I started playing genshin back in October of 2023 (my girlfriend at the time got me into it). After we broke up in March of 2024, I stopped playing until May of this year, so here are my thoughts as a retuning player to Genshin Impact:

The story is really good, I love Fontaine especially.

The exploration is wonderful and I love going around and doing all of the challenges and things to get those little rewards (every primogem counts). I don’t know why people say that the rewards are scarce, I’ve managed to save up a lot of primogems because I’m not trying to pull for every character

I don’t actually like the design of a good portion of the characters, which makes it easier to save. But, the characters I do like are absolutely amazing, I’m currently saving for Hu Tao whenever she comes back (I’ve made very good progress).

I’m honestly surprised at how many primogems you can actually get per day, you can get at least 2-3 pulls per day if you play for a decent amount of time.

I pretty much only pull characters off of design rather than meta relevance, I’m currently a Kaeya main since I love Kaeya, and I like that he can actually be viable.

It’s pretty easy to get free fates (both types). I usually save up my acquaint fates for a 10 pull, then I save all of that stardust to buy out the intertwined fates from the shop every month (more free pulls).

So yeah, those are my thoughts on genshin impact as a free to play returning player. I really like the rewards and the story, I feel like you can get a lot out of the game through exploration and discovery. Sure, you could get more in a quicker amount of time through spending, but I just don’t find that fun. Love the game, excited for Nod Krai (probably won’t be pulling any of the characters from it though).