Has anyone tried Star Rail yet? I believe it is in the same universe as Genshin Impact but more SciFI TBS/JRPG game.
I made an account and will give it a go as free to play player. I assume that the Gacha Elements can be a turn off but the reviews on the combat are very good.
I’m playing it, think I’m level 12 now. It’s very much Genshin but turn based combat and less open world. Other than that things are very similar. I think I enjoy the turn based combat more than the actiony combat of Genshin.
I have tried it for some time (2-3 hours or so) and really enjoy it.
I don’t understand half of the systems, and I haven’t felt obliged to use any money now, but its pretty fun, and I like the characters and the story, but really don’t know how to best proceed, what to use, what not to, and so what characters to use.
I kinda wish it was a buy-once game instead.
Is the one on the App Store called Honkai Star Rail or something? What do honkies have to do with it? Are there crackers in it too?
I tried watching YouTube for learning all the systems etc. it hurts my head listening to all the tips on the pulls. But many reviewers stated that the game is still fun even if you don’t have the top tier units.
I may play this for some quick games i between my dive into AOW4.
I never paid money into Genshin and had a number of 5* units to go along with most of the 4*. They are usually pretty generous and handing out free pulls during events and just from playing. In this one, there is a special begginer pull that gurantees a 5* in 50 pulls. If it’s like Genshin, having the best units won’t really be required to get through the main content. So far in this game I’ve had no issues with just the free 4* characters I’ve gotten.
How many free pulls does one start with? I heard about the special beginner but I wasn’t sure if you need to save up the 50 pulls to use it (thinking it might disappear if you start it but couldn’t go a full fifty yet).
I don’t believe there is a time limit on the beggineer banner, none that I saw anyway. You get 10 of the basic star rail passes after essentially going through the tutorial. I think in total I’ve gotten like 30 of those so far. They just gave away 10 of the special star rail passes that are used on event banners and they have another daily login event going on that I think ends up giving 10 more of the special passes if you login every day for a week. Beyond that I’ve purchased a handful of passes using the stellar jade ingame currency.
Yeah, the thread title should probably be updated to Honkai: Star Rail, which is the full title.
I’m extremely allergic to gacha-based games, something about them just shuts my brain down and I can’t get any enjoyment out of them at all. But, if there’s anything that’s going to work on me, it’s going to be this, which really does feel like a full-on JRPG. The combat is simple, but fairly satisfying so far. In brief, each of your 4 units has a basic attack and a special attack. Basic attacks recharge a “special” point, and specials deplete one, so you need to balance their usage a bit, while obviously preferring the damage / effects of the special attack. Each character also has an “Ultimate” attack, which triggers immediately when you activate, it. That is, it can be triggered out-of-turn order. There’s a poise / stagger system in addition to health, and a 7-part elemental weakness system, so triggering ultimates out of order to stagger / cancel enemy attacks, or kill off a low-health enemy is a legit tactical decision.
The graphics are quite nice, even on mobile. The simplified combat plays pretty well on a phone screen. In general, Star Rail just oozes production values.The voice acting is surprisingly good…better than many console games.
It’s also…quite funny? The whole thing is kind of just littered with jokes. There’s a quest line called “Everwinter Nights”, and Achievements named things like “The Cold Equations” and “A Song of Vice and Dire”. When a character is musing philosophical gibberish at you and asks what you think about it, one of the responses is “42?”, including the question mark. And then there’s the trash can
They’re just very aware that they’re making a premium product, and aware of who their market is. What I assume is some of the end-game grind content is a sort of Hades-like roguelike dungeon where each encounter gets you a buff themed around one of the “gods” in the world, and you try to get progressively farther using the various blessings. There seems to be an embedded “pipe dream” minigame that you can do for…reasons that are yet unclear. There’s little environmental navigation puzzles just like a traditional RPG. There’s also just tons of little interactables in the world. There’s even a pettable dog. And MiHoYo is unparalleled at designing waifus, if that’s your thing.
I haven’t crested the initial Gacha curve yet, which is where a lot of friction starts showing up. At a certain point, if the power curve starts just looking like a big old micro-transaction dead-end, it will lose a lot of its luster. There’s already obviously too many currencies, too many widgets and gewgaws to collect and combine, and the overall character progression system seems pretty opaque, which is all part of the gacha experience. If this was a single-player standalone purchase RPG, with some of those excesses edited out, it would be brilliant. As it is, I’m enjoying what I’ve seen so far immensely, but ready for the other shoe to drop.
It’s hard for me not to think about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 while playing this, as that had a very explicit gacha-vibe (and system) built into a micro-transactionless game. So, this is really just going that last little step from XC2. It’s interesting to think about the differences and similarities.
Updated the title. ; )
Where does one claim their daily rewards? Maybe that doesnt appear in the beginning?
I lost the first boss fight yesterday (right b4 you meet Himeko). When I logged back on I went around making sure I grabbed all the treasure chests (I think I had missed a few the first time around). It seems that they all respawned? I was definitely able to break stuff again for some extra drops (unless I had missed those the first time also).
I am playing with m/k - anyone playing with Controller?
I’m playing on my G Cloud, was able to map the movement/camera and a few other things to my sticks and buttons. I sort of move around using the sticks but still use touch for quite a few things.
Yes, I think the daily login stuff unlocks after you play a bit, it might actually be after that 1st boss fight. Make sure to level up your team and light cones if you need to, the main character isn’t great and will probably get swapped out of your team once you get new people so I wouldn’t level him/her more than needed, but March 7 is decent as I find her freeze ability handy so you are safe leveling up her stuff.
Do we get to keep some of the starting characters like March 7? I know we get a few free haracters but wasnt sure if we should invest in the current “pre-game” versions
I don’t think there’s a difference. Dan Heng and March from the intro seem to stay with you.
Himeno is marked “Trial” in big letters, it seems like anybody who isn’t permanent is marked that way (including during the rogue like VR missions), so I assume that if they aren’t marked Trial, they’re yours forever.
This game fascinates me. Everything about it is literally Genshin Impact in a different setting - the graphics, the progression, the fact that you can’t fast-forward through dialogue until all the associated animations are finished…
The turn-based JRPG combat is what makes all the difference. And while I’m not sure which combat system I ultimately prefer, it’s a different enough twist that I’ve been compelled to go along with it for a while.
Does anyone have a screen shot of the enemy weakness icons (that sits above them during combat). I know a few like physical, ice etc. I cant find anything online with a search. Is there an in game pedia?
The music reminds me of Persona 5. So do some of the moves. Maybe it is just me : )
I want to like the game, but I feel like it has the same issue that Genshin does, where each p[lay session I spend more than 50% of my time in menus trying to figure out how to level 8 different factors up enough to progress again. Today I needed to be Adventure level 14 to do the next story mission, so I had to run around the space station doing side quests, most of which involved only one combat encounter. And then it was a ton of time just claiming rewards in menus, boosting character and gear levels all separately.
If you go to the character screen (the details tab, the one where you can level up your XP), over on the right in the profile, underneath the characters names, there will be an elemental icon and a line that says their, like, class (Hunt / Preservation / Harmony, etc). If you click on the icon or the class, it will pop up a little description of all of them.
This is the only place I’ve been able to find where this info is, and it’s super obscure. I clicked through all the tutorials like 3 times looking for it.
I like the game so far. Started to play and next thing I knew 2 hours went by. The problem for me I am a bit flummoxed when it is time to do anything. Worry about - should I level my MC? Or work on a charachter instead like March 7. Or is that a waste? I dont like that part because who wants to waste your resources on the wrong thing etc.
Im not sure about Genshin, but in a lot of these games, the way that the exponential leveling requirements work means that what you do at the beginning doesn’t actually matter all that much. Like, whatever you sink into getting all your characters from level 1 to level 20 is going to be like, a drop in the bucket when you’re trying to get from level 40 to 41, so as long as you’re reasonably careful about it, it should be ok.
Right now, I’m spending a bit of the XP items on my characters if I’m using them, but I haven’t really put any thought into leveling Light Cones yet. The characters are fewer and rarer, so I figure I’ll probably need to find a use for the ones I pull, and burning those low level XP items isn’t so bad.
Light Cones, I don’t even know what they do well enough to judge if they’re good or bad, so I’m just leaving them until I get a lot of them and compare. I have been superimposing all my duplicate light Cones (combining up to 5 duplicates to power up in a way different from the “XP level”), just to keep the inventory sane, and because it seems harder to get duplicate cones than to get new XP items, so I might as well stack them that way when I come across them. You can use duplicates to level up or superimpose, if you have even more dupes, and Superimposing feels like going up the rarity ladder vs leveling up. Also, I only need 1 leveling up one, as I’m only equipping one at a time anyways.
No idea if that’s an optimal or even cost effective strategy tho.