<story><title>App store payments will have increased competition</title><url>https://www.kalzumeus.com/2021/08/27/app-store-payment-competition/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>patio11</author><text>Happy to chat about it, HN, since otherwise I&amp;#x27;d just be playing more Genshin Impact.&lt;p&gt;My capsule review of the game nobody asked for: if you like Breath of the Wild, you&amp;#x27;ll likely enjoy it a lot. It is not as pure of an exploration game at BotW is, and the emergent game mechanics that made BotW such a joy, a toy which produced its own unique stories with every player, are mostly absent. The exploration doesn&amp;#x27;t tie in closely with the plot like it does in BotW.&lt;p&gt;But, other than that, it&amp;#x27;s an extremely, extremely effective game. Excellent art and music design; the graphics compare favorably to anything I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen in an AAA game if you like this anime-inspired visual style.&lt;p&gt;I find the combat similar to single-player WoW with more interesting strategic choices (regarding party comp, etc) and less interesting tactical choices. Harder encounters are fun puzzles to solve.&lt;p&gt;While the actual story in the game is nothing we haven&amp;#x27;t seen done better before, the character interactions are an extremely interesting Chinese take on Chinese&amp;#x2F;Japanese&amp;#x2F;Western fantasy tropes. Someone could get an East Asian Studies thesis out of it fairly easily. It&amp;#x27;s amusing to &amp;quot;read&amp;quot; with that cultural commentary lens on; the localization is also surprisingly well done (including both English and Japanese, to the extent you credit me with being able to perceive that).&lt;p&gt;The metagame about how to progress as quickly as possible, and where to invest your resources &amp;#x2F; how to harvest them efficiently, also pushes my buttons very effectively.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kbenson</author><text>I learned all I want to know about that game while my 11 year old was playing it.  Sounded like BotW with annoyingly long and useless grinding to get weird crystals or something that are needed to buy better weapons (or buy loot boxes of a sort with low good loot chace, IIRC).&lt;p&gt;It didn&amp;#x27;t sound &lt;i&gt;horrible&lt;/i&gt;, because he seemed to like the gameplay, but I didn&amp;#x27;t feel any desire to get into a game where you can pay for benefit (I tend to the other end of the spectrum, repeatedly punishing deaths until you get better, like Dark Souls).&lt;p&gt;He probably spent a total of ~$80 on the game, over 4-6 months.  I don&amp;#x27;t count that as too bad, as it&amp;#x27;s not much more than buying it and an expansion would cost, and it provided him a lot of entertainment.  That said, the reason it as &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; ~$80 is because I was controlling the purse strings.</text></comment>
<story><title>App store payments will have increased competition</title><url>https://www.kalzumeus.com/2021/08/27/app-store-payment-competition/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>patio11</author><text>Happy to chat about it, HN, since otherwise I&amp;#x27;d just be playing more Genshin Impact.&lt;p&gt;My capsule review of the game nobody asked for: if you like Breath of the Wild, you&amp;#x27;ll likely enjoy it a lot. It is not as pure of an exploration game at BotW is, and the emergent game mechanics that made BotW such a joy, a toy which produced its own unique stories with every player, are mostly absent. The exploration doesn&amp;#x27;t tie in closely with the plot like it does in BotW.&lt;p&gt;But, other than that, it&amp;#x27;s an extremely, extremely effective game. Excellent art and music design; the graphics compare favorably to anything I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen in an AAA game if you like this anime-inspired visual style.&lt;p&gt;I find the combat similar to single-player WoW with more interesting strategic choices (regarding party comp, etc) and less interesting tactical choices. Harder encounters are fun puzzles to solve.&lt;p&gt;While the actual story in the game is nothing we haven&amp;#x27;t seen done better before, the character interactions are an extremely interesting Chinese take on Chinese&amp;#x2F;Japanese&amp;#x2F;Western fantasy tropes. Someone could get an East Asian Studies thesis out of it fairly easily. It&amp;#x27;s amusing to &amp;quot;read&amp;quot; with that cultural commentary lens on; the localization is also surprisingly well done (including both English and Japanese, to the extent you credit me with being able to perceive that).&lt;p&gt;The metagame about how to progress as quickly as possible, and where to invest your resources &amp;#x2F; how to harvest them efficiently, also pushes my buttons very effectively.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smoldesu</author><text>I like Breath of the Wild, but trying Genshin Impact was like having a root canal done on my brain. After around 30 minutes of playing it I had to put it down, grinding a game for the promise of being able to buy microtransactions is not a effective way for me to spend my time. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s just because I&amp;#x27;m not an MMO fan, but Genshin feels like a regression in the genre of JRPGs.</text></comment>