Honkai: Star Rail, one of HoYoverse’s most noteworthy projects to date and the spiritual successor to Honkai Impact 3, has been much anticipated since its announcement in October 2021. So far, the game has gone through two closed beta tests, with a third on the way. There is no release date yet, but we had a hands-on with the current mobile version of Honkai: Star Rail at Gamescom 2022.
Honkai Star Rail: Useful information for beginners
In Honkai: Star Rail, you play as the Trailblazer, an artificial unit who joins the Astral Express on a trip to uncover the mysteries surrounding the Stellaron, a “seed of disaster” implanted into your artificial body.
So far, the UI design and touch-controls appear and feel similar to Genshin Impact on mobile, with your on-screen character constantly moving by tapping around the screen, then clicking buttons for your actions, and character icons on the left to shift your active character. It also appears to be a semi-open world game, as opposed to Honkai Impact 3, where you browse through menus to get to the next area/mission, leaving you with limited roaming possibilities, a common system in mobile gacha games.
According to our Gamescom footage, you may interact with objects such as benches and encounter NPCs strolling around the city; the liveliness of having NPCs walking and being active is an improvement over most of Genshin Impact’s main city hubs, where the NPCs are mostly motionless. Having any open-world feature when the area around you feels lifeless is a major waste of in-game resources, so we’re glad to see Honkai: Star Rail doesn’t have that problem.
Tapping the map button also brings up a large map with displayed icons, significant interaction areas, and a marker indicating your current location. The good news is that the map button appears to be easily accessible from the main UI; because Honkai: Star Rail requires a lot of traversing across multiple planets for open-world exploration, you’ll find yourself referencing the map rather frequently while navigating toward your mission objective.
When you open the menu, you’ll see a list of characters on the left, which you may switch between by tapping on their icons. Each character looks to have a basic attack, a skill, an ultimate, a passive, a talent, and a technique, all of which may be tapped to understand what they do and the numbers they scale off of. Because Honkai: Star Rail is a turn-based game, you’ll have to spend a lot of time evaluating what each character specializes in before creating your squad, pushing you to adopt a plan (in contrast to the usual hack and slash from Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3).
The Memory layout appears to have been inspired by Genshin Impact and features completion requirements akin to Honkai Impact 3. So, before entering the Memory, you must organize your teams based on the enemy level and recommended elements. That way, you may make comprehensive preparations before coming in, assembling your finest team based on the topic. It would surely be a waste to have a big range of characters (the majority of which are earned through gacha) but no reason to cycle through more than the requisite four. Outside your favorite team, you’ll most likely need to level and improve more characters.
Will there be codes for Honkai: Star Rail?
We think so. Now there are codes for every game. There will also be codes for Honkai: Star Rail that will give various in-game gifts. We will publish Honkai: Star Rail codes as soon as they appear online. The frequency with which codes are released is up to the developers.
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