We Finally Get To Beetle Battle!

Ever since we were introduced to Itto, I have wanted to battle beetles. I desperately wanted a mini-game where I could go and have beetles tip each other over for my enjoyment after a long day of adventuring. Well, after what felt like years of waiting, it has finally happened! In the currently running event, Almighty Arataki Extraordinary and Exhilarating Extreme Beetle Brawl, we finally get to become the beetle battler that we have all dreamed of (we all dream about this… right?).

This event has you taking on different beetle battlers in the name of the Arataki Gang. Itto is once again in a messy situation when a young battling master defeats him. To save face, we go about facing off against four beetle trainers and then the young beetle master that took the top title from Itto.

I really liked how you get to control the beetle. You get to jump back and forth and charge attack your opponent while dodging enemy attacks. I don’t know what it is about beating up a beetle AS A BEETLE that is just so addicting. Maybe it’s because most other events, like that one right before this event, were fighting ones. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fighting ones where I go in and just beat up enemies with my characters, they are actually some of my favorites. But I will quickly admit that even though they are some of my favorite things to do, they get old fast. I’m using the same few teams I have built to destroy the same hordes of enemies time and time again.

This simple change up from the normal gameplay is so welcomed that I was actually excited to get back into a game that I barely touched for the past few months. I had dropped the game and really only jumped back in on two occasions. One, to see what the new land of Sumeru had to offer. Two, to get that beautiful new outfit for Lisa. Neither of these things really gave me anything to jump for joy. Exploring Sumeru was fun for the first five minutes, I liked the new creatures and I thought the improved travel mechanics to get you to high-up places were extremely useful for traversing the large lands. Getting the new outfit for Lisa took all of 20 minutes and I could do it on autopilot while talking to a friend on discord.

When getting out of the initial section where the debacle is explained and you are released to fight five different people, I was dumb and just talked to the first person I saw in front of me. Turns out, that was the person I was supposed to fight last. So, I took on the hardest fight first, making the other four fights feel like child’s play. With every fight thereafter, I took on the medium level, unlock the hard difficulty, and went back to beat them up a second time. This in itself proves how fun this short event was. I HATE having to go back and redo event tasks at a harder level, only to receive essentially useless rewards. The fact that I WANTED to go back and beat everything on the hardest difficulty, even offering to do this event for my boyfriend because he was busy with work, only proves HOW GOOD this event is.

The only thing that I have to complain about is just how short the event is. I finished this event (from the initial start to the end of all the content) in about an hour. I wanted MORE to do. Even if it was just the same thing remixed more. I wanted to fight more beetles. I wanted tougher fights. I found the challenge of the hard mode to be engaging. I loved getting frustrated at trying to figure out why none of my attacks were causing any damage during a fight, only to discover on the rematch that I had to hit them when they were recovering from their own attacks.

Something as simple as forcing me to take a moment and think about how I wanted to play this out or figure out how to deal damage made me feel like I was actually playing a game again.

To wrap up this rant about how Genshin actually made a fun event, I hope Genshin does more of these inventive events, or better yet, brings these into the overworld as permanent minigames.