I Got Back into Genshin Impact#

I started playing Genshin Impact about six months ago, but I hadn’t touched it for quite a while. Here is the story of how I ended up setting foot in Teyvat once again, along with some of my impressions.

Why I Stepped Away#

The music of Genshin Impact is genuinely phenomenal—I love it so much that I listen to it practically every day in my daily life.

↑ My absolute favorite.

However, I gradually grew tired of the game system itself. Right around when I reached Adventure Rank 55… no, honestly, it might have started even before that. Instead of enjoying fresh adventures and new stories, it had devolved into a repetitive, monotonous grind.

Daily Commissions every single day
Grinding Artifact Domains just to burn through Resin
Gathering character upgrade materials
Clearing out whatever events were currently running

Burnout#

I have a pretty bad case of waste-not-want-not anxiety, where if I don’t clear every single daily and spend every last drop of Resin, I’m seized by this compulsive dread: “I’m missing out!” Over time, this turned into a massive source of stress.

Ticking off all of Genshin’s daily routines easily eats up nearly an hour. Once you finish getting through all that work first, you have zero motivation left to push through the Archon Quests or World Quests. Before I knew it, I was playing purely to check off “chores I had to do.”

Looking back, it really felt like I was continuing to play while completely burnt out. And so, things just sort of fizzled out, and I ended up taking about a month-long break from Teyvat.

What Brought Me Back#

Some time passed after that. Then, an email notification arrived from Paimon about a returnee event.

Apparently, qualifying requires that you haven’t participated in a returnee event within the past 45 days and haven’t logged in for at least two weeks.

Succumbing to the sweet temptation of “free Primogems,” I decided to log in for the first time in a while. To be completely honest, my only intention was to grab the gems, but once I got back in, I was surprisingly reminded of just how fun the game could be.

What I Did#

Enchanted Tales of the Mikawa Festival#

The first thing I jumped into after returning was this limited-time event. Set in Inazuma, it was a festival-themed event; the story was decent enough, but the ending actually made me a little emotional.

Among the mini-games, the one featuring the Muji-Muji Daruma was really fun. I feel like I’ve played a puzzle game with this kind of mechanic before, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe a custom Portal map or something.

Lesser Lord Kusanali enjoying the festival.

Yumemizuki Mizuki’s Story Quest#

If you clear it within the event window, you get bonus rewards. What’s more, those rewards happen to be the exact materials needed to level up the newly introduced character. Truly devious. So this is how they pry the Primogems out of our hands…

Still, I ended up liking the character design quite a bit, and being an onsen lover myself, she caught my interest. So I decided to go ahead with the quest.

…

I never imagined I’d end up listening to hypnosis audio inside a video game.

I fell head over heels in love with her, and in the end, I pulled on Mizuki’s banner right after finishing the quest. Honestly, in terms of combat viability, she doesn’t feel particularly overpowered, but I simply lost to her charms as a character. You could say it’s my first step toward getting back to the basics: playing with characters I actually like, rather than chasing the “meta” like I used to.

And with that, I reorganized my overworld party.

Traveler (Hydro)
Yumemizuki Mizuki
Xiangling
Nahida

In combat, their synergies don’t align at all, but for anything outside of boss fights, it offers just the right level of challenge to be enjoyable. It’s also super convenient for exploration, so I decided to stick with this comp.

I also feel that a big part of Genshin’s charm lies in its music and food (+ buffs). When you challenge things with an overwhelmingly overpowered team, there’s just no room left to appreciate those aspects. If enemies drop in the blink of an eye, you barely even get time to listen to the background music.

Adventuring with a team of characters I actually love, balanced at just the right strength, seems to be what suits me best.

In Closing#

Personally, I found Inazuma’s Archon Quest to be the most underwhelming of them all, but when it comes to everything else, I think I might actually love Inazuma more than any other region. The music is fantastic, too.

Waiting for the quest to wrap up.

Considering that the very next day, Yae Miko hits you with a tease along the lines of “Well, it seems you had quite a night,” isn’t it only natural to think that something more went down than what was actually depicted on screen?

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