Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact is an open-world action RPG set in Teyvat, a continent of seven nations, each one answering to a single element and to the god who rules it. The Traveler arrives from another world looking for a lost sibling and ends up caught in the politics of the Archons and the Fatui.

You field teams of four characters and swap between them mid-fight, and the whole system runs on chaining elements: freeze with Cryo and shatter with a heavy hit, soak with Hydro and then electrocute. Exploration has no gates, with free climbing and a glider over a map that has grown without pause since 2020.

It is free to play with no upfront purchase and no subscription: the story, the regions and the events all open up for free, and what money buys is pulls for five-star characters and weapons. The limited character banner has hard pity at 90 pulls, soft pity around 74, and a 50/50 against the featured character; lose it and the next five-star is guaranteed, so the worst case sits near 180.

The two recurring purchases are the Blessing of the Welkin Moon ($4.99: 300 Genesis Crystals up front plus 90 Primogems a day for 30 days) and the Gnostic Hymn battle pass ($9.99 per version). The Welkin stretches a dollar much further. There is no Steam version on PC: you download it from the official HoYoverse launcher or the Epic Games Store.

HoYoverse ships a new version every six weeks, and since 6.0 each one carries a Luna name alongside its number. Version 7.0, Everwinter Without Mercy, opens Snezhnaya on August 12, 2026: the seventh and final nation of Teyvat's main line, with Snezhnograd as its capital, a rail network and a third-person shooter mode.

The game passed $6.3 billion in lifetime revenue by its fourth anniversary, though mobile earnings fell to roughly $710 million in 2024, well below the $1.9 billion peak of 2022. 2025 brought a partial rebound, with 15.2 million monthly mobile users in June. The Nintendo Switch version was announced in 2020 and still has not shipped.

It clicks if you like exploring at your own pace and solving fights through team building rather than competing against other players. You can play all of it without spending: four-star characters clear nearly everything if you invest in them properly, and the main campaign runs for dozens of hours before any wall shows up.

The weak spot is the endgame. Beyond Spiral Abyss and Imaginarium Theater there is little repeatable combat, artifact farming is a lottery that can eat months, and resin cuts the daily session short. This is a game for a while every day rather than for weekend marathons.