Honkai: Star Rail stars an amnesiac dubbed the Trailblazer who is created to hold a power called the Stellaron. Found by two individuals, Trailblazer quickly learns they hold a powerful force within them that could alter the fate of the galaxy. With a desire to learn what’s happening and what power they have, the Trailblazer—your MC by the way—joins the Astral Express and goes on an adventure aboard the literal flying train.

We can’t deny, Honkai: Star Rail definitely is reminiscent of Honkai Impact 3rd for having a story that spews anime energy and is just as chaotic. Honestly, we’re happy there is a big lore section in Honkai: Star Rail as we needed to quickly learn what all these terms being thrown at us meant and why we should care. Maybe they did this on purpose to really immerse us in the world of amnesia having Trailblazer.

What might disappoint many of you lovers of Genshin Impact and its open-world gameplay similar to Zelda: Breath of the Wild is that Honkai: Star Rail is a turn-based JRPG. Gone is the co-op gameplay experience and the third-person combat is replaced with very traditional turn-based gameplay but with some cool touches nevertheless. When you battle, you have a party of 4—more on how you get those characters in a second—and must beat various baddies. You have three forms of attacks, a single focused attack, either an AOE—area of effect—attack or a defensive attack, and an ultimate attack.

Each turn you can use either of the two main attacks but the defense/AOE can’t be abused as you need to perform regular attacks to use them. As you battle, you’ll then be able to unleash an ultimate attack that differs per each character for some rather stylish visual flairs and they do a decent amount of damage or cause effects. Enemies though won’t go down easy as they have a main health bar and a defensive bar. If you do enough damage, their defense falls causing them to break and you can then do more damage and stun them briefly. Again, this isn’t gameplay we haven’t seen before in a turn-based title but it is fun and means battles usually take some focus, especially when bosses enter the ring.

When you aren’t in battle, you’ll be exploring various locals and talking with NPCs to perform quests and gain items. These items will help level your characters and can even boost their various abilities. Exploration feels like Genshin Impact but there is less freedom in terms of movement. Don’t expect to fly around or climb mountains…you’ll be running around a lot. There are plenty of areas to explore and Honkai: Star Rail rewards those who like to scour areas dry but we noticed that the lack of free movement worries us in the longevity of exploring areas in future updates.

Did you like the wish system of Genshin Impact and spending an obscene amount of money and in-game currency to net characters…occasionally? If you say yes, which concerns you a bit, you’ll feel at home with Honkai: Star Rail. Called Warp, this is your primary way to obtain equipment for your characters and new party members. There is a kinder gacha system in play here as you’ll often get characters after every 50 Warps but we still see a worrying trend as we’ve only gotten one character so far from Warps and most were earned via story sequences. Still, for a free game, we fully understand the reliance on the gacha element and think it makes sense for the amount of content you’re getting.

Honkai: Star Rail is absolutely breathtaking in that we often find ourselves shoving our phones in our faces just to see every little detail when we’re on the go. From the ultimate attacks to the character models and the various locations…Honkai: Star Rail is why we think mobile gaming can sometimes mirror the big consoles when done well. Obviously, don’t expect these visuals do not come at a cost. Playing on a Samsung Fold 3—not the newest one, sorry—our batteries didn’t last at full charge for more than three hours before we saw our status entering less than 30%. You can reduce the visuals and run the game on lesser settings for better performance but why would you?!