Genshin Impact developer’s new RPG is getting a final closed beta in February

Honkai: Star Rail, the intergalactic interrailing RPG from the makers of Genshin Impact, is gearing up for its final closed beta. It’ll leave the station on February 10th and you can sign up to take part now. Or you can just watch a new trailer below.

It might be instructable if you’re not already invested in these characters, though:

If you want to sign up to participate in the beta, you can do so at its official site.

Honkai: Star Rail is a space fantasy RPG in which you travel from planet to planet on a spacefaring train. The closed beta will feature several locations, including Herta Space Station, and two “major destinations”, Jarilo VI and Xianzhou Luofu. There will be story quests and turn-based combat to experience too, obviously.

That turn-based combat makes Star Rail different from previous MiHoYo games, including Honkai Impact 3rd, which was an action game more akin to Genshin Impact. There is overlap between the two games in that they both feature some of the same characters (or alternate versions of characters), and in that they’re both free-to-play gacha games. Characters are unlocked either for free through completing quests or by spending money for a random chance at getting one.

Which, honestly, could go either way for me. Genshin Impact was pretty generous with characters and free pulls for a chance to unlock more, and I ran out of interest in its quest design before I ran out of new characters to try. If Honkai: Star Rail is similarly generous then I’ll probably check out its turn-based fights when it launches sometime later this year.