Windows builds also does manual asset installation if you can find its links, download the files, & apply the downloaded assets.
• There's a dedicated "Cloud" build, but since I've suffered from the pains of the regular version this is a massive "why bother?).

As most builds come from the respective platforms' app store (except for Windows which gets 2 external app stores and manual asset download and/or installation) GI gets an average (for most "games" released nowadays) 1.5/10. Should be a 1/10, but I give a +0.5 for Windows since you get the opportunity to separately download & install its assets.

Online requirements

GI is online-only, and is made to be a single player game. Allow me to document the horrifying experience of setting up GI & playing it.

• The first time I open the app (somewhere around August 2024), I am greeted with a prompt to log in, using either hoyoverse account (email) or either Facebook, Google, or Twitter. I used the hoyoverse account that was provided to me (which does contain some progress that I got access to as soon as the game starts) & I am greeted by Geetest's slide-a-part-of-a-picture captcha. After completing that & successfully logging in, I am forced to download ≥28GB (and counting up as future updates come in) of assets, which comprised all of the graphical assets & the English dub. The download got split between 3 workdays, thanks to the already shitty network I'm in at that time was getting further strained by GI's unholy downloads. I could've left the device in Sir Ed's abode & got the entire thing done way sooner (as he has the least cursed wi-fi compared to all of us), but I had to make sure this all gets personally documented (and at that time I didn't know Sir Ed / GOT21 all that well yet), so I braved on with the shitty office wi-fi.
That said, logging in with Google doesn't trigger Geetest. Not sure on the other 2 (Facebook & Twitter) as none of us had any accounts for those 2.

• As I couldn't be bothered with the mediocre English dubbing very early on, I searched for the settings to change the voice language. I found them, but I also found out that I had to download the files it needed, which amounts to at least 5GB for the Japanese dub. Another workday lost to this game.
• And after 4 painful workdays of setting everything up, I'm finally ready to get in yet another gacha hell (mixed with BotW). I went to some area with some enemies & fought them for a while... only for the wi-fi to randomly slow down at the worst timing possible & sent the latency to 999ms for something like 10 seconds. And this is when GI's greatest issue kicked in : even the combat is affected by the network. No damage input reaches the enemy, and I couldn't "dodge" some attacks either - I still lost a chunk of my HP even after clearly dodging it.
• As if this wasn't enough pain, I went to complete some story quests, since I need to rush my way up Inazuma fast for some artifacts I wanted (only to drop that wanting once I got my preferred artifact (something of a mix between Gladiator's Finale and/or Noblesse Oblige) set up for some of Mondstadt's pommel throwers & Traveler). I was at a certain point in Liyue (as I drafted this at somewhere around August 2024) waiting for the damned conversation to just hurry up & end itself by rapidly tapping at everything hoping I get there. But then the fucking wi-fi roared its ugly head again by randomly slowing down for me (despite latency showing somewhere between 90-100ms before I triggered the conversation), and suddenly I was hit by a "Reconnecting to server...". And I got kicked back all the way back before I started that conversation & had to repeat that tappity dance all over again - which did eventually end the conversation. Except it has destroyed any entertainment value I could've got out of it.
• And just in case I wanted more pain from the game, I could play in co-op mode (which would probably justify the bullshit online-only nature of this game). While there's Ed who's perfectly willing to do said co-op mode with me, neither of us managed to connect to each other's co-op room reliably enough, so I quickly dropped this idea. That said, searching for co-op on either GameFAQs or the subreddit shows players not liking GI's co-op implementation, which does strengthen my stance against co-op in GI (which, mind you, did not start good as I kept getting spammed by join requests & I intend to play in single player unless I had to). I could (and did) silence those join requests by setting it to "reject join requests", but they randomly get switched back to "ask to joinn" every now and then, so I had to recheck every now & then.

Based on that story, I would've thrown GI a perfect 0/10 for being arbitrarily over-reliant on online servers without a proper justification. However, I am also convinced to limit GI's overall gameplay score to 2/10 for this bullshit alone. That said, here's a condensed list of what GI's online requirements cover, from a regular user's point of view.

• Account log-in (also serves as data backup & restore). I would rather ask for some kind of zipfile extraction for data backup & restore, but I guess this is standard for online games.
• Asset downloads. Could've been done better by external downloads & asset zipfile extraction, especially considering almost half of GI's supported platforms regularly work with these files.
• Co-op gameplay if you're into it?
• Arbitrary input verifications - the worst aspect of this all. On a single-player game not designed for it.
• Background telemetry collections?

Where it connects to

Probably not the worst issue for GI, despite it being horrible in its own rights. Keep in mind I only used the Android / Play Store build, in a vanilla environment (personal - A12L crDroid, no GApps, KernelSU 0.9.5 (from Helios Kernel) installed for personal experiment; testing with Lukas' X3N - A12L LineageOS, no GApps, just debloated).

• A bunch of hoyoverse.com links, including 1st-party telemetry like log-upload-os.hoyoverse.com
• Some yuanshen.com links. While I could dismiss it as some sort of 3rd-party connection, a search of yuanshen in 4get.ca brought Genshin Impact, so I'll be treating it as 1st-party for now.
• Geetest for captcha (where you slide a part of a picture to where it belongs & gets informed that you're better tha some computer program for correctly sliding it in). I've encountered this only when logging in with HoYoverse account - Google account don't get this treatment.
• Some AppsFlyer stuff. Who said the tyrants occupying China would be the only one harvesting your data? Now some American / Israeli advertiser has a hand too.
• Apple ID, for some unknown reason. Not a connection I expected on the Android build, but somehow it's there.
• Google Firebase, which is somewhat expected for Play Store builds. Not that it would've mattered - Narsil's hosts (which I included in my hosts) had already blocked it.

...screw this, I shall arbitrarily rate this one 1/10.

Privacy policy

(Direct link - 1st-party JS & XHR required) | (archive.org / archive.is - no JS & XHR required)

To summarize, here's what GI collects :

• Account registration information - email, phone number (if applicable), password, verification code, Open ID
• Birthday dates, when provided.
• "Social" media accounts when used for logins
• Personal profile info
• Game data
• Chat data if used
• "Malicious content" (a.k.a. potentially anything)
• User service info
• Survey information
• IP address & "other device information"
• Advertising ID
• Payment data
• And "other information subject to specific notice", which might as well mean EVERYTHING.
• Yes, this is shared with "competent authorities" (the mafia?) and random 3rd-party nobodies - including advertisers. It might as well be EVERYONE!!! at this point.
• Data retention stated "as long as necessary", which possibly translates to "forever". Only US, Japan, EU, & Singapore were listed as the server locations, which is rather questionable considering MiHoYo's Chinese origins.

Simple 0/10. Oh and McUgly just summoned you - said your scores sucked or something, so I'll... just pray for a swift end for your ordeal, since my steelbar is still borrowed by some fuck who "asked me for a favor" & still hasn't returned it yet, and I am about to chase the damn thing.

Gameplay

In a nutshell, GI is a blend of gacha & BotW gameplay with some additional twists and arbitrary restrictions.

• First off, the BotW gameplay with some twists.
• Climbing feels somewhat different. In BotW (and TotK by extension) weather makes climbing sometimes irritatingly realistic, by occasionally (constantly if we insist on jump-climbing) forcing the player to slip when the terrain is wet. And climbing ladders doesn't force the player to fall once stamina runs out, though at the cost of no horizontal climbing there (which is actually a good thing since you don't really want to do that). By contrast, GI's climbing mechanism doesn't have those (as in whatever climbing mechanism GI implemented is also implemented on those ladders), which makes climbing ladders a bit bothersome (since you don't recover stamina while climbing ladders), but at the very least there's no slippings to deal with... aside from the times the characters slid down a slope because they couldn't be bothered to latch on & activate the climbing mechanism.
• Gliding is mostly similar to BotW/TotK except the gravity change in GI is immediate, whereas I felt a more gradual change in BotW/TotK.
• Equipment materials don't matter in GI. On the other hand, in BotW/TotK; bringing out any metal equipment turns you into a literal lightning rod in thunderstorms & wooden equipments can & will catch fire & eventually burn to ashes (especially in the Death Mountain, where lava & magma are everywhere).
• Speaking of wood, in GI you don't just chop trees like you do in BotW/TotK (hit tree with blade, it falls; hit trunk with blade, it becomes generic wood that can be picked up into inventory). You attack tree with physical attacks, and wood materials (up to 3 per tree, and actually corresponds to whatever tree you attacked instead of generic) comes out; all while the tree you attacked remain standing. Though in GI you mostly use wood for building stuff in the teapot.
• Fishing is now its own side activity (which gives you unique fishes that you can either process into generic fish for cooking ingredient or trade for some stuff from the fishing merchants), in addition to electrifying the waters (which felt weaker in GI as it's lingering & more subtle, as opposed to the instant explosion from BotW/TotK) & picking up the fishes one by one.
• Cooking is... different. In BotW/TotK, you put down up to 5 various ingredients with similar effects into an ignited cooking pot & get some food that heals (and sometimes buffs) you (or failed dish if you mixed the wrong things in); or set said ingredients on fire (some of which may not survive being cooked like this) to make them more effective at healing in return for losing all additional effects it could've offered. In GI, you lose a preconfigured amount of item & play a timing minigame where you decide how effective your item will be. As for the food itself, it can only do one purpose at a time - buffing attack, buffing defense, healing, stamina recovery (or cost reduction buff), or reviving. For the buffings, only 1 food buff per buff type may apply. Healing allows you to heal any character as long as they either aren't so full they would not eat another bite or needed reviving (in BotW/TotK you eat as much as you want to & Link is shown in the pause menu devouring whatever you commanded him to eat). Reviving... simply brings them to a point where they can just be healed, and it gets a 120 second cooldown before you can revive anyone else with this (in BotW/TotK you get resuscitated from a fatal blow as long as you either have a Fairy in your inventory and/or Mipha's Grace is enabled & ready). Stamina recovery gets an unfair 5 minute cooldown (in BotW/TotK you have none of them).
And yes (as long as you have learned its recipes), you can literally pan-fry a bunch of fruits & make a "freshly-squeezed" juice, thanks to this minigame. Or pan-fry some flour & seaweed into soba noodles. Fuck, add fish to those soba ingredients & it becomes udon! And if you want French Fontainian dessert, just pan-fry some almond, coffee, egg, & sugar for a perfectly portioned & squared layer cake. But alas, the boys heard these like a Chuck Norris meme (some felt one too many, in fact) & immediately branded me "Chef Norris" for those shitquotes. Ironic, considering BlinJail was not used as a recipe tag, at least for now.

• GI also contains a little alchemy system where you consume a bunch of items & maybe some money to get other items. This is also what you will use for potion making, whereas in BotW/TotK you drop monster parts & some insects with matching effects into the same ignited cooking pot meant for cooking up said foods (dropping wrong types of items, such as ores in anything, bugs in foods, or food materials in elixirs; results in some dubious "food" which heals at the cost of Link eating it with extreme disgust - but no other debuffs.).
• In BotW/TotK, the starting area gets trash mobs with loot that is only usable for early game. As the player explores the world, areas closer to the edge of the map & the penultimate area usually contains tougher mobs with better loot (all of which respawns off a blood moon mechanism). GI globalizes this mechanism with Adventure Rank & World Level. The former increases as you explore things, and the latter increases every 5 (or 10 on earlier) Adventure Ranks (and following an ascension quest). The latter makes enemies much harder to defeat, yet barely increases loot quality & quantity: and can only be rolled back (or reverted) by 1 level every 24 hours. It caps at level 60, and after that Mora will be given in place of Adventure EXP.
Personally, I felt the Adventure Ranks increases too quickly for me to properly keep up with the increased difficulty from World Level, at least up until WL6 (by WL7 the EXP requirements started spiking up, somewhat alleviating this issue unless you actively invest in more than 5 characters, or something down that line). And by the time my most used characters (usually it's Traveler + some pommel throwers from Mondstadt) got "strong enough") according to the game's "training guide" I had already capped out my Adventure Level to the point it will rise at least 3 levels once I'm done with the ascension quest for WL5. Despite those issues, I actually liked the added difficulty since I wanted more challenge out of the combat aspect.

• Speaking of respawns (and the blood moon from BotW/TotK); GI's respawning physics are rather basic - some regular bosses immediately respawn after logging back in, while most mobs respawn after the "daily reset" (a.k.a. at a certain hour of the day everyday).
• The game also contains in-game training guides & recommendations for characters, sourced from "active players", whoever they are. While it is neat the publishers would help us in developing our characters, I find this a bit unneccesary, mostly since I would rather just experiment with whatever I liked (not to mention the lottery of farming those items...).
• Sometimes the NPC can get stuck "completing a quest" when they're used for it, sometimes blocking a quest frrom progressing.
• For no apparent reason, we get key items with 4-stars & 5-stars. Not that it has any deeper meanings whatsoever (aside from some 4-stars being , but still.
• In both BotW/TotK & GI, conversations happen in the same world as the game itself. However, unlike Nintendo's games, GI may also trigger conversations (at least the scripted ones) in the middle of combat, forcing your character(s) to tank enemy attacks as he/she stood there waiting for you to rush the conversation off in order to finally take care of the attackers, all because you wandered a bit too close & triggered both enemy detection & conversation. Yes, this bullshit has downed my Traveler more than once.
• As for exploration gimmicks, BotW/TotK uses its armor gimmicks (where each individual piece has its effect towards something, and wearing them together results in an additional effect, at least when upgraded), while GI puts them in some characters... that you will have to roll for & enlist in your party.
• If BotW/TotK has armor set gimmicks (which, as mentioned right above this point sometimes applies to exploration stuff as well), GI has artifacts for gimmicks. And instead of just raising defense, it raises various stats. And if you equip matching sets, you also get additional bonuses depending on the amount of the matched equipped artifacts. And unlike characters & weapons, you can't ascend them.
By the way, good luck grinding for the artifact you want, with the effects that you do want. And the Artifact Transmuter is not the way to guarantee the artifact stats you want - it is simply too expensive for most players to rely on.

• In GI, you can bring up to 4 characters at a time, but control only 1. Setting up the party requires holding an inactive character & waiting for the dedicated menu to show up. Co-op mode will cut the amount of playable characters you can bring in proportion to the users currently in the room, but allows ≥2 playable characters to be out at the same time. BotW/TotK... You will play as Link, and you will like it because you can never play as anyone else.
• Unlike BotW/TotK, GI's map is incomplete. And HoYoverse provides an interactive map (which will require 1st-party JS & XHR, in addition to an additional display) in case you need to farm specific materials. Which is interesting because this implies even the developers & publishers find specific material farming sucks. But still, that's on them for implementing this in the first place.
• When it comes to maximum health & stamina, BotW/TotK directly rewards explorations & puzzle-solving (not to mention some boss fights drop Heart Containers on first defeat) by giving you Spirit Orb (or Light of Blessing in TotK), which you can exchange into either Heart Container (maximum HP upgrade) or Stamina Vessel (stamina upgrade up to 3 Wheels). And you can use cooked foods to temporarily increase them further. GI, on the other hand, kept HP upgrades within the artifacts (particularly the flowers) while taking notes from Nintendo's stamina upgrade mechanism (and limits each stamina upgrade to 7-8 point for each upgrade) but limits it to 240 Maximum Stamina (something like 12/5 of a stamina bar?).
• Inventory differs as well - BotW/TotK offers essentially infinite slots for armor, key-items (not that there's much need for those), & materials, but a set limit for cooked stuff & expandable limit for weapons & shields. And you expand the weapon/shield slots by gathering Korok seeds & handing them to Hestu (again, directly rewarding exploration & puzzle solving, except after some expansions the cost spikes really hard). GI, on the other hand, gives you a VERY generous set limit for everything but key-items.
• Stamina management somewhat differs. In BotW/TotK, once you run out of stamina you have to either consume a stamina-recovering item or wait until the stamina bar is 100% full. In GI, you don't need to wait for the stamina bar to fully regenerate - you can still consume stamina for one emergency dash.
• Stealth in GI is an insult compared to BotW/TotK (no indicators for anything, unpredictable detection mechanism) - so much so GI made a dedicated gameplay mode for stealth mode (which you will never replay ever again after you&339;ve completed whatever needed it - not that you would want to).
• As previously mentioned, GI is online only. In relations to the BotW above, it puts every user input & damage calculations straight up the cloud™ verification whereas BotW/TotK does them in-game. Co-op mode is also available, but its implementation sucks, according to most players.


• Combat has clear differences from BotW, so let me separately list it first before the gacha section.
• First off, no weapons are destructible. Like, you can't just damage & discard them (or even throw them to make 1 boosted last hit out of them). While it is nice to freely switch between weapons without having to explore the map & maybe kill random mobs for it (except for Master Sword which "recharges" after some time in BotW/TotK, though you need upgraded stats to obtain it in the first place), you do have to upgrade & ascend them as well.
• Every elements gets to react with each other in its own ways. Sometimes enemies come with their own (which they usually are immune against) which provides a platform to start abusing it (though some elements fare better than others at abusing this mechanism).
• Instead of being able to equip whatever type of weapon you want (sword, claymore, spear) with a sidearm (bow), every character gets stuck to 1 type of weapon. And active shield blocking is absent, except for a certain character's elemental skill.
• First off, spears / polearms. In BotW/TotK, it's a fast 2-handed melee weapon with long & narrow reach (as well as the lowest base damage in Botw). In GI, it's simply a better sword - longer & wider reach, sometimes with rapid attacks depending on the characters' animation set; all while having mostly similar attack stat to swords. And if you really need to mine stuff with a spear wielder, get Candace - her 2nd attack & Elemental Skill counts as blunt attacks... what's that, shield sliding is absent?! FUUUUUUUUUUUU-
• Swords used to be the de-facto all-rounder (with added defensive bonus from a physical shield). However, in GI, it's not as good as spears / polearms above (mostly because physical shields are mostly removed except for when it explicitly belongs to some characters), but then I've overinvested on the sword wielders (yes, 2 of them are those Mondstadt pommel-throwers I've previously mentioned - one of them is Jean, who I pulled off a time-limited free 5-star giveaway event (archive.is / archive.org) instead of being accidentally rolled) that I couldn't find use for most of the spear wielders.
• Claymores are just as bulky & slow (depending on the characters' animation set) as it is in BotW/TotK, but this time all of them are blunted as well, which also makes them the de-facto option for mining stuff and/or breaking hard things, including Geo shields. And they have a tendency to offend some HEMA practicioners, which is too easily understood - we have skinny kids (and/or grown-ups with some skill issues portrayed in the attack animations) handling those chunky ass shitbars. I also laughed like a fucking maniac as soon as how is this tiny prepubescent boy came out, only peaked by THIS IS NOT HOW, STOP SPINNING!.
• In BotW/TotK, bows are your sidearm - and you also get to slow time down while aiming in mid-air (at the cost of your stamina rapidly draining, which you will need to look out for because you use that stamina to glide too). In GI, bows are one of the 5 primary weapon classes, with charged attacks requiring waiting instead of just holding down the attack button (which also serves to send the player into aiming mode). The regular attacks deal regular physical damage over long distance. Mid-air aiming is absent (as in you cannot trigger aiming mode while off the ground), and to add insult to injury you cannot disengage aiming mode while falling (if you somehow remained on aiming mode while the platform you were standing on despawned) - guaranteeing your archer a potentially fatal fall damage that we can otherwise prevent. 5.2.0 implemented Ororon, a character who can trigger mid-air aiming (but is also subject to the same despawned platform mid-air aiming mode lockout as everyone else).
And yes, archers in Android builds of GI sucked hard. You need to use gyroscope to fully utilize them, but the gyroscope implementation in GI SUCKS. Especially compared to the nonsense of BotW/TotK which broke the game's combat system wide open.

• And we get to one GI-exclusive weapon - catalysts. This exclusively deals elemental damage & are a mix of melee and ranged (as in some chars use them as melee, some use as ranged).
• Shield blocking is now passively handled by Geo elemental reactions - pick a crystal from its resulting reaction & you immediately get passive shielding, at least until it expires over time or destroyed by enemy attacks. And as previously alluded in the mention about spears, you don't get any shield surfing, which doubly sucked considering the generally slow exploration speeds your characters usually run in.
• Speaking of elemental reactions, every playable character comes with their own unique elemental skills & bursts. Those are what gives your characters (except for the catalyst wielders) elemental attacks.
• Dashes in Botw/Totk were just sprints, while GI has actual combat applications for dashes (before they become sprints) by giving you some invulnerability frames for the initial dash.
• In BotW/TotK, your character stays still as he attacks and the enemies mostly receive the attacks head-on without being knocked back, except from either the final attack in the attack chain or a headshot. Whereas in GI, your characters (and most lesser grunts) move about when attacking, imparting an additional sense of fluidity Nintendo's offerings could've had in some cases. And everyone gets their own animations, which does make them more unique aesthetically (if not triggering martial artists). Mid-tier foes take a lot more to stagger & bosses and greater foes can only be staggered by specific attacks if they can be staggered at all.
• In BotW/TotK, you manually lock onto an opponent with the left joycon's ZL button (and raise your shield at the same time if you have one and/or equipped a sword-type weapon). In GI, your character automatically & randomly targets enemies based on God-knows-what factors whenever they attack.


• Certain areas also provide their own unique additional exploration stuff. Though I'll just note out the more notable ones because there are a lot implemented.
• The first one I've noticed was Mondstadt's Dragonspine which only introduced the Sheer Cold mechanism. Though that was only a mechanism that kept me moving for the nearest in-game warmth source, before my chars start succumbing to constant damage & my screen getting somewhat blocked by the "fogging" effect after a good chunk of the bar is filled.
The Signora boss (somewhere in Inazuma) fight brought this mechanism back & cloned it with the opposing effect for her 2nd form.

• Liyue's Chenyu Vale has the Golden Carp's Leap - Sumeru's Four-Leaf Sigil, but you get to launch yourself at whatever direction you wish.
• Speaking of Sumeru's Four-Leaf Sigil, I have multiple occasions of losing fights (as in I was considered "escaped" the fight, not defeated by the enemies) as I kept accidentally tapping on the trigger button, which is placed too closely to the attack button (sometimes while adjusting camera as well). And speaking of Sumeru... I find the Aranara mechanisms underutilized & barely relevant for anything else other than Aranara questlines (which does feature TONNES OF un-dubbed texts).
• Inazuma mainly plays with Electro-powered things, sometimes powered by Electro-afflicted chars, sometimes Electrograna.
• The Fontaine "peninsula" is basically Subnautica Lite (but without oxygen limits). And surface swimming (after activating at least one Statue of the Seven in Fontaine) comes with its own regenerating stamina bar (which allows you to not drown the moment you run out of stamina - and is also used underwater). Fun stuff, if it didn't set one precedent that would not immediately be surpassed.
• Natlan's stuff... is a bore. Especially considering it was implemented directly after Fontaine's not-Subnautica stuff. And yes, with certain characters being able to use Natlan's additional "stamina bar" in ways all non-Natlan chars don't... let's just leave things at "Natlan felt cheap" - and I also meant that for Natlan as a whole.


• For the gacha system...
• GI's gacha has a pity system where you get a 5-star every 90 rolls (that's 9 rolls for me) & resets every time a 5-star got rolled. And in some banners featuring a promtional character, every 5-star you get has a 50% chance that the 5-star you got is the promotional character (which probably explains the 50/50 thingy I sometimes hear).
• As for gacha rates, 5-star gets 0.6%, 4-star 5.1%, & 3-star 94.3%. Personally, I exclusively roll the 10x (and never the 1x), where I am guaranteed 1 4-star stuff at the very least. The rest of what I got, on the other hand, are unfortunately 3-star trash weapons (usually) that will only be used to enhance 4-star or 5-star weapons. Playable characters are invariably either 4 or 5 stars.
• Rolling for duplicate characters automatically gives an exclusive item for unlocking a constellation of a select character (except for Traveler, whose constellation unlockers are tied to adventuring & Archon quests). And every characters come with 6 constellations. And once the constellations are unlocked, they cannot be turned off - which can be inconvenient in some cases (such as the times I used Geo Traveler & some archers (including Ororon) to test out that mid-air aiming bug. Geo Traveler had his C6 unlocked, making his platform last longer & unnecessarily extending the test times.)


• Its grindy economics...
• The quests tends to give good rewards... but you are more likely to run out of them faster than you can get them.
• Enemies barely drop any EXP or Mora. Instead, you are expected to level up things by consooming various EXP items (and/or unused equipments, for artifacts & weapons).
• We are always bound to lack something to enhance & ascend our stuff, be it money (Mora), its experience stuff, or its ascension materials. Especially Mora.
• Some materials can only be farmed on certain days. Sunday is the only day you are graciously allowed to farm everything that is otherwise locked to certain days, but...
• As per the tradition of gacha games, we get a sluggishly recharging "stamina bar" called Original Resin, which allows us to get rewards from completing some grindable stuff (boss enemies, domains, ley-lines). And by using the game's alchemy system we can condense 1 regular boss worth of resin (40) into a Condensed Resin (which is locked behind Liyue Reputation Level 3), which needs manual crafting but increases the rewards of non-boss domains. Immediately restoring Original Resins requires either 1 Fragile Resin or 50 Primogems for 60 Original Resins; otherwise you are forced to wait for 8 real-time minutes for each point of Original Resin, which equates to 26 hours & 40 minutes (1600 minutes or 96000 seconds) for a full 0-200 restoration.
For reference, we max out at 5 Condensed Resin (worth 5 additional rewards from non-boss domains( & 200 Original Resin (worth 5 non-weekly boss (40 Resins), 3-4 weekly boss (normally you are charged 60 resins for looting weekly bosses, but every week you get 50% off for the first 3 weekly bosses you loot) or 10 non-boss domains).

• Speaking of weekly bosses, you can only loot them once a week. Which sucks, especially since you can fight most of them anytime you want.
• Grinding for stuff also contributes towards Adventure Rank XP points. Which meant we are always in the grind because at some point we need to increase World Level to continue receiving rewards and/or further strengthen our stuff. That said, WL7 & higher has spiked up EXP requirements, so I guess it somewhat balances out?
• Instead of daily login rewards, we get daily commission quests - which SUCK. Sure, you have the ones which eventually progress into some other commissions when done (which could & should have been either miscellaneous or radiant quests), but most of the time these are dross that barely deserve any of your time. And this is where you usually get your Primogems daily.
Fortunately, these can be skipped by gathering Encounter points by doing adventure stuff (including but not limited to clearing quests & unlocking chests) or spend 30 Original Resins to convert long-term encounter points into regular encounter points.
Completing 8 commission quests also grants Story quest keys (up to 3 because GI likes to unneccesarily limit user game time), which can be used to unlock (mostly) optional character-focused story quests & Hangout quests (which requires 3 keys). Hope you got your greatest internet networks ready, because those optional quests have tonnes of texts... and there's barely any good checkpoints.

• We have in-app purchases which is mostly used to buy Genesis Crystal that you will have to convert to Primogems, which can be converted into one of 2 types of currency (1 for regular & 1 for the time-limited ones) to actually roll the gacha. And after you roll in gacha you get some additional currencies (depending on the gacha results) that you can use to buy stuff.
Or if you purchased thousands of those Genesis Crystals, you could also buy optional costumes for your characters (which serves no other purpose than making your characters look different in the overworld#41;.

• Battle pass, because Chinese game. Also comes with monthly pass to get the real good stuff, if you bought it with in-app purchases.


• As for the rest...
• We have a trading card game in here, except it's clunky enough that I'd rather play it in another app rather than in the game itself, if I would even like to play it in the first place. In fact, a majority of the rewards you get from this minigame is exclusively used for the minigame itself - rarely to benefit the main game unless you're willing to sink even more time into this crap just so you can get enough Primogem for roughly 3/8 of one gacha roll. And I only invested my time in this crap until no more NPCs got "used" by this TCG questline's starting acts (I don't think I want to know if there are any other questlines for the TCG). And even then most NPCs get additional options to accomodate this crap, so we are always reminded of its unneccesary existence.
• We have redeemable codes - which can be used to get free stuff. Mostly used to make this game a bit less painful.
• We have 2 special domain challenges in GI - Imaginarium Theater & Spiral Abyss. Both demand you to have as many units readied for combat as possible, therefore these seems to be aimed at those pay2win cucks. Especially the Imaginarium Theater, which demands at least 10 playable characters with specific elements.
• The Serenitea Teapot is a fun way to build your own domain, passively (and unsustainably, as they take 2 days & 22 hours in real time to grow) farm certain plants, and maybe farm bond points for some characters that you couldn't bring to your party, except I only progressed it to the point I can buy things that directly benefit the gameplay (which, mind you, takes quite some time as I have to reach Trust Rank 8 just so I can start buying those rather overpriced level-up materials), since I'm pressed for time when it comes to these online-only games (questionable devices & shitty networks topping the list of factors limiting my time with these crap). Going in the teapot also forces the game into the co-op mode for no reason, and exiting it may revert you to your "home world" or yank you to the main menu when GI's server thinks something needs updating.
• You have expeditions where you can "send" characters for some time (from 4 to 20 real-time hours) to gather up some material.
• While you get at least 6 expedition spots for each region (at the moment of writing(9/12/2024) we have something like 36 spots), you can only "send" up to 5 characters.
• See why I put those quote-on-quote marks on "send"? That's beause we can still use the characters that was supposed to be doing expeditions, without impacting their progress at all.
• That said, before anyone can ask so I can send anyone I want to expedition since I can still use them?!, I must also mention that certain characters receive bonuses (such as a 25% item bonus for 20hr expedition or 25% less time spent on expeditions), so it still mattered, especially considering the arbitrarily limited amount of characters you can send for the expeditions.
• After clearing certain chapters of the main story / Archon quests, we get City Reputation.
• Level up rewards tend to vary in quality & usability, but (usually) by lv2 & lv4 we unlock mining outcrop searches & merchant discounts on the "main" restaurant (which sells general dross instead of their trademark stuff which we may never buy) and general cooking ingredients store. Lv10 (the maximum level) gives you a wind glider themed after the region & an achievement worth 20 Primogems (1/8 of a single regular roll & 1/80 of my rolls).
• Clearing quests gives off 20 reputation EXP points, with Archon quests (at least the ones not pointed at the Traveler) providing 100 for each "acts".
• Weekly requests (which is unlocked at rep lv2) is one of the 2 quicker ways to raise your rep exp. That said, you can only do up to 3 requests across all nations.
• Another quick (but subject to the same restrictions as the weekly request above) way to raise your rep exp is bounties, where you track down & take out an enemy with special conditions, usually within 10 minutes of entering the designated area. That said, tracking down said enemy sucks hard in Mondstadt & Liyue as you lose time finding arbitrary "hints"; but since Inazuma GI knew we all just wanted to take out the enemy & move on so the "hint hunting" got deleted from that point on (replaced by more gimmicks, which at the very least didn't waste any more time than those hint huntings).
• GI also "awards" world explorations for each region (by giving you Mora & rep exp), but only by 20% at a time, up to 60%.

All in all, GI gets a 1.5/10, which is somewhat below my arbitrary score limit. The predatory gacha & grindfest playstyle (with a lot of useless cruft, including the arbitrary limitations) is something I can live with. However, the arbitrary online only bullshitry has limited the score to 2. For transparency, ignoring the online-only aspect & most of the unneccesary cruft (such as battle pass & TCG), I could've simply given GI 4.5/10, with some quote that sounded a bit like this: Sure, it is a greedy grindfest gacha behind an allegedly open-world RPG coupled with a lot of arbitrary limitations, but at least it has room for skill to cover up stat issues, for the most part.

Controls

GI's un-editable controller layout is usable, at first look. Sure, it is quite clunky, but nothing new to me since I've gotten used to these kinds of controls (aside from multiple instances of me randomly launching Elemental Bursts while fixing up camera angles, getting yanked off fights in Sumeru... good times.). Which is somewhat neat (at least for me), because GI doesn't support external controllers on Android for no good reason (all the while PlayStation builds have native controller support, and iOS & Windows builds gets support for external controllers). In addition, some redditor claimed to asked GI's customer service about 3rd-party mapping support, but instead got warned against it (though per used one & didn't get banned for some reason).

GI supports gyroscope, but only for certain actions like aiming. By default, they are too slow for me, to the point I had to max out its sensitivity (anything lower than maxed out & it's too slow for me). At that point, it could finally keep up with me, except now it is quite janky - sometimes it would inexplicably act up (randomly shaking up, drifting to one direction, or even instantly aim elsewhere other than whatever I was targeting), completely fucking up my aim. I could've easily blamed this on the Xiaomi hardwares I've used to play GI with, but then I've found some complaints after a bit of searching, at least in the official subreddit (though only one so far mentioned his/her device out of the numerous examples I've listed - but it's kind of enough to dismiss Xiaomi as the only brand with gyroscope issues).

• XxDashiexX (commenting on some PSA post about gyroscope support for Android on reddit): "it sucks ass, the camera moves on its own even when the phone is still" (archive.is)
• DetergentOwl5 (commenting the same post as XxDashiexX above): "I turned this on because I used gyro for aiming in codm, but it seems ATROCIOUS in genshin. Practically doesn't work at all, no exaggeration. Idk if its a phone (I have a galaxy s20+) or game issue." (archive.is)
• THAT_LMAO_GUY posting on reddit around 2021 about gyro being somewhat laggy. (direct / archive.is)
• Netherdan commenting on THAT_LMAO_GUY's post mentioned above, claiming there's no dead zone for gyro. (direct / archive.is)

All in all, I'd rate this part 1.5/10. There are very clear flaws that GI's devs can't be bothered to fix, and even if I can "mostly" get used to this, I've got fucked over by the flawed controls more than I could've liked.

Other additional bonuses

That I can't really put into their own points within this review.

• GI keeps getting embroiled in controversies over tribal stuff (Natlan & Sumeru immediately came to mind, skin color included) or its voice actors getting randomly caught in something that prevents them from working their voices into the game. However, the proper controversy we should've lambasted ' boycotted (assuming boycotts worked) GI over would be its arbitrarily online-only nature.
• Do you like "the community"? If you do, head over to r/GenshinImpact (or any kind of Genshin forums?) & behold a fuckton of guides, memes, & theories.

Conclusion

TL;DR : RUN!!!! ...not clear enough? Then lemme retell this in <h1>.

RUN!!!!

Hands down, GI is the worst Android game I've played so far (and that's a game, not the shitty "games" flooding the Play Store nowadays). Behind its initial impression of an open-world adventure + role-play gacha game is a blatantly flawed grindfest whose gameplay does not mesh well with the open-world gameplay GI was supposed to offer, blended with various arbitrary restrictions that artificially slows down any sort of progress. Getting past that, its online-only nature completely kills off most of the fun of an open-world adventure game as these games were never made for it (not to mention you surrender your gaming "rights" to some unrelated people). I previously mentioned I consider GI's gameplay a sacrilege of the highest order against gamers, but allow me to reword it in a more dramatic fashion - GI is a poison to gamers. Which is actually not a surprise - the tyrants occupying China tends to be sadistic towards its subjects, and I presume some of their masochistic drones might knock on my door with pitchfork & torch in hand anytime soon, because I just lambasted their game & made fun of their masters. To them... enjoy your liquid sodium chloride.

To be absolutely honest, I actually somewhat liked GI (before the pointless online-only crap kicked in of course - otherwise this page will never be here). I mean, an anime-themed open-world RPG? Sign me up. Troves of lore & story? Fuck me, I'm down, just as I was for FGO. But alas, the developers & publishers seem to really dislike their consoomers and/or customers (which is not surprising considering the tyrants occupying China might have some of their drones sitting on the thrones of the Chinese corpos), as highlighted by the arbitrary limitations & online-only bullshitry. And yes, I think HoYoverse's (or MiHoYo for China) motto (TECH OTAKUS SAVE THE WORLD) is an insult that is better read as "YOU COOMERS WILL EAT OUR CLOUD™ SHIT & YOU WILL LIKE IT".

As for me, I have already uninstalled GI since posting this (9/12/2024), and returned the account to Sir Ed (who also considered my "investments" somewhat interesting, but then passed the account to Lukas). Forget missing out on stuff, I'd rather just as soon watch its unfolding stuff on the internet (or hearsay from the others). And since I've suffered enough (not to mention the PAIN of recaptcha from archive.is use on an office computer, because archive.org shot their own foot as I drafted these back in October 2024)... sudo call deer.

"Hey GearJail, try out Wuthering Waves! It's gonna be better than Genshin!"

OK then...

• Searched for Wuthering Waves on the internet to see what system it supports... just in case muh garbo devices got supported
• Found a gameplay screenshot in minitruth wikipedia - who does NOT specify some online-only games as such
• Saw both UID & latency measurement bar in screenshot provided by wikipedia - all pointing towards online-only
• Deletes all hypothetical plans of ever installing Wuthering Waves. Sorry, but hell fucking no. Not after this crap. This will never happen.

"HOW COULD YOU LAMBAST A GRATIS GAME FOR BEING ONLINE-ONLY?!"

Well shit, how many gratis offline-playable titles should I mention?

• Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Xeonjia, & Zoysii (among other games in F-Droid) are FOSS & gratis. Open source & only costs a bit of your time to download its installers (and your time playing it if it counts). Not to mention you don't need any Play Services for the gameplay.
• Anima ARPG. Gratis on Play Store, playable offline, and doesn't depend on Play Services for gameplay.
• Battleheart (just Battleheart, not the used-to-be-paid-only Battleheart Legacy) before Goolag nuked them off Play Store for being unmaintained.
• Play with emulators like NetherSX2 & PPSSPP? ...except you would need discfiles for the games, which you can obtain from Atlantis. May Poseidon's blessing be with you.

And since I'm feeling rather generous, here are some offline-playable titles that you can only rent "buy" in Play Store.

• Battleheart Legacy... if you can get them to run. That said, Goolag nuked them off the Play Store.
• Animus Stand Alone. Unfortunately Goolag also nuked TENBIRDS.
• Great Big War Game. Rubicon Development has long since killed their server (and GBWG's online multiplayer mode with it) but Goolag still hasn't nuked them off yet.
• The various Android ports of Grand Theft Auto officially published by Rockstar. But then again you're better served with the console ROMs instead of the rather borked Android ports.
• Castlevania SotN. Same shit as the GTA ports, but the PS1 ROM is far better since you don't need to wait for some arbitrary asset downloading.

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