Genshin, if you like exploring, some light puzzles, and decent combat wrapped in an anime aesthetic, that’s mostly wholesome you can’t go wrong. Very relaxing and fun world to get lost in, literally so much to do. And the music… man there were some moments gliding around that game in Liyue I will never forget.
That said, the beginning of the game (Mondstat to Liyue to Inazuma) is the best stretch. And even those first 3 areas could be 40–100 hours depending on how much you want to dig into side quest, lore, character quests, hangouts, etc.
Honorable mentions would be:
Star Rail if you like jrpgs, amazing style and snappy gameplay.
Marvel Snap for a very streamlined card game that’s extremely pick up and play friendly
War frame was pretty fun, I no longer play but I had a great time with it for about 4 months a
Couple years back.
Zenless Zone Zero is of course the new hotness, can’t fully recommend it yet as it’s so new and we’ll see where it goes, but man, the last week has been incredibly fun. Animation is far beyond anything else around imo, vibrant, colorful unique world too, it at the end of the day it’s a corridor battler, you’re going to be fighting lots of enemies in smallish areas. Similar to Honkai Impact 3rd or Punishing Grey Raven (both of which I’ve played but no longer follow) only so many hours in the day
I’m happy there is a gacha/f2p thread because I’m always looking for new ones to try out.
As a side note,
My gf recently basically stopped playing both Genshin and Star Rail, and now she only plays Wuthering Waves, she really likes it. She says it’s like Star Rail art style but in a Genshin type game, so for her it’s the best of both world. More edgy mature look overall, but still get an open world to explore. I’m waiting for a console release on this one, I’ll give it a try then.
