Started playing this and have less time in it than I would normally like for a review on this site, but I really was impressed by the launch! I am slightly biased, because I came from MHY's sister game Genshin Impact already a fan of their games, but I also tried Honkai Impact 3rd a while ago because of Genshin and wasn't impressed.

This game is the culmination of what I think both Honkai and Genshin do well, but with the apparentness that Honkai is the series MHY loves the most. They definitely leaned harder into the time sink/grind aspect of Genshin that isn't my favorite, but because the game is so new I'm not sure if it will end up much worse of any better. In HI3, the game was more of a beat 'em up style game with, what felt like to me, very little emphasis on strategy. The story was very good, and the characters had so much love in them. In genshin, there is a lot more emphasis on strategy and team building, and I really like the blend of the two in this turn-based RPGish style. While I will always have a gripe with gacha systems in games, I am trying to refrain from passing judgement since it's so early in the game's life cycle, but it seems to be leaning heavily to the genshin style which... I don't feel positive about at all. Though I don't really have much experience with HI3 like I said before.

Anyways, just kinda dumping my thoughts after getting past all the tutorials and completing some of their dungeons & my fair few of fights. Really love the character design and the humor is actually funny. When I saw the Honkai Star Rail booth at anime expo last year, I didn't expect to ever play it or even enjoy it, so hopefully I will continue to enjoy my experience with it in the future!

wish i could give this a 3.75. its not quite a four for me, but also ranking it lower than that feels... not right? so i guess we round up.

this was enjoyable, and i would recommend it to people generally, but i cannot see myself coming back for the dlc or even for all of the extra content in this game, which really disappoints me. i like the story, and i like the general feel of combat but there are too many things that just made it difficult for me to personally enjoy.

i got motion sick from this, which is INSANE because i dont think any other game has ever done that to me? maybe once or twice with powerwash simulator, but after tweaking one setting it was fine. i could not do that with this game. i dont know what it was about the death animations/resetting of the room, but it made my head hurt so bad when playing. i didnt deal with this too much in the beginning, but as the game got more difficult (like the last 3 stages), i felt sick. the options given DO help, but i wish that the death reset operated the way the rest - r button does. its smooth and helped a lot, but obviously i cant react and expect to push that right before i die in every screen. i think without this issue, i might have enjoyed this game a lot more. there was some issues with input delay/buffering and some wonky ass hitboxes, but overall it was really fun. i dont think i've played something like this (though i know hotline miami is famous amongst k0 fans for a reason), so i was happy with my foray into the niche.

final note, the final boss of the campaign was fucking sick. ended too quickly for my tastes, but she was great. super fun to learn and very hard at first, but i learned quick!

okay, i played this game ages ago but im just now logging it because i realised i hadn't yet. this game is amazing. otome games were nothing new when this came out, but i truly think cheritz revolutionized the genre with this one. the real time chats to make you really feel like you're romancing these guys... the phone calls... the custom chat bubbles?!?! its so perfect. the story writing might not be the most well crafted thing ever, but the experience of playing this for the first time is fucking awesome. zen is the best, and jaehee is so wonderful. i come back to this game all the time and it never fails to make me happy.

holy shit, pinturillo. i almost forgot about you.

back in 2013, i would sit on skype with my best friend and we would 1v1 on pinturillo. i swear i don't remember it being pinturillo "2" and not just "pinturillo" but my memory of those days is getting more fuzzy as i get older. one thing i do remember? this was when we were DEEP in our minecraft phases, so if we weren't being cringe on wattpad we were being cringe on skype. when i think of pinturillo, i think of the skype groupchat we had. i remember spamming that stupid dancing turkey emoji, and never ever having cams on but sitting in calls for 8 hours anyways. i remember how every single prompt of ours ended up with us forcing our minecraft youtubers in it somehow like dolls, or just drawing each other.

i think we just liked drawing together, and these little guessing games were just a fun way to do that. imagine if those 13 year olds had access to magma or drawpile??? we would have been UNSTOPPABLE. the way we churned out fanfics was a testament to how dedicated we were, i cant imagine giving us access to a collaborative paint tool sai in tandem lmao.

but anyways, i still have screenshots of her pinturillo drawings posted on my old instagram account. maybe i'll call her up for a game sometime.