Honkai: Star Rail Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Mobile game developer miHoYo has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until the launch of Genshin Impact that the team shattered expectations around the world of what a mobile game could really be. The open-world, Breath of the Wild-inspired, gacha action game took plenty of familiar elements and crammed them together in an impossibly beautiful mix that felt like a massive step up from what was expected from mobile gaming. Genshin Impact is growing larger every year, but so is miHoYo – while the golden Genshin goose continues to thrive, so too is the team. More talent and even more money has helped make it possible for the studio to launch multiple new projects, and one of those is Honkai: Star Rail – a free RPG adventure that, while nowhere near as revolutionary or inventive as Genshin Impact, has the promising beginnings of an addictive new gacha game adventure.

While Honkai: Star Rail shares a name with the often under-looked third currently-running miHoYo mobile game Honkai Impact 3rd, they’re not connected narratively – besides a supporting character with the familiar name Bronya. Honkai: Star Rail is an entirely standalone story and it kicks off with a bang – when your game’s opening cutscene shows a badass lady dressed in purple playing air-violin to Pachelbel’s Canon while her henchmen break into a space station to secure an ancient relic, you know you’re in for something good. The mysterious woman, Kafka, uncovers something called a Stellaron and decides to seal it inside the body of the Trailblazer – a white-haired amnesiac who serves as your protagonist for the rest of the story. You soon discover that the station you’re on is under attack by the Antimatter Legion, but a group of fighters from something