Boy howdy am I really liking Genshin Impact

If you'd told me that I'd begin 2026 getting heavily into a gacha, free-to-play rip off of Breath of the Wild, I would think you were a delusional prophet — yet that's what the last week of my life has been.

I'd heard of Genshin Impact, of course, but never played it prior to now. Free-to-play games — to say nothing of ones with lootbox monetisation — are not really my thing, and despite its incredible popularity and pretty-looking aesthetic it didn't really seem like something I would get into. But, a YouTuber I've recently discovered did multiple videos about the game and in devouring all of her content backlog I found myself with a curiosity that could only be described as piqued.

So, at the beginning of the month, I downloaded the massive ~100-gig installation and got to work figuring out how to get it running when I don't have a Windows machine. Much to my surprise, getting it playing on macOS through CrossOver was absolutely straightforward (getting it running on the Steam Deck was marginally more complicated, but not tremendously difficult) and it runs at a comfortable 60 FPS at the absolutely highest settings. The Steam Deck has to drop to medium settings to get the same result but it still looks beautiful and in a lot of ways I can hardly tell much difference between the two. Given that the game is running on phones I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by that, but it was a surprise all the same.

Now, I can only speak to the state of the game now, ~six years after its initial launch. I know there were some rocky bits here and there, and I know there was less content at release compared to 2026, but as the game itself didn't interest me in the past I didn't keep up much with the Discourse™. However, a week in, I'm finding myself playing several hours a day and have become invested enough in the story to want to see how it progresses.

Genshin Impact is beautiful, the combat mechanisms are interesting and varied enough — even different characters who share the same elemental types with others still have a fair bit of variety to how they utilise those elements (there's a billion characters, though, and I wonder how much overall variety there is across the character lineup, but so far it doesn't seem to simply be reskinning another character and making their attack colour red instead of blue) — and there are SO MANY SYSTEMS in the game that I can see this appealing to the min/max types quite thoroughly who want to invest the time (and probable real money) to get the best items, equipment, and stats for their preferred characters.

It's not completely without my gripes; the writing is often a good example of the difference between localisation and translation — sometimes it's grammatically correct but stilted in a strange way that takes me several re-reads to parse. On the writing, given that the studio is based in China there are often quite... unexpected takes, like the very Russian-coded faction being warmongering imperalists going about trying to steal the power of gods as is the case in the story up to the point I'm at right now. Your initial starting zone is a free city whose god founded it on the principles of giving humans self-direction and autonomy, in contrast to much of the rest of the continent whose deities are directly involved in the affairs of the mortals under their charge. It's interesting and I wouldn't have necessarily expected those kinds of politics being championed as overtly as they are — though, I don't know if the Chinese-language translation dramatically differs.

Also, those same complicated and varied systems can also be extremely overwhelming and the game doesn't always do a great job of explaining things to you. The quest system in particular has confused me on a number of occasions — I am not sure if I've progressed faster than the game expected me to, largely because how I play open world RPGs involves doing all of the side quests I find before I progress the main storyline, but on more than one occasion I've realised I have met other characters out of order or the game has unlocked some system I was clearly meant to engage with later in the main story but is accessible to me now because I've leveled up enough. The game makes no accommodation for the ordering, and I've had my character remark on some shared history with others assuming context that I, the player, completely lack to an extent that has baffled me repeatedly. I have realised that the game really expects you to do a region's main story first and then go back to do side and character-specific quests outside of that afterward, but it doesn't really tell you this so it's confused me a few times, and I could still be making the wrong assumption about progression even now.

I also want something to eat Paimon so that it never, ever speaks to me again.

As for monetisation, after playing a week I haven't spent anything on Genshin Impact at all. In my experience with free-to-play games this is pretty unheard-of and it's rare that I am able to spend more than a few minutes before the game is slamming a wall before me that can only be traversed by spending real moneybucks on their widgetgem-doodahs. I haven't had that experience yet, but I'll also admit to being a little confused by how monetisation works at all — poking around in the game menus I've come across the shop that cheerily invites me to spend real money on certain things, but I've yet to reach a point in the game where doing so is a requirement for any meaningful progression and the things I can spend money on broadly appear to be characters and cosmetics instead of a fast way to get levelling material. Simply playing and progressing along the main and side quests has given me plenty of widgetgem-doodahs through which I have had other characters join (to the extent that I have a surplus to pick amongst) and been able to level up and ascend several characters several times with exploration, quest rewards, and normal in-game progression. I don't know how long that will continue, nor do I know the point at which the wall will slam down in front of me and demand my credit card details for further content, but if that continues at the same pace and cadence of my game experience so far, I imagine I will have gotten enough out of it that I'll wrap my time up as soon as money gets noticeably in the way. I'm not completely averse to spending cash on a free-to-play game, especially if I've otherwise enjoyed said game, but once I start feeling like I'm being taken advantage of I will tap out. So far, that's yet to happen.

You'll either love or hate the anime waifu and husbando character design — it's not my favourite, but it's something I can tolerate, even if some of femme characters are flirtier than I really want to have to deal with in a video game. The rest of Genshin Impact is exceptionally gorgeous, and much like I did in Breath of the Wild (or Elden Ring, for that matter) I get easily distracted whilst traversing to a quest location or to unlock a teleport fast-travel spot and spend several minutes dealing with an environmental puzzle to unlock a chest or collecting countless amounts of berries and Sweet Flowers.

I have been surprised by how much I've enjoyed the game, gripes and annoyances notwithstanding — the monetisation scheme means the game requires a constant internet connection, and as they have no dedicated Australian servers this leaves me dealing with a ~200ms ping minimum in a best-case scenario when the Australian NBN is performing well.

I will revisit my thoughts when the free-to-play aspect of Genshin Impact inevitably forces me to cough up some cash to continue. How quickly that happens will determine how much more time I spend inside the world of Teyvat, but so far it's been an unexpectedly nice journey.