The STATE of Star Rail in 2024 (Honest review of Honkai: Star Rail pre-2.0)

What would your ratings be?

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[eherden]

The story in Belobog was what hooked me to the game, I hope Penacony is as good.

[nereas_gaming]

Mostly agree, but I do think the combat has a little more depth than you gave it credit for. I could feel a significant difference in performance from in combat decision making when I was malding MOC early on before we had the gear, levels, to easily 30* so there was an actual ceiling to push against. I think the main issue is that since HSR is striving to be casual friendly and approachable without whaling there is a difficulty ceiling. It's higher than Genshin but it's still not that high. Once you can clear content easily then it does indeed become just a game of use skill use ult don't waste sp on pointless things and the combat doesn't have much depth at all.

When MOC12 dropped as someone without a great solution to side-1 I once again found myself having to make quite a lot of nuanced decisions in combat about who to attack, when to break, when to not break and let enemies do a move to potentially gain more energy or provide more targets or something. There was easily a 2 cycle variance in outcome depending on my in-combat decisions and what started out feeling completely impossible I was eventually able to 3* after some hours of refining my strategy without changing my stats.

I think the feeling of lack of depth is mostly just a symptom of being a f2p/budget friendly gacha game that has this huge overhead above the ceiling and once you get there decision making kinda doesn't matter unless you are keen to set your own challenges like 0 cycling.

That said, I also wouldn't say the depth is super crazy or anything, and to be honest I also find that when this game gets hard more often than not I end up finding it more frustrating than fun as you suddenly become very reliant on RNG based strats. The number of times I reset MOC12 because Jingliu was at 99% energy and all the enemies are like no I don't want to hit her.... ugh. And don't get me started on Sampo RNG bounces and breaking. This stuff doesn't matter when you're cruising the content but if as soon as the game is actually hard for your account it can get painful.

[arvzg]

So what you said about the decision making in battles not seeming like they matter much and that it's all about how you build your characters - I want to push back on this just a little bit, I think you're right about that in some parts of the game, like story content, limited events, lower to mid-end simulated universe, yeah, you can just auto battle and it usually doesn't matter too much, however, when you start doing high end content like Difficulty V Simulated universe (swarm disaster/gold & gear) as well as MoC - especially if you're trying to 3 star - EVERY decision matters, the wrong timing on your ultimate can change the outcome of the battle

also, memory of chaos is definitely not just a stat check! you definitely do need the stats, but unless you're a whale, or extremely lucky with relic stat rolls, your character's stats are going to be fairly average, so that's really only 50% of the equation. Decision making in combat and team building accounts for another 50% of the outcome of battles

[boo]

As long as the gameplay stays fun, they keep giving us cool endgame stuff and the characters are still characterized well ( for a recent example I think argenti was genuinely amazing seeing as I didn't care about him at all until I did his quest) then the game will continue to hold me. Story isn't that big of a deal personally but I would very much love for it to be as good as belobog was.

[garbanzo]

From someone who played HSR first and picked up Genshin later:

- I agree that Belobog was amazing, the Loufu not so much. I did really like the events though, including and especially the ghost hunting one. At least for the Luofu arc, I just accepted that it's more like several little plot lines centered around the characters. I really hope 2.X will be more cohesive though. Having just finished Sumeru and Fontaine in GI, I have to admit that Genshin is currently ahead in this department.
- I like the combat, but similarly to what you said, it's more of a math problem that you solve before the actual fight and especially MoC becomes more of a trained choreography. Simulated Universe with its roguelike character is a whole different story though and with the recent addition of Pure Fiction we got something even different from that. Personally, I really enjoy this variety. I do also like Genshin's reaction based combat and the action aspect of it, but overall I prefer the methodical approach in HSR.
- Events: Personally, HSR >> GI, sorry. Even though the Freminet story was good. All these low-effort minigames just aren't my cup of tea.

Last, but actually first: Thank you, great content.

[balzo_benevolo]

For me personally, I think the Luofu arc has been the only part of the story that hasn't delivered as much as the others. But everything after the Luofu (the return to Belobog, Huohuo's story, Ruan Mei and Dr. Ratio chapters) has been pretty nice imo.
Regarding combat, I feel like Star Rail actually requires thinking. I cannot always mindlessly repeat my rotation until the enemy dies, because sometimes the enemy might pull off a move that "forces me" to rearrenge my strategy. It's not all about what I do. What the enemy does also matters in some situations and that's what adds variety to the combat.
I agree with the fact that events are a bit long, much like Genshin, but the fact the main ones are related to permanent story content is a huge W, because this way new players can still experience old "event" stories via the Conventional Memoir.
The endgame is so good! They add new modes and they update the SU. This incentivizes me to build new characters and try out new ways to approach the content, it's FANTASTIC!

[wildcarx]

I think the events are great, they are long because they are the after events of the stories or part of it so making them long make sense. Unlike genshin events are sort of unexpected and short. The events of hsr are like a mini story on every version
You need some skill not just spd tuning, you also need to be aware about the enemies and adjust your rotation depending on the enemies.

[achilleaszigouris]

I agree with most you said. For me the thing they did with star rail that keeps me coming back is simulated universe. Especialy with gold and gears now I think its great and I would love if they added something similar in genshin.

[planetary-rendez-vous]

I have to agree, the Luofu story was a disaster and I think the Belobog story was really decent but the little lore and story about the space station pulled me in because it truly felt like space adventure.

[danha]

I feel like I’m in the minority for not liking Belobog’s story too much; it felt a very overdone “richer overworld exploits and endangers underworld” thing throughout. All the twists and plot points felt super predictable. I cared more about the character interactions than anything I was doing to help the people.

To be fair, the characters were great and well developed especially if you do their companion quests. Seele x Bronya is so cute (but a bit sudden), Hook is sweet, Nat is great, I love Serval and her quest so fking much. I can’t say the same for Xianzhou characters at all, they didn’t have nearly as much development time, but I am still working through their quests so idk

[truce.K]

Great roundup, agree with most of your points. I do think simulated universe probably has the highest skill expression, people do crazy stuff with even the basic characters by abusing various blessings and their interplay, deliberately extending their swarm runs to fish for specific curios and more. However this has been more fun for me to watch other people/content creators do than try it myself. Fully agree on the events, they are extremely tedious. Chewing through the ghostbuster event on the last day actually made me take a break from the game for now (and losing Ruan Mei to Geppie I suppose lol) however I plan to come back for Penacony. I hope the story gets back on track again as well, the Loufu arc really didn't make a lasting impression.

[jaxxcrybaby]

I know I am a bit late, but I am probably going to download Honkai Star Rail tomorrow! I have been thinking about it for a while because I love some of the characters (Himeko and Blade mainly) and I think I have enough storage (for now at least 😅).
I am not to keen on the combat but who knows I might end up loving it

[wretchedoftheearth]

I'm a Genshin player that started HSR 4 days ago, and was literally just watching your must-pull tier list. Fun serendipity that this was just uploaded haha.

[HonestToCritic]

You hit the nail on the target, I share the exact same sentiments about the story. The lore of the second world was great if not a little too much to take in at once. But the characterization and pacing went off the rails, and it's been in a stump since. Also the humor i loved at first has become too imersion bereaking at times at times... 😔

[thelastwill]

The only difference between genshin and hsr combat is that u can move in genshin. Both games use basic atks, skill, and ult.

[KLeeW]

oh wow, didn't know you had a channel covering HSR too! Always been watching Genshin videos/guides ❤

[TheZombie]

Luofu is indeed Rushed but the Boss Fight is still really good compared to Belobog.

[AndreiSorin]

As a fan of your content, in general, I want to say that this feels somewhat disingenuous, to be honest.
To not alocate video time to discuss in-depth and ( in my opinion ), to praise modes like Swarm Disaster and Gold & Gears, is not acceptable.
They are such good modes, that are so fun, highly replayable and which actually require strategy and thought put into how you play, at high difficulties.
The game becomes a full fledged rogue-like, in those modes.

[MrGoodra]

The biggest complaints I have are: -relics farm locked behind SU
-too many characters released and all related issues, such as character development non existent and difficulty to save pulls (the last one is subjective)
-luofu existing
-speed is broken and not having enough of it makes you automatically lose (even though it is an rng stat)
-having to farm 6 relics for every character is cringe

[plutoniumrooster]

Overall very fair take, I can definitely see your perspective. I personally loved all of the longer events, but I can definitely see if you're not that interested in the characters or the casual puzzles, they would feel like a slog. And lets hope the overall story will pick back up in Penacony!

The new critter event is actually *much* much shorter - you can probably knock it out in under an hour - which actually worries me a little. I didn't like it at all. All these new 'puzzly' gameplay systems are introduced and then barely even touched. Actually much like the Genshin events, which I just find to be a shame. I hope (for my own sake) that this is just an outlier and not an actual trend, but we'll have to see in 2.X. Who knows, they might find a good middle ground. :)