The simple answer is that Chinese players have increased expectations and felt let down by Sony's efforts in the region. - The game did not have a Chinese audio dub - The game did not incorporate regional pricing - The game requires a PSN account Let's break this down: (2/7)

I admittedly call it Zenless mostly as it's fewer syllables.

This shocked me this morning. I was so thrown.

Yeah, they're never ever required. I know this because I play their older game where they *are*, the characters just basically don't function without them. Although they've made that less punishing to get them now, it used to be worse! But it's also a system with no coin flips.

But even then in the best-case scenario that's basically giving up having another character so you have to be really sure there's not some other more interesting character you'd want instead!

The only ones in Star Rail worth much interest in are the ones that offer other utility you can't get otherwise, like counter-master Yunli's increases her chance of being targeted, which otherwise you can only sort of get via another specific character, so kinda hampers your team options.

They usually are for sure. Genshin's is comically the worst (there's a 75% chance for a 5* to be one of the *two* featured ones, and the coin-flip guarantee resets between banners, and it used to be worse than that), and they're mostly just "bigger number" than "core functionality".

Means you can shove it in front of some poncy art critics and they'll say things like "how deep" and still not offer anything of value.

I'd like to blow their minds with the fact Fischl was the top tier support for multiple years... in Honkai Impact 3rd. She was just the best lightning support so went in every lightning team. She only really got supplanted by a shift making combined Lightning/Bleed teams a thing.

Ah, what like two thirds of my cursed gacha game intake basically consists of. Even despite the varying appearances.