BREATH OF THE WAIFU
Really, I shouldn’t like Genshin Impact as much as I do. It has lootboxes with dreadfully low drop rates, an energy system that limits how quickly I progress, and an extremely annoying sidekick that refers to itself exclusively in third person. These flaws would doom other games, but Genshin Impact is also a fantastic RPG set in a vibrant open world that is so much more fun to explore than most full-priced games I’ve played this year.
If has a secret weapon, it’s that it isn’t afraid to swipe features from other games, most notably . Just like Nintendo’s seminal hit, there’s an enormous world to explore that’s teeming with secrets, puzzles and cleverly hidden loot. There are mercifully few icons on the map, so a lot of the exploration is self-guided. I have to climb mountains, glide across canyons, and pay attention to my surroundings if I hope to discover it all. It doesn’t just thoughtlessly copy and paste these ideas. It expands on and tweaks them to fit really nicely into a loot-obsessed RPG that is—despite what its roots in mobile games might imply—incredibly fun to play.
