Honkai: Star Rail
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Top Critic Average
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Critic Reviews for Honkai: Star Rail
Some subtle improvements to the grind and flexible turn-based tactics mean Honkai: Star Rail's off to a fine start.
Despite its gacha systems, Honkai: Star Rail is an impeccable turn-based RPG with a killer visual style
With stellar storytelling and satisfying progression that offer dozens of hours of content that newcomers and hardcore players can enjoy, Honkai: Star Rail is a free-to-play RPG that might hook you for months – without making you feel like you have to pay.
Not just great for a free-to-play game, Honkai: Star Rail is a genuinely fantastic RPG with slick combat and an engaging story loaded with content. The biggest caveat is, while generous, its gacha system may tempt some players into unwise purchases.
Honkai: Star Rail isn't a groundbreaking experience or a massive new open-world action game, but it's still full of promise and potential as a polished, pretty, and easy-to-master RPG experience.
Honkai Star Rail offers a palpable universe full of possibilities on top of an accessible turn-based combat system that you can dig as deeply into as you want. There's a grind involved with any gacha game, and Honkai Star Rail is no exception. Strong writing, intriguing characters, and engrossing combat make Honkai Star Rail a must-play game that's also relatively friendly to free-to-play players.
Honkai: Star Rail, already a tremendous success, transfers to PS5 flawlessly – and is almost guaranteed to become one of the most-played games on the platform. In some ways its bite-sized nature means it's more at home on mobile, but its beautiful anime art style and stunning animations deserve to be experienced on a big screen. While its narrative is occasionally overwritten, and it demands players invest a lot to experience it to its fullest, this is a live service executed impeccable. And the truly exciting thing is that the best is yet to come.
Honkai Star Rail highlights the issues that Genshin Impact had despite how many issues have been addressed. The game's barebones RPG mechanics will definitely improve over time, but it still will take a lot to convince any enthusiast to pick this game over other turn-based RPG gacha games.
