Honkai: Star Rail Review - A New Gold Standard In Live Service RPGs

Those issues aren't directly related to the core of Star Rail , however, which shines as brightly as any of the celestial bodies it tasks players with visiting. The quality of content at launch is, quite simply, incredible - it really looks, feels, and plays like a live service game that has already been out for years. Its turn-based combat might, tragically, not be for everyone, even in spite of its depth of tactics and highly customizable loadouts. That should be something everyone decides for themselves, however. Honkai: Star Rail is a must-play 2023 release that could very well become the next big thing in live service games, and will, if nothing else, become one of the better RPG releases in recent mem

A Fire Harmony character, Asta's skills primarily center around buffing allies, granting a stacking attack boost whenever she hits an enemy, with extra stacks being granted against fire weaknesses. Although the stacks fall off quickly, the boost is still consistent and useful for increasing a team's damage output, especially in combination with Asta's speed-boosting ultimate. As a slight downside, however, Asta is one of the few free characters in the live service Honkai: Star Rail whose element overlaps with another, which has her competing somewhat for a team slot with Fire Trailblazer - although, on the other hand, one of her ascensions does increase the fire damage of other characters, further increasing her usefulness against fire-weak enem

Herta, an Ice Erudition Honkai: Star Rail character that players can claim for free after completing the " Simulated Universe: Second Closed Beta " quest, becoming available shortly after the end of the game's initial prologue. Unfortunately, however, she's subject to a few problems that can make her underwhelming to use in battle. As an Erudition character, Herta focuses mostly on dealing multi-target damage, but can't quite keep up with the output of other damaging characters, and offers no utility to make up for it (aside from Ice breaks freezing enemies). Compounding her problems, Herta's Ice element overlaps with March 7th's, making her unnecessary even for elemental cover

Updated on May 9, 2025, by Nahda Nabiilah : Hyacine and Cipher are both set to be the stars of Honkai: Star Rail 3.3. Hyacine will bear the Wind Element and follow the Path of Remembrance, whereas Cipher is a Nihility-Quantum unit. Not only for the new characters, but version 3.3 is also exciting since players are expecting older characters to be buffed in the update. As previously announced by the developer, units like Seele, Blade, Jingliu, and Silver Wolf will receive an improvement to keep up with the current meta and finally be viable ag

As is the case with the Light Cone, the best Relics for Himeko’s build in Honkai: Star Rail are those that boost her powers. Currently, the best Relic set for the character is Firesmith of Lava Forging. Himeko deals a great amount of Fire damage, and the set’s two-piece, four-piece, and five-piece effects do exactly t

One of the main features that Himeko boasts in the game is her ability to apply an AoE follow-up attack, outside her own turn, once an enemy’s Weakness is broken. This is a great way of constantly applying Fire damage to all opponents and, potentially, speeding up the Weakness Break effect against t

As the final free Erudition character, Serval's Lightning element and potent attacking skills manage to set her apart as a good general option - which is especially good because she can be claimed for free early in the game as part of Star Rail 's pre-registration campaign. Being the only Lightning attacker out of the free characters already gives Serval a solid niche, but her skills also leave potent lightning DoTs on enemies that are effective at racking up residual damage, further supported by her ultimate and basic attacks. As a slight downside, however, her skill can only target three enemies, meaning her damage can suffer in fights with larger gro

If there are any issues in Honkai: Star Rail , they stem from its status as a gacha game. Drop rates are predictably pretty stingy for 5-star characters, which is further complicated by the presence of Star Rail Light Cones , the game's version of weapons from Genshin Impact . These also need to be rolled on, which can make finding an optimal build quite expensive unless someone gets lucky. Energy requirements also make it feel like Honkai: Star Rail is unnecessarily gating players away from its content - limited runs of the Simulated Universe or for materials can feel like a negative element. This is compounded by the fact Star Rail isn't open-world, Cute hsr charactershonkai which means players won't have the same ability to wander around and simply find things that they have in games like Genshin Impact when their energy system is deple

With four pieces, ATK is boosted by 7% after every attack you perform or receive, up to six times. With five pieces, Physical DMG is boosted by an additional 12%. Using all five pieces is a great cho