Genshin Impact developer miHoYo’s stunning upcoming turnbased space fantasy RPG Honkai: Star Rail will release on PS5 and PS4 in the future. Dated for iOS and Android earlier today – it’ll launch on 26th April – the free-to-play gacha is currently in development for PlayStation, and will arrive “soon” according to the Chinese team.
We were lucky enough to test out the beta earlier in the year, and this is really nice change of pace from Genshin Impact, with its emphasis still on team-building – albeit within the confines of a more traditional turnbased combat system. While the story is needlessly verbose, the art direction is excellent – and you can expect it to look incredible on PS5 particularly if Genshin Impact is anything to go by.
Writing on the PS Blog, lead programmer Yang Yu revealed: “Honkai: Star Rail provides a vast universe abundant with distinctive cultures, landscapes, and scenery. It is full of rewards and secrets waiting to be explored. Roaming the worlds and uncovering mysteries, Honkai: Star Rail offers a grand space journey full of twists, coincidences, and happiness. Building your four-person combat team from a wide range of playable characters, getting along with your companions, and leveraging their unique skills correspondingly to overcome challenges from every corner of the universe.”
As mentioned above, there’s no release date for the PlayStation versions yet, but miHoYo says the game will be available on Sony’s systems in the “near future”. In the meantime, we imagine cross-progression from mobile will be supported, so you’ll probably be safe to get started on your smartphone when the title debuts next month.
[source blog.playstation.com]
Comments 30
Can't wait to join compellingly named characters like March 7th on their journey through the cosmos!
I like genshin impact (haven't got the time to seriously play it on ps5 though) so I'll also try this, the game looks good
@wiiware You're already dead!
As a fan of turn-based games (though not all), I'll probably be checking this out once it hits PS4/PS5.
Nice I was hoping this one would make it's way over to PS more than the other they showed off. But having three mhy gachas is gonna be insanely overwhelming lol. Even if they're quality games
Nice, it has been good times for turn-based rpg fans. On the list, Keep them coming!
So I read somewhere that the developer has 3,000 staff in their studio. Considering that Sony's biggest studio, Bungie has 800, it shouldn't surprise you with how quickly they push out updates and events. In multiple games no less!
Super stoked for this. Loved the beta. And ss much as I like Genshin Impact, this game is way more up my alley with its turn based combat. Can't wait! (Probably even gonna drop Genshin for this, even with all the money I spend on it)
Also interesting to see how they announced PS4/5 and no Xbox version. Wonder if Sony threw some money their way once again? Or if its just easier for them to deal with a single console. (GI Switch version where?!)
I don't dare try this. Genshin has absorbed too much of my life. Plus all the characters look like variations on Genshin characters. I can see bits of Diluc, Fischl, Keqing and more in these. Can't unsee it!
Nope! With 1200+ hours and counting put into Genshin there's zero chance I'm going near this. Really don't need or want another gacha game in my life.
@Shigurui
Amen.
Given Mihoyos track record, this game probably won't have a lot of depth to it. Which is pretty sad since their games have the potential to be great, but always end up aiming for an ultra casual experience in the end.
@themightyant Came here to say the same thing! It's definitely traces of Genshin design not just graphically, but with characters!
@ErrantRob Some of the same animations too. I've seen Keqing/Alhaitham's burst animation used here too, and others.
That's probably smart, efficient development, but it's noticeable.
@themightyant it's sort of the same between genshin and honkai too, sometimes purposefully (like raiden ei/raiden mei and yae sakura/yae miko as the most obvious ones and more subtle like alhaitham/su and venti/wendy, apparently nahida/theresa but that's a bit more of a dubious one)
they like to basically re-use characters between games, it's clever in its way as you've got an existing fanbase for a character already that you can use to drum up hype even if the two characters are entirely separate in terms of personality and motivation. It's fairly certain the Tsaritsa is gonna be an expy of Bronya (hands down best girl out of the three MCs in honkai) and that's what drums up a lot of hype for her eventual reveal. They've also done this between honkai and star rail with Himiko (an expy of whom is also heavily implied to be the Pyro archon)
So yeah, expect to see a lot of re-used character designs. It doesn't help that anime is so tropey anyway, the characters do tend to stick within the same basic archetypes if the writers are lazy
@starnivore Good info. Thanks for sharing. Some may like it, I don't, I like my characters to feel fresh... until they add Zhongli! lol
@Shigurui Only 1200??? You lightweight! I think I had that on PS4 alone. (crys into addiction)
@themightyant - Heh, I put about 550 into the PS4 version and I'm another 700+ into it on PS5. I go through phases when I have to delete it for a few months but I've played almost daily since Sumeru dropped.
@Shigurui I REALLY need to delete it. Other than holidays i've played every day since launch. Often just 10-15 mins to do dailies but it adds up!
Cool news although tbh i'm more interested into Zenless Zone Zero
@themightyant - From launch day I played nothing else for 8 months straight and ended up hating it so it had to go. Came back after all of Inazuma was available and the Chasm dropped and been on it since but I make a conscious effort to limit my time with it.
@Shigurui I definitely make a conscious effort to limit my time with it but every now and again find myself wandering aimlessly
One day I might see the screen for rewards you get as a returning player after 21 days, but today is not that day. lol
They don’t half come up with some strange names
Putting Genshin on some ice for Star Rail.
Heeeeeell yeeeeeeaaaaaaah!!!
Amazing news! I was so hoping it was going to happen!
This game has an actual damn endgame, and enemies that, by design, don't just ×+×*ing fly around for 10 minswith only a few seconds to damage them. 3.5 Genshin has been so damn bad, I will happily put that down for a few patches to get pulled into HSR
The game looks pretty decent and the graphics are once again beautiful. But after playing genshin I am hesitant to play this, I've only played around 30 hours in genshin but my world level has now reached a point where the enemies are too hard and take an age to kill, and I can't lower it, I need to power up my characters but I need a lot of materials which I need from enemy drops so I'm kinda screwed.
Pretty sure this is going to have some gacha or other microtransaction implementation to offset the fact it's free so I'm not really looking to get into this.
@BeerIsAwesome it's not that easy to have more people under you, just ask MS and the Perfect Dark studio LOL. Sony has shown they are pretty "picky" in how they hire people, opting to buy studios because the people working there gave good results helping established PS Studios like Santa Monica instead of just hiring in regular ways.
mihoyo on the other hand, as impressive as it is to watch Genshin running on a smartphone, the coding in a lot or areas is VERY rough, obviously their main target is mobile so they have a pass (for now because it's actually crazy what phones can do right now) but you can see all the people there focus on content so people can spend more money instead of how polished or optimized is the content.
@themightyant 5000 hours in Guild Wars of 5 years though I think I didn't play anything for years. 🤪
@GymratAmarillo Fair enough. I didn't look at it that way. Too many cooks and all that.
Though I can see what you mean. Genshin runs like a dog on the PS4, although having played it on my phone (and of course PS5), it's surprisingly smooth! You're right though. There is a constant stream of characters, weapons, artifacts and events going on, so clearly all the staff are designers instead of programmers. 😅
I'll try this out, might click with me more than Genshin Impact did.
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