HSR patch 3.2 review
Apr. 12th, 2025 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoFinished playing through the main story mission and have browsed some of the stuff on reddit and CN forums. Figure I'd write down my thoughts while it's all fresh.
First of all, the story continues to be pretty consistent with previous patches. The pacing is definitely benefiting from given so many patches to work with, compared to earlier story arcs having to be smushed into 3-4 patches. On the other hand, the downside of this elongated storyline is also starting to show, in that we are *still* in the "buildup" phase of this world, and it is feeling a little more bland each time, with the per-patch endings no longer being quite enough to feel like a "climax".
Also, the story continues to do a good job of focusing on the banner characters of the patch each time, which I am guessing is something Hoyo has put effort into due to previous feedback. The upside to this is that people who pull for lore get to learn about the characters fairly deeply before deciding to purchase them. The downside, though, is that enjoyment of the story is also somewhat impacted by how much you like the focused characters in question...
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Castorice: I pulled her purely because I like her art design; she's really pretty. However, everything else about her after playing the story and her demos is kinda...meh. She is very obviously an archetypical "waifu" character, not really intended for my demographic.
Secondly, the whole philosophical meandering during her arc about how death sucks and she hates it and prefers the world to go back to the days of yore where everyone lived forever yadayada, and then transitioning to "learning" about how death is a necessary driving force of life/progress/etc... it's just so cliched and haven't we had this before back with the Xianzhou? Honestly I felt sleepy during some of her longer dialogue/monologue scenes.
And then gameplay wise, I can't speak for her numbers because I've been hearing contradictory stuff, but her mechanics are a bit finnicky, and I don't quite enjoy the mechanic of draining your own team's HP to fuel attack. But, she's a 5 star quantum AoE damager which I didn't have before, and she does give my Luocha a chance to be used more, so whatever I guess.
Anaxagoras: I also like his art design and will be pulling for him in the second half (even though he was probably cheated out of half his animation budget by Castorice). His personality is a lot more bombastic and standout than Cas, and I did like his role in the story for playing all sides of the politics just to use them both in order to further his own ambitions in human experimentation ala fusing divine corpses with his own soul, and then succeeding at his goals of uncovering a further layer of truth about the world, and paving the way for his future ascension to divinity... what can I say, this guy has definitely got the "mad" part down for "mad scientist", lol.
I've also seen people call him Ratio 2.0, and sure, there are some similarities between the two (both accomplished scholars, and professors teaching their knowledge/ideals to others, eccentric personalities, acerbic tongue, arrogance in their own intelligence, soft spot for promising students and cute critters, etc), but IMO, I am more likely to focus on the differences between them. The most obvious one is that Anaxa is much more ambitious, to prove his school of thought is the truth over the more pious branch of thought, to prove his theories on divinity, and to *become* divinity in order to reshape the future world. Ratio, OTOH, after having realized he wasn't going to gain the gaze of Nous and get invited to the Genius Society, seems to have come to terms with his current lot with the Mundanite Council of the Intelligentsia Guild; while he doesn't pursue worship of any Aeon, neither does he seek to become one and rewrite reality to remove the dumb from the world. Anaxa puts his personal goals of SCIENCE ahead of almost everything else, with politics and stuff just being stuff he manipulates to achieve personal goals. Whereas, we know Ratio is willing to work with mundane organizations such as the IPC. And y'know, maybe this is the reason why Ratio was never gonna get the attention of Nous, and why gameplay-wise, he's not an erudition unit. *rubs chin*
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Other updates this patch included a freebie 5 star (which I chose Ruan Mei E2) and other stuff that comes with the Anniversary. A lot of shop updates which the EN folks have been complaining about. I dunno, IMO it's the same kind of stuff I see in a lot of other mobile games, so I don't know what the fuss is about. It's not like you can't play through most of the game without pulling every banner. Nowadays I don't even try for full endgame anymore if it takes more than 2-3 build tries. It's not worth angst-ing about that extra couple dozen gems in rewards, or centering your pull goals towards that (for me, anyway).
The mini game that came with this patch is a reskin of the idle game mechanic, which I kinda liked. Almost makes me want to go back and play some of the older clicker games I've had before, until I remember how buggy bluestacks has been for me. -_-
First of all, the story continues to be pretty consistent with previous patches. The pacing is definitely benefiting from given so many patches to work with, compared to earlier story arcs having to be smushed into 3-4 patches. On the other hand, the downside of this elongated storyline is also starting to show, in that we are *still* in the "buildup" phase of this world, and it is feeling a little more bland each time, with the per-patch endings no longer being quite enough to feel like a "climax".
Also, the story continues to do a good job of focusing on the banner characters of the patch each time, which I am guessing is something Hoyo has put effort into due to previous feedback. The upside to this is that people who pull for lore get to learn about the characters fairly deeply before deciding to purchase them. The downside, though, is that enjoyment of the story is also somewhat impacted by how much you like the focused characters in question...
-----
Castorice: I pulled her purely because I like her art design; she's really pretty. However, everything else about her after playing the story and her demos is kinda...meh. She is very obviously an archetypical "waifu" character, not really intended for my demographic.
Secondly, the whole philosophical meandering during her arc about how death sucks and she hates it and prefers the world to go back to the days of yore where everyone lived forever yadayada, and then transitioning to "learning" about how death is a necessary driving force of life/progress/etc... it's just so cliched and haven't we had this before back with the Xianzhou? Honestly I felt sleepy during some of her longer dialogue/monologue scenes.
And then gameplay wise, I can't speak for her numbers because I've been hearing contradictory stuff, but her mechanics are a bit finnicky, and I don't quite enjoy the mechanic of draining your own team's HP to fuel attack. But, she's a 5 star quantum AoE damager which I didn't have before, and she does give my Luocha a chance to be used more, so whatever I guess.
Anaxagoras: I also like his art design and will be pulling for him in the second half (even though he was probably cheated out of half his animation budget by Castorice). His personality is a lot more bombastic and standout than Cas, and I did like his role in the story for playing all sides of the politics just to use them both in order to further his own ambitions in human experimentation ala fusing divine corpses with his own soul, and then succeeding at his goals of uncovering a further layer of truth about the world, and paving the way for his future ascension to divinity... what can I say, this guy has definitely got the "mad" part down for "mad scientist", lol.
I've also seen people call him Ratio 2.0, and sure, there are some similarities between the two (both accomplished scholars, and professors teaching their knowledge/ideals to others, eccentric personalities, acerbic tongue, arrogance in their own intelligence, soft spot for promising students and cute critters, etc), but IMO, I am more likely to focus on the differences between them. The most obvious one is that Anaxa is much more ambitious, to prove his school of thought is the truth over the more pious branch of thought, to prove his theories on divinity, and to *become* divinity in order to reshape the future world. Ratio, OTOH, after having realized he wasn't going to gain the gaze of Nous and get invited to the Genius Society, seems to have come to terms with his current lot with the Mundanite Council of the Intelligentsia Guild; while he doesn't pursue worship of any Aeon, neither does he seek to become one and rewrite reality to remove the dumb from the world. Anaxa puts his personal goals of SCIENCE ahead of almost everything else, with politics and stuff just being stuff he manipulates to achieve personal goals. Whereas, we know Ratio is willing to work with mundane organizations such as the IPC. And y'know, maybe this is the reason why Ratio was never gonna get the attention of Nous, and why gameplay-wise, he's not an erudition unit. *rubs chin*
-----
Other updates this patch included a freebie 5 star (which I chose Ruan Mei E2) and other stuff that comes with the Anniversary. A lot of shop updates which the EN folks have been complaining about. I dunno, IMO it's the same kind of stuff I see in a lot of other mobile games, so I don't know what the fuss is about. It's not like you can't play through most of the game without pulling every banner. Nowadays I don't even try for full endgame anymore if it takes more than 2-3 build tries. It's not worth angst-ing about that extra couple dozen gems in rewards, or centering your pull goals towards that (for me, anyway).
The mini game that came with this patch is a reskin of the idle game mechanic, which I kinda liked. Almost makes me want to go back and play some of the older clicker games I've had before, until I remember how buggy bluestacks has been for me. -_-
