Honkai: Star Rail Review

A New World

Honkai: Star Rail boots with a wonderful shot of the Astral Express, the vessel which travels the universe on the titular Star Rail, signaling that you’re in for an adventure. Much like developer miHoYo’s previous gacha outings, Honkai: Star Rail is a turn-based RPG with a focus on exploration. Additionally, Honkai: Star Rail’s character growth mechanics and user interface are based on their former hit, Genshin Impact. As the Trailblazer, you’ll travel to various worlds to save them from corruption known as Fragmentum.

“Reach the end of the story in your own way.” Honkai: Star Rail truly begins with these parting words from a mysterious woman named Kafka. As she plays her air violin, the Herta Space Station encounters disaster from the Antimatter Legion. Kafka, along with her companion Silver Wolf, provide you with a small taste of their power as they effortlessly sweep away the monstrosities. As the invasion continues, Kafka and Silver Wolf discover a “Cancer of All Worlds,” the Stellaron. You, the true protagonist, must choose between either the female Stelle or the male Caelus, and fuse with the Stellaron. Acknowledging that this awakening would give them amnesia, Kafka and Silver Wolf escape the ship after uttering the aforementioned parting words. As you come to, you meet two new, potential friends.

Break the Rules

Honkai: Star Rail’s battles are pretty standard for turn-based RPGs. Battles take place with a party of four characters and a variable amount of opponents. A queue displayed in the upper left corner of the screen shows the attack order for characters and enemies. Every character has a specific element and combat type called a Path, which determines their gameplay style and niche Combat Skills. For instance, your starting character is a Physical type Destruction Path character with a semi-AoE (Area of Effect) skill attack. One of the first free characters you get, March 7th, is an Ice type Preservation Path character who’s skill allows her to surround herself and her allies with shields.

True to its RPG form, a large part of Star Rail consists of building a party that can fill the required roles for a given scenario. The story will give players some free characters to start out with, but requires use of the gacha mechanic to acquire more. You switch parties on the fly outside of battles, allowing for experimentation of what works best in different situations, such as when you encounter the various types of formidable foes. Before you engage the enemy, you can preview its weaknesses, which allows for planning to tackle the challenge. Unfortunately, the gacha mechanic limits players’ choices of characters when building teams, since it bars access to certain Paths.

The Journey

Outside of battles, there’s plenty of exploration and dialog. Puzzles are the main obstacles for blocking progression. However, they are simple enough that players won’t find themselves stuck. One of the earlier puzzles I encountered required me to activate all of the squares of an area without repeating a path. Another puzzle asks you to redirect energy flows by rotating hexagonal connectors.

There’s a plethora of entertaining flavor text for players who like to explore and interact with all of a game’s environment. Those players will appreciate a recurring joke involving the main character searching every trash can that they find. Honkai: Star Rail is also full of fun and inconsequential moments that reference various other media, like leaving a hotel review and signing it with the name Heisenberg. Additionally, there’s plenty of lore. Scattered throughout the world map are various books that share the history of each location. These books consist of paragraphs of text that work to fully flesh out the setting.

Trailblazing

Overall, the game does a good job of welcoming new players and rewarding series veterans. Honkai: Star Rail is actually miHoYo’s fourth game in the Honkai series, but a complete newbie to the series can easily play this game and avoid being lost. The amnesiac protagonist helps reinforce this, since they have no knowledge of the setting themselves. Even players familiar with the Honkai series will be left guessing, due to this being an alternate unvierse. However, there are plenty of nods to the previous games that veterans of the series will spot.

Honkai: Star Rail offers lots to do. Much like Genshin Impact, there are plenty of side quests that must be done to progress through the main story. Players will need to increase their Trailblazer Level by completing these side quests and exploring Star Rail’s world. There are also companion quests for party members that you acquire throughout the game. These character-specific sidequests focus on fleshing out the stories of each featured character.

Should players manage to finish all of the current story, there’s more to come. In the meantime, besides tackling the numerous sidequests, players can enjoy extra content, such as the Simulated World or Calyx, which are battles against specific foes for items and materials used to level up their characters.

With its presentation, gameplay and story inspired by more linear RPGs, such as Persona 5 or Final Fantasy X, Honkai: Star Rail manages to be a delightful RPG experience, even if it’s somewhat tainted by its gacha mechanics.