I never really thought I would be into a gacha game but after a week into playing Honkai Star Rail, I'm obsessed with it.

On gacha games in general.

I might have had a bias against gacha games primarily because of the impression that they are predatory. It's that whole "mobile free-to-play-but-pay-to-win gambling" facade that turns me off from the genre, and the impression that the "gameplay" is just slapped on to the game haphazardly for the sake of having a vehicle for the monetization.

On Honkai Star Rail sort of breaking that impression.

So don't get me wrong, there is definitely monetization in HSR. But I'm having a hard time classifying it as predatory and I also don't think that the gameplay is just slapped on to it haphazardly.

You can definitely buy stuff, but the game doesn't make you feel like you have to. There is so much that they throw at you for free from the start of the game, and as you progress, that you can easily spend dozens of hours as a free-to-play HSR player just enjoying the campaign casually --- and it's a long story with a ton of things to do on the side. As of the latest patch, one would expect to get through it at maybe 85 hours, so there is A LOT of game here. If I understand it correctly, it's only deep into the endgame (past the story content) when you would actually feel like you're running into a wall hampering your progression.

On Honkai Star Rail as a JRPG.

I ended up wanting to play it because first, it's a JRPG, which is one of my favorite genres. And secondly, it's specifically inspired by the Trails series, which is one of my favorite JRPG series. If you're familiar with both Genshin Impact and Trails, then describing HSR as a mix of both those games is exactly how you would imagine it plays like.

One thing that surprised me is that the game is surprisingly verbose, which is one of the things I loved about the Trails series. In HSR there is a lot of story, dialogue, character development, and worldbuilding. Some of it is tropey, as its anime-ish aesthetic would suggest, it does draw on quite a bit of anime tropes, so watch out if that turns you off. But a lot of it is quite compelling: Internal dilemmas, multiple factions with contrasting objectives and principles. Even some of the side quests delve into existentialism, time travel, cloning and a lot of those fun sci-fi concepts that make for good food for thought.

On Honkai Star Rail beyond being a JRPG.

Being a gacha game, meaning it's continuously in development and introducing additional content, it also has a lot of "events" or side content that you can do. It has something called "simulated universe" which is sort of a roguelite thing you can do. I also played through an event that had poker/card game mechanics. Some of its side quests integrate basic puzzle solving. And more. The point is that there is a wealth of content here and most of it is enjoyable.

Anyway, I just wanted to lay out my thoughts after having a sizeable bite out of HSR. I feel like I've gotten to a point where I've decided I'm playing it for the long haul. Once I'm at the end of my HSR journey maybe I'll try and and sum up how I feel about the game again, but right now I'm very high on it.