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| I love the PS5 splash art. |
Developer/publisher: Hoyoverse.
Platform: PS4,PC,mobile
Official Site: N/A.
Official Site: N/A.
Release date: 11-10-2023
I decided to give star rail a try, because I keep hearing its pretty much structured
like any RPG (but still gacha) and inspired by trails, so here goes nothing.
Pro's
- Solid prologue & story on Jarilo VI.
- Great main cast of characters and fun interactions between MC,March & Dang Heng.
- Being able to replay old events.
- Automode for battles with material rewards, which removes tedium.
Grey area
- Xianzhou's story was a little messy.
Con's
- Combat can feel basic and a bit repetitive.
- Certain substories can be accessed too early creating inconsistencies.
(Like it acts like we've been to Peanutbutter but I actually haven't YET.
Setting is a space fantasty/sci-fi, honestly it reminds me more of star ocean
rather than trails but in terms of combat its the latter that's similar.
I'll say it was off to a fantastic start and the story and characters easily hooked me.
There's an actual main party in star rail: March and Dang Heng whom I actually want
to have in my party but for Genshin impact which I also played I wanted to replace
the initials as fast as I could, Amber yea you're nice as a torch lighter.💀
but he was useful with his icebridges... untill Wriothesley put him out of a job.
The chemistry between MC,March and Dan Heng was just that great.
Other characters range from great to they're just kind of there doing their own thing like Asta.
Combat is like a turnbased RPG but its very basic and repetitive.
It bothered me you can't use items in battle unlike genshin?! and there's
no MP management, just normal attack, skill and a special move. It really seems
like a simplified version of trails. its servicable but I am not really here for it.
I only rank up my world level in star rail when I am really ready because
I am traumatized from genshin in which you could level up too fast and struggle.
Unfortunately there is a powercreep and newer characters will always be better
but that didn't really affect my early journey of progressing through the story.
The characters yo get from the game are perfectly viable.
There's an autobattle but that doesn't work on every fight, so for the story you still gotta work.
I think it is nice in that it can remove the tedium of having to grind for mats to level up
a character or light cone which is like their armor. There's traces too which is like a skill tree.
So when there's so many this or that it can get tiresome if you had to do it manually
so I can still appreciate the automode. However I do realize these type of games
make me miss regular rpg's since there's too much this or that here and in a regular rpg
there may just be skills gained by lvl up or something like a sphere grid like ffx/xiii
while you just buy gear in shops and in star rail there's no gear except lightcones
and without gacha they only come as rewards and they're quite rare.
I have rambled on too much about it but... its not the worst combat/gamplay system I have seen.
Its also not open world like genshin so I wasn't able to get lost, it was still nice
to find random chests here or there but its rare to find lightcones from chests.
Its basically just a bit of credit, exp materials and the currency to roll on banners.
Music was pretty good I have no complaints and I thought the graphics were better than genshin?
the character models also have more shine to them. Just feels like it had more polish.
Storywise it varies; The prologue and space station were great.
The first world Jarilo VI was good but with the Xianzhou Luofu... despite having great
characters it had too much lore dumps and I wasn't able to remember it all, only the
important bits which was a shame. It was also here that I felt the need to already take a break.
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| Going from Jarilo VI to Xianzhou Luofu do be like this... |
Overall its off to a great start but then sort of dips but never too low it loses momentum
and well if you think you need a break from the story then I suggest you do so.
Its also good to remember the story comes in parts so one will eventually catch up.
====================================================================
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| More like honorable fart... |
The dialogue was a lot of fun as well and its not as bloatey as genshin was
which is notorious for having a lot of fluff, even I who can ramble a lot thinks its a lot.
At times when explaining lore it does get long but what can you do about that?
sometimes it is necessary. I actually don't really go back to read quest descriptions
but this one time as seen below I actually chuckled. It seemed the translator was like
someone has to read this right? may as well make it funny!
or they just had their funny pants on that day. Or always...
Despite this being a gacha game, much like genshin it doesn't throw you the banners in your face
and
its easy to ignore any character you don't want to roll for and save up
for someone you do want. Personally I plan to only roll on banners if I
really like the character.
When I started playing I could choose 1 standard character for free
and also choose between Ruan Mei or Luocha, I chose the latter.
For standard I chose Gepard but I am still using March 7th...😅
though eventually I think I will replace her with him.
I don't really feel too hot or cold towards Luocha, he's nice to have on your team
and even after the second world has an air of mystery around him.
On the other side I feel conflicted about Ruan Mei after her story quest, like
she's not that bad but she sure is something alright.
TL;DR overall I can recommend this gacha game if you like RPG's in general
even if genshin didn't work out for you, it mostly fixed most of my gripes I had with that
though I can't gaurantee one will like it as well, it never hurts to try.
More rambles after the jump but i've mostly said what there's to say.
There's no real plot spoilers but I do talk about some companion quest so light spoilers maybe?
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The only character I found annoying would be Sampo
ISTG he's this game's most punchable character and him having
the same voice as Cow Lee from the trails series certainly didn't help.
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| Gepard probably deals more with that guy so this reaction naturally fits. |
and just annoying in general made me just want to facepalm and sigh.
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| The dialogue can be strangely selfaware perhaps because the writer was. |
I did not want him to show up, I was even afraid he'd show up on the next world
but thankfully he did not. Or maybe he has a long lost brother named Blade
but atleast this Blade wasn't as slimy or annoying. My fears were also for nothing
since Sampo did in fact not show up in Clara or Serval's quests. Though I am sure
he's bound to reappear SOMEWHERE atleast we got a break from him.
Companion quests are mostly worth doing but there were a few where I was like what
the hell is this? Luocha's companion quest was funny, it just felt like they had 0 material
so they had to try hard to come up with some..thing. I love the guy but it was so random?! 
Also after the quest I found out there was a supposedly funny achievment but you have
to examine the monitor again, said achievement didn't live up to its name at all.
On another note I found out Luocha is apparently a reference to this Otto character from
the original honkai but there's no definite proof. Luocha also has chemistry with Sushang and people
ship them but... its soo breadcrumbed that I don't really see it. Like they're friends maybe?
Other than that there's not much to his character at all like he comes to Luofu, saves
two people, elaborates nothing and leaves. Apparently he is more involved in the story
but it just sort of cuts off and we head into the next world. It just left me confused.
Oh! maybe he's majorly involved in the story down the line so they can't do anything
with him now which is why we just get a random quest with him in it.
So naturally as I was hoping to learn more about Luocha I was left disappointed.
Most other companion quests like Silver wolf,Natasha or Hook felt better to me so idk what that says.
I also learned more about Ruan Mei in her quest. Clara's was also good but it reminded me
a little of nier automata with a whiff of plastic memories, not sure if intended. Like atleast
other quests were fun or actually gave depth to the characters, after I did Luocha I still felt
like I had only barely scratched the surface of his character. Yanqing also just was like yea that's
nice foreshadowing but is that really it? couldn't they just have incorporated that into the story?
if I had done this too late there'd be little to it. Atleast Dan Heng's story quest was good and
touched upon his past and current issues so its not like all Luofu companion quests were bad.
It honestly varies whether the companion quest was good or not, some may leave to be desired.
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| Much wow but master's master is not impressed, neither did it amount to anything but foreshadowing. |
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The next bit is just some comparisons with genshin and I feel like its all good improvements.
Unlike Genshin it seems in Star Rail you can replay old events
so you can still enjoy the stories and rewards it had, if you had participated
then of course you can't earn rewards again but this is fair.
With genshin I was disappointed I couldn't replay events since
they often added character lore, I started playing mid sumeru
and I could never really find out who Keqing was because the events
in which she had a focus had long come and gone. Keqing is part of the Liyue story
but it never goes into her or what she does. She also had no story quests
which did not help so star rail having an event replay feature is much welcome!
Its a shame because I liked Keqing and I shouldn't have to watch youtube videos
to catch up on lore from and old event, i'm glad they looked at granpa granblue fantasy
and let players replay old events in this game. Makes me wonder if they'll ever
make that happen in genshin so players can still be able to see the impactful events.
Also another improvement over genshin is that materials needed to lvl up stuff aren't locked
to a specific day of the week so you can upgrade whatever character you want at your own pace
without having to pull out your agenda to plot when you can get specific materials.
You also don't need to take walks on the beaches or look under cliffs to collect materials
as you simply get them from completing challenges and its easy to select which you need.
As much as I do like wandering a world it is also nice there's just one go to place to get your
materials instead of 5 of them here and 3 of them there and there being another one
in some random spot you have trouble to find.
It also has a world level like genshin impact but its called equilibrium
I didn't raise it till I absolutely had to because I have PTSD from genshin impact
where it ended up raising itself too much for my party to handle so I was actually
stuck early on when going to Inazuma. I didn't really have this problem in Star Rail.
As I had all my characters at lvl40 with traces leveled up to that point I unlocked lvl2.
====================================================================
Now a bit negative but not that bad... I think?
Also the game had some minor design flaws like still being able to use Dan Heng
in your main party on the Luofo while he wasn't able to come with you initially.
It is a shame you don't get Welt temporarily as a replacement.
Though I think a lot about Xianzhou Luofu was just poorly implemented
so they let this slip through and just never bothered to fix it cuz hey a player
could be using Seele, Himeko, Luocha and IDK Clara in their team.
I suspect they couldn't have handled it any other way, as if the above example didn't
make it already clear, you can roll on banners from the get go and get god knows
whatever character who's introduced much later in the story, I experienced this myself
with the free Luocha like sure he's with you on Jarilo VI but the story doesn't acknowledge it.
Whoever you use in your battle party at the time isn't canon, its just for flavour.
But yea its a gacha game but had this been a regular RPG
you would have had to do companion quests to get them to join you.
Another thing that bothered me is that after I was done with the Luofu questline
I was bombarded with sidemissions, in one of them it had assumed I had already went
to Pena(l)co(lo)ny. I stopped the quest right after the introduction. I believe the quest
was homecoming wardance but this really made me question
why the hell did this quest unlock right now and not after the next world.
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| Yea okay I guess I'll abandon this quest and just do the mainstory /shrug. |
====================================================================
Final Thoughts?!
Honestly I think it was pretty decent and an improvement over their first gacha game.
I enjoyed the prologue and first world but it sadly fell apart on the second.
I had trouble following the plot of Xianzhou, there was too much back and forth
with random NPC's as well which dragged the whole thing on. Strangely enough
it seems that was the only time it warned me of missable quests... I then did them
and I was like yea that's SUS as heck no wonder why the two quests will be gone soon.
I did like some important key characters at Xianzhou Luofu but it was just a big mess!
I could potentially see myself rolling for Jing Yuan whenever he has another banner that is.
Other than that I suppose the overall story has enough going on to get you hooked, its just
the writing can vary a lot whether its from the main story or the companion quests.
I'm not that far into the 3rd world yet but I liked what I saw and will eventually continue.
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| This reminds me of mother hydaelyn of the hit MMO with a free trail up to------- |
Of course I loved the character interactions of the main crew and the dialogue choices
were a lot of fun as well. It didn't suffer from a companion NPC narrating everything.
The main party and the MC felt equally involved which was good. The dialogue could be
strangely self aware as well, at times a bit cringey but rarely reaches that level.
I understand they do it for humor and its better than being some direct translation with 0 charm.
Its rare to see chinese RPG get translated properly, if only the sword and fairy games among others
could get that same treatment! I'm gonna compliment the translators for their work on this game
could get that same treatment! I'm gonna compliment the translators for their work on this game
as well as genshin despite that having generally more fluff in its dialogue.
Overall it was still a fun experience but for now I will be taking a break.
I already spend like 30-40 hours with it and now I miss games with more normal progression.
I'm not here for the combat though but its not that bad, it could seem boring, its not something
that if you just play for the story needs your full attention all the time so it can be quite laidback.
Being able to replay old events is also a huge plus so if I am ever bored I know where to look!
7.5/10
This would have been an 8/10 but Xianzhou made my head hurt so I lowered my score slightly.
Anyways on a final note, games like these will always be after your money but I don't think
Hoyoverse is that stingey? the Ruan Mei or Luocha deal also didn't last for a single patch, I believe
it was 3 which gives plenty of new players the opportunity to benefit from it.
The third planet has really memorable characters. The fourth planet has been a delight so far. Hoyoverse's stories can be messy at times but they have a lot of heart :) I hope you will enjoy your space journey!!
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