5 Things Honkai Star Rail Excels Over Genshin Impact

In the realm of mobile gaming, HoYoverse's flagship titles, Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact, have ignited numerous comparisons. Although they inhabit distinct genres, both games share certain gameplay mechanics. Nevertheless, within Honkai Star Rail lies a treasure trove of features that are widely regarded as substantial enhancements to what Genshin Impact currently offers. These notable attributes encompass impeccable gameplay balance, an array of quality-of-life improvements, and more. In the following sections, we'll delve into five things Honkai Star Rail does better than Genshin Impact, solidifying its status as a game-changer in the mobile gaming landscape.

5 Things Honkai Star Rail Does Better Than Genshin Impact

1. Easier Combat and Movement Control

Genshin Impact, as an open-world RPG game, offers a ton of combat features that players can experience. However, it also means users will have more combat inputs to consider, making the game quite demanding in terms of strategic thinking and reflexes, especially on mobile devices. 

Honkai Star Rail, on the other hand, offers a much more simple combat system as a turn-based RPG game. The user interface during combat is fairly easy to navigate without having to worry too much about split-second skill timings or rotations.

2. Actually Useful Starter Characters

It is common knowledge for most gamers that starter characters in Gacha games are only useful for a tutorial or early game experience. Once a player reaches a certain level, this character usually becomes useless and gets ignored. 

While this is arguably true in Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail’s starter characters can actually carry you through the later stages of the game. Characters such as Natasha, Serval, Qingque, March 7th, and the Main Character Trailblazer, remain competitive in the meta despite new 5-star characters being released.

3. Balanced Class/Element System

The class system in Genshin Impact is quite diverse but lacks a form of advantages and disadvantages. While this is a good thing for players who have fewer characters in the game, most characters simply outshine another. This means players can simply brute force their way into everything using the most recent DPS character in the game.

In Honkai Star Rail, all enemies will have a weakness in a specific element. This allows each class to truly have their place in the game as you will need to form a team based on your enemies to gain the advantage.

4. Quality-of-Life Improvements

Honkai Star Rail has elevated the concept of quality-of-life enhancements, particularly through its crafting system. Unlike Genshin Impact, where players must often trek to specific locations to craft or forge items, Honkai Star Rail simplifies the process by seamlessly integrating the Synthesize option into the game's main menu, accessible from any location on the map. Similarly, the Assignment system is readily available from the main menu, eliminating the need to travel to an NPC's location for task management. 

Another good Quality-of-Life improvement added in Honkai Star Rail is how players can clear some dungeons multiple times in one single run. Spending your Trailblaze Power (equivalent to the Resin Energy in Genshin Impact) is a lot less tedious as you can easily clear multiple waves and spend your Power in one activation.

5. More End-Game Content

End-game content is very important for an RPG game to provide veteran players a reason to play the game. Honkai Star Rail offers two types of content for players who want to test their limits- Memory of Chaos (MoC) and Simulated Universe. 

The MoC is quite similar to the Spiral Abyss of Genshin Impact while the Simulated Universe is a rogue-like game mode where players are forced to adjust to certain situations as the buffs or enemies will be randomized. On top of that, the Simulated Universe: Swarm Disaster offers a huge difficulty spike, offering an unforgiving gameplay experience for hardcore players.

With Genshin Impact only offering Spiral Abyss as its end-game content, Honkai Star Rail excels more in this aspect as there are more options for veterans to test out their characters or try various strategies and theorycrafting to keep them occupied in the game.