App store payments will have increased competition
Happy to chat about it, HN, since otherwise I&#x27;d just be playing more Genshin Impact.<p>My capsule review of the game nobody asked for: if you like Breath of the Wild, you&#x27;ll likely enjoy it a lot. It is not as pure of an exploration game at BotW is, and the emergent game mechanics that made BotW such a joy, a toy which produced its own unique stories with every player, are mostly absent. The exploration doesn&#x27;t tie in closely with the plot like it does in BotW.<p>But, other than that, it&#x27;s an extremely, extremely effective game. Excellent art and music design; the graphics compare favorably to anything I&#x27;ve ever seen in an AAA game if you like this anime-inspired visual style.<p>I find the combat similar to single-player WoW with more interesting strategic choices (regarding party comp, etc) and less interesting tactical choices. Harder encounters are fun puzzles to solve.<p>While the actual story in the game is nothing we haven&#x27;t seen done better before, the character interactions are an extremely interesting Chinese take on Chinese&#x2F;Japanese&#x2F;Western fantasy tropes. Someone could get an East Asian Studies thesis out of it fairly easily. It&#x27;s amusing to &quot;read&quot; with that cultural commentary lens on; the localization is also surprisingly well done (including both English and Japanese, to the extent you credit me with being able to perceive that).<p>The metagame about how to progress as quickly as possible, and where to invest your resources &#x2F; how to harvest them efficiently, also pushes my buttons very effectively.