It’s nearly the middle of January, just that time of year when I set plans in motion to make up for anything I didn’t finish. My colleagues know this feeling, as they just took a look over at what 2023 resolutions they achieved, and then jumped into making resolutions for 2024. As for my resolutions and failures, there are two massive games from last year that I started but never managed to put much of a blip into: Baldur’s Gate 3 and, uhhh, Honkai: Star Rail.

These were games that I decided to jump into as breathers between releases, not realizing exactly how big they would be (foolish, I know). Games that constantly needed updates I couldn’t install because I was always running out of room on my laptop’s memory. Games that fit into the same broad genre of turn-based RPG, but couldn’t be more different once you start actually playing, what with one being a cRPG, and the other a Gacha game.

So I need to get back to them, but the kicker is that out of these two, my priority won’t be 2023’s runaway game of the year, but the plucky, highly addictive mobile game, Honkai: Star Rail.

Critical Rolling In The Deep

I previously wrote about my bad luck with my Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough, where every single thing seemed to go wrong at every turn. I admitted to rage-quitting (gotta work on that) but did also admit I’d still like to see the end of the game some time, which is exactly what I’m planning to make time for.

Not that I actually dislike Baldur’s Gate 3, I’m just easily overwhelmed by cRPGs. I’m an overthinker, a skill that works wonders in JRPGs, but not in the cRPG. I can see how impressive it is that the game is prepared for me to take any action, but I swear I always manage to pick the only bad option, due to never being able to analyze the path I wanted. Something I didn’t mention in that article is that yes, I am aware I could just start the playthrough from the beginning. Make a character from scratch and abandon playing as Shadowheart, whose low charisma stat can be blamed for my constantly bad social dice rolls.

I’m stubborn as shit though, so that’s not an option.

I will see the end of Baldur’s Gate 3. I gave myself a bad hand, but I am the type to push through it instead of adapting. This attitude takes patience, and involves having no patience at all, the classic paradox. I needed space, so I could then finish what I started. Once I’m done, I’m sure I’ll come across more interesting characters and story moments, but I doubt I’ll ever play it again. I never went back to replay cRPG darling Fallout: New Vegas, but the shallower Fallout 3 and 4 saw multiple replays, and even across different consoles. These aren’t my type of RPGs, but hey, at least I do see them through to the end.

Which is quite the opposite of what I got from my short time with Honkai: Star Rail. I was interested in Star Rail purely due to the fact it was free, which sounds like I had money issues or was a cheapskate, but it somehow taps into my inner child, taking me back to my teenage years which saw me spending a lot of my free time on free web games.

I had Runescape days just like every other millennial, but what I lost years to was Adventure Quest, a free Flash game where you build a character with several classes to choose from, all while fighting random forces of darkness during big story updates. You could also pay one time to become a Guardian, which I never did, meaning I tended to lose all my fights during those story raids as I didn’t have the special overpowered Guardian-only armor.

And Honkai: Star Rail brought me back to that kind of experience: the greasy world of allegedly free games that happen to sneak in ways to get your money, but if you did avoid paying them anything, you still had fun!

Related

Baldur’s Gate 3: All Romance Options, Ranked

Baldur’s Gate 3 allows players to romance certain NPCs. Here are the best ones to Romance.

Star Rail sees a more basic turn-based combat than Baldur’s Gate 3, something that’s much easier to pick up and play. Baldur’s Gate 3 battles are long, and difficult if you’re not acquainted with that D&D-slash-Larian style, with it sometimes feeling like a battle with a lowly goblin pack can take 10 minutes. Star Rail’s battles are the more simple on paper turn-based style of type weaknesses and status conditions, the kind of thing I’ve long mastered. I remember early on in Honkai, seeing an enemy several levels too high and going “Yeah I can take him”, only to be proven right!

The beginning missions see your player avatar forced to team up with March 7th (a pink-haired woman who named herself after the date from which she can’t remember her past, not unlike Baldur’s Gate 3’s Shadowheart), and soft-spoken cool dude Dan Heng. While I did like Dan Heng as a character, it was March 7th and my avatar who I immediately understood the mechanics for. The avatar is a brawler, smashing enemies with a baseball bat and even conveniently having a type advantage against a lot of the early enemies. March 7th played more like a tactical mage and healer. I used her to buff the party, heal up, and occasionally used ice magic to attack enemies whenever they had that as a weakness.

It took me only an hour to ‘get’ Star Rail’s combat system, while several hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 and I still failed to understand much of anything. I also felt a connection to my chosen squad of characters, ready to travel the stars with them, knowing no matter what, we’d all be fine together. This is a feeling I wish I had with my BG 3 party, where I instead never truly understood how to utilize any of our strengths. Never feeling like we were that great of a party, always doomed to fail.

Gacha Gacha Gacha Chameleon

I don’t think this makes Honkai: Star Rail better than Baldur’s Gate 3, though I do happen to think that both would be enjoyed by the same type of gamer, both being character-rich and offering stories that offer intrigue with little sign of how long it will take to learn the answers.

As for what you may like better, that’s something only you will know. For me, I’m just too stubborn and overthinky to see Baldur’s Gate 3 as anything other than a great but daunting game that I respect but won’t replay, and Honkai: Star Rail as a game I’m going to put countless hours into despite not knowing if I’ll ever cave and spend money on it.

Related

The Xbox Version Of Baldur’s Gate 3 Tarnishes 2023’s GOTY

Xbox players are better off not touching it for a while.