Honkai: Star Rail

Gameplay

Honkai: Star Rail follows the gameplay style of classic Japanese role-playing games where players build up a lineup of characters and control a team of up to four in turn-based combat. In addition to various stats that affect characters' strength, each character has a combat type that affects the kind of damage dealt to targets, a character class referred to as a Path that defines their combat role, and a set of unique abilities called Traces used in combat. Each character can equip a weapon known as a Light Cone, that has various effects that activate if the Paths of both the character and Light Cone match. Characters can also equip various Relics, similar to Artifacts in Genshin Impact.Elements of open-world and dungeon exploration are present, with multiple mechanics including the gacha system, carried over (with slight differences) from Genshin Impact. Instead of exploring one large map, players explore smaller, self-contained areas on each world, which contain treasure chests, puzzles, and other interactable elements. Both games have mechanics of gacha games, in which players spend in-game currency that can be earned in-game or purchased with real money through microtransactions to receive new characters and weapons. Additional gameplay features include an auto-battle system, fast-forward options during combat, and cross-save support between platforms. The game's premium currency, Stellar Jade, is primarily used to purchase Star Rail Passes to obtain characters and Light Cones through a mechanic called "warping", and can be earned through gameplay progression, events, and achievements.