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Overall, Honkai Star Rail is a solid and well-made experience. Not only is the game extremely clean and highly polished, but also extremely fun and addicting to play. Honkai Star Rail also solved many problems from HoYoverse’s similar Gacha game, Genshin Impact. However, like any release, Honkai Star Rail suffers from unique problems. Over time, it can be challenging to keep up the quality of every patch, especially with the short release cycle that HoYoverse games have. That said, Honkai Star Rail has recently released its second large-scale update, Version 1.2. Unfortunately, this new update has a slew of problems that have made it fall flat. However, HoYoverse will hopefully learn a lesson from this patch and keep moving the series forward.
Honkai Star Rail Updates Have a Short Turn-Around Time
For players unfamiliar with the game, Honkai Star Rail is a turn-based Gacha game by HoYoverse. Players will need to collect resources for the chance to receive characters and items through a gambling system called Warping. Honkai Star Rail and similar games like Genshin need to constantly push out new content and characters to stay fresh. This has led to Honkai having an extremely short, six-week rotation. This is nothing outside of the ordinary, with Genshin Impact having the same schedule. Still, at times, it can lead to patches feeling rushed.
Additionally, Honkai Star Rail is under harsher scrutiny than more established games like Genshin due to how new it is. Genshin offers a massive amount of content; therefore, it’s easy to let problems with updates slide. These factors combined have ultimately led to the disappointing release of Honkai Star Rail Version 1.2.
The Trailblazer Quest of the New Honkai Star Rail Update Is Subpar
Compared to Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail’s Version 1.2 update has introduced less content overall. Firstly, the new Trailblazer quest update is much shorter than fans had previously anticipated. Needless to say, it can be frustrating to only receive glimpses of the game’s main story once every six weeks. For players that are invested in the world of Honkai Star Rail, longer-lasting and better-paced content is a must-have. Especially for a game like Honkai Star Rail, there isn’t much content outside of quests.
Players can grind, do events, or complete the Simulated Universe. However, outside of this, players will mainly be completing quests every play session. If Honkai Star Rail had some more content outside of quests, then smaller-scale updates would be more excusable. Sadly, the amount of content in Honkai Star Rail Version 1.2 doesn’t meet expectations.
The New Update Does Bring Interesting Characters to the Table
Despite its negative aspects, there are some strong aspects to the new Honkai Star Rail Version 1.2 update. Both Blade and Kafka are wonderfully designed characters that fill engaging roles in both combat and the story. No matter which character you’re rolling for, they both make equally strong additions to any player’s collection or party. Additionally, the rewards of this update are nice as well.
Although it doesn’t affect the gameplay too much, receiving extra Warps for free helps soften the blow from the lack of content. Finally, new events are always fun and should help at least give players a bit more to do when playing Honkai Star Rail. These events will give players losing interest more things to do besides daily grinding. While all of these elements are great, they don’t amount to much overall besides the new characters.
In the end, although Honkai Star Rail’s Version 1.2 update was personally underwhelming to fans, it shouldn’t be a bad sign for the game’s future. Since Honkai Star Rail is still new, it may take a little while to find what works. Using similar update formulas to Genshin Impact is a great way to start for Honkai Star Rail.
However, based on player feedback, HoYoverse should make adjustments to the update cycle. This could potentially mean increasing the amount of time between updates or shifting the priority of content being produced. Longer update cycles are fine as long as the quality remains high. Despite Honkai Star Rail Version 1.2 falling flat, we still have high hopes for what Version 1.3 will bring to the table.
