First, Genshin Impact is a gacha game and everything that's wrong with gacha games is in Genshin Impact too. Things like paying for progression, powercreep, or the gambling addiction bait is here and won't be leaving soon.
With this in mind, GI is a very competent game for the genre it belongs to, having actual gameplay compared to other gachas, which are mostly known for statstick autobattler gameplay. There is exploration, theorycrafting, puzzle-solving, and lots of different characters to play, build and fight with, if you have the time -or money- to invest.
It is important to say this: GI started as a Breath of the Wild clone. Both had a similar structure and featured similar mechanics up to a certain point of the story. As a live service game, obviously GI grew bigger and now features different things that makes it a very different game.
For the story I would say that GI has a very interesting lore, full with mysteries and great characters, most of them with at least serviceable writing, and integrating irl culture, themes and aesthetics into different chapters that aren't really bad at all. However, the way the player is introduced to this lore by the way of the story makes you think that the game is not really serious about it, and most of the quests either feel like you shouldn't take them seriously until the last moments or when lore drops, or you should be extemely emotionally invested in whatever is happening right now even if you really started the quest 10 seconds ago. Both approachs suffer from the wall of text problem when either npc's talk for 10 minutes straight exposition dumping or a literal wall of text in a lore-note.
Most of the gameplay on GI consists of exploration, following the main story and leveling your character as needed in the early and mid game, and when reaching late game this changes to pretty much doing daily quests and farming statsticks for your characters while waiting for the next character or expansion, rendering your total playtime to 15 to 40 minutes daily, which might be chill for some people but it gets repetitive afer a while.
This game has a very high production value, excellent designs and aesthetics, and is fun when you have enough time to invest in farming characters and materials, if you don't, you might like the main story and that's it. Not recommended if you are prone to wasting too much money on games or have gambling problems.
With this in mind, GI is a very competent game for the genre it belongs to, having actual gameplay compared to other gachas, which are mostly known for statstick autobattler gameplay. There is exploration, theorycrafting, puzzle-solving, and lots of different characters to play, build and fight with, if you have the time -or money- to invest.
It is important to say this: GI started as a Breath of the Wild clone. Both had a similar structure and featured similar mechanics up to a certain point of the story. As a live service game, obviously GI grew bigger and now features different things that makes it a very different game.
For the story I would say that GI has a very interesting lore, full with mysteries and great characters, most of them with at least serviceable writing, and integrating irl culture, themes and aesthetics into different chapters that aren't really bad at all. However, the way the player is introduced to this lore by the way of the story makes you think that the game is not really serious about it, and most of the quests either feel like you shouldn't take them seriously until the last moments or when lore drops, or you should be extemely emotionally invested in whatever is happening right now even if you really started the quest 10 seconds ago. Both approachs suffer from the wall of text problem when either npc's talk for 10 minutes straight exposition dumping or a literal wall of text in a lore-note.
Most of the gameplay on GI consists of exploration, following the main story and leveling your character as needed in the early and mid game, and when reaching late game this changes to pretty much doing daily quests and farming statsticks for your characters while waiting for the next character or expansion, rendering your total playtime to 15 to 40 minutes daily, which might be chill for some people but it gets repetitive afer a while.
This game has a very high production value, excellent designs and aesthetics, and is fun when you have enough time to invest in farming characters and materials, if you don't, you might like the main story and that's it. Not recommended if you are prone to wasting too much money on games or have gambling problems.