The Good Elements of Honkai: Star Rail

I have been playing Honkai: Star Rail on and off since its launch, and I have a few thoughts about it.

From the very beginning, I have been enjoying playing the game and learning more about the story. Starting the game with an invasion of a spacecraft was a great way to grab my attention (and having an attractive woman being the first people we see doesn’t hurt either).

This game makes you feel like you are in a living story. The best example of this is how the dialog you choose affects how the responses you will get. You can be kind, sarcastic, or downright deny the request of a character. These options feel different from a lot of the other (gacha) games that I have played, the characters' replies also show off their personality and help you connect to them.

The characters feel incredibly flushed out, they have quirks and dynamics with other characters that make them feel more relatable and allow me to be more invested in certain ones from the start. Silver Wolf is a sarcastic gamer who is cocky because she knows her skills are among the best. Gepard is headstrong in the name of his honor, he will stand with the men he leads and wants to protect those around him. He also has a softer side when it comes to his sister, seeing their bond through him using her guitar case as his weapon. This game has a lot of little details that can be easily overlooked, but they make the characters feel alive.

The turn-based combat is incredible. When broken down, it may seem simplistic with two options to attack, an ultimate skill, and skill points. But it can become complex the further into the game you go once you start to fight harder bosses. Characters will have a baseline speed stat that will set a turn order. Instead of each character having something akin to mana points, the team shares skill points that will allow the use of skills. To get skill points, a character has to use a normal attack. Both forms of attacking will gain energy for the character’s ult and they can be activated at any point no matter the turn.

So much more can be talked about for the combat alone. But to keep it short, each enemy will have a break bar that you will need to use specific elements to break. You can also use a character’s techniques before the fight even starts. Some characters will do things outside of battle like heal, buff allies, or debuff enemies. Most characters will strike the enemy and break at the very beginning of the fight. All of these things combine to make common mobs easy tasks that can be beaten with auto-play, and high-level bosses will require some thinking and strategy.

This game, for a gacha game, feels rewarding. From the beginning, the game gives you multiple free 10 pulls, numerous Stellar Jade, and even a free guaranteed five-star Standard Character. Honkai makes it so easy to stay casual, with the inclusion of autoplay by being able to use Trailblazer Power up to six times in one run and standardizing the level-up materials. Include how you can easily get excellent weapons for any character through the many shops, and most of the player base will have no problem clearing the story and a good amount of the extra content like Simulated Universe and Forgotten Hall.

Recently, Honkai has started to roll out events. The first one was a simple fighting event where you go through multiple rounds of enemies and you have to defeat them within a certain number of rounds. At the time of writing, we are wrapping up the Sliver Wolf event where you go around and find stickers that Silver Wolf has left around the Herta Space Station. I loved this even because all of the stickers were cute, they were hidden decently well so I did have to look around, and I got a great Light Cone out of it for free. There are also two other events that I will need to complete and with how the events are going so far, I am excited to see what the next ones have in store.

I hope that Hoyoverse keeps up the good work with Honkai: Star Rail. It has crafted a world, story, and set of characters that are enticing and makes me want to play. I am excited for when the next section of the story is released, and I also need to decide on which new character I need to save my pulls for.