Genshin Impact is an action RPG Gacha Game where you can pick which character you wish to play as between two blonde twins. Genshin reached the peak of its popularity during 2020 around when COVID started. You and your twin travel the world together before you encounter an unknown god who you fight. You lose and are sent down to a world called Teyvat. You wake up not knowing where your sibling is and the goal of the game is to find them by exploring different nations of Teyvat.
There is a wide selection. Mondstadt takes inspiration from Germany, Liyue is like China, Inazuma is similar to Japan, Sumeru is India and Persia, Fontaine is France, Natlan is Indigenous culture, and Schnezniya is Russia. As we travel through the nations we can see clear inspiration from real-world cultures which actually poses a problem for the game.
The game started to receive immense amounts of backlash when the fourth region of the seven was released. The region was based on several different cultures mixed from two separate cultures and some people have reported finding it disrespectful to mix the two. The game also has barely any darker-skinned characters and they will claim a character is a certain race, like Indian for example, then make them paper white. The issue itself is they do this with every character leaving many fans to feel they aren’t properly represented.
The new region, Natlan, also has this issue but they’re supposed to represent Native Americans which the game does not do a very good job of. There are as of now three Natlan characters with slightly tanned skin which, to put it into perspective, is really pale, it just seems darker when compared to the rest of the playable characters. We know the company is capable of making dark characters, they do it with many NPCs, so many fans are rightfully upset.
Messing with and incorrectly representing cultures and countries is not the only issue that the game has faced. Many gacha games have the issue of power creeping. Power creeping is when old units in a game become less powerful when compared to new characters; every new character becomes more and more powerful, and the old units become almost useless. Although Genshin’s old characters are still usable there is subtle power creeping that may become worse in the future as more characters come out.
Another issue many complain about is how stingy the creators are with rewards. Primo gems are the in-game currency you need to get characters. To put it into perspective, you need one hundred sixty to get one pull and you need about one hundred eighty pulls to be guaranteed a character which is twenty-eight thousand eight hundred primos.
Every day you get one hundred sixty primos and you can get around twenty or sixty from quests. Every new nation gives around ten thousand from maxing the nation out in quests and exploration, which is extremely low to receive, and even during anniversaries and special events, the rewards have been low. Many bigger Gacha games give out large amounts of rewards but Genshin is extremely stingy only giving around ten pulls.
Recently we have had a switch in who runs the game, as a result, more rewards have been given out but it’s still very small in comparison to other Gacha games and fans are hoping for even more improvement in the future. For now all we can do is review bomb and quit playing until they give the fans what they deserve.
