Continuing my thoughts on the Genshin storyline and areas, from my second playthrough.

I’m not sure if it’s accurate to call Inazuma Genshin’s first big expansion, since it came after the patch that added Dragonspine, but Dragonspine is a completely optional area and I’m going to discount it as such.

It stands out a bit even today as being very isolated.  Every other region of the game can be reached on foot after getting a very short way into the story, and the game even opens up some teleport spots for you so you don’t need to run to the later regions, but Inazuma can only be reached by ship, and only after finishing the Archon quests that take you through Mondstat and Liyue.  Which can be quite annoying if you get a character from the gacha that requires upgrade materials from Inazuma, as an aside.

It’s also a complete vibe shift from those earlier zones.  While your experience with the elemental archons up to this point has been generally quite positive, Inazuma’s Electro Archon is not a very nice person and you wind up in direct conflict with her quite early in the story.

I mean, she has reasons.  And she gets better.  But she does kinda try to murder you at least once.

The vibe shift extends to the zones themselves.  On my “main” account, I had long since gone through all of the long quest lines that kept me from being, say, repeatedly struck by lightning while trying to fish.  On this play through, I was constantly reminded how many of the various islands that make up Inazuma are passively trying to kill you.  And you can get a little tired of purple after a while, though the scenery is genuinely gorgeous at times.

FORTUNATELY, the islands that want to kill you are not part of the main quest line, and it will not take much time to get through Inazuma if you want to just get to Sumeru as fast as possible.  I wound up spending some time on them because I had a couple of characters that needed character leveling materials, but even with that this was a very short stop on the road to the current content.

Looking at it from the perspective of what it must have been like when it was current content, however, you can really see all the places where Hoyo was trying to slow players down.  There are a lot of important quest lines that are regularly interrupted by the need to wait until the next daily reset to continue, for example.  It also introduced a mechanic where you needed to open chests to collect sigils to get upgrades that let your characters pass through progressively-stronger Electro barriers, which do lock you out of  some exploration.

It’s also a little aggressive with the way it tries to sell you on some of the game’s limited 5-stars.  It isn’t as pointed about it as the “Rebuilding the Jade Chamber” archon quest, which is a pretty forceful advertisement for Shenhe, but the interlude in the main quest where you have to stop doing what you’re doing in order to go hang out with Ayaka and Yoimiya is pretty obvious.

It’s not the only time the game tells you to stop doing main story stuff and go off to do some character story quests, but I think this is the first time those story quests aren’t for 4-star characters.

It’s not precisely filler, because “filler” implies a lack of quality.  But it does point out that the main story is very short, and I think it would have been a point of annoyance if I’d been playing at the time this was current content and needing to wait 6 weeks between story drops.

To fill that tie, Inazuma delivers on giving you a ton of entirely-optional content to have fun with.  I don’t think I’d recommend putting the main story on hold while you grind it out, but I could see “pick an island and roll with that island’s quest line” as something to do between content patches, for sure.

Anyway.  Inazuma.  Decidedly less friendly than areas seen before – or after – and I suspect it’s one of those areas that people either love or hate.  I’m still on the love train at this point, but unfortunately Sumeru is next.