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Arthur JEANNIN's avatar

Thank you for this super interesting opinion piece! If I may be so bold, I think you would benefit from going a bit further in the story for multiple reasons:

- Combat gets harder. Since increasing your Trailblazing level upgrades the enemies, there's always a balance that is achieved between your characters' stats and theirs. One of the last bosses of the currently available story presents a considerable difficulty spike, and there is a roguelike mode called Simulated Universe that goes a bit farther.

- Eventually, players get to a point where their characters are "maxed out" and get very powerful thanks to the Relics sytem. You didn't mention it and I'm pretty sure that you would not enjoy it - I don't either, it's a frustrating and messy take on the classic RPG equipment system that is entirely dependent on randomness and farming. But, like in Hoyoverse's other game, Genshin Impact, it's the "endgame" that players will spend days, weeks and months doing in order to optimize their characters as much as possible so as to see bigger and bigger numbers in combat.

- The story on the first planet is very good! I genuinely enjoyed Jarilo-VI. It's a bit more jarring on the second planet, with overly verbal prose, confusing pacing and less interesting environments. This is all my opinion, but I feel like the writing quality definitely goes down as Star Rail progresses.

I would be interested in seeing your opinion on what you haven't seen yet and these systems, if you do keep playing it! Star Rail is a confusing beast that does some stuff super well in this 2023 gaming ecosystem ; it's got a generally good main quest, especially for a free to play mobile gacha game, as well as a bunch of very well written secondary quests, competent (if a bit lacking in complexity) combat and a monetization model that's both super generous and awful gambling.

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Azka Malik's avatar

Thanks so much, Adrian, for this deeply entertaining review of Star Rail. My daughter is a huge fan and a massive one of Hoyoverse. I on the other hand am a little skeptical due to being fleeced by the Gacha (or gotcha) games and my bank account is still suffering. But as you say, and I agree, the writing is top quality and refreshingly compelling which is what draws the player in to the game.

Azka

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