4 stars for actual game but im gonna have to give it half a star because my playthrough was ruined by fromsoftware elitist fans who have been ableist and stupid as shit to disabled people asking for an easy mode or using summons.

I genuinely will never interact with anyone who says "youre bad if you use summons" i do not give a shit, yes its easier and you can say the boss is boring now, but i dont give a shit. I cant play games like elden ring without help because im fucking disabled in my prominent hand so having to make my fingers work and do everything needed to beat a boss drains me mentally. Oh and thats not even it because there will always be that one mentally unwell basement dweller who says "git gud"

Gacha games are always a hard sell because they are grindy, time gated, and really just want you for your money. Despite such gold digger status, I genuinely do think that Honkai Star Rail is a gacha game that has used the past games of the HoYoverse to give a compelling argument for such a live service game that keeps updating and growing. While there certainly is some problems with Star Rail's delivery, and potential down the road; ultimately Honkai: Star Rail provides a solid answer to a space adventure RPG.

Perhaps the biggest selling point of Honkai Star Rail is just how big it can get, and how much can easily be added without giving much disturbance to what most gacha games need for an overarching story. Not to say there isn't an overarching story, but the real point of interest is exploring new planets, cultures, and developing the world of Star Rail over any actual take down of a big bad. This is something that Star Rail even has over such mammoth games like Starfield, No Man Sky, and Fate Grand Order. There is legitimately a massive amount of text, voice overs, and side missions that would make even the Mass Effect series blush. To say that Star Rail is a massive game is honestly an understatement at this point, already rivaling the 1st two arcs of Fate Grand Order in terms of size, as of May 2024. The first two main areas, Herta Space Station & Belobog, are a great start to the game, and impressed me with how much lore and content there was initially to began with. Belobog even feeling more like it's very own game when compared to the Herta Space Station opening.

Sadly, due to how big Star Rail can be, and how it utilizes both it's time, upgrade, and promotion currencies this makes the game a massive time sink. There is just something blatantly scummy and cruel about how Star Rail's combat works, and how the progression of the Equilibrium (difficulty) gets in Star Rail that rubs me the wrong way. See combat in Star Rail is pretty lax for the most part as long as you have the correct affinities to take down enemy weaknesses. In a lot of ways, both Fate Grand Order and Star Rail have similar combat prep and style. Use the enemy weaknesses while having characters equipped with proper light cones (Craft Essences) and hopefully be at a good skill level to make the battle easy to win. Where FGO and Star Rail differ however is that Light Cones are a bigger part to the stat equation, there is a mildly higher character growth when summoned from the gacha (6 compared to FGO's 5), and leveling up costing far more at the higher levels compared to FGOs requirement to fully upgrade a servant. This makes leveling up all the way far more difficult, and nearly a week endeavor just to get a character to the final level. This isn't accounting for other parts in Star Rail's character system like the fully upgraded light cones, skills, or relics that you can use. Plus on top of all this the game's promotional currency gets equally pushed out because you keep using it upgrade characters abilities/skills/levels/light cones. It's kinda insane how much time and effort it takes to fully invest into one character in Star Rail, let alone 20 of them, which the game honestly intends for you to do with some of it's higher required side content. So if you mess up like I did, and upgrade too fast on your equilibrium (difficulty) you end up being locked out of both story and side content till you can grind the rest to enjoy the game again.

Really the only thing I can say about Honkai Star Rail is that you'll be investing a lot of time in it if you want to experience it. For some that can be a deterrent, but for others this may be a blessing. While a vast majority of your time will be spent grinding/ leveling up your characters and equipment; the game does have proper story, characterization, lore, world building, and some pretty cool animations to boot. It really is just a cool role playing space adventure that keeps making cooler and interesting characters so you can spend money on, and frankly I like that a lot more compared to something like skins. It's still a scummy practice, but at least there is some substance behind that. If you can tolerate that, and a bit of grinding, I absolutely recommend Honkai Star Rail.

It's mediocre. I gave it a hell of a chance by trying to complete it 100% and even started NG+ but by god does this game not have anything that stands out. It's Oblivion in space.

One of my biggest issues with it and which made it such a bore to properly finish is the fact that it's way too easy. I had to change the game from normal, to hard, to very hard and even then I was breezing through all fights on land and 90% of the ones in space.

Then not surprisingly there's no point to anything. They ask you to sneak if you don't you get a three different pieces of dialogue and nothing else. They give you the option to persuade you don't/fail, you get the damn information anyway. You join one faction and then you immediately join another faction that doesn't like the first one and nothing is said (plus the options for special dialogue from being part of a faction happen like what, 3 times per faction?).

One of the focal points is exploring planets and yet, what's the point? What's there to see? Same ten bugs and plants and scan and then what?

This game is wasted potential because things are designed beautifully, it's also one of the most sciency sci-fi games I've seen which to me is a positive and yet nothing is done with it. It's empty, nothing matters and still, bugs a bit too much.

I've played one too many games with these exact same mechanics but this one is by far the worst. Some levels are absolutely impossible to pass without trying 100 times so you get the right blocks or by using resources which one or two "events" aside you can only get by spending money. Which brings me to to the gacha system which exists for what exactly? It's not giving me anything useful. And the decorations it gives so you can make your scenario pretty like CRK aren't that appealing and that ones that do something useful are absolutely impossible to get and have limited uses like, what?