Genshin Impact is Launching on to PS4

Man it’s been a wild couple months. In June Genshin Impact was announced. In July Blue Protocol was announced. Then we have Project BBQ.. It’s shaping up to be a pretty interesting year.
Now, back in June I actually did a video talking about Genshin Impact.
However, since almost 2 months have passed since being announced and undergoing a testing period or two, I felt like it would be a good time to re-address some information.
Partly because more information has been brought to our attention since, and partly because it was announced last week to have a PS4 release planned as well.
Yup – the game is now going to support PS4s as well. The platforms the game’s available on and the cross-play is going to make for quite the population. Which is cool. As MMO players we have a tendency to shy away from dead games.
I just hope they don’t separate us based on the platform we’re using. I know some games do that and it sucks.

Although originally thought to be an MMORPG, or MMO to a degree, Genshin Impact was revealed to instead be an open-world action RPG made by Mihoyo, the team behind the popular Honkai Impact 3rd mobile game.
Which, honestly, may be one of the best looking Anime games on mobile device, just FYI.
Mihoyo promise that the game is large and freely explorable, and if gameplay is anything to go off of, the exploration is kinda reminiscent of Breath of the Wild.
Some of the effects, the gliding.. I don’t know whether or not mountain scaling is a thing but if it is.. then the resemblance might be a bit on the nose.
Genshin Impact follows a deep story that sets the player, referred to as “The Traveler” along with several playable characters on a journey throughout the world of Teyvat.
It follows the basic RPG formula: There are secrets to uncover, party members to recruit, bosses to fight, but most importantly are the online features Mihoyo originally discussed.
See, originally the game was thought to be an MMO because Mihoyo went on to lead us to believe that “online features” would play a large part in the overall game.
However, they later revealed that the games online function would apply to dungeons and only dungeons.
Which is fine and all. I just wanted to note this so you guys don’t go in with the expectation that the game will be an MMO.

So a lot of gameplay was revealed recently for the PS4 version of the game and we’re shown quite a lot of combat along with some dungeon running.
Combat is about what you’d expect from a Japanese RPG: Monsters, and the graphical style are similar to Breath of the Wild and combat looks like a mixture of Breath of the Wild and KurtzPel.
You have each character with their own unique weapon type, using a variety of different skills that are specific to the kind of class they are.
The skill effects are beautiful, flashy, very fluid and make for what looks to be a very impressive Anime experience.
Since the game will also be cross-platform compatible on both PC and Mobile devices, I’m unsure exactly how the game will play on those platforms but the combat is complete action.
No tab-target, no targets necessary. You just spam your buttons like mad unleashing tons of skills onto your enemies.
One thing I would like to note is that the game doesn’t seem to allow for multiple characters on-screen at a time. You have access to each character and can swap to any of them at any time.
But, you don’t seem to be able to have them all engaged in the same battle concurrently. Which is.. unusual.

Genshin Impact looks really damn good. It offers players a highly explorable world with lots to see and lots to do.
It’s got some very, very impressive looking action combat for an Anime title, has an emphasis on storytelling, is cross-platform and honestly, it has a lot going for it.
Their first beta test was a huge success and they have plans for a second beta in the future, so I’ll definitely be applying to get in and see exactly how the game plays and what the game offers.
I have yet to see party play in dungeons yet so I can’t say how partying with other people online to tackle the dungeons will work.
It’s made by Mihoyo, a developer that has experience with mobile games so it has the potential to have microtransactions and be cash-shop heavy, but at the same time, I don’t know how impactful a cash shop can be in an offline game.
So I’m still excited, two months in. It was my most anticipated game – up until I saw that Tales of Arise and Blue Protocol were announced.
While I still believe that Genshin Impact could be a very good game, and will likely be a very good game, I’m always going to be cautious of how games are handled.