5 Things Honkai: Star Rail Does Better Than Genshin Impact

With how similar Honkai: Star Rail's game systems and mechanics are to Genshin Impact, I wanted to make a video listing 5 things Star Rail does better than Genshin! (And then I'll release a video in a couple of days I'll release a video on the inverse)

~Editor (Mindlesslight)~

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#HonkaiStarRail #GenshinImpact #Hoyoverse

[Rachitdubey]

Hoyo took the critism from Genshin and instead of improving it,
Implemented it in Honkai 😂😂

[AvroraEverheart]

Honestly what I love about star rail is the fact that characters ACTUALLY feel like people in the world you build a connection with instead of only seeing them in quests then they go full M.I.A. until the next event they are needed in, and imma admit I love the random daily messages from characters since it feels like they stay connected to the main gang, I love the fact we can see em pop in the express every now and then. I’m a huge sucker for stories and interactions between characters so I’m a very happy trailblazer rn :D

[TheUmbranGeek]

One thing to add in terms of HSR having better QoL, the fact we can easily switch the Trailblazer's element/path just by going into their menu rather than having to travel somewhere and go through a tedious process is so SO good

[KingTaltia]

Trailblazer's personality is 100% one of the main attractions of HSR.
One of my favorites was:
Trash Panda "Dan Heng, March 7th, it was a pleasure trailblazing with you"
March 7th "I DON'T WANT TO HEAR HEARTFELT GOODBYES RIGHT NOW!"
As we're surrounded by soldiers.

[onxy]

Not only can Trailblazer say some wild stuff the other characters actually respond to the dialogue you pick yet another improvement from Genshin

[tatyanna]

nothing shocked me more than seeing seele at the camp while i was doing a quest deep in the underground. I had no idea the characters could be out in the wild like this.

[sleepyme]

12:01 one note: Memory Hall is the equivalent to Genshins Spyral Abyss while Simulated Universe is based on Honkai Impact 3rd's Elysian Realm.

So they took both endgame modes of their preexisting games and combined them :D

[thelaw_]

About the no Paimon thing, I do agree lol
With no Paimon to do all the decisions and dialogues for you, you do feel that you are your own character and are in full control of whatever it is you're doing, which makes for a better player experience

[therranolleo]

imo one of the best things HSR did was the daily messages you get from random characters, not only you get to see these characters in--game you also get to know them more from these messages, they range very much and shows how colorful the personality of the characters are, be it Pela geeking out or Hook asking you books to read. the response you can give as MC also paints more colors for both characters

[hieutrang]

HSR shows how many chests there are in a map (not including chests from solving puzzles and elite mobs) and the area is typically narrow, so it is much easier to get 100% of what is the equivalence of the exploration percentage in Genshin.

[RevereShin]

Design-wise, Star Rail MCs are definitely more cookie cutter and more self-insert-able than Lumine or Aether, BUT oh my, I wholeheartedly agree with the statement about the interactions. They are such GEMS. The sassy option. The "hero" option. The WTF option. Oh, so heckin' great.

[danielferrieri]

Easy: Star Rail has a Character named March 7th

[domb.]

I like how having a crew on the astral express also makes for interesting character interactions and character developments that don’t necessarily involve the MC.

Like at the start of the game March and Dan Hung have their own thing going. Just because they found you they don’t suddenly stop talking to each other and their entire world only revolves around you. I like how both march and dan hung have their own baggage they carry.

I also loved that cutscene where Himeko convinces dan to go down to the Lofu to help out and face his past. It’s moments like those that really make a game great.

As oppose to Genshin where everyone just fonds over the traveler, the MC never speaks a single word (the trailblazer has talked more in 2 story quest than Aether has in 2 years), and your only main source of interaction is a flying nag with a voice i can only compare to nails clawing down on a chalkboard.

[nairobicataluna]

13:21
This has always made me so sad that the Traveler's personality is something you need to find instead of something they give you
I love the traveler so much and their voice lines with Paimon can be so gold, I don't understand why they don't give us some of those voicelines and just put them as little cutscenes in the middle of the Archon quests or something like that

It's as if you ask your friend for a book and they tell you they have it, but instead of them just handing the book to you, they instead tell you where the book is located at in the library

[Yokie]

The dialogue options are gold in this game, i remember one of the robots praised the trailblazers fighting skills and one of the options was “i only have 2 skills” like😭😭😭

[GoldenOwl_Game]

This is to be expected.

Games are at their easiest to change while they are still unreleased and in their development phase. This is because even if Design has improved ideas, the Technical department will greatly struggle to implement these changes because there's a high chance a code change can create unintentional bugs elsewhere. Some of Star Rail's improvements may make their way back into Genshin, but these will require more time and effort to implement due to Genshin already being in live service.

Star Rail's development starting after Genshin means Star Rail's design team can see everything Genshin does well and does poorly, and plan around them accordingly. And since the game is in development, the tech side can afford to scrap and reprogram things without any fear of screwing up player accounts, letting them better implement and create systems which the Genshin design team just never thought they'd need.

An example of such was lip syncing to multiple languages. Genshin had this in early content, but was dropped later, implying that it was manually "hard coded" painstakingly, and the game was not initially designed with a system to automate this during its development phase. This is too painstaking and time consuming to do manually, so it was ditched afterward. Star Rail's development team, seeing Genshin team's issue, was able to design and implement an automated system for itself as a result.

This also reflects in the UI. Genshin completely ditched Honkai Impact 3rd's UI, which was an absolute visual clusterf-, and created a cleaner and more presentable one. Star Rail, seeing this success, subsequently kept Genshin's UI as a base and improved upon it for itself.

This will happen again in future. Just as Genshin's systems was a huge step up over Honkai Impact's, Star Rail's systems are a step up over Genshin's, and ZZZ's systems will eventually be a step up over Star Rail's.

[loonastrawberry]

small but interesting detail: when you try to take a photo of your character in genshin, you need to wait for the idle animation that you want to film. but in hsr you easily can change idle animation right away to take a photo a lot easier. you just can choose a pose for a photo! its a small detail but for me it really shows how hsr shows a lot more dedication for such small things that makes your experience a lot nicer.
and it’s really sad for me that genshin aint gonna improve bevause honkai just the favorite child and if you like genshin more, hoyoverse doesn’t really care about you and you can really FEEL it when you play genshin

[welkin]

i think the class system makes team building a LOT more engaging. HSR presents situations where you will indeed need a healer, tank, or utility focused support!! the way each class feels unique and useful is a stark contrast to genshin where no class really matters besides DPS and supports that improve your DPS! HSR wont have the problem genshin has where tank based characters like dehya and noelle wont be useless if they cant provide big damage.

[Xephyranth]

probably just Star rail being in the early phase but Genshin's main problem for me is how damage is literally the only important thing where shielders and healers value is lower if they can't support your damage output
and the fact that how Genshin makes "harder" content is just making enemies damage sponges especially in abyss
at least how shielders and healers in star rail have more utility during the paced gameplay

[Seelie_Serenus]

As someone who has played a lot of Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3rd before HSR was released (AR60 and Lvl88 respectively), it’s super interesting to see what elements from Genshin and HI3 were brought over to Star Rail. Playing the Simulated Universe was like Elysian Realm from HI3, but without the flamechasers haha. Interested to see what HYV does with their games going forward.