Hoyoverse’s turn-based RPG Honkai: Star Rail has been the newsmaker from the billion-dollar giant as it’s nearing the promised launch year. Next year in 2023, most likely in, the 1st quarter itself we will be able to see the global simultaneous launch of Honkai: Star Rail. So far, Hoyoverse has held 2 global closed beta tests for Honkai: Star Rail with the first-ever closed beta test being done in March 2022. The second closed beta test was conducted somewhere around August 2022. Closed beta tests are held by games to test their server stability while creating some hype among the players for the eventual global release. Honkai: Star Rail is released as a free-to-play game on both the Google Play Store and iOS App Store. Why wait? Play Honkai: Star Rail instantly on your browser without downloading anything. Click, and start playing now.

Table of Contents

1. Gameplay Style of Honkai: Star Rail
2. Roles and Classes of Characters in Honkai: Star Rail
3. Graphics of Honkai: Star Rail
4. Gacha System of Honkai: Star Rail

Honkai: Star Rail is a 3D turn-based RPG that is set in the fantasy world of its previous successor – Honkai Impact. Although, the game’s storyline is fresh and does not follow up on the storyline of the other game. New players that are not aware of the franchise will still be able to follow the story of the game and the beautiful theme shown alongside to amplify the effect of the storyline. Right off the bat, players will be allowed to choose their character and enter their desired player name. Players can board the Astral Express as they venture throughout space to different types of planets in search of the truth about the embedded Stellaron core inside you, the main character. Just moments into the storyline, players will be taken to a new planet called Jarilo-VI which is completely covered in snow. The entire time, you will be mesmerized by the sheer visual beauty of the game. It’s evident that Honkai: Star Rail was created by the makers of Genshin Impact as they both share the same graphical engine and the same crisp and clear art style which we all love. 

Try now for 15 minutes

Exploreavailable games

Gameplay Style of Honkai: Star Rail

The gameplay mechanics of Honkai: Star Rail is turn-based where each character in your team gets to take action on their turn and not when it’s not their turn. Akin to other turn-based battlers, the characters in Honkai: Star Rail have their own unique elements attached to them which makes room for more strategical allocations of them in different content. Each hero in Honkai: Star Rail is assigned 1 element out of 7 different ones – Physical, Ice, Fire, Lightning, Wind, Quantum, and Imaginary. Players are tasked with making parties of 4 different and unique characters. Before even beginning the battle, players can view the enemy’s team composition and their weaknesses to go with it. However, this only applies in PvE campaign stages and not PvP game modes for fair purposes. Drafting a team that has an elemental advantage over enemies is going to be the core aspect to focus on while climbing through the main story of the game as a new player. 

More strategy in Honkai: Star Rail is infused with the “Break” mechanic. If an advantageous elemental character strikes the enemy, they will be in a Break state. During the Break state, they will not be able to move for the turn and take increased damage from all sources. This is especially helpful against boss fights where skipping a turn is huge for your own allies to gear up for the next attack. The movesets of all characters are divided into 3 different attacks – Basic Attack, Active ability, and Ultimate ability. Each character has their own action points. Action points are the currency used for using the skills of your characters. Of course, each skill also has a specific cooldown timer attached to it, so you cannot continuously use the same skill over and over again. Each character also has its ultimate move gauge. Taking turns and using skills can fill up this gauge. When the gauge is completely full, you can unleash the Ultimate ability of that character. All the ultimate abilities are fully animated and have their own unique effects. 

Roles and Classes of Characters in Honkai: Star Rail

Being a turn-based game, the focus of Honkai: Star Rail is going to be primarily on the combat style and combat mechanics. We have taken a brief look at some of the battle mechanics of the game in the previous section. In this section, we will be taking a closer look at all the classes of the characters in Honkai: Star Rail. 

Each of the characters in the game is divided into 7 different Paths:

• The Abundance – Characters under The Abundance path are the healers in the team. They are tasked with healing/supporting allies and helping the team stay healthy.
• The Preservation – Characters under The Preservation path are the Tanks/Shielders for the team. They are tasked with protecting weak allies by soaking up damage.
• The Hunt – Characters under The Hunt path are the Assassins. They have exceptionally hard-hitting single-targeted damaging skills and can destroy squishy enemies.
• The Harmony – Characters under The Harmony path are the Supports for the team. They help the team by providing allies with different buffs.
• The Nihility – Characters under The Nihility path are the Debuffers for the team. They help disrupt the synergy of enemies by debuffing them and crowd-controlling them.
• The Erudition – Characters under The Erudition path are the AOE-DPS of the team. They have exceptionally strong AOE-targeted damaging skills.
• The Destruction – Characters under The Destruction path are Mixed DPS. They have high levels of AOE-targeted and Single-targeted damaging capabilities.

Graphics of Honkai: Star Rail

One of the strongest suits of Hoyoverse is its graphics and art team which pushes the boundaries of the game to the next level. The same can be observed in Honkai: Star Rail which is a beautiful mesh of skill effects, animations, and professionally voice-acted characters. 

The cut-scenes are perfectly timed to give players a greater impact as to what’s going on in the world of Honkai: Star Rail at the current moment. Keeping up with the space and the astral theme is going to be a challenging aspect for the development team but knowing the capability of the team with their previous works such as Genshin Impact makes it easier to believe in them. The cell-shading done on the 3D models of the characters gives them a much more hyper-realistic look than simply animating the 3D rendered designs. 

Gacha System of Honkai: Star Rail

The gacha system of Honkai: Star Rail is still fairly hidden as players were not able to summon much during the closed beta tests. However, from basic knowledge, players were able to make out that 2 different summoning banners exist in the game at the start – Standard Warp and Time-Limited Warp. Warp is the gacha system of the game. It uses premium currencies to be able to summon different rarities of characters. The Standard Warp uses Luminous Deep Space to be able to summon characters on the banner while the Time-Limited Warp makes use of the Light Cones to able to summon the banner. Players can get either objects or characters from each summoning banner, making it a mixed gacha. Sadly, there is no other way to make sure only characters are summons. A 5-Star character is guaranteed in the form of pity after player makes 300 summons on the Standard Warp using Luminous Deep Space. A 5-Star character is guaranteed in the form of pity after player makes 200 summons on the Time-Limited Warp using Light Cones. 

A beginners summoning warp banner is also mentioned in the 2nd closed beta which guarantees a 4-Star object on every 10 summons made on the banner. Further, players are given a 20% discount up to 50 summons on this special new player banner. A 5-Star character is guaranteed to be obtained within 50 summons on the Beginner Warp banner. 

Honkai: Star Rail is a heavy and grindy gacha game that makes use of very intense graphics. Players are required to have a flawless device to be able to enjoy the game at its maximum settings without experiencing any delays or lags. It is recommended to play Honkai: Star Rail on a PC with BlueStacks using a keyboard and mouse. You can also Play Honkai: Star Rail in your browser on your PC or mobile without downloading. Click and Play instantly!