Anime Honkai: Star Rail - It sucks almost as much as mods changing titles

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Okay, I played Wuthering Waves for an hour or 1 hr 30 min. I tried it on my phone. I don't think I can play these 3D Chinese games on the phone, especially these action games. It is really awkward trying to move my character and camera around, and the camera is so zoomed out it is hard to see my character or to inspect the little stuff in the world. During the tutorial combat section, I did not have the dexterity to dodge in time or in the right direction. I think Honkai Star Rail is turn based, so that would be more ideal for phone play, but I'd rather look at these games on a big monitor screen anyway.

I spent about 20 minutes going through the menus. I was looking for a lore glossary, but apparently everything is locked. There were a lot of proper nouns thrown out there in rapid succesaion that I couldn't understand. Tacit fields. Tacit discords. Reverberation. Echoes. Resonators. Terminals. Etheric sea. Etc.

I was also looking at the main character sheet. Apparently he does "spectro" damage, but nothing in the menus would tell me what that is. I also saw the blurb on the main character's outfit saying that it is what he would wear forever, which is disappointing. And it seems he can only equip swords? If so, then it is pretty disappointing that you can't customize your chatacter.

I looked through the gallery of the other Resonators (playable characters). It seems that they are almost all young, slim, beautiful 20 somethings or teenagers. I love youmg slim beauties too, but it's just so samey. No variety like in Granblue Fantasy where you have old people or people with broad shloudered physiques, or non humans like penguin robots or flying cats or shapeshifting goo.

The aesthetics of the game are a mixed bag. The sound themeing of the nouns is somewhat exotic and intriguing, and I liked the weird gliders. But the characters are dressed in tacky modern clothing, and the environmemts look like generic and plasticky. I didn't make it to the city, so no comment there.

Music was forgettable.

Voice acting/direction is overall lackluster. Not just talking about the delivery of the English dub. Chiaxi was fine. I was peeved when flipping through the character menu or the gallery of playable characters, and they would spout the same speech over and over, especially the MC with his "I will protect everyone" thing. During the cutscenes, Yangyang sounded a little too artificial, like she is not actually there. Also, I could have sworn that when she dropped certain Chinese nouns, that the sound clip for that word was copypasted from a different line, maybe because the voice actress had difficulty pronouncing it and they didn't want to spend the time to get it right.

Once again peeved how I am traveling with a party in the cutscenes, but in gameplay I am by myself, and there is the immersion breaking instant on-the-spot switching of characters, which you do a lot to use each character's ability on cooldown like you are playing some hotbar MMO.

I might check out HSR next, due to the more leisurely turn based combat. Hopefully the music might be better, though I thought Genshin's OST was grossly overrated.

 

[itsme]

This is your opinion dude. You havent tried different characters, havent seen all regions, etc. There are milfs, lolis, alpha males in this game. Theres one male character with something resembling a beard and wearing a FEDORA. Hes 4 stars though.

If you want furries, you can try ZZZ. It has a bear, a wolf and a fox is coming up.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

After trying out Wuthering Waves last night, I decided to try out Honkai Star Rail, also on the phone. This time with Japanese voice acting.

It is an inferior Trails clone, with the same ups and downs as Trails in combat, gameplay structure, and story.

The first positive is that - like Trails - it has leisurely turn based combat (WITH your party of characters fighting with you in battle, unlike Genshin and Wuthering Waves. Sadly they don't run with you in the overworld), with the same turn/speed system and ability to pop your S-crafts immediately. Unfortunately, so far there seems to be no indication that you can do the interesting turn manipulation stuff of Trails like the nooby delay based strategies, or using Chrono Burst and Accel Shot to take multiple turns in a row, or the elite high dodge rate and auto countera attacks after evading + slow speed + auto regen VP every turn strat to become absurdly powerful. There is no positioning in battle like in Trails, which is disappointing as the most challenging and memorable encounters in Trails relied on clever positioning of your characters on the battlefield. I saw a character do a followup attack once, so I am not sure how robust of a system that mechanic is compared to Cold Steel's link attacks where ypu had a resource and different options for followup actions.

Fiddling with the touchscreen controls to move the character and camera was just as frustrating as in Genshin and Wuthering Waves, but given that this is a turn based game, there was nowhere near as much pressure. I was not getting beaten up because I couldn't dodge in the right direction or turn the camera to see. Selecting targets in battle with the classic Final Fantasy camera framing is easy and intuitive.

I apparently got a free outfit for March 7th, which looked prettier and classier than whatever her dumb default character design is supposed to be, so I equipped that. Unfortunately, in cutscenes she reverted back to her dumb outfit.
The story is mediocre, borrowing from one of the most debilitating aspects of the Trails franchise. The game begins with you playing not as the main protagonist, but as an annoying young woman who is a know-it-all and Very Important with secret projects and involved in the underworld and such. And then she is accompanied by a horribly snarky hacker young teenage girl who is also a know it all. I hate these teen geniuses in Trails who act like they have so much life experience when they are barely 20. I also did not like the hacker girl's 4th wall breaking. We then find out that the space station is being attacked by secret armies from nowhere (not this shit again), and then get introduced to the members of what seems to be yet another Akatsuki/Ouroboros/Organization XIII clone. Yawn. The story improves a little once you find the protagonist and the two brats leave, but it's still not good. So far I don't give a hoot about any of these characters or what is going on, which is a failure.

I like the design of the robots at the beginning. The battle attack animations/ VFX, and cutscenes for both party members and enemies are solid. I am still not keen on the cartoony artstyle, though.

I keep thinking back to Trails and keep thinking about how badly the experience of these free games is mangled by the format. I would much rather just buy a $60 box and get all of the characters, rather than get a couple free characters I will probably dislike, have to waste a considerable amount of my limited free time doing awful dailies just to save up enough fake money to roll for one character I might be interested in.
So far there is no big Western styled open world filled with copypasted ruins and chests to waste my time, which is a plus.

I dislike the main character's outfit. He is wearing an oversized punky jacket and a baseball bat, which makes him look like an inept teenager rather than a cool or competent person. I was not particularly keen on the detailing of Wuthering Waves' MC's jacket, but at least he looks competent. Neither of them hold a candle to real JRPG protagonists like Zidane, Oshtor, Rean, etc. It should would be nice if these Chinese games allowed me to customize my main character! Get a haircut, drop the dumb outfits, pick up a spear, tame and fight with a pet, etc.

I am not keen on the music, but at least I can recall that it even exists, unlike WW. Maybe it will get better? I am truly baffled as to why people fangirl over Mihoyo's music. The hype duped me into wasting a day of my life listening to all of the Genshin albums and only walking away with maybe 12 songs that were good.

I might try this a bit more. I think i liked Wuthering Waves' characters a bit more, and the protagonist was more likeable (at least none of the characters were so aggravating as to diminish my enjoyment), but the cutscenes were too long winded, and ofcourse the open world and action combat are dealbreakers. Whereas this has more entertaining combat, and so far the story respects my time a little more (though could still stand to be trimmed). But overall, not really feeling the mediocre experience of these 3D Chinese mobile games, so I'll probably just uninstall.

 

[Tyrr]

Do all Wuthering Waves characters still have one of these Chinese names that all soundalike?

 

[Reinhardt]

Neither of them hold a candle to real JRPG protagonists like Rean

lololololololol

 

[Saark]

It's pretty simple, really. Hoyo is good at finding the middle-ground between what other games are really damn good at individually.

It has decent enough combat. but games like Wuthering Waves simply do it better.
It has a decent story, but it lacks in at least two aspects in every story beat, whether that be narrative progression, presentation, voice acting, music, or integrating story-telling into the actual gameplay. Limbus Company or Heaven Burns Red do it better. (if you can stand the fact that HBR is very anime-trope~y).
It provides enough content that you can goon over, but certainly can't beat games like Nikke or Blue Archive in that regard.

And that's why it's so successful, relative to most of these other games, at least in terms of monetary value. It doesn't do anything exceptionally well, but it hits all the notes well enough. WuWa has terrible music and Voice Direction (although it has gotten better, but i.e. their OST is still miles behind PGR, the studio's previous title). Limbus just doesn't have the budget, although to me it's still the best game in the Gacha market right now (mostly because it has stellar VA, music, and the writing is interesting and well done. Also, it doesn't really feel like a Gacha). HBR has a solid story, music and VA (it's created by Jun Maeda, after all), but the gameplay is just a bit too simple. Hell, even ZZZ has better combat and tells its story significantly better.

Doesn't change the fact that the most lukewarm of games, Genshin and HSR, still have much bigger playerbases simply because they cater to all aspects of the genre "well enough". It's a shame, really, because other games deserve a lot more credit and attention than them.

 

[Reinhardt]

Limbus Company

it's from lobotomy corpo devs? is it gud? how dark is the story?
i have really low tolerance for grimderp lately, that's why i prefer stuff like heaven burns red where drama balanced by lighthearted bits.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

is it gud?

it's supposed to be autobattled. so it's not.
no idea about the story, i felt "fire force" vibes and steered away from it as soon as possible.

 

[Saark]

it's from lobotomy corpo devs? is it gud? how dark is the story?

Ye, same devs as Lobotomy Corp/Library of Ruina. It plays a lot more like Library, with "turnbased" combat where you select your skills, the enemy has theirs pre-selected, and once you set where each of your attacks is supposed to go, they clash with one another. Next turn, same thing repeats. In most advanced battles you pick which of the enemy attacks you attack with yours (provided your out-speed them), in non-focus encounters you don't have much control over where your people attack. It's not re-inventing the wheel, but the combat is serviceable and once the enemies aren't complete fodder, you may have to actually think a little (and more importantly, read what the enemy does), to deal with their mechanics and win the fight. YMMV, of course. Certainly the weakest part of the game, just like HBR, but good enough that you don't wanna blow your brains out before enjoying more of the story.

The story is the same setting as before, it's just a continuation of what Lob Corp/LoR already set up. The City is still a depressing post-apocalyptic capitalist hellscape, you travel around with 12 set companions, so new Gacha characters are still the same character in the story, they just have a new "identity" in battle. Keeps things focused on the same roster of people, instead of constantly having to pull shit out of thin air to "sell" the newest character. The overall story leans very heavily on Dantos Inferno, (the protag is Dante, Vergil is part of your company, but not exact copies of course), and each character is based on a character in famous literary works. Each character gets a dedicated Canto in which their story is being told, and those stories lean fairly heavily on the original works, within the scope of the overall narrative, of course. It's done quite well, i.e. the Wuthering Heights and Moby Dick parts worked surprisingly well within this setting, while also having unique and new aspects to it. Characters obviously get development and scenes beyond their own Canto (so far we have 7 Cantos). The first 2 are kind of weak (based on Kafka's Metamorphosis and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment), and things get progressively better, with Canto 4 being better than anything I've experienced in any other Gacha so far (and beating plenty of regular RPGs as well).

Tl;DR: Depressing setting/story, but it is about each Sinner overcoming their shortcomings and struggles, as they learn how to cope and deal with it. No sad-porn here (maybe a few scenes, but they quickly learned to not go down that route again).

it's supposed to be autobattled. so it's not.

Not sure what gave you that idea, but it's not really all that accurate. Pressing Win-Rate gets you past the easy fights or the ones where you "outscale" the enemy, but most story boss fights or encounters with gimmicks you still very much want to manually select which of your characters clashes with who. You do get a lot of value out of the auto-battle with Win-Rate for farming content, but I personally don't consider that a bad thing, actually makes things a lot easier on the maintenance.

 

[Reinhardt]

you travel around with 12 set companions, so new Gacha characters are still the same character in the story, they just have a new "identity" in battle.

so like heaven burns red?

how is gacha part btw?

 

[Saark]

so like heaven burns red?

Pretty much, yes, but since it's only 12 characters, its a lot more tight-knit.

how is gacha part btw?

Rates aren't great, but it doesn't matter. The game has a free and paid battle pass that last for the entire season, and progressing through it past the "maximum" level will keep granting you boxes with shards that you can use to buy almost every single ID of any character in the game. Buying the Battlepass is recommended (basically triples the amount of boxes you get) but not necessary, and it'll last the entire season (which usually lasts around 6 months), so it's incredible value for what you're getting out of it. New IDs or EGOs (ultimate abilities) release every 2 weeks~ish, and with the paid BP, you basically get more shards than you can spend. They really don't know how to make a Gacha, essentially. I started early last year, right after the 1-year anniversary, and at this point I have almost every ID and EGO in the game, without having spent a single dime beyond buying the Battlepass twice. Since you rarely if ever have to spend currency to roll for characters, you can use it liberally for other stuff.

 

[Reinhardt]

thanks. maybe i will try it later to see if story works for me.

 

[Saark]

It's certainly worth checking out to see if its up your alley. I'd try to power through to Canto 3 if you can stomach it, since things start picking up a lot in that chapter. It's based on Hesse's "Demian: The Story of a Boyhood" and its protag character Sinclair, and warps and twists the original story in a very interesting and fitting way, while also helping a lot with world building.

Like many other games it uses an Energy system for story stages, so you cant just do all of them back to back. But since you don't really need to spend the currency for pulls, you can just refresh Energy for currency and get it back by completing stages. Also, the tutorial sucks and is grossly misleading in some cases.

 

[Reinhardt]

i'm just raped by gacha rolls this month in every single game i play so starting another right now is out of the question. i just know nothing good will come from it.
literally hit two pity in fgo back to back...

kinda tempted to roll in heaven burns red because today banner has two best girls - megumin and mona~nyan but...

 

[Saark]

i'm just raped by gacha rolls this month in every single game i play so starting another right now is out of the question. i just know nothing good will come from it.

Yeah that's fair. Personally I don't really approach Limbus or HBR as Gacha games, since both of them don't offer particularly challenging gameplay, they just tell good stories, so I see little to no reason to spend on them.

I was trying to go for E2 Herta to have a unit that's gonna last for a year or two, due to how insanely OP her E2 is, but Bronya decided to fuck me over.