I had to make myself play the HSR 3.8 patch the weekend after it came out, which says a lot about how much interest I've lost in the game, lol. I guess the story is...ok.

I did like that it filled in a lot of blanks (*coughretconnedcough*) the awful parts of the original Penacony arc. Especially, it fleshed out the motivations of the antagonists, so that we have more than just Sunday's horrible memetic dove speech. And they managed to make the philosophizing...well, still a bit abstruse, but at least not as much soapboxy anymore.

The sudden insertion of the current banner character into the plot, retroactively, feels a bit awkward and very sales motivated. And I don't really like Dahlia's character all that much. But I have to say at least it wasn't *badly* done, and at least the narrative logic is fine. Personal taste aside, I'll roll with it.

The actual part I didn't like was the shippy parts with Firefly. Because I am obviously not the target demographic for it; it is very obviously geared towards the male fans who want to date the popular waifu character. So, eh, I did end up skipping some of those bits in the end.

Oh yes, also liked the extra bits with Aventurine. And the slight shippy interaction with Dr. Ratio at the very end (tagged "Sweet" dialogue option, lol).

Anyways, with all of that over, I plan to take a hiatus from HSR for now. Will likely still follow news and stuff on reddit and other online sources though. If the story takes a turn for the better, I may consider coming back later. Maybe.


As for the Genshin side, it is still continuing to take up a lot of time investment, despite my best efforts to stay casual, eh. I have finished the main story line up through the Sumeru archon quest so far, which is maybe around half? Though maybe not quite half, considering later archon quests seem to get longer and longer compared to the earlier nations.

There's a ton of side quests that are still in the backlog, plus the interlude arcs, which I plan to try and finish over the Xmas holiday period. Then will see about doing the Fontaine archon quest over the New Years holiday period. Hm... not sure if that's too fast. We'll see.

So far of the 5 star characters I have, 3 are 1.x Liyue characters, and one is a Sumeru character from the standard banner. In other words, all quite "obsolete" in terms of meta-ness. :p I am getting by in the overworld by not doing the ascension quest for world level 7, which really doesn't give too much benefit at the current point since I have all that needs to be unlocked for function. And then my main team being overleveled for the current WL.

As for pulling more "modern" meta characters... I am considering it. The current banner's Natlan characters are supposed to be very great low investment meta characters. But then the next major patch is going to feature the "Archon" of the current Nod Krai arc, to be paired with a new Liyue character for the Chinese New Year. On the third tentacle, I don't really like the design of this "archon", but also not sure if it's worth pulling the Liyue character by herself. Hrm... planning to wait until there are more leaked info about the next update, I guess.

Regarding the story so far... I do have to say I enjoyed the Sumeru arc. It was quite lengthy but also well paced and did not feel like any of it was artificially extended; there just was that much stuff to pack in there. In comparison, the Mondstadt and Liyue stories feel like they are way too short. Understandable for Mondstadt since it's technically the "prologue" arc. But Liyue's story also feels like a prologue, part 2, as well. Inazuma's story was just horribly paced. Of course, it feels like Mondstadt is getting a sorta continuation in the current Nod Krai arc, since there.

Setting design... I totally like Liyue and its extensions (Chasm and Chenyu Vale) best. Totally not biased. :p