I’m irritated to admit that this week’s edition of Choose My Adventure was more like a misadventure thanks to technical issues, to my surprise, as I was pretty sure that Eterspire wasn’t going to be something that would demand a lot of my hardware. Guess I was wrong.
Long story made rather short, when I downloaded the game I was directed to by the polls, the phone I own ended up not being compatible. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised since I’ve had to get something on the cheap, but it was still a bit of a downer. I was almost positive that this wouldn’t require anything terribly powerful.
It also put into relief how generally underpowered my mobile devices ended up being – a sort of technological gulf that I didn’t expect.
It wasn’t just my phone either, as apparently my tablet wasn’t going to work out either – not really a surprise since it’s a Windows tablet and isn’t running any sort of typical mobile OS. Between these devices, I’m suddenly pretty much made aware that mobile MMORPG gaming just isn’t in the cards for me – or at least some of the more “serious” games anyway.
So what to do instead? Well, I followed through on the poll choices after a fashion: I instead returned to Genshin Impact.
You are going to have to take my word on this, I’m afraid, because once again tech snarl-ups stopped me from snapping the screenshots I thought I was getting. So there is a lack of photographic evidence of my comeback to this game on my PC, but I promise I really did. Also I’m pretty sure I know how to solve my screenshot button issues (and no, the default screenshot folder for the game weirdly doesn’t exist either).
Anyway, let’s get past the technical SNAFUs and get into the meat that I was able to enjoy. I had almost forgotten (somehow) how incredibly pretty Genshin Impact is from a visual and aural standpoint. The opening music soared, the introduction looked great, and it all was quite a feast for me since this marked the first time I enjoyed the game on my current PC hardware.
Unfortunately, I also had to start from the very beginning all over again. I had played this game through most of its initial story beats, having fully defeated Stormterror in that big grand boss fight, but those account details got lost to the winds apparently, or they weren’t associated with the information that I believed they were. More technical issues.
Honestly it’s probably just as well that I was running into all of these problems anyway because it has been literal years since I thought about playing GI. It kind of felt like it all absolutely blitzed past me, to be honest. The updates kept coming, the story kept unfolding, more areas kept being added… all the while I wasn’t ever leveling my adventure rank fast enough, which locked me away from experiencing things either by myself or with others.
As time wore on, the few people I knew who were playing the game just appeared to have stopped, so with all of the wells drying up around me, I sort of resigned to the fate that I would never play this game again. Until this past weekend, anyway, since I was forced to return to Monstadt from the very jump once again.
I remember how good the game felt to play, at least. Even if its combat kind of skews to the somewhat simple, it also feels active enough that I was enjoying myself a little bit. I also tried to absorb the story a bit more this time around; I admit that the first run through kind of crashed against my disinterested skull. Maybe second time’s lucky, right?
Even though I’m trying to look at the silver lining of it all, I have to admit that the grey clouds are pretty damned big here. I lost a lot of materials, progression, what few characters I cared to have unlocked (they weren’t much, to be fair; gacha monetization can get in the bin), and sense of being a part of the whole buzz that sprang up around GI when it was new and apparently making waves. Now it’s all just sort of… stopped. Both in the microcosmic and macrocosmic sense. Sure, it’s still getting updates and has its fans obviously, but it kind of feels like a train that has just passed me by in lieu of the shinier Honkai Star Rail or the even shinier Zenless Zone Zero.
Also I was kind of distracted by Tower of Fantasy, so, y’know, that happened.
I’m going to admit, friends, I’m feeling a bit on the back foot here. I’m not about to get a new phone purely to play Eterspire unless one of you have a few hundred dollars to spare, the other mobile titles that were on the previous poll’s list are also probably not going to work out due to hardware limitations, and this game just feels… weird to me, as if it’s a missed opportunity or some new social media toy that I can’t process because I’m becoming An Old™. But I also have my stubbornness pushing me forward as well, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some weaboo-drenched RPG stop me.
I suppose this is all a long way of saying I need some help in making a decision here.
Where do we go from here?
- Keep up with Genshin Impact. Might as well follow through. (78%, 83 Votes)
- Do something else. Anything else, at this point. (22%, 24 Votes)
Total Voters: 107
Loading ...
As usual, polling is going to wrap up at 1:00 p.m. EST on Friday, January 19th. I do want to apologize for the failboat that this ended up becoming, but at least now I know what is and isn’t possible, and hey, maybe GI will actually begin to set hooks in to me. Weirder things have happened.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have to apparently check the spec requirements of an indie mobile MMORPG as well as the potential for another hardware upgrade of the mobile gaming variety. Who would have thought that this is where I’d be…
Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.
