Would Honkai Star Rail dare to satire?
We can’t help but think that Planarcadia has a little air of déjà vu. Not because its settings fully play the otaku side and recall modern Japan (although this aspect was supposedly toned down due to political tensions between China and Japan, explaining the delay in this update), but because this urban aspect is somewhat reminiscent of Penacony. Only at first glance (the fact that it’s daytime changes everything), and in certain neighborhoods.
For its fourth planet, we would obviously have wanted that Honkai Star Rail stands out a little more, but Planarcadia still has its own uniqueness by swapping the phantasmagorical aspect of dreams (of Penacony) for that of a hyperconnected world, closer to our reality. Because a lot of things here revolve around online fame and excessive buzz, which is personified by Sparxie, a new character linked to Sparkle, whose kit essentially revolves around this parody of social networks.
This is also materialized by the presence of Imagenae, beings like no other, who only survive thanks to the attention we give them (we couldn’t make a better caricature of influencers). We even talk about the “absolute banger”, which shows to what extent this new world is inspired by ours (and makes us feel very, very, very old).
Why this look so serious?
While waiting to see how this world will be able to compete with what Amphoreus has been able to offer us, these two planets share one thing in common: that of making us discover a new Path for playable characters. Here we talk about Joyrepresented by Aha, with two 5-star characters planned for this update which are Yao Guang and Sparxie.
The first has all the essential support for teams focused on this Path, which undoubtedly explains why HoYoverse makes its summons portal available throughout the duration of the update. Sparxie presents herself as the first DPS of this Path, and if all her animations seem very nice, she appears less essential.
At least if we learn from the path taken by the Way of Remembrance since version 3.0. The first DPS of this Path were quickly replaced in the meta, which is certainly characteristic of many gacha (the new characters are often better than the old ones), but this replacement happened far too quickly.
And if we are delighted to see a new Path coming into play, this still raises several questions, such as whether this Path will not be predominant in future content, or whether it will be possible to build a Joy team without breaking the bank too much. Because the problem of Honkai Star Rail is to favor the releases of 5 star characters, to the detriment of 4 stars, who have been completely relegated to the background for over a year.
A free 5 star, with other rewards to boot
HoYoverse makes up for it in another way by sometimes offering certain 5-star characters (the latest version of Dan Heng, Archer…), which is a good thing. The studio is doing the same with this 4.0 update by offering you a limited 5-star character from a selection including: Jing Yuan, Dan Heng – Imbibitor Lunae, Jingliu, Acheron, Aventurine, Sparkle and Kafka (we can only advise you on these last two).
This is just one of the gifts offered in this update, which also intends to give you a free costume for Ruan Mei. And this in addition to numerous stellar jades and summon tickets to summon the new characters, and the old ones that are Black Swan, Nocterna and Hysilens, before being replaced by Sparkle,
Cérydra and Rappa in the second part of the update.
You can now download this new update of Honkai Star Rail on PC, PS5, iOS and Android.