2 player games unblocked reviews - Honkai: Star Rail
The ghost of the new Genshin Impact roams the planet. It is clear that Honkai: Star Rail , another anime gacha from Friv5Online, was doomed to success, and big numbers should not be surprising - more than 30 million pre-registrations, 20 million users who downloaded the game on the first day, records for downloads in the App Store, tens of millions of dollars earned already in the first days ... Another thing may surprise you - the “new Genshin Impact", with similarities in style (and even in the interface), differs in many ways from the previous anime hit Friv5Online. And at the same time, this is not a direct continuation of Honkai Impact 3rd , which the Chinese released even before Genshin, - with it, too, there are both obvious parallels and differences. What kind of animal is this - Honkai: Star Rail?
In general, everything is clear and familiar. We fight, complete quests, save up different currencies and materials to upgrade characters, their abilities and equipment, as well as to synthesize consumables, spend an analog of stamina on completing daily raids and tests in local dungeon variants (“sepals”, “corrosion dungeons”, “virtual universe" and others). And we also download the battle pass by performing various activities and periodically launch the gacha in order to draw new characters in the "casino".
As in all Friv5Online 2 player games unblocked, Honkai: Star Rail is full of beautiful anime girls, although occasionally (less often than in Genshin) there are also boys who here feel like boys at a St. Petersburg philological faculty, that is, like a lonely dry bamboo in the middle flower garden. This shareware game squeezes out money mainly from our desire to get a vending waifu - preferably a five-star one.
Many things familiar to Genshin are simply called differently here. Instead of “prayers” (the same gacha casino), there are “jumps”, instead of “resin points” limited to a daily maximum - “exploration energy”, instead of “traveler rank”, on which the availability of many story missions and other opportunities depends - “level of development ". And the archons, the gods, on whom much is tied both in history and in the gameplay, have turned into eons.
But what immediately catches your eye is that Honkai: Star Rail is not a cute, popular fantasy, but a space adventure, and in some places quite adult and gloomy, forcing you to periodically make difficult choices. One of the first side quests forces us to decide whether to tell the young man that the girl who ended up on another planet reciprocated his electronic declaration of love, or lie.
The nuance is that due to space-time distortions, time flows differently for them. And when (and if) she returns to him at the Hertha station (this is our main base), then he will already be an old man, and she will remain young and beautiful. And he, to tell the truth, will live only this upcoming meeting, rejecting all other possibilities.
However, for the “honkai players” who went along and across Honkai Impact 3rd, these are still flowers. Here it is necessary to make a necessary digression and say that the universe of the Honkai series itself is in many ways emotional pain, darkness, depression and entropy. And the combination in one of the trailers of a bright anime girl, dashing battles and raindrops flowing down a window overlooking a gloomy city is the best illustration for the entire Honkai Impact 3rd.
Like in Mass Effect, there is a metaphysical and almost inescapable force called Honkai that destroys human civilization on Earth whenever it gets too advanced.
And the conductors of the apocalypse are god-like people (herschers, or judges). They are trying to fight this threat, and our combat waifu, the Valkyries, turned out to be at the forefront of defense. So, the trouble is that in some of them the power of the Herschers wakes up and they themselves become the cause of the death of thousands of people, after which they experience an emotional catastrophe.
Mei, one of the main characters of Honkai Impact 3rd , tried to commit suicide, but was barely saved by another Valkyrie. Many girls were experimented on, and as a result, one of them, Zele, got stuck and completely dissolved in the Quantum Sea, and her best friend and named sister Armor lost the ability to walk and experience complex emotions because of this. Other experiments have greatly shortened life.
It is the history and character development that are the main assets of Honkai Impact 3rd , and in the new release of the series, the authors went the same way, although they somewhat reduced the degree of darkness. Moreover, the games are not connected in any way - now the action takes place in a parallel version of the universe and we see many new characters, and some of the old ones have seriously changed - the same Armor can walk here by itself, and Zele is far from being so helpless.
A common theme is the global threat posed to worlds and civilizations by a mysterious force - in Honkai: Star Rail, the mysterious Stellaron, known as the Cancer of All Worlds, is responsible for it. It was sown throughout the universe by one of the local gods, the eon of Destruction. It just so happened that during the attack of the legions of antimatter on the Hertha station, it was Stellaron who gave life to our hero (or heroine).
The first and so far the only planet we land on is Yarilo-6, snow-covered to a state in which it is almost impossible to survive. It is clearly made according to Russian and Slavic motifs - eternal snow and cold, a large and very important robot named Svarog for the plot, and a meeting (not very pleasant at first) with an old friend Bronya, who was just born in Russia.
And here one more fundamental difference from Genshin Impact is revealed - the action (at least for now) takes place not in an open world, but in a semi-open one. There are large cities and territories where you can always be distracted by completing side quests, searching for chests and more powerful enemies, but all transitions to other locations are accompanied by downloads.
It is clear that some may not like it, but the concentration of interesting characters, events, dialogues and quests is higher here than in Genshin Impact. It is also present there, but somehow spread over the expanses of an infinitely beautiful world, where you can admire the landscapes and breathe in the heady air of freedom, but at first it is difficult to grasp how the story quests are connected with our main task, and you have to perform a bunch of routine tasks to collect items and cleaning up locations.
But in Honkai: Star Rail, the plot goes from words to deeds without unnecessary preamble - 10 minutes after arriving at Yarilo-6, we are already forced to flee from the guards of the local guardian, who is clearly hiding something very important and terrible. And the characters are all charismatic as a selection - there are simply no passers-by.
Funny little Hook, the leader of the local kids, who asks to be called Mighty and demands submission and immense admiration; the roguish Sampo, who constantly either saves us or sets us up; a noisy and cheerful girl named the Seventh of March - it was on this day that members of the Star Express found her frozen in ice in space; the hare-like creature Pom Pom that serves as our train's flight attendant is not all the memorable characters that, importantly, appear from the very beginning.
There is enough humor and funny situations in the game. And in some places, the scriptwriters just come off - they came up with scenes where we are drawn to merge with a closet or open someone else's chest, wrote quests that play on the themes of trolling and hating in social networks and instant messengers, added a funny device for searching for objects ("Find"), which spams ads and suggests using a "humanoid self-propelled tactical microwave."
Many more serious topics and tasks. There is, for example, a reference to "Blade Runner" (more precisely, to Philip Dick's story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" ), when we decide whether to tell the android the truth about its origin or destroy it. From this point of view , Honkai Impact 3rd is still darker, and Starlight Express is something between it and Genshin Impac t, but in any case, the characters, quests and dialogue are brighter here than in the previous Friv5Online game.
The main gameplay difference between Honkai: Star Rail and the previous works of the Chinese studio is also immediately evident. Here, all battles take place in a turn-based mode, which is largely taken from the latest releases of the cult series The Legend of Heroes - no wonder, given that many of its developers worked in the ranks of Friv5Online on the Star Express.
This immediately ennobled the fights, especially when compared to the slasher mechanics of Honkai Impact 3rd . Everything is familiar - we attack in turn, we save up energy to use special skills (for example, hitting several enemies, not just one) and powerful, beautifully animated ultra abilities. Sometimes bonus attacks work.
Yes, it doesn't have the same focus on elemental combos as in Genshin, but we still need to take into account the vulnerability of enemies to elements and damage types. And the characters in Honkai: Star Rail belong not only to different classes (the so-called paths of aeons are responsible for them, where the path of Destruction gives physical damage, and, for example, the path of Harmony allows you to impose useful auras on allies), but also to different elements and types damage.
There are many opportunities for pumping - in addition to developing the characters themselves, you also need to study, activate and improve passive and active skills, which are presented here in three mechanics. Plus there is a complete system of equipment.
As a result, there were fewer passing battles, and more serious ones (especially with bosses). Yes, many battles can be entrusted to AI and auto-combat - they go many times faster, and the characters themselves use their skills. But also often you need to personally get confused by competently managing the fighters - or even retreat in order to better pick up and pump the party.
In the story campaign, critical difficulties still rarely occur. But during the passage of tests and raids, which are especially important for pumping the "level of development" and obtaining valuable materials, you have to sweat. It is especially necessary to note the levels of the "virtual universe", which are presented in a bagel format - it can be really difficult here.
If anything, you can call friends for help, or rather, use their characters by calling one of them as a support fighter. Unfortunately, the co-op in Honkai: Star Rail is limited to this - against the backdrop of Genshin Impact, it is really a step back. As well as the inability to change weapons for characters.
Honkai: Star Rail looks like a beautiful, high-quality and overall classic JRPG with turn-based combat, which, for obvious reasons, was transferred to gacha rails. At the same time, it is not at all necessary to spend money to complete the plot - in the store, the authors even warn users themselves to “play moderately and not spend beyond measure.” They are cunning, of course, but still a commendable care. Although who listens to them - according to some reports, Honkai: Star Rail brought the authors more than Genshin Impact at the start. So far, the new Friv5Online work is a success, but then everything will largely depend on the subsequent filling and expansion of the game - at least I want more planets and more interesting co-op.
Pros: interesting plot; a lot of bright quests, events and dialogues that require a choice; exciting turn-based battles; various pumping system; an abundance of tests, including riddles; the game looks and sounds great.
Cons: no open world and full-fledged co-op; at the start, there are few regions for research.
