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Having gotten curious enough about GIO to try it out to see how it would change my opinions on the game, largely due to it basically letting players cheat around the currency systems. Tried to think and analyze how I feel about re-experiencing the different parts of the game.

Using BotW as a benchmark to compare

Game Mechanics

• combat
• teams
• exploration
• environment
• numbers

Replay

• Currency
• Nostalgia
• Story

Compared to BotW I miss BotW's more focus on dodging/flurry, blocking/parrying, and giving a single character all the tools he needs to do the job. While BotW combat is still a bit on the simpler side for me, I still enjoyed the feeling of skill expression through timing and learning, as opposed to juggling buffs and timers. And it makes me miss combat from other games (like DD2 or even GW2) where your characters has a more fleshed out toolkit to deal with situations, without turning into Elementalist managing boons and cool-downs and swapping between elements constantly to get stuff done.

I don't enjoy the generally short duration of buffs, and miss options to have access to longer lasting duration bonuses, or other ways to play. And thus end up preferring playing teams where I generally only need 2 characters at a time. Having access to some characters with longer buffs or abilities, would have made a lot of things more enjoyable, like say an option to just put Oz just permanently pop up in combat, and stick near you, so you don't have to just keep swapping to Fischl just to hit the skill again and again. It just feels like busywork.

Generally I feel the team building tends to fall into rotations, which I find to be boring, to upkeep buffs and damage. And not being adaptable or reactive to the situation/gameplay.

I know why the team system is the way it is, and I understand why they make it this way and why it won't change etc. But honestly I just don't enjoy it, and no matter how well designed or how well it works etc, I'm still not going to enjoy it. Playing GI again just made me miss DD2 pawns through the entire game. DD2 pawns with a reaction system, let's go!

The more I look at the combat and team building in GI, the more I see it as a simple puzzle game with a small bit of execution. You find an encounter (domain, boss, abyss, OW, whatever), you either try it or look at the enemies, double check the bonus (if you care), and design a team to deal with that encounter. Either you make a Stiletto to assassinate the encounter by abusing the weaknesses, or you make a Sledge to crush it with overwhelming power. But once you've deducted the team to solve it, you've solved the puzzle. At that point the actual combat doesn't really feel very engaging, and it's just execution for executions sake.

When I feel the game works, is when you have to make a team that just has to deal with as much as possible, without changing it, and then have a multitude of different situations thrown at you at more or less random. If I have a team without pyro, that works well for most things, but then ends up in a situation where pyro would have really helped, I have to adapt and play around it or find other ways to deal with it. The part of the game that does this the best is OW which is why I've enjoyed that, it really made combat and team building engaging to me, except for the WL/difficulty. Why I've honestly had more fun self handicapping OW than dealing with Abyss.

Score: Personally it feels like a 3/5, but that's mostly because of my own bias/dislike. I think it deserves a 4/5.

Generally types of teams I like from most to least:

1. 3 On-field + 1 Support (adapting to situations)
2. On-field + 1 Support (Using the other 2 situational)
3. On-field + 3 Hot-swap (buffs and damage upkeep)
4. Hot-swap (constantly swap for bursts/skills/energy/buff-upkeep)

This obviously goes with me enjoying making overall teams that can adapt to whatever happens, with the least amount of direct weaknesses. Which naturally is more of a thing in OW than in Domains etc.

Looking back at some of my old favourite teams, and what I liked about them or not.

Example1:

• Noelle
• GMC/Ninguang (battery)
• Flex1
• Flex2

My favourite domain team, and also fun in OW if I swap to favonius weapon on Noelle. Prefer GMC for domains, and Ning for OW. Flex slots are just whatever I need for shields/etc generally. I built this originally to use swap out flex to any 2 element combo as needed:

• Pyro = Xiangling + Bennet
• Cryo = Kaeya + Rosaria
• Electro = Fiscl + Beidou
• Hydro = Xingqui … Yelan didn't exist yet, so figured he'd carry it.

But ended up not bothering with Beidou at the time, and just ran Xingqui+Fischl as a combo instead. It's all over been my most flexible team, I've enjoyed it into practically any content yet that doesn't just directly hose geo.

Example2 (National):

• Xingqui
• Xiangling
• Bennet
• Chongyun (flex)

Constantly swapping in and out to use bursts and skills to fuel, line up orders with normal attacks between to trigger rain swords. It works for small periods, but playing that constantly would just be really annoying. If I had to play that in open world I'd hate it, and even if I had to use that constantly through multiple domains or other content. I like it for being an old v1.0 team with 4stars, that uses reactions I generally don't have a problem with (unlike dendro). Also like it swapping chong with Jean for sunfire and extra survival. I don't really enjoy sucrose but probably would have liked it with Heizou if I learned it better.

Example3:

• Yanfei
• Yelan
• Fischl
• Barbara

Where I can run Yanfei+Yelan, or Yanfei+Fiscl as needed, either use both at the same time or have them take turns. Or swap into Barbara with either of the 2 sub dps if pyro doesn't work. Flexible for most kind of situations. Would probably be better with Diona as healer, but I just don't like playing her. Work decently in both OW and domains etc, can work with very little energy, as Yelan is the only one that needs burst to do their job.

Example4 (Fantastic4):

• Jean
• Yelan
• Ayaka
• Diluc

The 4 characters I leveled up to play in coop with pharaun, in order to have a variety of characters for coop that would be roughly at the same power level as pharaun's characters at time time. They made for a surprisingly fun OW team for me, and has honestly been some of the most fun I've had in OW since I started. Having potential 3 on fielders, with Yelan as an off field damage dealer, and Jean as healer/tank. Let me set up yelan, and then swap into Jean to swirl hydro with the skill, and then swap into either Diluc for Vape or Ayaka for Freeze. It was one of the most varied and adaptive OW teams I've played, combined with Yelan and Ayaka's OW mobility which just felt really good. It also helped that since they where mostly underleveled/geared, they didn't trivialise OW as much as my built up characters where.

Score: (Team-building included in combat score above)

Generally does things well, slightly outstay it's welcome per area, base game v1 was perhaps a tad too big compared to botw which seems to have gotten the size just right to make players tapper out and run out of interest near the end while still ending at a still positive note. GI v1 felt like it outstayed that by a bit.

v2 and further, would probably feel better in that regard if I came at it from the start, finished the previous v in 3-4 months, and left starving for more. As I came in at v2.4 I already had a backlog, that grew with v3 coming out before I was done with v2, and same with v4 etc. But by that point other issues also appeared.

For the actual experience itself. The towers are ok, I'm kind of mixed on the whole system from different games (including botw), the teleporters are pretty common, chests and the various oculi are generally well paced and spread out. The actual environment/map itself tends to be well setup, I like the more natural feel and style to the layout. That you can often walk around to find easier ways and so on. Roads and paths makes generally sense.

In that regard I both liked and disliked v2's islands, as they make for good bit sized contents to engage with. But other parts of the game drags you around so much you're not allowed much time for that. And by v3 I was just barely getting done with v2 and just put entire v3 on indefinitive hold because I was sick of it.

Mechanics. some ups and downs, you get tired of the seelies in the long run, as well as many of the different types of puzzles like the torches and various timed elemental altars etc. And the world in general doesn't scale difficulty enough to really feel that engaging after a certain point in PP. Still over all manages to do it well, especially if you can keep it to more bit sized experiences instead of trying to dive into everything all at once. Dragonspine might still be my favourite, despite how annoying that cold effect can be.

Score: 4/5

The element system is the main mechanic used for environment interaction, and it's one of my favourite things in the game. That so many things to be found in the world is designated as the different elements and thus can be reacted to. Combined with the general design of open world means that most encounters have a decent variety of different ways to combat them in different ways.

On the other hand, it often lacks some of the options that BotW did, like pushable boulders, moveable planks/parts, destructible trees and boats as examples. Which could have been more ways to interact with the environment. Also they could have expanded further on the elemental system to larger parts of the world, like trees and grass being dendro, rocks being geo etc.

I do also miss more natural reactions to elements, like botw's infamous rain making climbing slippery and stealth easier. I've ended up missing that through my entire time playing GI, even when I would have absolutely hated it at times. It's another thing that makes me feel more immersed in the nature/environment. And I'd have loved more effects like that. Probably why I didn't mind the cold weather in Dragonspine as much.

These things have been one of the main things that have kept the combat entertaining for me, where domains and other similar encounters has not due to feeling too sterile and monotonous to make the combat very fun for me. And all of the domain/abyss buffs have never been able to replicate that to me. I would have liked domains much better if they where designed more like the Sword Challenge in BotW, where you get some instanced arenas with actual environment in them.

Score: 4/5

Or redundant power creep.

If looking at AR25, AR35 and AR50.

• AR25: Unit/Weap ascension 2, level 50, 3star artifacts, max level 12, talent 2.
• AR35: Unit/Weap ascension 4, level 70, 4star artifacts, max level 16, talent 6.
• AR50: Unit/Weap ascension 6, level 90, 5star artifacts, max level 20, talent 10.

Some exceptions, like getting 4 or 5 star artifacts earlier from week bosses. But largely there is very little difference between the different points. The largest one being that at AR35 you get access to all the artifact types as 4 star artifacts have the largest variety, as well as unlocking the Ascension 4 talent of a character. AR50 effectively cut down some options by making the 4star only artifact sets too weak in general.

So the only difference between a characters in the different groups is largely numbers. The difference between an AR35 and an AR50 character is just the numbers involved. Even at AR25 the difference is a single A4 trait, and a completely different selection of artifacts from AR50.

Similarly enemies just gets higher levels with more bloated stats to compensate. They largely increase slowly to fit a roughly similarly spot/role, but with a slight weakening over time, to retain the feeling of player growing stronger.

So these numbers doesn't change how you play the character or the game. Number porn. It's primary purpose seems to be just grind, taking resources and thus time or money.

Clearly, I would have preferred to see them shave off as much as possible of these numbers, and rather balance the game around a much smaller number scale. But lacking that I must admit that the increase in AR feels rather pointless to me. I could just as well stop at AR35 or even 25, and adjust difficulty by restricting some upgrades. And I'll still have the same experience of the game. The main point against this would be Spiral Abyss highest floors balanced for the max power level, but considering I don't have any interest in this, there's really nothing that encourages me above playing at a lower AR.

Score: 2/5 (Because it's not quite Diablo)

Wishes and Primogems: GIO makes a few changes, you generally get the same amount of primogems and such, but they change the Paimons store, so effectively they're worth much more. 10 primo for a wish instead of 160. And there's no limits to use both types of starglitter to exchange for wishes are pretty good rates. 100 for a wish, or 30 of the bigger starglitter for 10 wishes. If you're spending 10 standard wishes and getting a 5s you already got maxed out, you're almost getting enough glitters to buy another 10 pull. The wishes themselves also seems to have much higher chance to pull stuff, at least 2x might even be 3x.

Basically you're bombarded with them, I got more characters unlocked in 4 hours in GIO than I did in 2 years playing f2p GI. While it was very nice to get a bunch of wishes early on to grab a bunch of 4s units to start playing with. It got kind of overwhelming pretty quickly. I also got a shit ton of weapons, which was kinda nice, loved having lots of Fav weapons for everyone.

Overall, I still just don't enjoy the gacha mechanic, and would rather like a system where I can pick which unit I get, and focus on units that I like etc. So on one hand getting bombarded with wishes was slightly better than the Famine2Play version, it still came with its own problems.

Resin: So GIO's resin system functions similar, except that it regenerates faster (something like 1 per minute instead of 1 per 8 minutes). And every single use of resin cost 1 (leylines, domains, bosses, week bosses etc). So in practise it regenerates that 1 resin before you have time to clear whatever you're doing, so it is effectively infinite. Haven't unlocked condensed resin yet, so no idea how it interacts. They also Made you get a good chunk more rewards per resin used, gut feeling says about 3-4x more. Which meant you really didn't have to farm resin related things very much at all.

Overall, it might have been a bit extreme, but I liked it. Resin has always been the most annoying restriction for me in the game, and this effectively removes it completely. I would have been fine with much less extreme solutions than this, like just increasing the resin cap so you can save it up for 1 week and binge it all once a week. But I much preferred GIO's version here over GI's just because it let me completely ignore this annoyance.

AR: Not really any changes here, but I wanted to touch on how the other changes effectively interacts with it. After a gazillion wishes, and free resin, suddenly the AR becomes a massive limitation. I guess whale players would be completely familiar with this, but for me it was a rather new experience.

Score: Not a score as such, but I'd say I find GIO's free-whale mode a bit more enjoyable, just because of the Resin changes.