Escapism is something we’ve all experienced before. When the expectations and consequences of real life decisions become too heavy to bear we seek for an escape. A distraction. Some find their escape through reading, exercising or even video games. As for the 10 million plus users on the Google Play Store, their distraction is in the form of a free open world video game available on PC, mobile and Play Station named Genshin Impact. 

     With its massive debut in September of 2020, and in the middle of a pandemic, Genshin Impact took the gaming community by storm. Millions of users play this action role-playing game created by Chinese game developing company, miHoYo. The game has an open-world environment that uses elemental magic with an action-based battle system. The main story consists of you playing one of the twins (male or female) that is searching for their sibling, on this search you’re met with side quests that tie back into the main premise as well as introduce you to the world and characters of the game. Alongside these countless playable characters, with drawn out origin stories, the game uses a gacha system. A gacha system being an almost spin the wheel type game that gives out randomized rewards in exchange for some form of in-game currency. These random virtual items consist of new characters, weapons, and other resources.

     Some players are still in shock that this game is free. Rightfully so too, in the game you are not only met with fun game play, but beautifully rendered scenery and so much attention to detail that it’s hard not to wonder how this game really is free. 

      “The amount of work put into the world and its characters from amazing smooth and fun animations, beautiful scenery, lore, amazing voice actors, soundtrack, design… everything is just top tier quality it amazes me each time,” user Nushu on the Google Play Store writes. Most of the reviews on the Play Store seem to agree with them, considering the game is rated overall a 4.⅘ on the Play Store. 

     With good reviews and jaw-dropping design this game easily has become many people’s favorite, including my own. While the scenery and world overall is what first catches the eye, it’s the characters and storyline that keep me locked in on this game. Within the game you are met with so many different characters that, if playable, come with their own origin stories and voice lines outside the main story. Not only does this feature help humanize the characters, it also showcases just how much the developers took real life inspiration to create these cities, landmarks and avatars. 

     In the game you start off in Mondstadt, a city based on Germany and the more you explore you can find yourself in Liyue,  which takes inspiration from Chinese culture and currently is the biggest region in the game. Having the characters be from such different regions and their designs obviously being inspired by their regions makes them so unique. 

    It is obvious, with all the effort put into this game, that it isn’t some simple cash grab by the company either, as mentioned before it’s not only the detailed designs of the characters and world that prove this but the soundtrack. Different instrumentals play in many different scenarios in the game, when the sun is rising, setting or even when you are in combat. On their YouTube, MiHoYo shows us just what they go through in terms of music to get the beautifully orchestrated pieces that play throughout the game. 

     It’s been months since the release of the game and users are still anticipating more. MiHoYo has made it a staple of theirs to update the game every 6 weeks. Updates include new events where you can get rewards, releasing new playable characters you can roll for through the gacha system and big updates like expanding the map and adding more regions for players to explore. All the while they add onto the main story that people suspect will take till 2024 to truly finish. 

     With all this well put effort into one idea came a great game that you can enjoy without paying any money. While there are in-game items you can buy with real life money you don’t have to when it comes to getting the full experience of the game. Genshin Impact is simply creative freedom overload that takes so many different aspects from different media and jams them into a mobile game. So the question is, are the whopping 8 GB it takes up and time needed to play the game worth it? I say it at least deserves a chance.