Out of absolutely nowhere a long term friend of mine who's always been vocally against gacha games (despite never having played one) randomly asked if Genshin was worth picking up because he 'wanted to see what it's about'
I'm trying my hardest to give a factual but neutral response about what the game's like as well as its strengths and weaknesses, but the more I think about it the more it feels like starting this game when we're this far into the story and content pipeline would be almost insurmountable to someone who's new and completely lost
Imagine the sheer quantity of hours for nothing but the AQ, then throw in all the side content like world quests, character stories etc. and that's without even including all the events they can't do and the actual gameplay portion getting new characters, building and upgrading them, using them in combat etc