This is the third in a series of five write ups I produced, detailing my thoughts and experiences with Genshin Impact. In this part, I discuss the appeal of the game as well, a game. I compare it to the legendary Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, discussing what makes Genshin Impact similar and different from it, for better and worse.
If I had to sell you on Genshin Impact, and the game being free wasn’t enough, I would ask you some questions. Have you played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Did you like getting to explore a vast world with all sorts of fun overworld puzzles and enemies? Have you ever wished that you could wipe your memory of it and re experience Breath of the Wild for the first time?
If you answered yes to that last one, then Genshin Impact may be the game for you. Taking much inspiration from it, Genshin Impact is a game with a vast open world to be explored however you want. It has many fun overworld puzzles and tricks to explore, a vast variety of characters and locations to meet, and is just an overall satisfying game to play. The moment to moment gameplay of combat, moving, and solving puzzles is addicting, and if you’re anything like me you will struggle to put the game down at first.
But the thing about Genshin Impact is that, while it does bear many similarities to Breath of the Wild, and while your initial experience with it may be quite similar, the more I dug into Genshin, the more I realized that under the surface, it has many large differences with Breath of the Wild that really set it apart. Let’s go over them.
Setting / World
One key feature of the setting of Breath of the Wild was that it was post apocalyptic. This cleverly allowed the developers to leave much of the world barren and ready to be explored by the player. But it also meant much of the world was and felt empty. This was a world that saw a great calamity, and so its inhabitants are merely picking up the pieces and trying to get things running again. There are quite a few towns in the world of Breath of the Wild, but they are largely isolated and have few notable characters to them.
Genshin Impact is in many ways the opposite. True, much of Genshin Impact’s world is also open and barren. However, you will frequently run into non playable characters (NPCs) with names and a story of their own. Characters will speak of cities both near and far away, you will encounter merchants and important locations where NPCs live. There’s a story to Genshin Impact that sees you interacting with a whole bunch of different characters. Each of the main playable characters has a whole sidequest dedicated to them that expands on them and the world, each of the playable characters has dialogue about other characters and their relationships you will unlock as you increase your friendship with them. The world just feels alive.
Compared to Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact has a much greater emphasis on its narrative. The story is more bombastic with highs and lows, there are so many named characters with a backstory, goals, and relationships to them, and the world in general has a lot of thought put into it. If you wanted Breath of the Wild to have a larger story and more named characters, then Genshin Impact may be the game for you.
The sidequests in particular are a stand out. While Breath of the Wild had great side quests from a gameplay perspective, much of their narrative component was rather bland. Genshin Impact has quests like these, called World Quests. But Genshin Impact also has Character quests. Each of the playable characters, which currently numbers 31 and is growing, has their own Story Quest associated with them. These see you learning more about the character, but can often go further in telling you about the world of Genshin Impact and what sort of people populate it. Some see you exploring a city more and getting to know its residents, some may lead to the reveal of a brand new and difficult boss that exists in the world outside of the big players in the main story, some may reveal shocking truths about the world’s history that changes your perspective on it. They all help to bring the world of Genshin Impact to life in a way Breath of the Wild simply never attempted.
Revisiting
Another huge difference between the two games becomes apparent the more you play it, and the more you realize that in Genshin Impact, you are encouraged many many times to return to locations you’ve already visited. Take the game’s dungeons. While overall, Genshin Impact’s dungeons are fewer and of less quality then the many brilliant shrines and divine beasts of Breath of the Wild (I can only think of a few that had puzzles that stumped me the way so many of the shrines in Breath of the Wild did), Genshin Impact’s many quests and progression system will require you to revisit its dungeons multiple times. The game also features daily quests, which require you to return to an area you’ve already visited, help an NPC in need for example, or clear out some enemies. Where Breath of the Wild was all about exploring and constantly moving forward, Genshin Impact is about exploring...and then backtracking, constantly revisiting areas you’ve already been to.
This is another part of what makes Genshin Impact’s world feel more alive, but it also means you’ll spend a lot less time exploring then in Breath of the Wild. Couple this with the fact that Genshin Impact is nowhere near close to being completed (the game is currently around a quarter as big as the developers want the final product to be), and after your initial 50 - 100 hours of the game, you will have no more of the world to explore, only revisiting, grinding to upgrade your characters and weapons, and experiencing new quests in familiar locations as they are added into the game.
Collectibles
When I first played Genshin Impact, and realized how similar it was to Breath of the Wild, an immediate thought I had was how the game would handle the weapon durability dilemma that plagued Breath of the Wild. See, while Breath of the Wild is universally acclaimed, the one design element that garnered the most controversy and discussion was its weapon durability mechanic, in which weapons would break after a while. For many this was a detriment to their enjoyment, but it also felt necessary. It meant the developers could create a vast world that constantly gave players reason to explore and find all the treasures they could. Because since weapons broke, players required a constant stream of new weapons, so they could be used as the game’s main collectible, to search for and feel satisfied upon gaining. I wondered, how would Genshin Impact handle this? If it does not have weapons breaking, how would it encourage players to continue to explore, if they get a really good weapon, and nothing else will really top it?
The answer is collectibles, so many collectibles. I’ve come to learn it is a common mechanic in gacha games, but in Genshin Impact you will be required to collect so much if you wish to level up your characters to their max potential. You will need to find special adventure experience notes to level up your characters, weapons and special minerals that are used to level up your weapons, talent books and enemy drops to level up the talents and abilities of your characters, and artifacts, which are needed to level up artifacts that boost your characters’ strength. There is so much to collect in this game, and all of it can be used for something, that you will never not have a reason to go out and explore every part of the world. It solves the weapon durability problem, as it means players don’t feel like their weapons might be wasted for gaining a lesser weapon. However, it also creates the problem of making Genshin Impact feel a bit like a collectathon, and not in a good way. As your characters level up, you will require more and more collectibles to keep it going, and it can feel like a chore at times to have to farm dungeons or enemies to get that one item you need for your character. Which system works better between the two? Honestly, that’s up to the player. I’m not really sure myself, I don’t have a huge problem with either weapon durability or collectibles. But I do like that because your weapons aren’t constantly breaking, you don’t need to constantly open up your menu and shuffle your weapons around like in Breath of the Wild.
These are some of the big differences I noticed between Genshin Impact and Breath of the Wild. However, the biggest of these is Genshin's combat and customization system. For a deep dive into that, stay tuned for the next part!
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