Continuing from the last post, here’s my impressions of Genshin’s Sumeru Archon quest from my second time playing through it.

My first pass through Sumeru was enough to drive me away from the game for a while, mostly because I thought I’d figured out how the game was structured by that point and assumed that the “World of Aranara” world quest series was going to be mandatory for the Archon quest.

For the uninitiated, the World of Aranara is a 15-to-20-hour quest chain where you mostly run around a forest with entirely too much verticality while you obey the commands of small radish-like creatures that talk funny.  Some people love it, and I’m happy that it brings those people joy.

For the record, it does not bring me joy.  And it was with great pleasure that I discovered that it could be completely ignored for the purposes of completing the Sumeru storyline, though it does become mandatory if you want to run around the jungle solving puzzles and collecting chests.  There are also a number of crafted weapons locked behind it, which is particularly important if you want to craft a good 4-star sword for Bennett.

The other pain point in Sumeru is, of course, the phase of the Archon quest where you are locked into a sort of an Endless Eight/Groundhog Day-style loop.  This was really the only point in my entire second playthrough where I found myself wishing that Hoyoverse would implement a “skip dialogue” button, but knowing that it was coming and – more importantly – knowing that it would eventually end made it more tolerable.

Also, quests in Sumeru felt much longer than previous regions.  This is mostly a problem because quests give rewards at the end.  So, while Inazuma or Liyue had a bunch of small quests that kept giving you twenty or thirty thousand mora and some material at the end, Sumeru has fewer and longer quests with, yes, slightly better rewards.  I don’t have any strict data to back this up so this is strictly from vibes, but it felt like I was suddenly in a new region, with new characters to build and new teams to try out, and not getting enough resources from quests to do so.

Presumably, this was not an issue if you were a veteran player who came into Sumeru at max level after playing through all of the earlier areas, with an inventory overflowing with spare resources.

I am being a little harsh on Sumeru, here.  While it does feel like it was designed to maximize player “engagement hours”, it does introduce some really fun characters – Candace is an all-time favorite, and Nahida is just the ultimate in oh-she’s-so-tiny-and-adorable followed by “wait, never ever get on her bad side”.  And, though it took me a while to understand how Dendro works, I have had a considerable amount of fun with Hyperbloom teams.

Another positive to mention is that the villains are pretty top tier.  It would be really boring if every new region was just “oh look, the Abyss / the Fatui are getting up to no good again”.

I mean, there are Fatui in the region.  And they ARE up to no good.  But they really aren’t the focus of the plot, most of the time.

Lastly, some of the biggest pain points were addressed with QoL updates.  We’re talking stuff like interior maps and fast gadget swapping.  No more going into your inventory every time you need to bust out a musical instrument, or getting hopelessly lost in one of the underground mazes.

I mean, I can still get lost even with a map.  I’m special that way.

Anyway.  While I could still say some things about the desert area, my opinion of the region went way up, this time around.

Then it was off to Fontaine!  More about that later, unless I forget again.