Pro Tips For Genshin Impact You Need To Know
Choosing a game to be thankful for in 2020 can be tricky. Given the current state of the world and how many of us are looking for ways to keep occupied while cooped up, I feel like we should be thankful for virtually any good, engaging games. But the one that I was thankful for the most is a game that felt optimistic, warm, comforting and colorful. Even if said game is about ferrying the souls of the dead towards the afterlife. I am, of course, referring to Thunder Lotus' Spiritfarer. Aside from being a possible GOTY contender in general, Spiritfarer hit a certain sweet spot for me, http://www.guilinwalking.com not only giving me the freedom to craft an insane ship filled with tons of activities and giving me an open world to explore, but also providing one of the year's best casts of characters. Azul, Gustav, Stanley...all of them were a blast to hang out with and I truly felt a bond between them as I learned more about their stories. It got to the point where I actually purchased the art book because I heard it had more info about them, and once I learned what not only went into their backstories, but how the world around them is all related to everyone and Stella in various ways, and the absolute tons of metaphorical layers that went into everything, I couldn't stop thinking about Spiritfarer for the longest time, about how what I thought were small bits suddenly had much more meaning. And all of this is just so refreshing. In a year where other games try to attempt drama by being continuously blunt, bleak and depressing by presenting horrible situation after horrible situation to the point where it almost cartoonishly feels like award bait and you stop caring about everyone in the plot, Spiritfarer decided to go hard in the opposite direction. Vibrant landscapes, cute animal characters who just want to hang out with you, a vast ocean filled with magical adventures...all of this means that when the emotional moments reveal themselves in a natural way and do hit, they hit hard. Spiritfarer never stops being comforting as a whole, but it deals with the themes of death and how everyone approaches them in such a beautiful, mature fashion. It's a brilliant bit of fantasy with the year's best writing and it's something we all need right now.
Diona’s shield may not be the most formidable in Genshin Impact, but it can still ward off a few rogue hits from enemies before falling. The Cat’s Tail tavern’s resident mixologist also has a signature drink in her Elemental Burst, which deals periodic Cryo DMG to foes and slowly heals your active character inside the zone. The consistent Cryo application makes sure that Frozen enemies don’t thaw out , so you can maintain the Crit Rate bonus from Cryo Resonance and the Blizzard Strayer Artifact Set that your DPS is probably runn
Even when the game moves away from its exploration aspect and quest-lines become the focus. When players are dropped into one of many dungeons -- or whose side activities laboriously have you hopping from A to B...back to A again...and then literally back to that same B point straight-after -- combat too is another area where Genshin Impact makes both meaningful but also a pleasure in engaging with. On the surface the set-up may not entirely be all that special; characters have their own pre-determined role of regular DPS, two-handed heavy-hitters or ranged whereby one of six elemental classes is assigned. The appeal lies in dabbling with the make-up of your party, of which you can have up to four characters that you can switch in-and-out on the fly. Combat is fast, frantic and at its best allows players to go wild with the elemental possibilities on offer.
There's no greater a highlight than a moment around fifteen-ish hours into wandering the world. Having already established the omnipresent "the world is one big environmental puzzle" motif at the heart of Genshin Impact and successfully completing a near two kilometre trek to a new region, to activate another beacon filling in more of the map, only to spot one of thousands of optional collectibles atop an incline of rocks; a few seconds of climbing later and off in the distance, another beacon. A subtle indicator -- of which the game does a great job at allowing players to organically discover parts for themselves -- that hinted not only towards another environmental conundrum, but also of what may lie beyond. Even then: what other little moments will distract me. It's a truly great, out-of-the-blue moment but another point in Genshin Impact's favor. How, indeed like Breath of the Wild before it, the journey becomes as pivotal and as fulfilling as the destination. Ultimately, the marvel of seeing yet another perspective on the vast world before you. Before long, you're ready to plot another course and begin that journey all over again.
A game I'm thankful for in 2020 is one that was met with universal critical acclaim and extremely-divided fan reactions: The Last of Us Part II. There are elements of this game that can be legitimately criticized, but personally the good outweighed the bad. But while I would argue this is overall a great game by most objective standards, I'm thankful for it because of more personal reasons. The original game was a topic of deep discussion with my other half so naturally we were anticipating this release. Playing through the game together was a good bonding activity and led to hours of discussion about the character choices and the storytelling approaches used in The Last of Us Part II.