Genshin Impact celebrates its sixth anniversary with Version 7.0 and 7.1. After six years of new regions, characters, stories, and systems, we revisit the journey so far and examine whether Genshin Impact is still worth experiencing in 2026.
Overview
What is Genshin Impact?
Genshin Impact is a free-to-play open-world action RPG developed and published by HoYoverse. Set in the fantasy world of Teyvat, the game follows the Traveler, an adventurer searching for their lost sibling while uncovering the secrets of its nations, gods, and civilizations. Real-time combat centers around teams of four characters, with each character wielding unique elemental abilities that can be combined to trigger powerful elemental reactions. Alongside story quests, exploration, puzzles, domains, and boss encounters, players can collect and upgrade a large roster of characters and weapons through Genshin Impact's gacha system while exploring an ever-expanding world supported by regular content updates. Recent additions have expanded the game's combat system with new Lunar reactions while continuing to introduce characters, regions, quests, and events.
Genshin Impact features:
⚫︎ An Expansive Fantasy World to Explore
⚫︎ An Ever-Expanding Story Across Teyvat
⚫︎ Combat Powered by Elemental Reactions
⚫︎ New Lunar Reactions and Combat Mechanics
⚫︎ A Vast Roster of Playable Characters
⚫︎ Character Progression and Team Customization
⚫︎ Regular Updates with New Regions, Quests, and Events
⚫︎ Four-Player Co-op and Challenging Boss Encounters
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 App Store |
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 HoyoPlay |
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| Free-to-Play | |||
Genshin Impact 7.0 - 7.1 Review: It's Still Worth the Experience Six Years In
The Last of the Seven is Upon Us
Six years and six Archon quest chapters later, Genshin Impact has arrived at the seventh nation, Snezhnaya, and released chapter seven for Version 7.0. Many things have happened since the Traveler met Paimon and set off on their journey through the nations of Teyvat. Characters, gameplay, and storylines have been released and added upon to create the game as it is today.
Each chapter and region had its ups and downs, some– like Inazuma and Natlan– more notable than others. But, the autonomous region of Nod-Krai showed that Genshin has not lost its touch in terms of storytelling, characters, and exploration, and Snezhnaya has so far proven to be following in its footsteps.
As we enter Genshin Impact’s seventh region, there’s a chance to look back before looking forward. How do the new characters, gameplay mechanics, and region affect the game and its quality? Has there been improvements to the game, or has Genshin become stagnant? Just considering the latest Version 7 updates, there’s already a lot of changes to examine.
Warning: Heavy spoilers for Genshin Impact’s version 7.0 ahead!
The Great Build-Up Begins Anew
One of Genshin’s key strengths has always been how it creates and builds up on the relationships between its characters and the nation they live in. In every region, these relationships are often best represented by the first people we meet as we enter the regional arc. In Snezhnaya, for example, the role was filled by Alyosha, Odette, and Vodyanitsa.
Each character allows the Traveler to connect with and sympathize with a relevant faction of that nation. Alyosha is a common citizen, Vodyanitsa is a Fae, and Odette is a mid-level Fatui with a life outside of the fantasy military. Befriending ordinary and well-meaning citizens like these three characters allowed the Traveler to adjust their perception of Snezhnaya as a whole.We are treated to a down-to-earth quest that deals with the common people’s plight and the effects of the government’s decisions.
By the end of Act 1, the Traveler remains wary of being in the Fatui’s home turf, but comes to understand that Snezhnaya is also home to ordinary people who simply wish to live their lives in peace and comfort. This is a great introduction to Snezhnaya as it gives the Traveler a more grounded view of the nation and its people, as opposed to the mainly militaristic — and oftentimes antagonistic — encounters with the Fatui in previous regions. As the story progresses, and as we meet more of the new cast of characters, it becomes easier to be invested in the troubles Snezhnaya had been facing even before the Traveler’s arrival.
Beware the Land of High Expectations
Genshin has brought the stage to the land of Snezhnaya, where the Traveler’s goal to meet all of the Archons is coming to its conclusion. This means that not only does the game have to provide a satisfying wrap-up for this goal, but it must also make a convincing argument for whatever the Traveler’s next steps would be.
The premise that started this entire journey is the Traveler’s search for their sibling, their missing powers, and the unknown goddess who is suspected of taking this power from them. To achieve these ultimate goals, finding information through the seven archons had been the main direction for the Traveler.
Over the years, the game had shown little progress in regards to these goals. Answers to these questions and revelations of the past more often than not took a backseat to the current problems faced by the Archons that the Traveler had hoped to speak to. The problems are only tangentially related to the Traveler’s questions, but they do end up revealing a little more by the end of each arc. Now that the final Archon is in sight, expectations are high and plentiful for what comes next for the Traveler.
While there wasn’t much action to be found in the 7.0 Archon quests overall, necessary information had been revealed in an entertaining way. Snezhnaya’s arc is very quickly established to be directly related to the goddess that took the Traveler’s powers — revealed previously as one of the four Shades that govern the laws of Teyvat. Even Paimon’s past and connection to Celestia, long hinted at by her design elements, is revealed.
The Chapter 7 Archon quests focused on building rapport with key figures that serve to give a reasonable build-up for the Traveler’s inevitable involvement in what’s already happening in Snezhnaya. The pay-off for this setup is imminent in Version 7.1. With our initial allies and antagonists established by the end of Chapter 7 Act 2, the next quest seems to involve a plan of action and its execution.
Whether or not the game manages to continue its streak of great storytelling remains to be seen. Of course, the higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment if the game fails to meet them. Personally, I think it would already be great if Genshin Impact manages to keep the same quality of storytelling they’ve shown so far in Nod-Krai for the rest of the Snezhnaya arc.
TPS Mode is Baby Steps in the Right Way
Before the arrival of 7.0, Genshin revealed the introduction of the Third Person Shooting mode, which caught its playerbase by surprise due to how fresh it was for Genshin Impact's combat economy. The idea of being able to utilize the Traveler outside of their Sword and the 7 elements proved appealing for most players, and gave us a glimpse into the idea that Snezhnaya would be different from the other regions solely based on the implementation of this.
However, its first-time implementation seemed to be more akin to an exploration mechanic rather than a full-fledged combat system, even if it did come with its own endgame-style challenge mode with Edge of Survival. This is mainly attributed to the limited uses of the Third-Person Shooting mechanic, with the idea that you could only play it in specific areas of the map called “Shadow Realms”, meaning it can’t be used in place of regular combat.
Still, it does prove that HoYoVerse wants to separate Snezhnaya from the other regions, and it has already done so with TPS and the rest of the Snezhnayan mechanics surrounding TPS.
A Second Home on Wheels
Early on in Snezhnaya, you can get access to a functioning train and railway system that takes you all around the land, with the train even operating in real-time and giving you ease of access to certain amenities, including being able to call the Adventurer's Guild and submit your dailies there. These little additions to an already-atmospheric mechanic make the train seem more homey, giving you more time to admire the hand-crafted views that Snezhnaya has to offer. It also gives you a sense of accomplishment, witnessing the Traveler’s journey from their humble beginnings in Mondstadt, and seeing it through to Snezhnaya’s high society.
After a while, it does lose a part of its significance due to you eventually having all the teleport waypoints in the area, but this little addition does give off its own charm and helps sell Snezhnaya even more as a region both in-lore and in-game.
Stellar Team Synthesis
Snezhnaya introduces a new variant, and therefore a new ceiling, to its combat system in the form of “Stellar Reactions.” These follow the same trend they have with Lunar Reactions in 6.0’s Nod-Krai, the Nightsoul system in 5.0’s Natlan, and even more simplified systems like Fontaine’s Bond of Life in 4.0 and the Hexerei system midway into Version 6. These are meant as capstone game-changers for the game’s combat system, and it was only around 5.0 and the Natlan era when these changes took off and changed the game drastically.
Moving on to the current state of combat, it's clear that most team comps since the time of 4.0 have been experimenting with unique mechanics that could make them stand out from the others. To elaborate, Nightsoul teams often need one another to scale higher, Hexerei teams were able to revive usage for old characters, and Lunar teams were able to transcend the original Elemental Reaction system of Genshin by further amplifying it. This forces players to think months or even years ahead just to polish up the best teams due to the scarce nature of reruns. It also, unfortunately, forces moments where players have to consider breaking the bank or be extremely selective with pulls just to clear through harder content.
Stellar reactions, namely Stellar-Conduct right now, have achieved a synthesis of all of this with its current best teams, as old characters like Yae Miko, Qiqi, Cyno, and Wriothesley can join the likes of Sandrone and Odette to achieve new heights. To put it simply, you don't need to be an expert with rotations and numbers to make a Stellar team run well, and that is the beauty of the system. To top it all off, the Traveler themselves have a spot in this team as one of the possible cornerstones for it, and not just as a side character for the team, but as a unit that can properly thrive within it.
The Abyss That Causes Spirals
To briefly summarize, Genshin Impact's endgame comes in the form of Spiral Abyss, which rewards your vertical investment into your best characters. There’s the Imaginarium Theater, which tests your whole account's horizontal investment, rewarding you for having different units built to take part in it. Finally, there's Stygian Onslaught, which rewards both vertical and horizontal investments at much higher degrees.
Keeping up with the current state of damage ceilings for Genshin as of Snezhnaya means that HoYoVerse also had to tune up the difficulty for almost all the endgame content, which give the game's current competitive scene an air of dread, as it can now be undoubtedly considered “Hard Mode”.
As of now, the game has gone into a dark age of sorts with endgame, setting up conditions and challenges that can be breezed through with the current top-of-the-line teams, or be dealt with using older, outdated teams in an experience that can range from breaking a small sweat to crawling in the mud during a storm. In addition, it doesn't help that the game modes also often require around two to three unique team compositions, which can punish players who took a break from the world of Teyvat for whatever reason.
Endgame Shills Harder Now
Due to the highly explored and triple-implemented feature of enhanced transformative damage scaling with Stellar reactions, endgame content has also been “optimized” to factor this in, and the result is that most endgame content is—simply put—too difficult for non-meta teams to power through now, either entirely or not without great difficulty.
In addition, since all endgame content has different numbers of stages or phases, they also had to find alternatives rather than just making the entirety of it catered to Stellar. Unfortunately, this means placing in enemies that also require hyper-specific team comps to deal with, which is why the last few Spiral Abyss resets have been a deadlock between Stellar-Conduct and Lunar-Charge.
This has resulted in a scenario where you are highly pressured to pull for the newest characters, or risk being short-staffed for Genshin's endgame a few patches down the line. Whether this stays the same in the upcoming patches is something that remains to be seen.
Character Buffs Are a Gamble
As mentioned earlier, certain older characters would receive buffs to their existing kit at random, which resulted in them being on par with the more modern teams. The unfortunate reality, however, is that you will never know which characters are due for a buff, and that these buffs may just be band-aid fixes before they get powercrept in the following patches by a stronger, more prominent unit that gravely overshadows them. This can be seen in the cases of both the Hexerei buffs and the Witch's Revelations, since some outliers like Razor and Yae Miko received buffs. The former makes plenty of sense, whereas the latter seemed more like a last-minute addition to the roster, but has since become a major driving force in the meta today.
In a manner of speaking, your current roster of characters has now entered a grand toss-up in which they can either be due for a powerscale and a return to the spotlight, or remain on the sidelines for a long time.
Detailed Character Designs That Don’t Break the Mold
Expectations for Snezhnaya naturally extended to their character designs, with people theorizing about how Genshin Impact will utilize the Russian inspirations they had already shown in Snezhnayan NPCs. As a nation long associated with extremely cold weather, clothing meant to represent it was the least you might expect. In the end, Genshin had decided to match the fantasy vibes of Snezhnaya with the rest of Teyvat, for better or worse.
The newest batch of characters are indeed decked in fur-lined cloaks, thick coats, and warm layers– for the men, at least. While the women of Snezhnaya enjoy the occasional patches of fur, they remain mostly exposed to the elements with generous cuts and fashionable heels. Even the ballerina character, Odette, who is quite obviously based on the classical ballet Swan Lake, could not escape having heels rather than proper ballet shoes. Alyosha, on the other hand, enjoys a full coat, gloves, and a thick, furry hood that ensures his survival as a hunter in the snowy wilderness.
Similar to Nod-Krai’s character designs, a bit of disappointment is inevitable as these female character designs sacrifice practicality and narrative cohesiveness to entice players to pull for them. Admittedly, this stylized, high-fashion approach aligns with what many players love about Genshin’s roster, prioritizing visual flair over realism. But for players seeking narrative immersion, seeing a ballerina brave sub-zero snowstorms in high heels remains a jarring disconnect in an otherwise meticulously crafted region.
Winter Wonderland Full of Awe-Inspiring Views… And Other Players’ Notes
One of the major differences in Snezhnaya compared to previous regions is the inherent multiplayer function of the primal ice constructs scattered throughout the nation. Of the various types of ice constructs, some are placed by other players and have a chance to show up in your world in single-player mode.
These ice constructs are often helpful, pointing out clues or offering items in storage devices, but they can also end up making the scene too crowded or harder to navigate. The House of Hesperides, for example, has rooms full of puzzles, and more often than not, there’s notes or constructs enough to match each puzzle. Some notes are also placed too close to certain interactive elements and get in the way of smoother gameplay rather than offer any aid.
Snezhnaya by itself has plenty of breathtaking scenery, both visually and literally. Similar to how other regions have constantly changing weather with a chance of rain, Snezhnaya has snowstorms that come and go in different areas. Some areas may even become impossible to survive in until the extreme snowstorm passes. This makes for interesting and immersive gameplay that really makes you feel like time is passing and nature is truly alive within the game.
Nation of Tragic and Theatrical Love Songs
There is little to criticize with Snezhnaya’s music and sound design. The game employs various string and keyboard instruments paired with melodic vocals to bring a sense of cold, melancholic grandeur to the region. You can hear the crunch of snow beneath your feet as you make your way to the Sanctuary of Grief, where Columbina’s haunting lullaby awaits.
Story cutscenes where the soft, almost gentle music swells with the characters’ voices and emotions add to the cold yet rich atmosphere of Snezhnaya. The region’s musical themes bring to mind the nostalgia of old music boxes and fairytales with bittersweet endings, perfectly fitting for a wintry nation ruled by the Archon of Love.
Is Genshin Impact Still Worth Playing in 2026?
Worth Coming Back to for the Story
Genshin Impact is not a perfect game, but the effort put into every update is evident even in 2026. While the main quests hit some rough patches, the quality of most of the storyline is more than enough to make up for it. Snezhnaya gives new and returning players swaths of new areas to explore, puzzles and quests to uncover. With the sixth anniversary right around the corner, there’s plenty of rewards to look forward to, as well.
Its imperfection also extends to its now-simplistic gacha system, which retains a similar stance to how it was a year back. In contrast, however, more options have been introduced to players so that the lines between Free-to-Play and Spender are more clearly defined, though the best part of the experience is still clearly gated towards those who have invested more than just time into the game.
How to Catch Up as a New Player
Catching Up 6 Years Ahead
While Genshin's current state of things is one thing, getting to that point is another, especially if you're just starting. Previously, it was stated that you would need around 90+ hours realistically to make it from Mondstadt to Nod-Krai, but this number has easily breached into the hundreds, requiring an estimated investment of around 110+ hours to get to Snezhnaya.
If you've been keeping up with the reviews on Genshin, the pipeline to catch up is still the same, but has a few more extra steps now. To reiterate, these are:
| New or Returning Player Catch-Up Guide (Snezhnaya Edition) |
|---|
| 1. For returning players, complete the Stellar Reunion Welcome-Back feature. |
| 2. Progress your Daily Commissions and Battle Pass. |
| 3. Play through the Main Story. |
| 4. Spend Resin on resources and build characters. |
| 5. Participate in the “To Temper Thyself and Journey Far” permanent event. |
| 6. Do limited-time events. |
| 7. Advance Spiral Abyss, Imaginarium Theater, and Stygian Onslaught to get some Primogems. |
| 8. Explore the world of Teyvat, especially the new region of Snezhnaya, and obtain rewards. |
Remember that each region has its own unique experience, and with 8 different regions to choose from, you can cycle to and fro to avoid burning yourself out too early.
If you want a more in-depth look at what your day-to-day will look like once you start your journey, check out our Starter Progression and Catch Up Guide here:
Starter Progression and Catch-Up Guide (2026)
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