Honkai: Star Rail first look — Is it a replacement for Genshin Impact, or its own beast?
Honkai: Star Rail, one of HoYoverse’s most notable projects to date and the spiritual successor to Honkai Impact 3, has been a greatly anticipated title since its October 2021 reveal. So far, the game has undergone two closed beta tests, while a third is expected to be on its way. There’s no release window so far, but we’ve gone hands-on at Gamescom 2022 for an early look at the current mobile version of Honkai: Star Rail.
In Honkai: Star Rail, you play as an artificial unit referred to as the Trailblazer, who joins the Astral Express to go on a journey to solve the mysteries behind the Stellaron, a “seed of destruction” implanted inside your artificial body.
So far, the UI design and touch-controls appear and feel similar to Genshin Impact on mobile, continuously moving your on-screen character by tapping around the screen, then tapping buttons for your actions, and character icons on the left to swap your active character. It also looks more of a semi-open world game as opposed to Honkai Impact 3, where you’re maneuvering through menus to navigate to the next area/mission, leaving you with limited options for roaming, a traditional system found in mobile gacha games.
Based on our Gamescom footage, you’re able to interact with objects like benches and encounter NPCs walking around in different parts of the city; the liveliness of having NPCs walking and being active is an improvement from most of Genshin Impact’s main city hubs where the NPCs are primarily stationary. Having any open-world element where the world around you feels dead is a huge waste of in-game resources, so we’re happy to see that’s not the case with Honkai: Star Rail.
Tapping the map button also pulls up a sizable map with displayed icons, important interaction locations, and your current location marker. The good news is that the map button appears to be easily accessible from the main UI; since Honkai: Star Rail involves a lot of traversing across different planets for open-world exploration, you’ll end up consulting the map a lot while navigating toward your mission objective.
Accessing the menu brings up a character list on the left, and you can swap around by tapping on their icons. Each character appears to have a basic attack, a skill, an ultimate, a passive, a talent, and a technique, where you can tap on each to learn what it does and the stats it scales off of (see orange colored font from the video footage). We know Honkai: Star Rail is being developed as a turn-based game, so you’ll have to spend a lot of time previewing what each character specializes in before forming your team, forcing you to adopt a strategy (in contrast to the usual hack and slash from Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3).
The Memory layout also appears to be borrowed from Genshin Impact and includes completion objectives similar to Honkai Impact 3. So you’re required to form your teams based on the enemy level and recommended elements before transitioning inside the Memory. That way, you can make full preparations before going in, assembling your best team depending on the content you’re taking on. It certainly would be a waste to have a large selection of characters (most obtained from gacha) and not have an incentive to cycle through more than the required four. You’ll likely need to level and upgrade more characters outside your favorite team.
There’s still no news on a potential release date for Honkai: Star Rail, but we anticipate the third beta is on its way as long as HoYoverse sticks to its usual patterns on betas. Early judgment dictates Star Rail will bring an entirely new flavor with its turn-based combat system. It still feels similar to Genshin Impact from UI design but also adds elements from Honkai Impact 3 when encountering familiar characters and experiencing the crossover takes from the Honkai universe — essentially getting the best from both worlds while taking a break from the usual hack and slash gameplay. There’s no doubt that Honkai: Star Rail will receive a lot of love from HoYoverse to turn into one of thebest gacha gameswhen it releases, providing a great opportunity for stress testing your shinynew Android phone.
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