When the studio first released Genshin Impact in 2020, HoYoverse set a new standard of what a AAA mobile game could be. While unable to set itself free from the shackles of F2P mobile game tropes such as limited currencies and a gacha system, what it did provide was a lush open world that is still fun to explore years later, constant updates, memorable characters, addictive action-RPG gameplay, and most importantly, a narrative you can easily become immersed in. To be honest, it felt like a once-in-a-generation success for the mobile gaming market… not something that any studio could replicate again… even HoYoverse… right?
Following a series of closed beta tests, late last month HoYoverse released what would be their second major 3D mobile game – Honkai: Star Rail – the newest chapter in their wider Honkai media franchise. Rather than replicating the success of Genshin Impact, the creative team clearly took the existing framework set by its predecessor and shook things up considerably – offering a sci-fi-driven narrative and environment, a shift from exploration-driven open world exploration to more linear but higher-detailed environments that are about completing quests, and a complete shift to a tactical turn-based RPG battle system. Do these changes provide a framework for HoYoverse to create another massive hit? Read on to find out.
Chapter Driven, With New Worlds in Each
The main concern that many may have at first is “I haven’t played Honkai Impact 3rd before, will I be able to appreciate the story?”, and the answer to that is most certainly! Being a spin-off title in the series, it is set in a completely different universe, and while it shares characters between them – they are completely different people with distinct appearances, lore and personalities. So this is most certainly a place you can jump aboard on.
In Honkai: Star Rail, players will once again be able to fill the shoes of their own player character – known as the ‘Trailblazer’, who is awakened aboard the Herta Space Station while under siege from an entity known as the Antimatter Legion. Quickly uniting with Dan Heng, March 7th and other members of the Astral Express team, a series of events leading to the discovery of their abilities around mysterious “Cancer of All Worlds” Stellarons, they join the team on their mission travelling the stars and start encountering worlds impacted by their own Stellarons and other associated threats.
The Version 1.0 build of Honkai: Star Rail offers a good chunk of story, offering a good dozen plus hours of gameplay – and even more if you take your time and don’t rush things too quickly. What you get is the introduction chapter, the full first chapter set on the planet of Jarilo-VI which has experienced 700 years of an eternal freeze, and what appears to be about half of the second chapter set on the futuristic starship city, Xianzhou Luofu. Filling the same roles as Genshin Impact’s Mondstadt and Liyue arcs did in Genshin Impact, each locale is well thought out in terms of providing very distinct narrative-driven events, their own design language and more. But while there is less player-driven exploration given the lack of an open world to explore, what we do get is a more succinct experience where every character of a region has a purpose for being in the story – supported by their individual questlines which are rolled out incrementally so you don’t complete everything at once.
Storytelling has always been a strong suit for HoYoverse, and I think Honkai: Star Rail showcases this perfectly. In addition to providing a promising framework for the series going ahead, they provide many genuinely hilarious moments – often on behalf of the player character – from easter eggs around characters and lines from other HoYoverse properties, memes, and genuinely outlandish situations. May I personally recommend hopping in the closet the first time you enter a hotel room in-game?
Detailed Environments, Varied Characters, Stellar Music
Shifting from an open world to smaller scale environments has clearly allowed HoYoverse to dedicate more resources towards providing greatly detailed environments for players to navigate – including significantly large cities filled with unique assets, with more happening throughout in terms of NPCs and just many beautiful vistas you want to use the in-game camera on. With each of the three in-game “worlds” not being linked to each other, they also took advantage of it, developing a unique design language for each which makes travelling to each planet or locale a lot more memorable.
As of Version 1.0, Honkai: Star Rail features 21 playable characters (22 if you factor in both male and female protagonists) along with a bunch of story-important characters who also feature unique designs and are almost certainly to become playable in the future. Like Genshin Impact, the characters are all uniquely designed and while limited to a few set body types and movement animations – all feature distinct stand-still animations, combat animations, apparel, and more, and there are no characters who I would want to keep from my party based on appearance alone. Also, and while I say this loving Genshin Impact’s mascot character Paimon… Pom-Pom is downright adorable and I hope we will see figures, plush dolls and more made of them in the future!
HoYoverse has always been able to deliver stellar soundtracks for their games, even having an in-house HoYo-Mix label to craft songs. Honkai: Star Rail is no exception, with an amazing soundtrack that encapsulates the moods, tones and locales of every cutscene and area you visit. For a sample of what you are able to hear in-game, I strongly recommend checking out the game’s post-launch ‘Departure Festival’ concert.
Honkai: Star Rail offers four different audio languages to play the game with, each available to download separately via the game’s main menu: English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. The English audio is what I did my playtesting on, and was pretty good across the board, with the acting tending to be on the more mature/serious end compared to a wider variety of voices featured in Genshin Impact, although this could very well change in the future.
A gameplay framework for future success
Honkai: Star Rail’s combat system is based on a turn-based RPG battle system, where players form a party of four characters, with each member being assigned one of seven elements (Physical, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Quantum and Imaginary) which grants them strengths and weaknesses against characters of other elements, and one of seven paths which dictate the type of skills they have available to them (Destruction, Hunt, Erudition, Harmony, Nihility, Preservation and Abundance) – ultimately filling the same role as Genshin’s Weapon x Element breakdown, albeit with more variance overall.
The turn-based battles see characters attacking one at a time, using a combination of their basic attack, skill and ultimate ability to exploit opponent weaknesses and walk away with a victory. This is probably where my first potential issue with the game arises – as it would have been more rewarding gameplay-wise to give the player more abilities to add an extra layer of strategy to the game’s combat system – but I can appreciate this might not have suited the mobile game nature of Honkai: Star Rail. However even with these limitations, the combat is fun, and strikes that balance between having players intentionally show their skills through boss battles, while allowing random mobs to not be skipped, but rather played auto-battle style.
With 21 playable characters, as you might expect, some are considered more valuable, higher-tier characters than others. Seele, the first limited 5-star character for example, is capable of taking down whole swarms of enemies very quickly. However, perhaps aided by learnings from Genshin Impact and the greater variety of element + path combinations on offer, in what we have seen so far, every character is viable in at least certain situations. Furthermore, there is not a bad 5-star character in the bunch, meaning that whoever you unlock in the guaranteed 5-star 50-pull Departure Warp Banner will be a good character. I for one got lucky to pull Bailu from mine, who fulfils the Qiqi role, but provides great utility and heals even if she isn’t a heavy hitter. Even the player character, typically a character you would quickly replace in similar games, has quite a lot of versatility in-battle after a few story events.
But as time goes on, it will be interesting to see how the base-level characters fare. Outside of this, the gacha system has been brought across from Genshin Impact, with a <1% base rate of pulling a five star per pull, but with the 90-pull pity returning with a 50% feature pull on feature banners. Could it be better… of course, but this should not come as a surprise to anyone.
While coming with their own unique Honkai: Star Rail features, many of the core gameplay systems and features are at least inspired by those found in Genshin Impact. Instead of collecting weapons, players collect light cones which pretty much fill the identical purpose and are associated with specific paths, you can equip six different relics on your characters (with up to two separate buffs possible), upgrade your skills, and collect materials through a range of different battles challenges accessed through the game’s equivalent of ‘Energy’ – Trailblaze Power. On the combat side of things, there is also the Simulated Universe unlocked very early on, where you travel through rogue-like dungeons collecting upgrades as you face increasingly difficult mobs (which pack a genuinely good punch early on) and the Forgotten Hall – similar to Spiral Abyss – where you are challenged to defeat one or multiple groups of enemies within a certain turn limit.
With Honkai: Star Rail being split up into incrementally released chapters and there being no open world for you to aimlessly explore, it might raise some questions about what would keep a player returning again and again. While the half-update character banner refreshes would certainly bring players back in hopes of unlocking the next character, the incrementally unlocking missions, daily quests and the aforementioned features do a good job at getting me to log in for 15 minutes – half an hour each day, even after completing everything.
But this is only the beginning… the next steps taken shall matter
Honkai: Star Rail is currently at the point of time where everything is new and fresh, but as with Genshin Impact, they will need to work hard and fast to keep continued interest. Without exploration mechanics such as climbing, jumping and gliding to keep players wandering the world – I am curious about what shape the in-game events will take. Furthermore, how much of the narrative will they unlock with each version update? Each nation in Genshin Impact typically took a year to open up, and I feel the game will need more worlds – at least every six months – to keep players immersed in the world. Of course, I could be wrong on that… time will tell.
What I am excited about is some of the “fluff” that will be added to the game as time goes on. The Serenitea Pot was always a favourite feature of mine in Genshin, and I would love to see them incorporate a similar ‘Player Housing’ system in Honkai: Star Rail, perhaps allowing players to design their own carriages aboard the Astral Express, and expand to allow their collected characters to “move in”, perhaps with their own unique boons for doing so. As I would be ticked off as the only one of the crew not to have so much as a room to myself aboard the craft.
Honkai: Star Rail is off to a solid start, the ball is now in HoYoverse’s Court
As a free-to-play game, Honkai: Star Rail has every possibility of meeting the high standards set by Genshin Impact. It is clear that much love, attention and resources went into crafting Version 1.0 of the game, with an intriguing sci-fi story, excellent audiovisual production qualities and some genuinely addictive gameplay. But the actions taken by HoYoverse over the coming months and the next few versions will determine whether players will want to invest more time and potentially money into the game, or whether it becomes just another ambitious freemium mobile game in an already saturated market. The ball is now in HoYoverse’s court.
This review was conducted exclusively on the PC release of Honkai: Star Rail, and does not factor in any (if there are any) issues or limitations that may be found with the iOS or Android release.
Honkai: Star Rail can now be downloaded on PC (via direct download, Steam or the Epic Games Store), Android (via Google Play) or iOS (via the App Store). A PlayStation version for either or both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 is also in the works, to be released at an unspecified date in the future.
