Genshin Impact is a gacha game, which means players spend in-game premium currency for a small chance at pulling rare characters, also known as wishing in miHoYo's world. Genshin has two tiers of characters, four-star characters and five-star characters, though their actual worths are often broken down into tier lists made by fans. Four-stars are guaranteed every tenth pull, with increased chances for those featured on the banners, but the five-stars are a minuscule chance. Guaranteeing a five-star like Eula, Diluc, Jean, or Itto only happens every 180 pulls, which takes quite the chunk of change.
This often results in three types of players: the whales, who pour hundreds if not thousands of dollars on nearly all of the new five-stars, sometimes over the fear of missing out; the free-to-play players, who wish to experience Genshin Impact completely for free, which is easily achievable; and finally, those who fall somewhere between the two. Some players might spend a few dollars on the battle pass or on pulling a five-star character that really excites them, but otherwise still aren't spending a large amount of money on the gacha game. Genshin Impact perfectly satisfies the last two categories, if not all three.
Why Frugal Gamers Should Play Genshin Impact
Especially in the months following Genshin Impact's launch, many players complained that there wasn't enough content in the game, but this is highly debatable. Keep in mind that Genshin released during the pandemic when many people were working or doing classes at home. But there are some restrictions that keep fans from grinding Genshin Impact through all hours of the day, which was especially problematic when it released over a year ago. The resin cap keeps players from being able to level up their characters, weapons, and artifacts too quickly, and they need to parse it up between sessions with other activities. With only so much resin to spend per day, they blew through the story and side quests too quickly, resulting in the feeling that Genshin Impact doesn't have enough content.
But since its early days, miHoYo has added a slew of new features to Genshin Impact. Limited-time events often bring new activities, there's now a house customization mode called Serenitea Pot, and character-specific story quests release with almost each new five-star these days. Outside of the lengthy Archon quests—there's currently a prologue and two chapters aside from the additions of Dragonspine and Enkanomiya—like most sandbox games, the Serenitea Pot requires exploration for resource collecting such as whacking trees, which can take a considerable amount of time. It even allows players to farm, inspired by the trends of Stardew Valley. The amount of content now available is overwhelming, and of course, it's all completely free to access.
That's not to mention gameplay elements such as Genshin Impact's dailies, fighting weekly bosses, grinding domains for artifacts and level-up materials, exploring for ascension items, and so on, which can take several days to do at higher levels. It doesn't necessarily keep players from doing story quests if that's what they so choose to spend their time on, but it's pertinent
The catch when playing Genshin Impact is to not get sucked into spending any (or too much) money on it. If players can avoid the gacha traps or the temptations of the Blessing of the Welkin Moon daily login bonuses and the premium battle pass, the latter of which can give access to "more" content in the way of fragile resin, then they can get plenty of gaming content completely for free, and an array of it as well. Genshin features an exhibition of interesting characters, some of which may be dateable in the future through the hangout quests, a compelling plot, expansive regions unique from one another, constant events, and activities that don't require participating in combat continuously, meaning there's something there for every type of gamer.
Genshin Impact is out now for Mobile, PC, PS4, and PS5 and is in development for Switch.
