The Inazuma region of Genshin Impact was partly released in update 2.0 that went live in late July 2021. But just because the something is released doesn’t mean I’m going to play it. Once I got out of the habit of playing Genshin Impact regularly, it was harder than I thought to go back to logging in. It’s actually a pretty tedious game when there are no new areas to explore.
When I finally dragged myself back in, I discovered I had to do a lengthy series of quests involving Beidou, Kazuha, Thoma and a bunch of randoms before I could finally be free to explore as much as I wanted to. All right, I’m game… I thought. I hate the lengthy talky quests in GI but the pay off would be worth it once I could go round grabbing Electrolus and murdering mobs for their common chests… I thought.
Once I actually tried to play, though, I quickly ran into a garbage sneaking mission involving tailing a corrupt official named Keijirou. I’ve already explained my feelings on sneaking missions in Genshin Impact, and indeed everywhere else. After failing twice, I tossed the controller aside and went back to Love Nikki (and new release Shining Nikki, more on that some other day) and Happy Color. It’s only this past weekend that I had a little time to kill and decided to give the mission one last try. Okay, so it wasn’t that hard and I finished it pretty smoothly. But I stil hated it. I’ll have to compose a special poem on how much I hate it to include in my survey response next time Mihoyo pretends to care about our opinions.
Welp, so, after all that hassle and bother, I now have mostly free run of the three Inazuma islands released. Yay! I’m pretty excited, actually. I just lack the IRL time to properly enjoy a long gaming session. Maybe this weekend I’ll sink my teeth in properly. So far I’ve unlocked the two Statues of the Seven and caught 7 electrolus. I’ve triggered a bunch of quests as well, but as I said, the quests in this game are so lengthy and wordy that I’m not motivated to do them. Go talk to that guy, go talk to that other guy, come back and talk to this one again, repeat 200 times. GI really need a Skip+Summary button like Granblue Fantasy eventually got.
That said, I’m eventually going to do all the quests and explore as much as possible because, well, what else can you do? That’s what the game is about. Plus, more importantly, I need the quests to save primogems for Baal / Raiden Shogun. At this point in time I have no idea of her skillset. She might not even be all that powerful. But the past two Archons (Zhongli and Venti) are considered must-haves so I figure Baal must be good as well. Even if she sucks, the fans will riot until Mihoyo buffs her, so I’m not worried.
I don’t want any other characters besides her for now, mostly because I don’t want to farm new artifacts or learn how to fight any of the new bosses. But also because I spent a lot of time and effort raising my party and don’t intend to throw them away so easily. Right now my main party is Xiao (DPS), Bennett (sub DPS, healer, buffer), Xiangling (pyro res + off-field attack) and Fischl (team mascot lol. Also Oz hits like a tank).
Their artifacts could be better and their talents are only around 7 so there’s room for improvement there. But they get the job done on the world map (Abyss? wot dat?) and in most events, so I’m happy with them. On the backburner, I’m idly raising Venti for the crowd control, Diona for the shields and Xingqiu because I need a good water attacker and I hate how Mona sprints. I have a ton of other characters as well, but I can’t/won’t raise everyone since 1) I can only use 4 in battle at a time and 2) Better characters will come out eventually. Conservation of effort and all that.
To summarize this whole not-even-that-lengthy post, a long-awaited new area came out in Genshin Impact. But I’m too busy right now to explore it properly. Luckily enough it’s a permanent area, so there’s no rush. I’ll just have to chip away at it every weekend at my own pace. I won’t have much else to say about GI until update 2.1, and possibly not even then.
This is where I would normally add a section about what else I’m playing/planning to play right now, but I know I won’t play anything anyway, so I won’t bother. I really want to play Undernauts a.k.a Yomi wo Saku Hana when it comes out in October and I may or may not buy a Switch OLED for that, but that’s it as far as plans go. See you when I see you!
Glad to see you covering this again! I guess I will wait for your thoughts as the story develops more. I honestly thought part 2 of the archon quest is at least an improvement over Liyue’s storytelling. I will say it had some good cutscene cinematics at the right pivotal moments? It’s one of the more rare instances that Genshin does indeed “show” but not “tell”, but I can’t deny that Genshin’s writers do tend to be way too wordy for their own good. Nevertheless, looking forward to your next post 😀
I’m slightly intrigued by the whole Vision Hunt Decree thing, but it’s been so long since I played the game that I don’t remember why MC wants to see the Shogun or what Inazuma has to do with finding Aether. ??? I haven’t found much time to continue the story though. Last weekend I was busy trying to do the Thundering Sojourn thing, yesterday I was busy trying to finish the whole Seelie event in one day (failed miserably). Maybe next week I’ll get further with the main quest.