Honkai: Star Rail looks like a slick, stylish turn-based RPG, but much too anime

I rarely feel as conflicted about a game as I do about Honkai: Star Rail. It’s a turn-based RPG and I like those; but it’s a JRPG and I dislike those. It’s got a spacefaring train in it, which I always think is cute; but also it’s got anime waifus in it and those make me cringe. Its new trailer, which you’ll find below, is dynamic and exciting and well-edited; but… it’s got cringy anime waifus in it.

Watch it and make up your own mind.

Honkai: Star Rail is the fourth game in the Honkai series, and the first to be turn-based. If the name sounds familiar, it’s maybe because the last game in the series, Honkai Impact 3rd, was a huge hit in Asia, and the precursor to the huge-hit-everywhere Genshin Impact.

Star Rail mixes things up by being turn-based, but also because it features new characters and alternate versions of characters from previous games. The characters are a big deal in all of the Honkai and Impact games because they’re free-to-play and funded via a gacha system, whereby players pay money for a chance to unlock any but a handful of starting characters. The characters are arguably an even bigger deal in Star Rail too, given you’re building four-character teams with which to battle through an open world and various dungeons, rather than just a single (albeit hot-swappable) protagonist.

I just, yeah, wish those characters weren’t as anime as this. People who fight using guitars or magic cameras or whatever? All for it. A turn-based game with these production values? Seems great. Just please let me mod it so it feels less pandering.

---

Not E3 2022 is in full swing – see everything in our E3 2022 hub, as well as our complete round-up of everything announced at Summer Game Fest 2022. Many more big game showcases and streams are still to come this summer, so make make sure you stay up to date with our summer games stream schedule.