Genshin Burnout, and the Lingering Feelings of Being Pulled Back In

When it comes to my relationship with Genshin Impact, the journey has been interesting.

Getting Into The Game

I started playing Genshin back in 2020 with a four-hour session on Twitch. I can honestly say, those four hours were the most boring hours in the whole game. It was so slow paced and I hated how rigorously the game made you stick to the pre-determined path for the tutorial section. This was a terrible first impression for me, so much so that I put the game down for a couple of months.

What got me back into the game? Well, my best friend was the one to get me to download the game in the first place, and when my other friends started to pick it up, I was convinced to give it another chance. In a sign of good faith and knowing the beginning of any type of media is always the slowest, I decided to do another stream of the game.

I will say, I started enjoying the game more after the second or third time I played. I really liked the art style and the character design, those are some of the main reasons that I agreed to download the game after it was recommended. I really liked where the story seemed to be going, I thought that the character-building was great, and I wanted to learn more about the world and people.

I started playing Genshin a lot more and made it a point to stream it every Sunday so that even if I couldn’t get to play during the week, my self-mandated Sunday stream meant I could always take care of my weekly stuff. I wanted to make sure that I could do all of the events so that I never missed out on any of the rewards. At the time, it seemed like there was so much content, I never got bored.

The Gacha

Genshin Impact was my first ever Gacha game, I jumped in not knowing anything about these types of games, so I learned very quickly how to work with the different currencies in the game and what all the different banners in the game meant.

My boyfriend was the one to really do a deep dive into the game and figure out what the best team comps were, he would give me suggestions on which banners to pull on and help me build my characters. And the character banner was something that really kept me going. I always wanted a new character, but since it was a Gacha game and I was free-to-play, I had to decide whose banner I would pull on.

One of the things that really kept me hooked was that I had insane luck. I, to this day, have lost only a single 50/50 on the character event banner. While trying to get Yoimiya, my ninth 5-star in a row on the event banner, I ended up losing to Qiqi (and I WANTED QIQI, and I finally was able to get her so even when I lose, I’m still lucky!) and breaking the streak with a high score of 8 50/50’s in a row won.

Those pulls just happen to be during my last play session for Genshin before dropping the game. So, if I had all this great luck and just got two new characters that I really liked, why did I stop playing? Well for one, I was moving so I didn’t have time. For two, I just never got the urge to download it on my new PC.

The Genshin Burnout

I felt burnt out. It felt like the game was getting stale, I dreaded logging on to stream every Sunday. At the time, we had three regions unlocked to us and I was up to date on the Archon Quests and couldn’t be bothered to do the story or world quests because I didn’t wanna sit through loads of dialog and fetch quests. Yeah, there were events, but I felt that all of the fun ones that brought something new always seemed to go away too fast. For the most part, all of the events felt like chase quests where the first section would walk you through everything, and then you would rinse and repeat a dozen times until you can get the rewards you wanted.

My break from the game seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The running joke was that my luck was too good and I would never be able to get my Qiqi, I would end up getting her right before I stopped playing the game. Turns out, that is exactly what happened. My last Genshin stream was the one where I finally got Qiqi. The very next week, Tower of Fantasy came out and my whole friend group was convinced that we would all switch over to the newer, better game and leave Genshin Impact behind.

Coming Back?

So what does the second half of the title mean? If Tower of Fantasy was so good, why do you feel like going back to Genshin? Well, because no matter how much I wanted Tower of Fantasy to be the game that I’ve wanted since childhood, it just could not hold my attention. I still to this day cannot pinpoint why I cannot get sucked into this game like so many others, but I just can’t. My lack of interest in Tower of Fantasy is actually helping to bring back my interest in Genshin Impact, where I already have a connection to the characters and I have new ones that I still need to build. I never got to explore Sumeru and a whole new elemental type, so all of this new content is what is making me want to at least jump back in for a bit. And the recent introduction of the Genshin TCG might be the pushing factor to bring me back.

In the end, I think I overplayed the game to the point where I needed a break, but, with all of the amazing fan content that never leaves my feed, I think I am ready to re-download and come back to Genshin Impact.