Honkai: Star Rail

[Lily Emilio]

Finished both HSR 3.0 story and Genshin up to 5.1.

HSR 3.0 is...fine. I don't expect much from an intro chapter of a new arc. The new characters so far are...ok. Phainon is about what I expected from a Kevin alt and Mydei is not as "berserk" as I expected, but he's fine. Tribbie is mostly there as the plot teleportation device and Castorice's slow speech gave me Tamamo Aria PTSD. Why are voice directors keep making Chiwa Saitou speak in snail speed? The Herta part in the end feels like they had to put it there because it's her banner gotta show her doing something, but it is relevant to the plot and will play bigger role later so I'm fine with it. I expected more from Aglaea but god forbid Hoyo making her a bit more extreme (just give us an actual bad end when we fail her test ffs) because certain "sensitive" players can't handle such characters. Gnaeus is great. I saw the Horcrux twist coming almost instantly when he mentioned Nikador's soul being split up, but it was still nice.

I did not like how they still have characters standing still talking in riddles eventhough they can do dynamic camera. The puzzles cockblocking near the end is really annoying. They're not hard, just disruptive, and since I try to clear as many as possible to not have to return later it took longer than it should've. The world looks pretty good but there are parts where you can see water or grass looking low quality (and I played on high resolution). I also wish it got more variety in architecture instead of just fantasy Greece. I get the point that ppl of the planet sharing common language with the crew implying that the planet might not be too alien at all, but still! Hopefully the next maps will be better.

RMC is great and considering we got their E6 right off the gate we might get another Path sooner than later as the story progress. The fact that they're just as strong as Sundae in quite a few comps making them a very valuable character for new players, even moreso than Harmony MC due to their versatility. Highly recommend.

I'll try to finish Genshin 5.3 before Lunar New Year break is over, prob in 1-2 more days.

[Spartacus]

frankly I prefe Castorice's english direction than japanese ngl

[Lily Emilio]

Sundae is a fraud and a scam. What the fuck is that score I could barely break 3.8k with E0S1 Sundae or E3 Bronya previously.

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frankly I prefe Castorice's english direction than japanese ngl

It's the longgggg annddddd slowwwwww speech ontop of the deadpan tone that got me really bored. I get the idea behind it but it feels a bit too tryhard. Kinda like with the breathy voice of Firefly at the start of Penacony that made me felt like I'm losing my breath. Hope they dial it back a bit in later versions. Keep the deadpan tone and speed up her dialogue a bit.

The coughing part I am also not a fan of, eventhough it's not as ridiculous as Baizhu in Genshin or Baiji in Honkai 3rd constantly coughing every few seconds that makes me felt like I got Covid and about to drop dead.

[Bobin]

You guys are making me wish there was a function to replay lines in multiple languages. Castorice in chinese sounds fine to me, but I don't know what she sounds like in other languages so I can't make any comparisons.

[Formless Creature]

Okay I did the story. Now normally I tend to like these storylines a lot more than the fandom does but there is one thing I have to agree with when it comes to discussion around this story.

It's an okay-ish, really predictable and kind of generic story that I probably would have enjoyed significantly more if it wasn't undercut by like 5 hours of gameplay that serves no purpose to the narrative. Just why. The previous storylines weren't all that afraid to have huge swathes of the new areas be reserved for future exploration, but Amphoreus feels like it's demanding you to see and get through everything. The puzzles aren't interesting or difficult, they're just really time-consuming because they consist of "go here, change this thing about the area, then go back", repeated over a dozen times. Hand of Zagreus is very mildly fun to punch enemies with I guess, and the Spirithief is cute and has cute JP voice acting, but that's about it. I actually just started laughing when I felt like I was about to finally reach the end and the game immediately put me in a Herta segment that is once again 90% gameplay and 10% story. This is like a 2-3 hour story painfully stretched out to the point of tearing apart with these gameplay sections. It reminds me of Genshin's 1.x storylines where it was mostly just you doing dungeons.

I love long stories. I'll gladly take a gacha game storyline that's like 30 hours long. But it needs to be long because the narrative has a lot to say, not because I get given menial tasks to do every 5 minutes. They aren't even good!! They aren't even good puzzles!!! They don't even help with characterization all that much outside of the early segment in Castrum Kremnos with Mydei's funny shonen rival banter. You walk into a new area and Castorice goes "oh look, a puzzle", and I'm like, gee, you think???

The characters are really inoffensive but boring. Phainon is just Shonen Protagonist: The Character and Mydei is his designated edgelord with a heart of gold rival that people will and are already shipping. Castorice's views on death are things I've seen a billion trillion times in fiction already; her only interesting aspect is her actually being afraid of dying, which is not often seen in characters like this, but it doesn't get much focus. I do think she looks cute though. Tribios is cute and also essentially more of a plot device than a character right now. Aglaea is like the only character here that has truly been interesting thus far and she gets less focus compared to Phaidei and Castorice.

This isn't a terrible start but I really hope it doesn't stay like this. In the future I'd like to see some more interesting ideas and less gameplay sections. Like just have it so I can do the exploration in the new areas after I'm done with the story. As Kamera pointed out earlier the amount of post-story content you get to do here is laughably small compared to Penacony, which granted I'll treat as a mercy after that molasses-tier storyline, but it's still annoying.

Also Nikador doesn't really feel like much of a threat. Though I'm being unfair here because in a post-LB7 world, it's hard for any enemy in a gacha game to feel threatening nowadays. I feel like they could still have tried a little harder, and I'm not fan of how its battle with Mydei was entirely off-screened. That was a bad habit in Penacony that I hope doesn't repeat itself here too much.

Mem's "speech" hurts my ears. Why. Just make her speak like a normal person. I guess you can't really hide the "she's Cyrene lol" twist if she actually talks, even though I was immediately like "oh, that's Mem's voice actress" the moment I heard Cyrene speak towards the end.

[Formless Creature]

NOOOO THE EVENT IS MORE CRINGE PUZZLE STUFF WHO MAKES THIS GAME I JUST WANT LINGHSA

[Kamera]

Yea HSR is falling off hard it's kind of painful that it's the butt of jokes in the fandom now, when it used to be hailed as paragon of good hoyo game

Sundae is a fraud and a scam. What the fuck is that score I could barely break 3.8k with E0S1 Sundae or E3 Bronya previously.

HMC is absolutely broken, but unfortunately I still need HMC because I don't have Fugue

[Formless Creature]

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Yea HSR is falling off hard it's kind of painful that it's the butt of jokes in the fandom now, when it used to be hailed as paragon of good hoyo game

This game was never particularly exceptional, people just glazed it because it gave lots of free rolls. Not that I hate it or anything but the flaws were there from the outset.

[Kamera]

I lost 50/50 twice in Herta's banner, one of them to Himeko - she hates me god damn.

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This game was never particularly exceptional, people just glazed it because it gave lots of free rolls. Not that I hate it or anything but the flaws were there from the outset.

They're phoning it more than usual in Amphoreus compared to Penacony's release, in a lot of ways.

[Lily Emilio]

The best of hoyo's story writing died with HI3rd part 1. The best of their story presentation is inherited by ZZZ. The best of their gameplay balancing is in Genshin and ZZZ currently. HSR is their comfortably middling entry like how FGO is in comparison to other TM entries.

This game was never particularly exceptional, people just glazed it because it gave lots of free rolls.

The free rolls are to balance out the two 5* per patch schedule, Hoyo has a quota of how many free pulls are given out per patch and they monitor it very carefully. So you're not getting it any better than their other games ultimately. Sneaky bastards.

ZZZ also does 2 characters per patch but the only real powercreep so far is Miyabi. Void Hunters should be like Archons or Emanators in term of hype for their respective game anyways so I won't complain about it just yet, plus team building isn't as asinine as HSR where lmao Firefly is trash without these 2 very specific supports but wait this Emanator will make your previous premium investment looking clown af as she clears with 4* teammates of minimal investment, and it happened twice now!

[Formless Creature]

God, it's not even powercreep that annoys me it's how much investment you need to have on a character to have them feel good to use. It's getting silly at this point. One DPS needs their lightcone and like two premium supports with several eidolons and a premium healer. And then you spend all this time saving or waiting for reruns only for the next premium team to outdo them anyway. The moment I realized they wanted me to roll for Sunday just to participate in the Remembrance meta all my ability to give a damn about 3.x's characters faded into dust. I'm generally not a big fan of pulling for characters I dislike in gacha games and HSR just has it on overdrive.

[Kamera]

The Herta feels like the first character in a long time that doesn't really need that much investment for a premium team to even work at all. But maybe it's because her BiS support and teammate hasn't really been released yet.

[Petrikow]

This wouldn't be as much of a problem if it wasn't for the fact that 90% of 4 stars are complete and utter ass. At least then you could deploy some budget versions of most teams. Worst of all, they don't seem interested in making more, competitive 4 stars at all. MC variations none-withstanding.

[Lily Emilio]

God, it's not even powercreep that annoys me it's how much investment you need to have on a character to have them feel good to use. It's getting silly at this point. One DPS needs their lightcone and like two premium supports with several eidolons and a premium healer. And then you spend all this time saving or waiting for reruns only for the next premium team to outdo them anyway. The moment I realized they wanted me to roll for Sunday just to participate in the Remembrance meta all my ability to give a damn about 3.x's characters faded into dust. I'm generally not a big fan of pulling for characters I dislike in gacha games and HSR just has it on overdrive.

The worst part of making a super specific support is that they are easily replaceable. Jiaoqiu is the first prime example. He can support DoT but the mommy collectors who enjoy DoT wouldn't care about him in their team, heck they are begging for another DoT mommy. He doesn't offer anything more than what Ruan Mei and Robin did either. He's not a big improvement for any other teams other than Acheron's but that's because Acheron has been using mid af Nihilities, it's not hard to top them. And his banner still flopped hard because people refuse to pull an NPC just to make one character perform better. His fans didn't like that he's Acheron's boytoy either. Nobody won, Hoyo included.

Very questionable design choice.

The Herta feels like the first character in a long time that doesn't really need that much investment for a premium team to even work at all. But maybe it's because her BiS support and teammate hasn't really been released yet.

Emanator privilege. Acheron's damage ceiling is so ridiculously high (and still is atm) that back during her debut E0S0 shits on all previous teams. Put her with two 4* Nihility, 4* LCs she 0-cycles the MoC with highest HP spike at the time. Then as the powercreep continues that budget team began to struggle but with just Jiaoqiu she strikes back again. Heck she still yet to have a full premium team except Jiaoqiu, which will be added when she falls off a bit more.

Expect Herta and future Emanators to age the same way. You're going to need Tribbie and then whoever the premium Erudition teammate later (Jade can be considered one atm but she works best with Lingsha sustain than Herta herself), then E2S1.

This wouldn't be as much of a problem if it wasn't for the fact that 90% of 4 stars are complete and utter ass. At least then you could deploy some budget versions of most teams. Worst of all, they don't seem interested in making more, competitive 4 stars at all. MC variations none-withstanding.

Yeah in HSR since the team's performance is mostly reliant on the units' power instead of players' skill, if the budget options aren't good enough, there's nothing you can do about it. Right now only Pela, Herta puppet and Gallagher are still seeing really high usage rate.

[asterism42]

I think Moze and Tingyun get some decent use too, albeit only in their specific niches

[Spartacus]

I mean if about skill, only a few decisions the players can add in a Turn Based game by design.

Even then I still feel that clearing regular content in HSR with what you like is far kinder than Genshin.

[Lily Emilio]

I think Moze and Tingyun get some decent use too, albeit only in their specific niches

Tingyun DDD abuse is still broken yes, but teams that used to use her rn mostly moved on to use Sundae, making her usage rate dropped. Moze is pretty much glued to Feixiao so it is what it is. He potentially can work with Tribbie, tho.

I mean if about skill, only a few decisions the players can add in a Turn Based game by design.

Even then I still feel that clearing regular content in HSR with what you like is far kinder than Genshin.

HSR now has casual mode, and the moment you got a meta team you'll never struggle ever again in regular contents. Endgame OTOH, is rough for f2ps who don't at least have several meta dps/supports.

[Kamera]

Really bothers me that Space Greece is just Greek Mythology with names shuffled around. Even the FGO Greece Lostbelt is more original with its adaptation and feels infinitely more space fantasy than this is.

[asterism42]

Sometimes the names aren't even shuffled (lookin at you thanatos)

[Lily Emilio]

Zagreus also.