YMMV / Genshin Impact

YMMVs with their own pages:

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome
• Fan Nickname
• Game Breaker
• Ho Yay
• Low-Tier Letdown (includes Scrappy Weapon)
• Memetic Loser
• Memetic Mutation
• Memetic Personality Changes (Contains Memetic Badass, Memetic Troll, Memetic Psychopath).
• Scrappy Mechanic
• Shipping (also includes shipping-related subtropes)
• That One Attack
• That One Boss (also includes Goddamned Boss)
• That One Sidequest
• The Woobie (includes Iron Woobie and Jerkass Woobie)

A-C

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Given how the cast manages to outsmart the guards by relying on Sumerian tendency to just accept what their internet is saying without question during the Sumeru Archon Quest, it can be taken as an aesop to always check the source and cross-check any info you find on the internet.
  • Sometimes, it’s better to just let people keep their secrets. Furina was able to hold off The Prophecy that would wipe out all of Fontaine and it's people for 500 years by posing as the Hydro Archon despite merely being a human cursed with immortality, while the real Focalors used the Oratrice to gather enough Indemnidium in order to pull a Prophecy Twist to save her people. However, when the Traveler and their companions come under the mistaken belief that Furina's secret is the key to averting the prophecy, they ended up putting Furina on trial just to reveal it, only by doing so, it caused the prophecy to advance forward, and if it wasn't for Focalors' Heroic Sacrifice, then Traveler and their allies would have effectively doomed Fontaine. Unfortunately, it turns out the trial itself is part of the prophecised chain of events, so it was very much unavoidable, even disregarding the fact that this whole thing might've been avoided had Freminet recovered the first tablet and arrived at the opera house sooner.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • One of the monikers you can earn during the Windtrace event is "Master Baiter", which has a much less appropriate homophone.
  • The act of applying Hydro to the targets being described as "making enemies wet" has invited its fair share of jokes. This is especially true when using Barbara or Nilou, whom both have an elemental skill that gives a watery aura.
  • Cloud Retainer refers to food as "edibles", which in recent time is more commonly associated with food laced with marijuana.
  • Nilou asks the Traveler if they want to play a clapping game in the Serenitea Pot. "Clapping" in the modern day is slang for a sexual action.
• Adorkable:
  • For a guy who resembles an adult man in his mid-20s at the very least, most of the fandom agrees that Zhongli is quite adorable due to his charmingly terrible spending habits, occasional absent-minded tendencies, and his hatred of seafood and the reason behind it.
  • Raiden Ei, the Electro Archon, turns out to be just as much of an adorable dork as Zhongli is, continuing the Running Gag of the Archons being broke and Mora-less, her adorable reactions to seeing some of Inazuma's changes, and acknowledging the Traveler and Paimon as her new friends.
  • Sucrose. She's small, shy, and wears glasses, which is a recipe for Moe. Add in how she geeks out over alchemy and you get an utterly precious character.
  • Tartaglia of all people has his moments, namely his increasingly-desperate attempts to maintain his cover story as a "toy salesman" just so he can protect his little brother's innocence.
  • Enjou has also attracted this response from the fandom due to his Affably Evil personality and his self-aware Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain status, as well as his lack of desire to do anything really evil and how much he genuinely likes the Traveler. Many fans wish he could pull a Heel–Face Turn in the future.
  • Neuvillette, the stoic and dignified Chief Justice of Fontaine and the Hydro Dragon Sovereign has his moments of dorkiness, like actually taking Paimon's silly ideas into consideration, the fact that he's really into tasting water, thinking you're trying to kill him by bringing him into a desert, and getting defensive over the fact that he's the Hydro Dragon whose sadness makes it rain quite often.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Alhaitham's unusually ridiculous behavior towards Kaveh. The crux of the major rift between the two is Kaveh's guilt complex, with which he copes by accepting unhealthy amounts of hardship for the sake of others. Alhaitham told Kaveh it would destroy him, to which Kaveh responded by breaking off their friendship. It's how he ended up so indebted to Dori, and thus so penniless he ended up rooming with Alhaitham despite their falling out. On the one hand, it's easy to see Alhaitham's jabs towards Kaveh as mean-spiritedly rubbing in the fact that he was right. On the other hand, Kaveh has trouble accepting pure kindness, and will try to pay it back even when he can't necessarily afford to. The main thing keeping him from doing the same when Alhaitham does the occasional nice thing for him is his frustration with Alhaitham's pettiness. It's possible that he's deliberately keeping Kaveh too angry and frustrated with him to feel like he owes him anything in order to avoid feeding the latter's guilt complex, thereby steering Kaveh's focus towards rebuilding his finances in a situation where he'd normally be too caught up with trying to pay Alhaitham back.
  • Are Arlecchino's reforms her breaking the cycle of abuse present under Crucabena or is she no better than her predecessor? Those who believe the latter point out how, even if conditions are improved, she is still raising the orphans under her to become child soldiers who constantly risk losing their life. Furthermore, given the bad circumstances many were in, becoming a soldier for their savior is much more preferable than sold into slavery, and are effectively being taken advantage of. Also, those from the House the Traveler have encountered are clearly not the most savory individuals, such as Efim or Trofin. Those who believe the former point out how Arlecchino isn't exactly able to stop those in the House turning into agents unless they break away from the Fatui, which would certainly jeopardize their safety, and can only improve their time as children in the House. Arlecchino also appears to have been appointed only recently, thus she has had little time to truly improve conditions, and most of the operatives encountered were likely raised under Crucabena, which is reflected in their disposition.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Chiori’s shoes have been decried as being unrealistic due to how they have a gap in between the heel and the sole. Except such shoes do in fact exist, as they’re called heelless shoes.
  • One of Xianyun’s idle animations has her activating a device that floats and spins, until she opens it up and releases what appears to be puffed corn from it. It may look like another one of her Complexity Addiction inventions, but it’s actually an old fashioned pressure cooker from days long past.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Lyney and Furina are much more divisive in South Korea due to their more androgynous designs, which aren't very well received in South Korea, especially among men.
• Angst? What Angst?: After completing "The Gaze From a Certain God", you can return to the Adventurers' Guild in Sumeru City to ask if Katheryne is okay, to which she responds with confusion at the topic, but brushes it off as a non-issue, despite getting stabbed in the back by a Corps of Thirty soldier earlier when she was possessed by Nahida. The Traveler deduces that the previous Katheryne puppet may have been replaced after being damaged beyond repair.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The Frostarm Lawachurl fought in the last challenge of Contending Tides was anti-climatically easy when compared to the other challenges before it, mainly because of one challenge-specific gimmick: the auras. Standing in them for a while builds up power until you're able to unleash a damaging shockwave by hitting the Lawachurl, which takes a large chunk of its health away even when protected by its Cryo armor. It was so easy that people defeated it with Amber solo on the hardest difficulty setting.
  • From both a gameplay and story perspective, La Signora goes down too easily. As a boss, not many of her attacks do considerable damage, with her tactics aiming mainly towards wearing the party down through the hazardous floors and extreme temperatures, both of which can be counteracted with any decent healer, making for a fight that can be irritating, but not particularly hard. Storywise, she was built up as a supremely powerful threat the Traveler was nowhere near in the league of yet, only for her to be taken out without issue a mere two chapters after her debut, and then get done in by a single attack from the Raiden Shogun.
  • The fight may be visually striking, but the story version of The All-Devouring Narwhal, unfortunately, didn't live up to the community's expectations after all the foreshadowing in the Archon Quest. The fight itself is nothing to write home about since its mechanics is similar to the Wenut, being untargettable while it's swimming underground or in the air and Neuvillette bypasses the Pneumaousia gimmick needed to stun it for the Traveler. The boss can't even be defeated; the fight is immediately cut short after the first stage transition as Skirk appears before teleporting it (and Childe) away. After being built up as a powerful monster, its intimidating aura immediately diminished when Skirk reveals that it's merely a pet of her master that only indirectly fulfilled The Prophecy. It's generally agreed that the boss killed the pacing of an otherwise brilliant finale for the Fontaine Arc.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Fans complained about the fact that from version 3.1 to 3.6, all three map updates consisted of new desert maps, which look mostly the same (compared to Inazuma's map updates consisting of very different islands, followed by Enkanomiya and the Chasm) and are boring to traverse. In addition, the desert maps featured a lot of emphasis on ruins and underground caves, and at the time, there was no underground map yet, making underground exploration annoying since it was easy to get lost inside countless similar-looking corridors. The general atmosphere of the desert, while accurate to real-life deserts, was also very discouraging. This caused a large number of players to become burnt out by the desert exploration, and the release of Fontaine was a relief for them.
  • Chapter IV, Act 3 of the Archon Quest takes place almost entirely in the Fortress of Meropide, and is universally considered to be a pointless slog and the low point of an otherwise well-written Archon Quest. First, Meropide consists of several floors, connected by a different elevator for each two floors, which makes it confusing to navigate. Even though there are Teleport Waypoints on most floors, the quest will often require you to go to places on a floor opposite of the Waypoint or elevator's location. Having to run back and forth, especially in gloomy prison corridors with repetitive background music, is extremely unpleasant. In addition, on each day of the quest, Paimon will ask you what you want to investigate, giving you several dialogue options, but regardless of what you pick, Paimon will disagree with your choice and force you to do what the game wants you to. Finally, the actual results of the investigations on the "hidden rules" of the prison turn out to be very anticlimatic and ultimately useless to the plot of Fontaine: the strange food is simply Sigewinne being well-intentioned despite the actual results of her cooking, and the bottles of what seems to be blood are Fonta's strange and ineffective marketing tactics.
• Ass Pull: The blame for Inazuma's problems is initially laid at the feet of the Raiden Shogun, who is clearly so out of touch with her people that she is seemingly ignoring several large-scale disasters. However, starting with the third act of Inazuma's Archon Quest, practically every major disruption or calamity in Inazuma, while enabled by Ei's negligence, is suddenly revealed to have been instigated by the Fatui. From the Vision Hunt Decree to the unsealing of the Tataragami on Yashiori Island, it's apparently all the Fatui's evil plans. While much of it can be attributed to Scaramouche and his hatred of humans and his "mother", not all of it can, as Fatui meddling in Inazuma's affairs even goes as far back as 400 years ago, when Il Dottore overloaded Tatarasuna's furnace and turned Scaramouche from just a young man with mommy issues into a Misanthrope Supreme out to destroy his home country. Worse, compared to Mondstadt^note where they exploited an existing crisis to lure out Barbatos, Liyue^note where they made a deal with Morax and helped him act out his scenario, and Sumeru^note where, rather than follow the Tsaritsa's plans, Dottore helped Scaramouche ascend to godhood, and only chose to obtain the Gnoses so he wouldn't return home empty-handed, there's no obvious purpose behind the Fatui's centuries-long campaign to destabilize Inazuma, not even to the Cryo Archon's goal of obtaining all seven Gnoses, as Signora's trip to Tenshukaku is a completely separate endeavor from Scaramouche's Delusion factory. In the end, Scaramouche obtains the Gnosis almost by accident; the Traveler charges into his facility alone and succumbs to a concentrated dose of Tataragami curse, and Yae Miko suddenly swoops in and trades him the Gnosis to get him to leave. Since none of the Fatui's actions in Inazuma make any sense except if they were For the Evulz, it's hard to see them as anything but a way to give Inazuma a villainous entity to which the Raiden Shogun can appear at least comparatively sympathetic.
• Awesome Art: From a mobile game perspective, the overall graphics, landscapes, visual effects and character models are commonly praised. And while cel-shading isn't a new concept, it nicely fits the game's Animesque aesthetics. The high quality of the visuals is sometimes set as a new benchmark, or mentioned to be something that isn't expected for free-to-play titles.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • Childe, the boss of the Golden House, is by far one of the better fights in the game: no strange combat gimmicks, no unfair attacks or status effects, instead having varied movesets that get more and more intense as the battle goes on, culminating in a One-Winged Angel final form that is a spectacle to the eyes to see and fight, combined with an intense battle theme complete with Ominous Latin Chanting. Oh, and one of his attacks involves launching a giant whale made out of water at you.
  • The Raiden Shogun, despite being the game's first Hopeless Boss Fight takes the above boss up to eleven in just a single form, teleporting around a battlefield constructed just for you and unleashing flurries of fast, hard hitting attacks that push your reflexes to their limit, culminating in her sealing the skills and bursts of everyone bar the Traveler away, all while a rapid, tense techno string track plays in the background, set to what sounds like a rapidly beating human heart.
    • Raiden Ei's story quest Chapter 2 involving The Electro Archon overcoming her own trauma & past tragedies. This involves her fighting against her own puppet self, sealing herself and her puppet, the domain's weekly boss in The Realm of Euthymia. Gameplay-wise, The Raiden Shogun Puppet still strikes you like a lightning. The puppet has obtained new moves that creates illusions. The Shogun's Baleful Shadowlord phase transforms her form to be more intimidating while the background music enters new dynamic riffs. Her "The Final Calamity" is something to behold before you need to charge Flowers of Remembrance to shield yourself against this attack.
• Awesome Ego:
  • Arataki "I'm Just That Good" Itto has received this status and more. He's strong, loud and boisterous, but that's undermined by his lack of luck and recognition in-universe. The fandom, however, loves Itto for it and will frequently cut him some slack. It helps that he's a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass.
  • (Madam) Faruzan just won't be quiet about her achievements received during her tenure in the Akademiya, being a much more experienced person than her juniors, or insisting to be called "Madam". To be fair, she really is that experienced while still caring for and doting on her juniors, so nobody out of universe is disagreeing with her soon.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Paimon, being the game's Mascot and Exposition Fairy, was bound to be this. Some argue on her favor for being adorable and having legitimately humorous moments, while others despise her obliviousness, Captain Obvious dialogue, and grating voice.
  • Scaramouche was a very popular villain for a time thanks to his unrepentant Sadist attitude, but it's that same characterization that caused fans to split on him when he pulled a Heel–Face Turn and became the Wanderer. Some sympathize with him as a Tragic Villain, while others think he was too much of a Card-Carrying Villain to suddenly pull a 180, and his redemption arc felt too rushed to justify making him playable. Another way to look at the issue is that fans like Scaramouche, but hate "The Wanderer".
  • The Raiden Shogun has had a pretty spotty reputation, with two notable periods where the fanbase was divided with her.
    • At first coming off as an impressive No-Nonsense Nemesis, her image took quite a hit when it was revealed that the Shogun seen is a puppet automaton ruling in place of the real Archon, who is shutting out the world due to trauma. As detailed under Unintentionally Unsympathetic below, it was hard to buy into her being well-intentioned but tragically misguided, as this undermines how not only did she allow the Vision Hunt Decree and a civil war to happen, but also let all of Inazuma slide into horrific mismanagement, not helped by how her first Story Quest seemingly placed her as a Karma Houdini. Many fans still sympathized with her (or rather, Ei's) tragic backstory nevertheless, citing that while the consequences of her decisions were still horrible, the unending trauma she suffered would obviously lead to someone else making such similarly horrible decisions. Her opinions improved after her second Story Quest, elaborating on the horror of the Cataclysm, placing her accountable for her lack of responsibility (if in a different way her former detractors were hoping for) and showcasing important Character Development for her throughout it.
    • However, after Scaramouche's own backstory was revealed, opinions of her reached a new divide. The initial revelation that she had created and then abandoned him for being unsuitable for her needs alone drew accusations of her being a negligent "parent" at best and abusive at worst; come the Wanderer's actual release, and it's revealed that his turn to evil is mostly because of a disaster engineered by Dottore, which she didn't attend to because she had shut herself into the Plane of Euthymia full-time that same year. This means that, contrary to prior belief that the Raiden Shogun puppet had been doing passably, Ei hadn't even been gone for a single year before a malicious actor waltzed in, caused an incident, and turned her "son" into a terrorist who would plague her country for centuries. Depending on one's viewpoint, this either makes her a victim of circumstances she couldn't have foreseen, or a criminally incompetent leader and "parent", who could have avoided all of this if she'd thought to check on the outside world even once during this time period.
  • Yae Miko was liked by most fans when she was first revealed due to being a Yae Sakura Mythology Gag and her attractive design, but opinions of her split as time went on. Her fans find her to be a charming yet brilliant chessmaster who treasures her friends and saved Inazuma when no one else could, knowing how to best utilize the people and what they were good at while minimizing losses with her deal with Scaramouche and finally talking some much needed sense into the sheltered Ei. Her detractors instead see an insufferable troll whose friendship with Ei is controlling and unhealthy, and accuse her of being a spotlight stealing Deus ex Machina who hijacked the Archon Quest and prevented potentially interesting plot points, such as Kokomi actually stepping in to stop Ei in her tracks or allowing Scaramouche and Ei to interact, from occurring. Her interactions with other characters (namely Gorou, whom she loves to tease, even having a whole route dedicated to it in his Hangout Event) are also either cute and hilarious or mean-spirited and self-absorbed.
  • Sangonomiya Kokomi has fans who enjoy her for her pretty design, unique kit, and strong, yet also kind and selfless personality along with her relationships with the Shogun (specifically Ei), Yae Miko, and the rest of the Watatsumi. However, another camp dislikes her due to her cunning war general status coming off as a largely Informed Attribute throughout the course of Inazuma, with Watatsumi spending most of the main story on the ropes while Kokomi herself ultimately contributes little to the Shogun's defeat and subsequent Heel–Face Turn; instead, Yae Miko herself is the biggest contributor to foiling Ei's plans, which was a divisive choice for reasons already listed directly above.
  • Dori is an especially notorious example. Her fans accept her as a cute, morally gray character whose money-grubbing antics are genuinely funny, sympathize with her Dark and Troubled Past of failing to accrue enough money to save her sister, and point that her many Pet the Dog moments make her, at worst, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Her haters, however, refuse to forgive her for putting Layla and Kaveh in Perpetual Poverty, and think her Freudian Excuse rings hollow in the wake of just how selfishly greedy she's become, signaling her as a Jerkass whose moments of kindness are also fueled by her greed and pragmatism. It's gotten to the point she has caused Edit Wars to break out on this very wiki, with even a special note in her folder warning editors against wrongfully adding Hate Sink to her entry, simply because Dori's haters cannot stand her at all.
  (The entry in question) NOTICE: Do not add Hate Sink to her folder. For a character to be considered one, they must lack redeeming qualities or moments of kindness. Even if Dori's less sympathetic than other characters, her Dark and Troubled Past, Healthcare Motivation and Pet the Dog entries show she has good reasons to not qualify.
  • Arataki Itto has become this in spite of being initially well received, simply because he receives much more focus than most other playable characters. As of Version 4.5 he's appeared in over half the patches since he debuted. For context, appearances for most other playable characters outside those from the latest region are extremely sporadic, with many going months or almost a year without even a minor cameo. This has made him the most recurring Inazuman character despite being far from the most popular or important. Combine this with him being deliberately obnoxious, and his presence over other popular characters from Inazuma and out feels a bit overbearing for some.
• Best Known for the Fanservice:
  • Every time Lisa is discussed, fans usually mention the climbing or grunting sounds that she makes in the Japanese dub (courtesy of Rie Tanaka) because they are borderline NSFW. This resulted into the "Moaning Lisa" phrase becoming widespread as a meme.
  • On the visual side of this, Mona takes center stage since even before we got a glimpse of her characterization and backstory, all anyone seems to talk about her are some fanservice tropes; her legs/thighs, hips, and pantyhose pants. While Mona was also memed as a poverty-stricken witch after the game was released, her fanservice tropes are still widely-known.
  • The fact that Ganyu's wardrobe seems tailor-designed to accentuate her breasts has not gone unnoticed by the fandom. Combine this with the "Cocogoat" memes and nickname associated with her, and you have a character that was pretty heavily sexualized long before she was Promoted to Playable.
  • Rosaria also qualifies here, especially after her breast size was reduced in Version 1.4; similarly to the aforementioned Mona, while other traits about her (particularly her inability to remember the name Barbatos) aren't totally forgotten about, her fanservice tropes are front-and-center whenever she gets brought up.
  • The one thing that the Raiden Shogun is known for above all else involving her character has nothing to do with who she is, but rather the fact that she pulls her sword out from her chest.
  • The reveal of Itto created a male case, with most quickly taking note of him being the most buff guy thus far and the one showing the most skin.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Windtrace is a fan-favorite event for a reason. The relatively simple mechanics allow anyone to pick it up quickly, the lack of combat means a competitive and casual player can compete on equal footing, multiplayer removes a sense of loneliness and solidarity, and with the recent updates, it has been designed to make either side enjoyable and fairer. Many wish to have Windtrace as a permanent part of the game for these reasons and for some, it has been their gateway to the multiplayer experience.
  • The Chasm is a gigantic Underground Level accessible after completing the Liyue Archon Quests. It has an astounding lot of variety in its locations and scenery, making what's essentially a giant cave a treat to explore: what starts as a generic cave with mines quickly grows to include an underground river with the game's first Fungi enemies, the underground ruins of a vanished civilization possibly connected to Khaenri'ah, and the Chasm's Nail itself, located in a giant cave with colossal unnatural rock formations that can be climbed to move from one place to the other, all while several instances of vertical descension help convey the idea of the Traveler progressively going even deeper underground. The enemies there all have the highest level allowed by the current World Level, and the Dark Mud mechanic requires working around it but does not impede your progress as much as Dragonspine's Subzero Climate and Inazuma's Balethunder; making its difficulty tough but fair. It also includes the second of Dainsleif's Archon Quests, which gives new lore concerning Khaenri'ah and its relationship with Hilichurls along with Halfdan's sacrifice.
• Better Off Sold: 1★ and 2★ weapons and artifacts become largely dead weight once you have a supply of 3★ and above, which only takes a few hours of gameplay. But you'll continue getting prodigious quantities of them from chests, because they still have a purpose—as consumable material to power up the weapons and artifacts you're actually using. The item-leveling interface will helpfully fill its slots with these low-tier items automatically.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • During 3.2, the player could encounter Tartaglia in Chinju Forest, apparently on the lookout for a mischievous mujina, until it's quickly made apparent that it's all just a game set up by Yoimiya. This has absolutely nothing to do with anything that was going on in that particular patch, and mostly seemed to give the fan-favorite a token appearance while his banner was being run.
  • In Ayato's Story Quest, we're supposed to free Shinnojou from a cage. We defeat the guys who imprisoned him, but before we can grab the key, a bake-danuki suddenly appears, takes it away and starts hiding. The player has to chase it around for a while and identify its hiding places. It goes on for about 2 minutes, depending on how quickly the player can find it. After retrieving the key, the plot resumes normally and this incident is never brought up again.
  • The Thorny Cyst is a mini-boss found in an out of the way underwater cave in Fontaine, being similar to the Miasmic Tumor and Marana in terms of gimmicks. However, there is no information to be found on it anywhere and is never mentioned again after being defeated outside of an achievement.
• Breather Boss:
  • The loot bosses generally range from decently challenging (the Hypostases) to frustrating (the Oceanid), but the three variants of the Regisvine (Pyro, Cryo, and Electro) are almost laughably easy in comparison. Most of their attacks are easy to dodge, they can be stunned for long periods just by hitting their weak spots enough times, and their lack of mobility, healing or invulnerability means that they can go down quickly, which makes farming Ascension materials for Pyro, Cryo, and Electro characters a breeze.
  • The Electro Hypostasis is by far the easiest Hypostasis. Most of its attacks aren't difficult to dodge, and it makes itself vulnerable for at least a few seconds after each one (unlike the Geo version, which likes to sit on its pillars where you can't reach it). For the spinning-lasers attack, you can just run to the middle and pummel it the whole time without taking any damage, as long as you dash out when its attack finishes. Its most annoying attack, where it spams high-damage cubes around the arena, can be cheesed by using platform creating characters such as a Geo-aligned Traveler, Zhongli, or Albedo to make a platform to stand on. Xiangling—who you get for free after finishing 3 floors of the Abyss—can easily solo this boss, and just as easily one-cycle its final stage with her Elemental Burst, earning an extra achievement.
  • While not necessarily an easy boss, Tartaglia is definitely among the simpler Weekly Bosses to deal with thus far. Whereas other bosses have gimmicks that make damaging them difficult^note  Stormterror requiring players to knock him down before being able to hit his weak point massive HP pools^note  Azhdaha, or That One Attack^note  Signora's Walking Wasteland ability and how a lot of her moves, such as the hurricane in her second phase, can make it worse , Tartaglia's boss fight is a simple, three phase one-on-one fight, and provided you have a good DPS, you can tear through his health in the first two phases relatively quickly. And while his third phase where he activates Foul Legacy is a bit bulkier, it's not nearly to the extent of the other bosses, and aside from the ability to Flash Step, he shifts into more of a Mighty Glacier with moves that are fairly easy to avoid provided you're careful, making it easier to land attacks while avoiding his.
• Breather Level:
  • The Spiral Abyss in version 3.1 was toned down in difficulty compared to its predecessor in version 3.0, allowing more people to capitalize on its rewards.
  • The initial areas of Fontaine are this compared to those of Inazuma and Sumeru, with less threatening enemies and geography. Even the underwater segments are meant to be relaxing.
• Broken Base:
  • Is Aether or Lumine the canonical Traveler? Any discussion about this just devolves into an endless debate ceaselessly repeating their names without ever reaching an agreement. Not helping matters is that Aether and Lumine are (understandably) some of the game's most popular characters, leading to ardent defenses and arguments about who is more or less popular and "deserves" the position more. A third camp argues that Genshin Impact has no canonical protagonist and believes it should be up to the player like in the game, though this is not helped by promotional material and official uploads of in-game cutscenes routinely depicting Aether as the Traveler and Lumine as the leader of the Abyss Order, which also results in debates about how canonical they are. Fans have proposed many potential solutions for this, such as having multiple uploads of official art and cutscenes so that both Aether and Lumine can have their moment to shine without bias in either's favor.
  • The writing. Supporters maintain that the writing is simple, charming, and immersive, and find an intricate and engrossing Jigsaw Puzzle Plot that explains nearly every detail about the world and its characters, with lore scattered about that makes many scenes in the narrative more powerful and easier to appreciate, allowing players of all ages to find something they enjoy about it. Detractors counter that the writing is bogged down by Purple Prose, overwritten storytelling, bloated dialogue, presumes the Viewers Are Goldfish even in the same conversation, and suffers from a shocking amount of Show, Don't Tell for something so story-driven, and find an obtuse and verbose Kudzu Plot that dumps lore in the most obscure and random of places (or worse, in limited time events) and is next to impossible to keep track of without reading every single line of it, not helped by the fact that dialogue and cutscenes are always unskippable. This comes to a head regarding Inazuma's Archon Quest, in which there was so much to cover that next to all of the characters' motivations in the final act are explained only in different quests that can only be accessed after completing it; you either like that these addendums exist or think they should have just been part of the quest proper.
  • The lack of a proper endgame outside of Spiral Abyss has created a huge rift among the Genshin fandom, and to some extent, the game itself, especially when coinciding with the Casual-Competitive Conflict. Detractors abhor how the game turns into an endless grindfest for the best artifacts and weapons, offering no real reward for players who work into maxing out their characters (or worse, threw a bunch of money at it) and leaving them with little reason to continue playing. Supporters instead see it as inherent to how the game was meant to be played, as it is very story and character focused, and the rolling update system is what is meant to keep players engaged, not any permanent endgame fixture (tellingly, these people rarely if ever touch the Spiral Abyss). It doesn't help that HoYoverse has said that there is no planned endgame content for combat other than the Spiral Abyss, while many combat modes added in updates are Temporary Online Content locked behind each version's events, while the few that persist, like Genius Invokation TCG, have nothing to do with combat and offer little in the way of rewards.
  • While the game has had Subbing Versus Dubbing debates for some time (see below), it became considerably heated by the time Fontaine came out. Those playing in English find the performances of characters such as Neuvillette, Navia, and Furina better than those in Japanese, while others think the Japanese dub is better because it has some of the most recognizable anime voice actors like Rie Takahashi and Hiroshi Kamiya.
  • The game choosing to kill off NPCs rather than playable characters is a point of contention among the playerbase. Some are ok with it as it avoids Gameplay and Story Segregation unlike its sister game Honkai Impact 3rd, where characters are killed off despite still being playable. Others feel that it lessens the emotional impact of certain scenes in the story because of how the game spends so little time investing in the NPCs that it kills off, to the point where players won’t really care when they die.
  • While leaks are naturally going to be this wherever they appear, they are even more of a heated issue due to how routinely the next updates get leaked. One group argues that they build hype for future versions and help players decide when to spend their Primogems, while another group says they ruin the surprises meant to be contained within the update, especially when they are story spoilers that can then be used to shut down fan theories and predictions^note This is considered, by both sides to be a bad move, and a lot of people who like leaks generally do steps to share them without spoiling others, like using the spoiler feature on Reddit or the line break feature on Tumblr, though this doesn't stop a lot of people from sharing leaks without warning, to the point where a lot of sites like the Fandom wiki and even This Very Wiki ban leak sharing entirely. The fact that leaks occur with such alacrity and often escape the places they are meant to be contained in makes it worse: some take it as an inevitable trait to a game that packages data well in advance of its actual usage, while others wish HoYoverse did more in stamping them out when they appear.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • The revelation of Venti being Barbatos in human form is no longer a surprise to those who have read the prologue of the supplemental webcomic that was released before the game came out. The game itself also makes it pretty obvious, especially with the illustrations in Venti's song cutscenes depicting Barbatos with the same distinctive hair.
  • Zhongli is Rex Lapis in human form. The Foreshadowing towards this was predictable and unsubtle enough that can have the Traveler lampshade this, stating that they always suspected it.
  • Dodo-King from the "Midsummer Island Adventure" event is Klee's mom, Alice. This is already obvious to fans who paid attention to the backstories because Alice is the only other person who understands that Dodoco is important to Klee; she gave it to her child in the first place!
  • Much like Venti and Zhongli, The Reveal that Nahida is the Dendro Archon is not very surprising as Chapter 3, Part 2 showcased her unusual powers such as disappearing out of nowhere, withstanding the Sabzeruz Festival dream, and remembering details within it far more than the Traveller and Paimon could. Paimon even lampshades this. In this case, it's so transparent of a twist that it can be argued that Hoyoverse wasn't trying to hide it, especially considering that Nahida fits the design pattern that was established by previous Archons. This is just as well since the same chapter has several actual twists that are properly Foreshadowed (to the point that there's a minigame where the player puts the clues together themselves) but more likely to surprise the player. The only reason it doesn't qualify as The Un-Twist is that there's no misdirection.
  • Many people correctly predicted that Neuvillette is the Hydro Dragon long before The Reveal, as it was stated that it rains in Fontaine whenever the Hydro Dragon is sad, and immediately after an intense discussion between Navia and Neuvillette regarding the death of Callas, it started raining.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict:
  • The "Advanced Mechanics" conflict revolves around gameplay tricks such as animation cancelling and glitches. Casuals think that these tricks are just optional or niche because not everyone has the time or effort to learn them. Competitive players are more active in discovering and using these tricks, often justifying how glitches and Lag Cancel help them kill enemies faster during Timed Missions. The divide is more evident when miHoYo fixes some of these tricks; players who actively used them get disappointed, while others don't mind if they're patched out.
  • The "Direct Playstyle" conflict can be observed in Co-op mode. While casuals don't mind what the other players are using, competitive players are focused more on the metagame and the idea of clearing the Domains as quickly as possible. The latter group frowns upon, and might even kick out players who use Low-Tier Letdown characters (such as Amber) or those who bring the wrong element in a Domain.
• Catharsis Factor: Throughout the Sumeru Archon Quest, where see firsthand what an utter bastard Azar is, with him using his authority to ban the Sabzeruz Festival due to his dislike of Kusanali and the arts, placing Sumreru city in a Samsara with no care for the health or well-being of it's citizens, the horrendous abuse he and the Sages put Nahida through, and spearheading a nation-wide conspiracy that puts numerous people in harm's way for the sake of uplifting Scaramouche to godhood because of his inability to accept that it's the fault of him and the other Sages for the Akademiya's lack of academic progress by trying to suppress Nahida, instead pinning it all on her. So seeing Azar's smugness pave way for panic when tricked into thinking Nahida has escaped by the Akasha Terminal and subsequently confronted by a pissed off Cyno had a lot of fans cheering. The only thing that lessens this in the view of many is that Nahida merely banished him and his co-conspirators from Sumeru City instead of something much harsher, a view shared by characters In-Universe.
• Character Tiers:
  • Tiering the characters, for Genshin, is based on the endgame contents, chiefly the Spiral Abyss mode. While virtually all characters can be viable for general explorations or fighting bosses, Spiral Abyss mode is a Timed Mission with rewards based on how quick the player finishes the levels, which means high damaging potential is favored over other capabilities/roles. In this case, the characters are tiered based on either their capability of dealing high damage, or supporting other characters to make them deal higher damage.
  • As mentioned in Complacent Gaming Syndrome, Pyro characters tend to be tiered higher than others because the Pyro Resonance effect gives increased ATK for the whole party, and Pyro powerfully reacts with virtually all other elements.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • The Cryo Regisvine could be safely cheesed by using Xiangling to drop Goubas from a cliff directly above the arena, allowing players to chip off its HP even before it wakes up. The devs eventually caught on to the trick and patched it out in Version 1.1.
  • To some extent, a Ruin Hunter can be beaten easily. Staying above ground-level triggers it into going into bombardment mode, in which case its weak spot will be exposed. Unlike the other Automatons, a single hit at the Ruin Hunter's core instantly stuns it. The timing is surprisingly generous so you have time to climb up an elevated point, shoot it down, deal damage, and repeat all without losing a single hitpoint.
  • A popular but controversial tactic in the initial Windtrace event's Prop Hunt minigame exploited Mona's sprinting ability, which makes her mostly invisible and can be maintained indefinitely if you just stand still holding the sprint button. The strategy wasn't foolproof, since some ripples are visible and hunters have some player-detecting abilities, but it was often better than actually using the disguises and other intended mechanics to such a degree that an Obvious Rule Patch that forces Mona (and Ayaka, who was released afterwards but has a similar ability) to run standing up was added to Windtrace reruns.
  • The fifth and sixth Unusual Hilichurl fights in the Mimi Tomo event (located in Tianqiu Valley and Cape Oath respectively) could be exploited by Jean's Gale Blade, which players can use to push them into the deep water and inflict a One-Hit Kill, skipping the entire fights.
• Common Knowledge:
  • In the pre-release period only, it was generally thought that the game would slant heavily, if not exclusively, towards having female characters, thus its Fan Nickname of "Breath of the Waifu" was born. This was mostly born due to the early trailers only showing female characters, such as Amber, and miHoYo's previous works like Honkai Impact 3rd having an extreme majority female cast. This idea generally persisted even after Aether, the male traveler, was revealed, and after the beta versions featured other male characters like Kaeya. It died down post-release due to the abundance of male characters who quickly became fan-favourites such as Diluc, Razor, Zhongli, and Tartaglia.
  • The fandom usually identifies Keqing as a Cat Girl, but she doesn't have beastly features, contrary to popular belief. Her "cat ears" are actually just sharp hair buns, and aren't like the Katzlein (actual Cat Folk with cat ears and tail) which include Diona and her father Draff. Jokes have been made about the subject in promotional materials with Keqing chasing birds in an advertisement for a park in China, but she isn't physically part cat.
  • As evidenced by these Google Trends graphs, there is a confusion or a misconception regarding a weapon's name. Players mostly use "Prototype Animus" (especially since "animus" is a Latin word) even if the game actually used "Prototype Aminus". This misconception died down after Version 1.2 changed the weapon's name to "Prototype Archaic".
  • In the Snezhnaya Chapter of the "Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview" video, the shadowy figure sitting on the throne is commonly thought to be the Cryo Archon Tsaritsa. However, the "Appearing Characters" section of the video states that the character in question is the Harbinger Pulcinella.
  • When the game was still new, Oz is thought to be a reference to L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz. But as more players read Fischl's lore, this misconception slowly died down because Oz's full name is "Ozvaldo von Hrafnavines", which is far from the full name of Baum's ficitional character.
  • Each of the seven elements is championed by a Dragon Sovereign. Though Mondstadt, Liyue, Sumeru, and Fontaine have all either explicitly named their Sovereigns or at least put forth a likely candidate, Inazuma conspicuously has not. It's often proposed by the playerbase is that it is the serpentine god Orobaxi, the Watatsumi Omikami, who was slain by the Raiden Shogun in ages past. While compelling in theory, it's highly unlikely for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that they have already been all but proven to be a god of Celestia via extensive experimentation by the Enkanomiyans. They had difficulty transplanting Orobaxi's coral onto Bathysmal Vishaps despite the latter's raw adaptive ability, and theorized that this is because Orobaxi's powers as a god from the "Human Realm" conflicted with the natural elemental power of the Vishaps from the "Light Realm". Add onto this the fact that they sided with the Enkanomiya's humans over the Vishaps, and the fact that they were punished for reading a book that contains knowledge that should already be known to the Sovereigns, and the theory quickly falls apart.
• Complete Monster:
  • Azar is the cruel and hypocritical Grand Sage of Sumeru.Before the events of the Sumeru Archon Quest, Azar willingly collaborated with Il Dottore of the Fatui to create a new God of Wisdom to replace Lesser Lord Kusanali, who has been imprisoned for the past 500 years due to the Sages refusing to accept her as Sumeru's Archon. His Establishing Character Moment has him criticize Nilou and shut down the Sabzeruz Festival due to his own hatred of the arts along with the festival's connection to Lesser Lord Kusanali. Afterwards, Azar uses the Akasha to loop the day of the festival to extract the dreams of the populace of Sumeru City in addition to placing Nilou as the host of the dream loop due to his sheer pettiness; this would have caused countless deaths if successful. Later on, Azar manipulated the radical Eremite groups by creating false rumors of King Deshret's return to kidnap several exiled scholars in order to extract information from their minds; this, along with the dream extraction, was done to ascend Scaramouche to become the new God of Wisdom. It is also revealed that Azar planned to use the Divine Knowledge capsule to dispose of Alhaitham. Azar also used the Akasha to spy on Cyno and imprisoned the Amurta and Vahumana Sages for refusing to go along with his plans.
  • Dougier is an inmate at the Fortress of Meropide who believes everybody sent there, himself included, is irredeemable. Dougier uses that as an excuse, along with some liquified fear he found, to instill his own ideal of punishment onto others, forcing multiple inmates into joining his Beret Society and establishing rules that instills distrust in one another while also punishing groups of five for the actions of one individual. Dougier also starves his subordinates to death and makes it so the only way they can even get food and water is to rat on each other. It is shown that Dougier's actions severely affect his subjects mentally, with many of them being too scared to speak. When he is caught for his crimes, not only does Dougier use the fortress's own gardemeks he stole against Wriothesley, but he also tries to use the fortress's rules, the same ones he broke himself, to talk Wriothesley out of punishing him. Dougier even attempts to shoot the Traveler when he can't hit Wriothesley.
  • Babel Tanit, the Matriarch of the Tanit Tribe, at first presents herself as a benevolent leader who welcomes the Traveler after they are invited by Jeht. In truth, Babel is a Manipulative Bitch who only allowed the invite because she saw an opportunity to use the Traveler for her own gain, having previously corrupted Jeht into her own personal assassin to kill the leaders before her; colluded with some Fatui mooks; betrayed said mooks; tricked the Traveler and Jeht into fighting one another under the claim that they had been betrayed by the other; and then sent her Tanit Falcons to finish them off. The instant Jeht realizes Babel's treachery and confronts her in vengeance, Babel reveals she had the Traveler and Jeht find the Eternal Oasis for her so she could use it to attack Sumeru City and overthrow the Akademiya and Dendro Archon, before commanding the entire tribe to kill Jeht and the Traveler while she runs off to her quarters, leading to Jeht killing the entire tribe to get to her. Even after all the claims of caring for Jeht like a daughter, Babel reveals in her last moments that she had some scouts message every other Eremite tribe about Jeht being a traitor, forever rendering her an outcast and proving that she never loved her, only claiming to in an attempt to make Jeht easier for her to kill.
• Continuity Lock-Out: While this game shares no direct continuity with the previous miHoYo games (i.e. you don't have to follow the previous games' story to understand this game's), it has several things that refer to those games, particularly Honkai Impact 3rd. As this game served as the first miHoYo game for many, newcomers were confused as to why some players are calling Genshin characters with Honkai-related fan nicknames. Fan theories are also affected by this, since long-time Honkai fans would usually reference concepts from miHoYo's older games, stuff that newcomers aren't initially aware of.

D-F

• Demonic Spiders:
  • Any enemy with Cryo attacks can be irritating to fight, especially during Timed Missions. Being inflicted with the "Wet" status effect once you've been marked with Cryo (or vice versa) will freeze you solid for a short period. What makes it worse is that Cryo enemies are often found near bodies of water or paired with Hydro enemies, making it easier for them to freeze you. And then there's the issue of fighting them when it's raining...
  • In general, Goddamned Bats can become Demonic Spiders in the right (or wrong?) situation or environment. Electro Cicins are Goddamned Bats and are mostly annoyance. But during rain or around bodies of water, the Electro-charged reaction is going to eat through your health, making them legitimately threatening. Or when the area had some burning grass from Pyro slimes, resulting in constant Overload reactions.
  • Stonehide Lawachurls, while not considered an "elite" boss, are arguably more intimidating than any of them, due to its strong Geo energy shield and fast-paced attacks. They like to use jump attacks that send shockwaves in all directions. If you manage to avoid getting squashed and aren't in the hard-to-predict line of fire of the shockwaves, its next attack (literally two seconds later) will probably get you... and so will the next attack after that. Abyss Mages each have an exploitable weakness that lets you break their shield quickly, but the Geo-type has none, so it's a slow process, and once it finally breaks, usually after a lot of claymore hits (or one explosive barrel, though there probably won't be one nearby most of the time), you won't have much time before it creates a new shield. Taking them out quickly requires a powerful combo of Elemental Burst attacks, which is hard to pull off without the right combination of characters.
  • Hydro Mimics do a lot of damage per attack, each with a specific gimmick: the crabs constantly strafe around you and make difficult targets to hit with precise attacks, the hawks sit far out of melee reach, only coming down to knock you aside with a hard-hitting swoop attack, the boar is tanky and can often run off the battlefield with its charge attack where it can heal back up with little retaliation, the squirrels simply hit hard and have a lot of health while being very agile, the ducks have a constant Hydro damage AoE field around them and move very fast to make it difficult to keep your distance from them, and while the cranes are arguably the least threatening of the Oceanid spawns, as they seldom move and attack slowly, they are often content with simply sitting in the outskirts of the fight and barraging you with ranged wave attacks. The worst one, however, is probably the giant bird, which can best be described as a super slime whose bounce attacks are difficult to avoid and deal more damage than anything else in the fight. To add insult to injury, the giant bird and the frog will explode upon death, which covers a very wide area that is nigh impossible to flee from without getting hurt; the other "reliable" way of avoiding the explosion is to time a plunging attack above the water just right so that the explosion just passes over you while you're submerged underwater, but even that method carries the risk of you drowning if your stamina is low. They're not exclusive to the Oceanid's boss fight, either: you'll have to fight a couple of waves of them in Zhongli's first Story Quest, a prerequisite quest for unlocking Enkanomiya, and in certain floors of the Spiral Abyss.
  • Whopperflowers are annoying because if their elemental charge-up is not interrupted, they rapidly fire elemental volleys, leaving the player with a little opportunity to retreat. A worse case happens when you're faced off against multiple of them at the same time, since it's easy to get stun-locked, knocked backed or killed by their ranged attacks coming from multiple directions. They also have the ability to burrow and reappear behind your character, making them annoying to hit.
  • Fatui Skirmishers, especially ones other than the Anemo and Geo versions. Their main gimmick is that they can create elemental shields for a short while after initiating combat or losing enough health. Unlike other shields used by other enemies, however, these shields are incredibly resilient to all forms of damage except one particular element they're weak to, meaning if you don't have the "correct" element in your party, you'll be chipping away at them for a disproportionately long time. The only upside is that they'll still take damage to their actual health for as long as the shield is up, but to give an idea of how absurdly durable their shields are, they're more likely to die outright before their shields break without the required element.
  • The meteorite challenges during the Unreconciled Stars event turned Hilichurl Shooters into these. They tend to spawn on the very edge of or just outside the ring the challenge takes place, making it difficult for players with ranged DPS to effectively retaliate against them. Hilichurl Shooters during these challenges also always fire volleys of five arrows at a time and are imbued with a specific element, which can lead to you getting Overloaded or Superconducted in the back by a difficult to avoid arrow volley that you can't fight back against.
  • Abyss Mages in general hit hard and cannot be injured or interrupted until their barrier is broken, and facing one (or worse, more than one) of them while you are distracted can spell trouble, but Hydro Abyss Mages are most players' least favorite mage flavor. They frequently launch homing bubbles that follow you for several seconds, and immobilize you for several more seconds if they hit you (and they lounge in midair taunting you the whole time). To add to the annoyance, their shield regeneration attack surrounds them with more bubbles, and unless you attack from a distance, you risk running into said bubbles and get stunlocked... again. Before playable Dendro characters were introduced, they also had the toughest shield of all Abyss Mages, requiring a minimum of 12 Cryo elemental application "units" to take down. They're also almost always paired with Cryo enemies, giving them an additional means of stunlocking you. Thankfully, they lose this distinction in Theater Mechanicus, where their slow movement, inability to attack and ready access to the proper elements to shut them down on part of the player turn them into non-threats that can be easily taken care of by a few turrets.
  • If an Anemo Samachurl spawns during a Testing Grounds challenge during the "Chalk Prince and the Dragon" event, say goodbye to one of your Ruin Braziers, as it will almost always lead with a tornado attack that will deal obscene damage to the Brazier it targets that will not dissipate when you attack it.
  • Blazing Axe Mitachurls are a nightmare in the Theater Mechanicus event. Despite their large size, they're deceptively fast and are much harder to stagger, meaning they're likely to blitz through your Mechanici defenses with barely a scratch (especially if your devices are already pre-occupied with other enemies). Plus, unlike the small speedy enemies, you can't simply knock them over with Anemo characters' wind blasts.
  • The Inazuman Kairagis are tough, hit hard, and can be surprisingly quick despite their bulk. They almost always come in pairs, which doubles their threat level, but the kicker is if one of them dies, the other one Turns Red, hitting even harder and healing themselves for 50% health, and becomes immune to being Frozen and Petrified. They can also deflect attacks, so a mistimed Burst would get its damage nullified. All these aspects combined make them absolute nightmares in Timed Missions, particularly the Spiral Abyss.
  • The large Rifthounds are a menace to fight. They have many more HP than even Ruin Guards despite looking less durable than them and can inflict Corrosion to your entire party. But the biggest problem with them is their finicky hitboxes and their tendency to flip and teleport all over the place, which makes them incredibly difficult to hit.
    • In the Fontaine quest "There Will Come Soft Rains", you even have the option of calling them your "least favorite monsters".
  • Consecrated Beasts as tanky as large Rifthounds, hit rather hard (including some extremely damaging multi-hit combos), and commence the fight with a significant buff to their damage resistances that can only be removed when they perform a specific attack, which they'll only do 30 seconds into the encounter. Oh, and they all have 50% Freeze resistance, so no perma-freezing them. Fortunately, they're rather rare in the overworld and usually appear singly. However, in the Abyss, they can come in pairs with differing elements, allowing them to easily use elemental reactions against your team.
  • Tainted Hydro Phantasms take everything that was annoying about Hydro Mimics and cranks them up to eleven. At first they're manageable, but once they trigger their Super Modes, which they almost assuredly will considering how much health they have, things get bad. Both the melee and ranged forms hit stupidly hard, are completely Immune to Flinching, and gain an immunity to being frozen as well, nullifying the one reliable weakness to the Mimics. Often times the only thing you can really do against them is apply a shield and do what you can to nuke them down, because there's almost nothing you can do to stop their onslaught once they get going.
  • Fatui Operatives, like Rifthounds, can also apply Corrosion to your active character and are very agile. However, unlike Rifthounds, their Corrosion is only applied to the active character (instead of the entire party) and is applied alongside Life Bond, which, if healed away, dispels the Corrosion.
• Designated Hero:
  • Cloud Retainer does a poor job displaying herself as a guardian deity of Liyue, especially when compared to her fellow Adepti. She's not only extremely arrogant, being a prideful engineer who will either mock human inventions or seek to surpass them to to keep mortals from getting full of themselves, but her immediate response to hearing of Rex Lapis' death, which is to immediately make plans to destroy Liyue Harbour in retaliation, shows a complete disregard for the lives of the people she's supposed to protect. Will all this in mind, it's likely that if it wasn't for her contract with Rex Lapis, there wouldn't be a Liyue Harbor for you to explore.
    • The Interlude Act 1 does show a softer side of her, with her relationship with her adopted daughter Shenhe, and her acknowledging if grudgingly Ningguang's handling of the situation with the Avenger of the Vortex.
  • In light of the "We Will Be Reunited" archon quest, some fans feel that the Traveler comes across as this at the final moments of the quest for choosing to prioritize their sibling's well-being over their plan with Teyvat. The dialogues you can pick at that moment show that they'd rather leave Teyvat as soon as they found their twin without saying goodbye to anyone, and the final cutscene shows that they're willing to follow their twin into Abyss, so those fans found the Traveler to be selfish for choosing to doom Teyvat to be together with their twin. Granted, to the Traveler, their missing twin is the only family they have left and they've been separated for long enough for them to wish to be with their twin again, but it doesn't help as these fans believe that the Traveler is willing to let Teyvat burn, and even hurt the people they befriended along the way, without saying a word to them so they can be with their sibling again.
  • For some fans, Zhongli's Secret Test of Character was too extreme to really support.
    • It effectively involved faking his own death just to see how Liyue would react to the resulting crisis without his intervention. It was only thanks to the Qixing that Liyue didn't descend into chaos and, even then, they initially put the blame on Traveler and Paimon. While it's stated that he could've resolved the crisis with ease if things got too dicey, to these fans, it feels like Zhongli arranged the entire storyline's events because he didn't want to be an Archon anymore and disregarded how badly the Adepti, who are contracted under him, would react to Morax seemingly being assassinated (Cloud Retainer in particular thought of destroying Liyue Harbor in retribution, and the Adepti later try to pull a coup that was only stopped by Childe summoning Osial), which ultimately culminated in him willingly handing his gnosis, which mind you, is the only thing that can produce Mora, over to the Fatui.
    • To make matters worse, none of the three aforementioned parties hold any ill will towards his actions, with the sole exception of Tartaglia but the narrative doesn't try to give him sympathy due to summoning Osial in the first place, Unwitting Pawn or not and even try to justify his decision once they find out the truth. It doesn't help that he's unable to explain what the bargaining chip the Tsaritsa used to make him agree was— something worth potentially leading Teyvat down a path of economic ruin, keeping the player in the dark and encouraging them to find it out for themselves.
• Designated Villain:
  • The Treasure Hoarders suffer this. While they at times do villainous things like kidnapping people or stealing, they're antagonized even when they've done nothing more than treasure hunting, for which they're seen as greedy and selfish...except when the players do it, of course. Seen even more blatantly in the Hu Tao character demo trailer, in which a couple of Treasure Hoarders are attacked by Hu Tao for the crime of...following a treasure map. Less so in general exploration however where Treasure Hoarders will attack on sight and don't need to be aggroed otherwise first.
  • The Fatui don't actually do anything villainous in Fontaine's storyline. Arlecchino deploys the House of the Hearth solely to perform reconnaissance and work to prevent The End of the World as We Know It. Neither her or her subordinates ever actually use violence against innocents to achieve their goals, although Arlecchino herself comes disturbingly close at times. The House of the Hearth repeatedly provides assistance to the heroes, including disaster relief in the town of Poisson. This came with no strings attached other than a potential favor in the future, and the Enemy Mine that Arlecchino proposes is one where the Traveler isn't forced to do anything wrong. In fact, the (rather cruel) plan for exposing Furina's identity is Neuvilette and Clorinde's idea. The Fatui don't even do anything to steal the Gnosis: Neuvillette gives it up, albeit because he feared the Fatui. Arlecchino also actually agrees with the Traveler, Paimon, and Navia when they suggest that a Heroic Sacrifice should be treated as just that and not an acceptable price to pay as part of a greater good. When you really think about it, this makes sense. Arlecchino's backstory is rooted in distaste for the House of the Hearth sacrificing soldiers willy nilly, and relying on the threat of force rather than doing anything physically violent makes her probably the only Harbinger to do her job right. Childe was also simply there for personal reasons and actually ends up saving the heroes from the real threat to Fontaine, the All-Devouring Narwhal. Even outside of the Archon Quest, they are presented as far more malicious than the preceding regions. The In Search of Lost Time World Quest series just follows a group of harmless Fatui trying to get a vacation and a girl named Penny is friends with a Fatuus, named Kerek, who is described as a good person by Excellent Judge of Character Don Quijano.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Albedo's character story states that he prefers to completely avoid social interaction whenever he can so that he can focus on things that actually interest him, which, combined with his soft, flat intonation, reads a lot like autism spectrum disorder.
  • Similarly to Albedo, Sucrose's character story makes a big deal about her social ineptitude, obsession with bio-alchemy research, shy disposition, and childlike ambitions. Much like Albedo, one can be forgiven for drawing parallels to autism spectrum disorder.
  • Fischl has been identified by some fans as plural. It's easy to dismiss most of her traits as the result of being a Chuunibyou, but not Oz, who seemingly popped up out of nowhere. Oz being a headmate who was granted physical form when Fischl received a Vision would explain this rather nicely. It's not even implausible, as DID and other related disorders can be thought of as the result of some part of a person's brain taking on memories which were lost as a result of trauma. Something must have happened to prompt Fischl to attempt suicide. One would think that Fischl being confirmed to not be separate from Amy in 2.8 would shut this down, but that event introduced a Literal Split Personality which accepted things Fischl didn't. Immernacht Fischl was introduced in an environment which gave form to the subconscious, so her existence added fuel to this idea.
  • In Hu Tao's case, she is an extroverted girl who enjoys the company of other people and playing pranks on them, but is Innocently Insensitive — these pranks sometimes go too far but she doesn't notice, and she has a problem with understanding the atmosphere around her and has trouble noticing other's feelings of annoyance towards hers. She also tends to wander off, becomes easily distracted and has strange hobbies she perceives as normal and does not understand why others think she is weird. Her ideals are also extraordinarily strong, and she often forgets that other people might identify with other ideals. While so far it's not truly clear what this combination of traits could be closer to, some fans agree Hu Tao might have something, given her lack of understanding of social cues exceeds normal quirkiness.
  • Beyond what her isolation would cause, Shenhe displays certain quirks that could be seen by the audience as neurodivergent. Among other things, she feels overwhelmed in situations with many people, has trouble understanding metaphors, and talks more formally and matter-of-factly than other characters.
  • Some fans believe Ei has some form of neurodivergence thanks to her Literal-Minded-ness (she took Makoto's pursuit of Eternity to mean that everything should be preserved, even things that shouldn't last for long), tendencies to withdraw from people (she abandoned her physical form entirely to reside in the Plane of Euthymia while letting the Raiden Shogun take control of Inazuma), and otherwise odd thinking processes (she honestly believed desserts came first in meals and that people weren't just indulging her, and was either too depressed to check or honestly believed the lies the Tenryou Commission was feeding the Raiden Shogun).
  • In the mountains near Liyue Harbor, you will find an NPC named Childish Jiang who, despite being an adult with a clear model build for one, is content to play childish games like hide-and-seek. Reading into leftover notes in his home reveals that his father is concerned about his state of mind and tries to find a cure for his disorder at Bubu Pharmacy, but since his father works all the time as a Millelith soldier, he simply does not have the time to investigate it further. The notes also implied that his father died in the final mission mentioned in the said note, his mother also died not long after, and the Millelith and someone called Uncle Tian covered the truth of Jiang's parents to him.
  • In the West, a decently common headcanon/fanon is that Alhaitham has autism, due to his assumed sensitivity to sound (he wears prominent noise-canceling headphones and has a official "shut up/too loud" emote sticker that shows him curled up in the fetal position with his hands over his ears), and his lack of both grace and interest in regards to social interactions.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Because of the Level Scaling provided by the World Levels and Adventure Ranks, the game becomes considerably harder after Adventure Rank 40 (World Level 5). Version 1.4 added an option to lower your World Level once you get it to 5, so you can take things down a notch if you aren't prepared for it.
  • Inazuma is notably harder than Liyue, both in terms of world design with more difficult puzzles and hostile environmental effects, and combat with new enemy types that deal substantially more damage and have substantially more health than anything that came before - to the extent that almost every single one of these new enemy types had to be nerfed after release.
  • Mona's event domain in 2.8's Golden Island Archipelago event, "Temple of the Star Latitudes", and her mirage version of Minacious Isle, were a massive increase in puzzle difficulty compared to anything previously seen in the game. The main type of puzzle involved connecting a series of devices to recreate a reference constellation. However, aligning the reference constellation to match the layout of the devices was not as easy as it seemed, and for some of these puzzles, forcing the reference constellation to appear was a puzzle in itself. And all that was before mentioning the optional puzzles in the event domain, most of which quickly entered Guide Dang It! territory.
• Discredited Meme: After Chapter IV Act V came out, any joke relating on how Furina "Needs Correction!" virtually died down due to how her haughty personality is actually part of a plan to prevent her people from disappearing and all the drama the comes with it, to the point where the origin of the meme, r/japanesepeopletwitter, even agreed to not use it as much.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • The Fatui Harbingers all get this treatment, with Childe and Scaramouche being hit by this the most:
    • Although Childe is, at best, an amoral ally of the Fatui who summons an ancient god to threaten Liyue with destruction in order to lure out Rex Lapis, his powerful and unique fighting style, bad-boy coolness, and Pet the Dog moments with his kid brother have made him popular enough that some are willing to overlook his flaws, if not outright ignore them or call him an Anti-Hero. Even he acknowledges his role as the "bad guy" more than that particular portion of his fanbase does. Childe is so popular that he is often one of the top male characters in Japan, which earned him the nickname of Mr. Worldwide due to - at the time - how frequent his rerun banner was back then. To say he has a legion of dedicated fangirls is an understatement, just ask Finana on what she thinks of him.
    • Scaramouche's fans are so dedicated to him that his own fanbase got a reputation of being desperate even by the standards of Genshin Impact. The fact that he constantly degrades the player has made him particularly attractive to a distinct group of fans. Vtubers such as Finana and Juniper Actias for example, are down bad for him.
    • Arlecchino's fans tend to either embrace her being problematic because it's "hot" or assume that the lines of other Harbingers that she's wearing a Mask of Sanity are misinformed (this belief supported by the fact that they both fit the descriptions they gave Arlecchino) and she's as Affably Evil as she appears. There's some reason to assume that, as her behavior is more suggestive of a taskmaster than a sociopath. There may be a mix-up, as the former Arlecchino was revealed to exist before the current one appeared and seems to match Tartaglia and the Wanderer's descriptions. This is also precisely the kind of thing a cold, calculating character would want you to think. As of Chapter IV Act V, whether the latter are right remains to be seen.
  • While downplayed for Zhongli as he was never an outwardly villainous character, his role in the Fatui plot that put Liyue in danger is more often than not ignored by a majority of the fanbase, despite his good intentions making him come off as a Well-Intentioned Extremist in the context of the story.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: As expected of a game with a large cast, some far exceed others in popularity, even if their role in the plot is minimal.
  • The Fatui Cicin Mages are nameless Elite Mooks, yet there are already several fanarts of the Electro variant on Pixiv just like these examples. Their cute voice (which can be ecstatic or erotic) is a strong factor to this, and there's also a fan theory mentioning that Sucrose might be an Electro Cicin Mage just because of their similar hair. Players are even hoping for at least one Cicin Mage to become playable in the future. The presence of two different friendly NPC Electro Cicin Mages (one of whom defects from the Fatui) made this idea even more popular.
  • Ying'er, the minor NPC who helps you make perfumes in Chapter 1, gained some following and fan content because of her innuendos.
  • Guizhong, Barbatos's friend, and Kazuha's friend are all very popular in the fandom for being long-passed friends to main characters in the story.
  • Hanachirusato, the subject of the Sacred Sakura Cleansing Ritual questline, became very popular due to her kind personality and the compelling story around the mystery of her identity and circumstances. Many people were saddened by her disappearance at the end of the questline, having been part of the very filth she came into existence to cleanse, leaving behind only her mask. The mask can be consumed to give the player the ability to craft the Hakushin Ring, but many players prefer to keep the mask instead as a memento of Hanachirusato, either never using it or lamenting having used it, especially since the Hakushin Ring isn't terribly useful. The developers recognized her fanbase and added in a base item version of her mask.
  • Although she only appears in Gorou's Hangout Event, Ms. Hina is definitely popular with the fans. She sells herself as 'Teyvat's Big Sister', here to give you advice with any problem you may come across, and has amassed a legion of fans. And she's not even a real person in-universe, given it's a Yae-commissioned genderbent Gorou.
  • Enjou is quite popular with the player base for his fun, easygoing personality, and for being an Affably Evil Lector that's simply trying to convince humanity to turn against Celestia by proving that they're foreign to Teyvat and conquered human civilization in the past, rather than going scorched earth on Teyvat like the rest of the Abyss Order had been up to this point. Many are hoping Enkanomiya won't be the last they see of him. And on April Fools' Day 2022, Enjou got his own mock character demo (contains spoilers for Enkanomiya quest). On White Day 2024, he even got his own artwork alongside Baizhu and Lyney.
  • Kujou Kamaji first earned the players' respect in the Raiden Shogun's first story quest, when he chooses to atone for his father's actions and his own inaction by facing her in a duel. And though she mops the floor with him (which even he predicted would happen), he refused to stay down until he passed out. But he really cemented himself in Ayato's story quest, where the first time fans see him he's bursting with joy about getting to marry the woman he loves and gushing to Ayato and the Traveler about it (even getting a Holy Halo in the process), and then, when complications arise, he collaborates with Ayato to resolve everything in a manner that's best for all parties involved. Many fans were expecting (and hoping) he'd have a Vision bestowed upon him the moment they saw the Holy Halo.
  • Bonanus, the deceased Hydro Yaksha immediately became extremely popular after the end of the Perilous Trail quest in version 2.7, due to the peculiar horns and claws of her design. Despite only appearing in one cutscene, she has received a lot of fanart compared to the other dead characters of that cutscene.
  • Rana is easily one of the most popular NPCs in the game, for the simple reason that unlike other NPCs, she actually fights back against enemies in the Aranyaka quest. The fact that she gets a Dendro vision at the end of the quest has left a praiseworthy impression on many fans.
  • In terms of locations, The Cat's Tail is a bar where Diona works and is supposedly to have cats as its main attraction. Players have long wished to visit it for obvious reasons, but it was inaccessible until patch 3.3 made it the primary location for Genius Invokation TCG.
  • Jeht also became popular amongst the fanbase thanks to her Action Girl personality, genuine friendship with the Traveler and Paimon, and her journey spanning several sidequests, as well as many tearjerker moments within. It's to the point where after her latest quest that some fans hope to see her in future regions, or maybe even someday she might obtain a Vision of her own. There are even many who hope to see her become a playable character. miHoYo seems to have taken notice, as Valentine's Day 2024 saw her getting official artwork in the same style and quality as playable characters, a first for an NPC, with her post getting far more traction than the other girls to get artwork that day, Navia and Lynette.
  • Talochard and Curve seem to have gathered a sizeable fanbase, likely due to their respective personalities, backstories, dynamics, and Character Development throughout their quest.
  • All of the above are absolutely no match for the Narzissenkreuz Institute, which has an absurdly dedicated fan community producing tons of fan content and headcanons. It is to the point where the community can pass off as the fandom for a hypothetical completely separate work from Genshin^note #Narzissenkreuz is a hashtag on Twitter, and almost all of the art posted under that tag does not have any kind of indication that the characters hail from Genshin. Thus, a random person who stumbles across one such post has no reason to think it's Genshin fanart. In fact, unlike the other flagship world quests of the game, which tend to feature one main NPC (many such examples have been listed above), the Narzissenkreuz Institute quest chain features an ensemble cast and fleshed out character relationships. Unlike what many might believe at first, the cast's omnipresence over Fontaine lore and the lore bombs dropped by the world quest chains are not the main reason for their popularity, as there are many Narzissenkreuz fans who don't particularly care about the lore, and simply latch on to the angst and tragic story of the broken friend group.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • There are invisible walls that prevent players from exploring unreleased regions, accompanied by the screen darkening while Paimon appears and encourages you to turn around, saying "Let's explore the area in front of us later." An interpretation/joke/fan theory on this matter suggests that Paimon is actually using some space-manipulation power to force you in turning around.
  • Alice is Klee's mom, but she entrusted her child to the Knights of Favonius and went off somewhere, causing Jean to step in the role as Klee's adoptive mother. However, fan theories (which also involve shipping) suggest that Klee might be the biological child of Jean (on the basis that Klee is also blonde just like her) and Diluc (on the basis that both of them have the same eye color and are also Pyro-elementals). Note that Klee has elf-like pointy ears, a trait that doesn't apply to Jean or Diluc.
  • A popular explanation for the three identical Katherynes in the Adventurer's guild booths is that they're Ridiculously Human Robots. They do occasionally say "Error" and "Rebooting" when you're not talking to them. Furthermore, fans also theorize that they may have been built by Snezhnayans (as the Fatui wield technology that isn't seen in the available regions, and the Adventurer's Guild HQ is mentioned to be in Snezhnaya). Also, the Fatui Harbinger Sandrone/Marionette wears a maid uniform under her coat that's very similar to Katheryne's uniform, suggesting that she's the one who built them to begin with. This was eventually confirmed in Chapter III, where Nahida refers to Katheryne as a "bionic puppet".
  • Dainsleif is thought to be Fischl's brother simply because they look similar to each other. Both of them are blonde, have eyepatches, and wear clothes with dark-blue/purple themes. However, Fischl's bio doesn't mention her having any older brother at all. The fact that he's actually over 500 years old and the last sane survivor of Khaenri'ah means that he can't possibly be her actual brother - though her Chuunibyou personality's backstory seems to imply their could be some other connection to him instead.
  • There's also theories floating around about Dainsleif being an older Aether, the male protagonist, from the bad future or an alternate timeline in which he failed to save Lumine due to what is presumed to be his monologue from the "Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview: Travail" trailer. The "brother prince" from the "Gnostic Chorus" trailer is also often presumed to be either him, or the Traveler.
  • Because the finale of the "Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview" trailer has Dainsleif mentioning "show me you are worthier than I to rescue her" to Aether, a common fan theory suggests that he is referring to Lumine and might have known her for a long time before Aether woke up in Teyvat (since in this context, Aether wants to find her sister in the first place). This line alone also opens an implication that Dainsleif is closely or romantically related to the missing twin, so a bizarre fan theory then asks a scenario: What if we are playing as Lumine, and Aether is the missing twin, would Dainsleif have feelings for Aether? Dainsleif world quest released in the 1.3 update partially confirms this via Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration where he'll refer to the playable twin as being similar to the non-playable twin.
  • Ever since this image◊ popped up, a fan theory regarding Sucrose suggests that she might be an Electro Fatui Cicin Mage since the latter's model has the same hair style and color. Some players then hoped that Sucrose would receive a Fatui outfit, while others began calling the Cicin Mage enemies "Sucrose Alter". Supposedly she has an Electro Delusion along with her Anemo Vision, allowing her to control two elements; though our first encounter with a Delusion is Childe's boss fight, who is much more powerful than a Cicin Mage. Nothing in Sucrose's playable version indicates she has hidden evil powers, though it's conceivable that could be left for a future update.
  • Honkai Impact 3rd fans who play this game made several theories on how both games are exactly related. Beyond Otto Apocalypse's observation of the Imaginary Tree showing a cameo of Dvalin, and the concept of a Multiverse from HI3), some fan theories try to predict the story of this game based on events that happened in Honkai Impact 3rd. Others try to guess if a Genshin character is an Expy of a Honkai character even if their similarities may not be obvious at first glance. For example, some fans think that Zhongli may have been based on the characterization of Fu Hua^note Being very old, knowledgeable, wise and powerful individuals who worked as "guardians" of their own lands (Shenzhou/Liyue), having taken on multiple identities throughout their long lives, and having problems with their memories being "too good". but with the body of "Post-Honkai Odyssey"'s Protagonist^note A story that takes place years after the "end" of Honkai's threat on Earth. Some fan artists even depict both characters together out of Commonality Connection, with Fu Hua's Azure Empyrea appearance being chosen to match Zhongli's aesthetics.
  • Vennessa, the founder of the Knights of Favonius, is commonly theorized to be Diluc's ancestor (and thus making him a part Muratan) due to his red hair and Pyro Vision, and the falcon that appears in his Idle Animation is commonly thought to be her in falcon form. This usually ignores the lore where the Ragnvindr clan has always been red-haired and had existed long before Vennessa came into Mondstadt.
  • The Tsaritsa is, as of this writing, the only Archon whose "divine ideal" is not explicitly confirmed yet. In the "Travail" video, Dainsleif mentions the kind of gods each Archon is supposed to be, but of Tsaritsa, he only says "she's a god who has no love left for her people". From this, many fans speculate and guess that she is (or was) the "God of Love." It's also suspected she might be an Expy of Bronya Zaychik from Honkai Impact 3rd as both of them are associated with Russia and ice.
  • Despite being a fictional character, many fans have latched onto the idea that Ms. Hina may be added into the game someday by using Albedo's alchemy to bring her to life.
  • There are widespread theories that Kokomi is a Vishap having taken human form, or even the reincarnation of the Primordial Dragon of Water due to her odd eyes matching the claim that Vishaps gradually lose the ability to see as they age, the belief in-universe that the Priestesses of Watatsumi somehow descended from Vishaps, and Kokomi's constellation name, Dracaena Somnolenta, translating to "sleeping dragon". Patch 2.5 even introduced the in-universe theory that Vishap-People have infiltrated human society. That Kokomi denies the existence of Vishap-People in the same patch did absolutely nothing to discredit the theory.
  • The Aranara Ararycan is theorised to be related to Dottore due to him being the only blue Aranara (all others are green, orange, yellow or brown), the pattern on the leaves on his head looking vaguely like a Fatui insignia and the world quest focused on him being about the Ruin Golem of Devantaka Mountain (where notes left by Dottore, as Zandik, back when he was in the Akademiya can be found).
  • Before Alhaitham's playable release, it was common for fans to speculate that Alhaitham was a reincarnation of the King Deshret. In the eyes of fans, this was "supported" by Alhaitham's supposedly unnatural looks, primarily his Exotic Eye Designs that resembled the symbol of King Deshret, his shirt having the symbol of the King Deshret on it, the gem on his chest having the same shape as the gem that symbolically depicted Deshret in Kasala's memories, as well as the story's suspicious insistence that he's just some guy that wants to live a peaceful life despite the competence he shows and the lengths he'll go to the achieve his goal. Come Alhaitham's playable release which went into depth about his background, it was confirmed that he really is just some overly competent guy who worked hard during the Archon Quest so he could continue to live listlessly and not related to King Deshret at all.
  • Another prevalent theory concerning Alhaitham was that he was an android due to his distinct headgear connected to a cord extending down his back. It turned out to be a pair of noise-canceling headphones connected to a music player in his waist wrap, both of which he invented.
  • The extraordinary lack of information regarding Natlan compared to other regions (including the total absence of NPCs from there) has led to lots of speculation on the reason behind it, for example, it being in a state of self-imposed isolation. There are even theories about the region having already been destroyed (usually by Celestia or during the Cataclysm), although they're seemingly contradicted by this tweet from the game's Spanish Twitter account celebrating what appears to be the Day of the Dead.
  • Out of Celestia's "Primordial One" and their four shades, only Istaroth's divine authority of Time has been explicitly named. However, among the five different types of artifacts is the timepiece, the Sands of Eon, leading players to speculate that the other authorities are likewise represented by the remaining artifacts, with the Circlet representing Reason, the Goblet representing Space^note Dubbed in Chinese as the "Cup of Space/Emptiness/Void", which is curiously the same wording used for the Herrscher of the Void that the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles heavily resembles, the Flower representing Life, and the Plume representing Death. This theory gained more traction after Rene's research into Descenders speculates that they are distinguished by their power of Reason. More notes from the World Quest also muse that by becoming a Descender, he would become "one that can protect the world, sustain the world, destroy the world, and create the world".
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The ending "A Done Deal" of Kaveh’s Hangout event is this, as Dori successfully tricked Kaveh into signing a contract that made him forfeit his commission fees for the library building project while taking full responsibility for the construction, and Dori’s trickery will lead to her gaining even more mora from the project long run. This is framed as a happy ending because the library being built will lead to the prosperity of Aaru village, and Kaveh will recoup his commission fees by ordering expensive things at dinner that Dori pays for. However, from the fandom’s perspective this is a far worse ending than the "Blueprint for the Future" ending in which the library is still planned to be built without Dori’s involvement, without Kaveh being scammed, and while leading to the same outcome for Aaru village, as in prosperity for Aaru village and desert children being able to get a better education. Not to mention, in this ending, the players not only get to see a preview of the building design, but Kaveh names the building style after them because they helped him think of it.
• Estrogen Brigade: Despite the Fan Nickname Breath of the Waifu, this game has no shortage of female fans. Characters with the "tall male" model (including Kaeya, Tartaglia, and Zhongli) are the most common recipients of fangirls, though other characters like Xiao and Venti aren't far behind. mihoYo apparently considered this, as the in-game web event that features Zhongli and Tartaglia plays out like a dating sim (sans the romance elements). It even has Lumine, the character yumejoshi would most likely choose as their player character, as the protagonist for the event.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • Mistaking the genre, or to be precise, mentioning that Genshin Impact is an MMORPG when it isn't actually the case. The developers didn't advertise the game as an MMORPG either. It's like a single-player open-world Action RPG but with a Co-Op feature to let other players help you out. Because of such misconceptions, comparing Genshin to any MMO becomes a hot topic and is alluded to comparing apples with oranges.
  • Mistaking Genshin as a Japanese-made game, when it's in fact a Chinese game. Its Animesque art style, the recent (as of 2015) trend of Chinese-made games using Japanese voiceworks to great success, and the fact that the English title uses the Japanese reading of "Yuán shén" have contributed to the misunderstanding. It also doesn't help that miHoYo refers to themselves as "Tech Otaku" when describing their company.
  • Fans of Horizon Zero Dawn were quick to remind players that Aloy is first and foremost, not a Genshin character and she's only there because of the collaboration between Genshin and the game she's originally in.
• Fanon:
  • Quite a few fans portray Zhongli as some sort of a father figure to Xiao and occasionally Ganyu. Canonically, Rex Lapis (Zhongli) was the boss of Xiao and the other Yakshas, and he was the one who freed Xiao from the latter's old master (an abusive god) and gave him his current name. Fans often see this as Zhongli "adopting" Xiao. Sometimes this will extend further and have him acting paternal towards Hu Tao and Qiqi, too.
  • Most of the "short female" model characters have Vague Age to varying degrees (except Qiqi, Nahida, and Yaoyao), but for the sake of simplicity, most fans just assume they're all children and act accordingly.
  • While it's established that the Seven Archons no longer meet up like they used to, fans often depict the playable Archons meeting up and spending time together, having reconnected and become True Companions thanks to the Traveler. It also help that there's offical art (Spoiler Warning!) depicting them this way.
  • It didn't take long at all for Tighnari and Cyno to be depicted as caring older brothers towards Collei, given how Tighnari is her mentor/caretaker who looks after her well-being and Cyno has a soft spot for her and will visit to check in on her. Expect them to be shown as very protective of her. This became Ascended Fanon with the Windblume's Breath event, where it's outright stated that the three view each other as family.
  • After Kaveh's initial reveal in the Sumeru Archon Quest, fans began portraying him as a (usually neglected) housewife-like figure to Alhaitham due to their Like an Old Married Couple dynamic that was picked up from their arguments. Come Alhaitham's character quest, this is more or less canon, though without the marriage aspect.
  • A popular fan theory is that King Deshret and the Goddess of Flowers were reincarnated into characters from the Sumeru cast after their deaths, with these often going back to how fans portray what they used to look like due to their appearances being unknown in canon.
    • Because of Cyno's lore and the design motifs he shares with Alhaitham, it's quite common in fanon to depict King Deshret as a Cyno or Alhaitham expy, although often with a changed eye color and longer in Cyno-Deshret’s case. Kaveh has also been a candidate due to his lore and characterization reveal.
    • There have been numerous theorized candidates for the reincarnated Goddess of Flowers, such as Nilou due to design and motifs, but Kaveh as the reincarnated Goddess of Flowers quickly skyrocketed in popularity after more of his lore was released. As with Deshret, aspects of their designs are carried over into the Goddess of Flowers’ design, with Nilou’s being the simplest to depict due to her Goddess of Flowers costume. On the other hand, Kaveh-Goddess of Flowers portrays tend to make her a gender-bent version of him.
  • Despite the presence of strange hair colors throughout Teyvat, theories about Kaveh's supposed "natural" hair color have become semi-popular in the Western community, with fans speculating that he's either a natural blond who dyed his hair brown, or a natural brunet who dyed his hair blond due to the dirty blond ends of his hair. However, both of these theories are undermined by the revelation that Kaveh's parents are both blondes who he takes after, indicating that his blond hair is inherited, and the fact that his character stories don't mention him altering his appearance, despite providing a detailed history of his life from childhood to the present day. Additionally, an NPC who has known him since childhood says nothing about any other physical changes besides his height, while also hammering home that he looks like his mother.
  • Fans often assume that all characters with mid-height models are teenagers and all characters with tall models are adults. This game plays Vague Age straight, so it's difficult to shoot this down, but as far as the text goes, some of the medium height characters have backgrounds that would be out of place for a child. Taller characters are more consistently written as adults, but Shenhe is stated to have been adopted over 10 years ago at the age of 6, which implies that she might be a teenager.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • To Tower of Fantasy, another Chinese gacha fantasy game; this time around focusing as a MMORPG with a massive character editing option. By itself it would have garnered friendly competition, but various controversies revolving around Tower of Fantasy apparently stealing assets from Genshin, Honkai and other games (and non-interactive media as well) had created a rift between the two fandoms. Ironically and strangely enough, when Tower of Fantasy was released worldwide, a significant chunk of the playerbase consisted of former Genshin players who are either burnt out or is waiting for the Sumeru update.
    • Speaking of Tower of Fantasy, the rivalry also extends to their publisher, Tencent. The story goes that before miHoYo got big with Genshin, Tencent wanted to buy them out, but miHoYo rejected it. Ever since then, Tencent went on a campaign to smear miHoYo and Genshin. Fans of Genshin noted that miHoYo's success with it propelled them as a serious competitor to Tencent in the gacha market, which is one of the reasons of the perceived hostilities between the two gaming companies.
  • Strangely enough, towards Sonic Frontiers which spiked during the 2022 Game Awards under Player's Choice. This is due to both the Sonic and Genshin fanbases trying to one-up each other on who would win the Player's Choice award for 2022. Said competition became toxic as both sides accused each other of brigading and bot-farming to win. This got worse when Genshin won and TGA host Geoff Keighley outright called out the bots, further rubbing salt into the wound.
  • Despite both being made by the same company, Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail have been frequently compared negatively to each other. A significant portion of Genshin's playerbase despises Star Rail due to the latter receiving many requested features, generous rewards, and QoL improvements in less than 8 months since launch, with Genshin players bemoaning that Star Rail has taken HoYoverse's attention and prevented Genshin from receiving similar treatment. Star Rail players, in turn, complain that Genshin is overhyped and overrated despite its litany of flaws, and want Star Rail to overthrow Genshin as HoYoverse's golden goose. Ironically enough, many Star Rail players are consisted of dissatisfied Genshin players who have become fed up with the game and its unaddressed flaws, lackluster rewards, and lack of permanent endgame content. It grew further heated when Star Rail announced that the limited 5★ character Dr. Ratio would be given out for free at the start of his initial banner until the end of Version 2.1. The Genshin fandom was pissed that Star Rail got its first free 5★ in its first year of release while Genshin has yet to get a single one^note Aloy was not counted due to her hailing from a completely different franchise that has been around years before Genshin even came out and was not available outside the initial collaborative giveaway. as of now.
• Fanwork-Only Fans: There's a large number of people who don't actively play the game but engage with the fandom by creating and/or consuming fanwork due to being interested in the characters.
• Fountain of Memes: Klee and Zhongli are two of the biggest examples, with the former's destructive tendencies and the latter's poor sense of budgeting being the most frequent jokes made about them. Tartaglia/Childe, Ei/Raiden Shogun, and Wanderer/Scaramouche, the three characters who are both playable and weekly boss, also have a lot of memes related to them, mostly thanks to Griffin Burns being known for being very unhinged, and the mother/son duo launching a new series of "Archon family" memes.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Honkai Impact 3rd fans also try this game because it's made by the same developer, miHoYo, and because they are curious of how much are the two games connected. HI3 fans were surprised at the Unknown God resembling Kiana/Herrscher of the Void. It was further evident when the other game's Chapter 17 has a scene where Otto Apocalypse catches a glimpse of Dvalin during an experiment involving the Imaginary Tree, which is a significant "multiverse" factor that attracted the interest of more lore-minded fans. To top it off, Genshin has several Mythology Gags to that game. This also has the side effect of some Genshin players trying out HI3.
  • There's an overlap in fans between Genshin and other gacha games, mostly out of curiosty, or after finding out similarities:
    • Dragalia Lost, with this game's international release being on DL's second anniversary, as well as having perky fairy mascots.
    • Granblue Fantasy, with comparisons ranging from both games having a diverse cast of characters, to characters with similar personalities or motivations, to having similar fantasy settings.
    • Fate/Grand Order, because of the similarly diverse cast. When this game was released, it was also very common for Genshin and FGO players to compare their games' version of Barbatos.
    • Cookie Run: Kingdom, since they share many of the same English voice actors with many fans comparing how Khoi Dao voices soft-spoken calm characters in both games (Albedo for Genshin Impact and Herb Cookie for the latter).
  • With the Fire Emblem series, as both it and Genshin feature high fantasy settings, anime-style character designs, and many of the same English and Japanese voice actors.
  • With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, due to the two games being similar enough to attract a lot of the same players, but different enough that accusations of Genshin being a Breath of the Wild knockoff have largely subsided after release.
  • There are also Genshin players who originated from other related fandoms after being aware of this game's references; Jojos Bizarre Adventure, Devil May Cry, and the Steins;Gate fans are just some of the most vocal. Other fandoms also tried Genshin because it also includes their favorite VAs (such as Kaguya-sama: Love Is War fans once they learned that Paimon, Mona and Yanfei respectively have the same actresses as Kaguya, Chika and Hayasaka). These overlapping fandoms resulted into crossover memes or borrowed Fan Nicknames.
  • Despite the..... tumultuous relationship with the Honkai: Star Rail fandom, there are a lot of players who like and play both Genshin and Star Rail as both are Animesque RPG gacha games focusing on fantasy worlds^note  though Genshin is more of a High Fantasy world influenced by Gnosticism while Star Rail is closer to Science Fantasy with an Art Deco aesthetic created by Hoyoverse.

G-I

• Game-Breaking Bug: Following the release of the 4.0 update, an exploit was discovered in the CN servers that allowed people to permanently delete important objects in co-op mode using Kaveh, something which some players took advantage of to ruin other players' worlds. This caused most players to deem co-op with random people unsafe until a fix is implemented. Eventually, Hoyoverse addressed the issue and banned those who used the exploit while also working on restoring the worlds of those who were affected.
• Gateway Series:
  • Genshin Impact attracted newcomers to gacha games, especially those who were just expecting a "free Breath of the Wild". Console and PC gamers also admit that Genshin is their first experience of a game where contents are gated by a Stamina/Energy resource (i.e. "Resin"), a mechanic that mobile/gacha gamers are already used to.
  • More generally, Genshin Impact serves as many gamers' first experience with an AAA quality title that's fully developed from China.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Much of the game's worldbuilding terminology is derived from Gnosticism.
  • If the symbol found in the Mora coins and in Paimon's jumper looks familiar, that's because it's actually based on the "Triquetra".
  • Morax is a God of Wealth, which is not just part of a Ronny Chieng standup routine, but an actual thing. Not surprising, considering this game was made in China.
  • Bennett's thumbs-up theme (from his character portrait and Elemental Burst icon) is a reference to a common type of thumb fracture. As if he wasn't unlucky enough already...
  • The Waypoints that can be unlocked to fast-travel around Teyvat aren't just random abstract statues: they resemble Vajras, important symbols in both Buddhism and Hinduism.
  • In Mondstadt, Diluc hosts a tavern named "Angel's Share". The angels' share is the percentage of barrel-aged distilled spirits that evaporate through the wood during aging. Clever name but an odd one for a wine bar.
  • Zhongli's meteor in his Elemental Burst and the Aerosiderite material are based on Burr puzzles.
  • In Dragonspine, nine Ruin Guard corpses give cryptic records when interacted with.A Redditor managed to solve these by converting them to ternary, decimal, and alphabetical, then deciphering the resulting message with ROT13. The final, decoded message would then read:
    "For the nation, we can't forgo this skyborne power, but we failed."
  • When the players first visit the Jade Chamber, they might spot a collectible book on the customs of Liyue, along with a delivery notice, followed by a series of numbers. Using said numbers as a hint for picking specific letters in the book spells out the message — "The Fatui will strike The Golden House".
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The game itself has an extremely vocal European and Latin American (especially in Brazil) followings.
  • Compared to the East, Beidou has enjoyed much more popularity in the Western community due to her cool, attractive design and matching personality. It helps that she's part of an extremely popular ship with Ningguang.
  • In the JP and EN community, Scaramouche/Wanderer is relatively well liked for his tragic backstory and sassy personality. In China, however, where Genshin Impact originates from, he is a very controversial figure, with many people hating his character quest and calling him a war criminal who got off scot-free, and as well as being disgusted by his general behavior.^note Mostly from male players. The few Scaramouche fans face constant harassment online and have been given a derogatory nickname of "Sanjie", while Scaramouche's CN VA has been harassed online. On a poll of which characters were most disliked on the CN server, Scaramouche was featured on a whopping 76% of people's lists.
  • Tartaglia, being often described as a Russian character, is very popular among Russian fans. Russian fans, just for a joke, even made a hashtag about him on Twitter and it became the most popular hashtag on Russian Twitter.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Any enemy with shields or barriers automatically qualify as this, as you will have to spend some time breaking it first. That being said, their danger runs across the spectrum from Slimes, to Fatui Skirmishers, and Lawachurls.
  • Geovishap Hatchlings roll and burrow all over the place, making it hard to catch up to them and actually hit them. Also, while most of their attacks aren't particularly dangerous, a player who isn't careful can easily lose large amounts of HP or even die to their spinning attack.
  • A nearly-literal example with Cicins, fast-moving electric drones usually generated by Fatui Electro Cicin Mages. Since they are small, they're hard to hit, even harder to keep track of while you're fighting something else, making their parent mages one of the more irritating enemies to fight. Making this even worse is they tend to take aggro off of their summoners who can just summon more should you kill one. The ever-present hilichurls (orcs) and slimes can also drive you batty, especially if you're trying to deal with a stronger enemy at the same time.
  • Cryo Cicin Mages aren't as lethal as their Electro counterparts, but they're much more annoying to fight because of their ability to spam shield after shield, leaving you only able to deal small amounts of damage to their health at a time before you have to break down yet another shield.
  • Eyes of the Storm are pure Anemo enemies that are annoying to take down for a number of reasons. They're almost always airborne, so non-Anemo bow and catalyst users are an absolute must to damage them, but even then, it still takes a long while to whittle down their large health bars, and the only time they ever come down to the ground is during specific attacks. When they become grounded, they don't stay on the ground nearly long enough for you to string together elemental reaction combos for some decent damage, so the fight just boils down to mindlessly hitting them with arrows and spells for a long time until they keel over. Worse is that they don't drop any noteworthy rewards for the effort of defeating them, just a small amount of Mora and that's it, so there's no incentive to take them on unless they guard treasure chests or are tied to daily commissions and bounty hunts.
  • Specters float just off the ground, and have an annoying tendency to hover both away from you and upwards as they take damage. Combined with how they're typically found around slopes, cliffs, and (deep) water, and it becomes common for them to float just barely out of reach of melee attacks, and even get too far away for ranged characters to hit them reliably. They are also much more durable than their small size and soft-looking appearance would suggest, and they don't die immediately when their HP hits 0, instead charging up for an explosion that you won't always realize is coming before it's too late. And it all gets even worse if there's a Hydro Specter present, because their attacks can heal all the enemies in a small area, including themselves, and undo all your efforts at damaging them. Evidently miHoYo agreed that the Specters were too difficult to deal with, as a later patch nerfed them so they were less durable and more vulnerable to vacuum effects.
  • Anemoboxer Vanguards are one of the most annoying Fatui enemies to fight, for several reasons. The biggest is that they can dash to and protect other Skirmishers with an Anemo shield that absorbs elemental damage, then counterattack with a Corralling Vacuum followed by a powerful punch, and the shield has no internal cooldown between uses, so they can easily spam it. They can also revive other Skirmishers who have been disabled by having their shields broken and allow them to instantly regenerate that shield, which is especially obnoxious when they're teamed up with Hydrogunner Legionnaires, and they never shut up.
  • Mirror Maidens, another Fatui enemy, aren't particularly deadly, but they're also not fun to fight. They have an innate resistance to being staggered, floored, or knocked back, an attack where they trap you in a circle of mirrors that can't be exited prematurely without using certain abilities like Mona and Ayaka's Alternate Sprints, Keqing and Rosaria's Elemental Skills, or Fischl's Elemental Burst and mainly exists just to annoy you, a lot of health, which just makes fighting even one a slog, and their attacks apply Hydro, so they tend to get paired with one of the above-mentioned Cryo Cicin Mages.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Co-op mode has its own take on "crazy legs" where a visitor's legs will sometimes flip 180 degrees and point straight up whenever they stand still. This doesn't cause any serious problems, but looks extremely silly, so it became something of a meme and has earned a comical nickname.
  • Players shared a lot of minor glitches on the Internet, from visual glitches where hair models don't load properly, to connection-related glitches that allow Paimon to follow you everywhere.
  • The Xiangling Glitch. Basically, at the top of Qingyun peak, it is possible to exploit an updraft and Geo Traveler's elemental skill to glitch Xiangling into gliding in awkward angles. Normally, if Xiangling or any other spear user performs an aerial attack, it's a drill stab straight down, but because Xiangling is gliding at a glitched angle, she will instead perform the stab diagonally, which launches the player across the map at ludicrous speeds. It has been thus used to fly over the entire map, and through off-limits areas.
  • An issue was discovered with Xingqiu's healing swords that makes the healing effect last forever (instead of only activating 3 or 4 times per use); it can even be applied to multiple characters at the same time. Expect this to get patched out at some point.
  • There's a bug that allows you to have five party members at once (in contrast to normal gameplay only limiting you to four members per party, while a fifth member is only available as a Guest-Star Party Member on scripted dungeons).
  • Sometimes, while fighting Childe in co-op, his A.I. crashes and he stands around doing nothing for the rest of the battle. Players use this either to beat him effortlessly, or for photo ops.
  • The permanent, stackable food buff glitch, shown here. If a food/potion buff runs out while the game is disconnected from the internet, but the internet is turned back on in time that the game 'corrects' the player to an earlier save state and does not boot the player out to the title screen, any food/potion buffs that expired during the disconnected period will become permanent, in some cases persisting through a logout. Furthermore, the glitch can be used to stack multiple buffs of the same type, so long as the food item used to do so is different (and note that delicious, normal and suspicious variants of the same dish count as 3 different food items). Suddenly, bosses melt like butter, stamina is a non-issue and the enemies might as well run because they cannot deal meaningful damage because of all your stacked defense.
  • In Co-op, it's possible for Barbara's Elemental Burst to instantly revive downed characters the moment they are KOed. This is because when a player's character gets KOed, the death animation takes priority over instantly switching to another available character, leaving a small window of opportunity for another player to use her Elemental Burst and override the sequence by refilling the depleted health bar. It's a frame-perfect trick that can bypass the need to use reviving items.
  • By repeatedly teleporting to a portable waypoint, Xiangling's burst could not only be extended to ridiculous lengths (lasting for several minutes instead of 10-14 seconds), but could also be stacked, allowing for absurd meme videos of bosses getting destroyed by a giant disc of fire. Unfortunately, this bug was later fixed on 15th April 2021.
  • Bennett's Elemental Skill usually knocks him back. However, while under the effects of Zhongli's Jade Shield, the game will count Bennett being knocked back as an enemy hitting him, and thus absorbs the blow, keeping him from being knocked back.
  • If you can create an Electro shield before the Thunder Manifestation fires off its Thunder Probes, the shield will absorb the probe, negating its effects. Keep this up with a skill that deals continuous Geo damage, such as Zhongli's Stone Stele, and the boss will just hover in the middle of the arena while you slap it silly.
  • A now-patched bug from shortly after Aloy's release in 2.1 caused her to only spend 1 Mora when leveling items are used on her, making it significantly less costly to level her up.
  • It is possible to abuse player-made waypoints to glitch the player up to the highest point in the skybox, which is so high up that it takes several minutes for the playable character to reach the playable area again, allowing the player to explore out of bounds areas with enough stamina food and an ability like Xiao's or Kazuha's to allow them to remain in the air.
  • Occasionally, when you look at a character's info, another of your characters will appear behind them sans idle animations. This can lead to the amusing sight of a semi-motionless Qiqi standing off to the side of any other character, or herself.
  • Swirling an enemy is an important game mechanic in Genshin as it lets the 4-set Artifact bonus of Viridescent Venerer to shred the resistance of enemies to the swirl element. However, actually getting the swirl off can be challenging sometimes if you also want to apply other elements like Hydro, especially if you want to get swirls off on multiple elements. However, a mechanic was discovered between only Sucrose and Guoba: if Sucrose uses her Elemental Skill at the exact same time that Guoba sprouts the exclamation point over his head, Sucrose will swirl Guoba somehow and shred Pyro. There is no reason why it should work like this, and no one knows why it works, but it happens to be one of the most efficient ways to set up a double VV-swirl when running Xiangling with Sucrose.
  • A cute and amusing bug with Nahida's idle animation allows another player to give her a push and send her floating away on her swing.
  • Your characters can execute plunging attacks if they are high enough in the air, but usually, they can't jump from the flat ground high enough to execute a plunging attack. However, there is a bug with hitlag (where the game pauses for a very small amount of time after a hit) where speed is conserved during the "lag" portion. What this means is if your character dashes during the very, very small window where the entire world is lagged, they can generate enough speed to jump high enough to do a plunging attack. The faster your character and the longer your hitlag, the easier this is to pull off. Therefore it is easiest to execute on tall male characters (who have the fastest movespeed) and claymore characters (who have the longest hitstun) leading to the creation of Dragonstrike (登龍劍 - lit "Rising Dragon Sword") Diluc by Chinese players. It is technically Diluc's strongest playstyle, but is it a pain to execute consistently.
• Growing the Beard: While it is agreed that the quality of Hangout Quests varies by character, some of the earlier Hangouts usually played out exactly as their title implied, being excuses to "hang out" with the characters in usually slice-of-life or date-like scenarios for the sake of fanservice, which led to a number of players dismissing them as "filler" or less important than Story Quests, which are usually comparatively more serious. However, in recent years, Hangouts have also become more serious, with interactions and character revelations that delve deeper into the focus character while toning the fanservice elements in some areas.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In Keqing’s backstory, it’s mentioned that she tried to destroy or get rid of her Vision because she didn’t want to rely on a blessing from the Gods to try to make Liyue independent from Rex Lapis. The 2.0 update shows that had she succeeded, then her chances to make Liyue independent from the Gods would have been taken from her, as a Vision is not only a blessing from the Gods, it's also a physical manifestation of a person’s hopes, dreams and ambitions.
  • A recurring gag with each introduced Archon is that they're all completely broke. While the first three Archons shown in the story tend to have their brokeness be Played for Laughs, Kusanali's case is a completely different story as she likely has no need of Mora due to how she's been locked away in the Sanctuary of Surasthana practically since birth. Given that she is not involved in governing Sumeru, that she has no control over her country's Gnosis, that she likely hasn't seen the light of day in person at least in 500 years, and the general neglect and abuse Akademiya heaps upon her, it's incredibly unlikely they'd bother giving her an allowance. They've already been known to cut off funding to fruitless research, so why would they do anything for a "god" they don't expect to amount to anything?
  • Zhongli requested the Traveler to be the recorder of Teyvat's history in the event that history may change over time during his first story quest. When Kusanali was forced to erase Rukkhadevata's existence from Irminsul, all of the histories regarding Rukkhadevata has been changed to either Kusanali or erased completely, even everyone on Teyvat think it was Kusanali who is the only Dendro Archon, leaving only the Traveler to remember Rukkhadevata.
  • When 3.2's trailer showed a scene of Nahida falling to her knees in tears, fandom rage for her sake reached an all-time high, with many vowing to find whoever it was that caused her tears and make them pay. While Act V of Sumeru's Archon Quest does result in several of the people who made her suffer getting what was coming to them, the actual context of the aforementioned shot is more heartwrenching than first believed, and by the time it's over with players will likely not be crying for blood but rather crying alongside her. After 500 years of suffering in silence, the one who finally made Nahida cry was not Akademiya, Scaramouche, or Il Dottore, but Greater Lord Rukkhadevata. Nahida met her idol, and had her approval for all of a single conversation before realizing that her mission was to destroy her, as Rukkhadevata had created her in the hopes she'd one day come and wipe her from existence, entrusting the Lesser Lord with Sumeru's future.
  • The Akademiya's treatment of Kusanali. We know they are disappointed at the new Archon succeeding Rukkhadevata, as she displayed childlike mentality when they found her and none of her predecessor's power or wisdom. However, Secrets of the Scorching Desert and Act V of Sumeru Archon Quest reveal that Rukkhadevata reverted to childlike form centuries before the Khaenri'ah Cataclysm, and her Living Memory the cast meets in Irminsul looks exactly like Kusanali. For all the Akademiya knows when they found Kusanali, she is someone who looks exactly as their beloved goddess, but instead of making the logical assumption that she is an amnesiac Rukkhadevata and nursing her back to full power, they turn away from her not long after. This makes the Akademiya absolute hypocrites who serve their god not out of true devotion and faith, but for the benefits their god can provide. And the moment that benefit stops, they turn away.
  • Plenty of Furina's actions take a darker turn after the reveal of the surrounding circumstances of her being a mere human, the humanity of Focalors, masquerading as an Archon for centuries with no powers of her own:
    • Her wanting to see "a real twist for once" in the Overture Teaser: The Final Feast, and liking for dramatic court trials, was her looking for signs of the incoming "magnificent and dramatic trial" that Focalors had described to her that signals the end of her masquerade.
    • Her showy and threatric personality is merely a facade to deflect any suspicious of her being a fake, lest her identity be exposed and putting everyone in danger by her failure to fulfill her task to deceive everyone.
    • At the beginning of "To the Stars Shining in the Depths", Furina is insistent that Neuvillette accompany her to a meeting with Arlecchino. While it's initialy assumed she's simply being a brat, it's later revealed that Arlecchino nearly assassinated Furina for her Gnosis on a whim and Furina has literally nothing to defend herself with, and she's understandably terrified at being alone in the same room as her attempted killer. Considering she needs to appear self-capable and powerful as part of her act, she is unable to speak up about this incident, even to her closest confidants.
  • The Fontaine OST titled 'Fontaine' is a melancholic tune that hits much worse after the conclusion of Chapter IV, Act V. After all, this is the music that plays as Focalors sacrifices herself to save her beloved nation.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • In the Archon Quest "We Will be Reunited", the Mondstadt and Liyue branches of the Treasure Hoarders hire a famous individual known as ‘the Grand Thief’, to scout out an Abyss Order hideout that they planned to rob. When the Traveler finds him, they find that he’s been killed by the Abyss Order in front of the corrupted Statue of the Seven. Due to how much he was hyped by the quest, some people refuse to believe that the Grand Thief is dead, instead theorizing that the corpse that the Traveler found was not the real ‘Grand Thief’ but a decoy that they used to scout ahead of them, and upon finding the corrupted Statue decided that robbing the Abyss Order wasn’t worth it.
  • After Signora's death through execution by the Raiden Shogun, many people went into denial about her death due to her popularity and how early in the overall storyline she was killed, hoping that she somehow survived or would be revived despite her body being reduced to ashes on-screen. The release of "A Winter Night's Lazzo" trailer in July 2022 was the final nail in the coffin, where Signora's funeral is shown and has been permanently laid to rest.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of Yoimiya's voice lines has her talking about Klee (Presumably mentioned by the Traveler), with Yoimiya being excited at the prospect of meeting her. The 2.6 Trailer opens with Klee visiting Inazuma for the first time since the Sakoku decree is lifted, meaning that Yoimiya can now actually meet Klee in person. And she does, in the "Hues of the Violet Garden" event, where it's even revealed that Alice has met Yoimiya in the past and believed she had "potential".
  • The popular ship that passes in the night between Kazuha and Scaramouche became this when it's revealed that the Kaedehara Clan's current decline happened as part of Scaramouche's plot to destroy the Raiden Gokaden. Made even more hilarious after the release of Wanderer: both characters end up being wanderers with Anemo visions, and Wanderer even has a voiceline on Kazuha, in which he has nothing negative to say, in stark contrast to most of his voicelines on other characters.
  • Xiangling has a reputation for being a Game-Breaker more powerful than many 5* units despite her humble status as a chef while many 5*s are country rulers and/or ancient spirits. During the "Moonlight Merriment" event, we learn that Guoba, her animal companion, was formerly a god. No wonder she's so strong!
  • Christina Costello once remarked about wanting to voice in the game and said she'd be fine with even being "a blade of grass or a tree". Then she wound up being the voice of Collei, one of the game's first Dendro users.
  • Aloy's inclusion in the game may be very unexpected and some would argue, out of place. Come the reveal of Sumeru, and they have developed Akasha Terminals which are remarkably similar to Focus devices.
  • The memetic comparisons between Genshin and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild become this upon the release of Sumeru and the Aranara quests introducing puzzles that require the use of a harp, songs for which you learn through the quests, to solve them, not unlike many The Legend of Zelda titles. The Aranara themselves are both favorably and unfavorably compared to the Koroks as well, with several of them hiding around the region and being rewarded for finding them, though the ultimate reward for doing so is fairly lackluster. At least they all have endearing personalities.
  • There was some annoyance in the playerbase when the Dendro Archon turned out to be female rather than male due to one of Ganyu's lines being localized incorrectly in English. Come Fontaine, while the gender ratio of the "Archons" remains heavily skewed towards female, in terms of "ruling gods", Focalors's death and Neuvillette replacing her as Fontaine's leader and guardian deity has shifted the needle back a bit.
• Hollywood Homely: Layla is considered an Unkempt Beauty to the nth degree by the fanbase. According to her Hangout Event however, most of her peers only see the "Unkempt" part.
• Hype Aversion: Genshin Impact quickly earned a massive online following as soon as it launched. However, the gacha aspect became a major turn-off for some, or seen as that one Scrappy Mechanic being glossed over by the hype. Some players and content creators stay away from the hype train because they know that this is a gacha game. Some long-time gacha gamers also avoid Genshin despite its merits simply because the 0.6% base rate for obtaining 5★ characters is considered to be very low, and that for the Free-to-Play, Genshin isn't a good gateway to gacha games when other titles have higher rates.
• Hype Backlash: The game experiences this in some parts of the Western community.
  • The Open World aspect is one of Genshin's selling points; the marketing doesn't hide it, and critics praise it. Unfortunately, some players become much more critical of the Scrappy Mechanics once they reach the endgame and vent how those mechanics affected their enjoyment of open world exploration.
  • Genshin is also divisive in the some parts of gacha gaming communities months after its release, with people wondering how this game managed to become popular so quickly and even won Google's "Best Game of 2020" when it's taking a while for miHoYo to address some of the playerbase's concerns. Others consider this game to be overhyped, and only got a significant attention because it didn't have any major competitor in the "open world mobile/gacha game" category when it was released.
• I Knew It!:
  • The English voice actors were initially uncredited in-game and on social media. However, it didn't stop the players from guessing the characters' VAs until they are officially confirmed. For example, those who are familiar with Yuri Lowenthal's voice correctly guessed that he voices Dainsleif (the character who narrates a lot of the official Genshin videos on YouTube) even before miHoYo announced it on November 9, 2020.
  • Hu Tao being the secret third banner for Version 1.3 was meant to be a surprise, but most fans figured it out long beforehand. She was leaked long before the announcement, and the weapon banner released several days in advance had a new polearm, the Staff of Homa, clearly tailored for her, given how her skills were expected to work (both the skills and the staff give bonuses based on max HP and incentivize being at low health).
  • This official New Year's Day Tweet featuring Ayaka mentions a shrine maiden called Guuji Yae. Even before she made an official appearance, fans of Honkai Impact 3rd guessed that she might be an Expy of Yae Sakura (the playable shrine maiden from HI3) or would reference her in some intentional way. The Guuji, Yae Miko, would later make an appearance on the Version 1.5 Special Program, and not only does she almost look like Sakura, she also has the same Chinese and Japanese voice actresses as her.
  • Players also predicted same would go for Raiden Shogun being an Expy of Raiden Mei.
  • Even before the story confirmed it in the "We Will Be Reunited" Archon quest, fan theorists and lore-minded players correctly guessed that Khaenri'ah is the nation that was destroyed 500 years ago.
  • Scaramouche was speculated to be an Artificial Human created by the Raiden Shogun before it was confirmed in final act of the Inazuma Archon Quest.
  • Albedo's nature as an Artificial Human was hinted and widely guessed at before being confirmed in "Shadows Amidst Snowstorms." That he didn't visibly breath in Dragonspine during the 1.2 update certainly helped.
  • Many players suspected that Dottore had a deeper hand in Scaramouche's backstory than they were letting on. They were more right than they thought. Niwa, the blacksmith who originally took Scaramouche in, did not betray him as initially thought; he accepted Scaramouche's nature as a puppet and was actively looking into the trouble brewing in Tatarasuma. What really happened was that Dottore stepped in to silence him and slander his name, turning Scaramouche to his side and stringing him along ever since.
  • The 2023 Lantern Rite Festival confirms a speculation that the blue-haired woman with a spear seen among the Adepti in a cutscene of Moonlight Merriment event is indeed Madame Ping. She was considered attractive in her youth, was gifted the Cleansing Bell, and was referred to as "master" by Xiangling who also wields a Polearm.
• Inferred Holocaust:
  • In version 3.0's Archon Quest, The Sages of the Akademiya lock Sumeru City's residents in a forced shared dream coma, harvesting their dreams through their Akasha Terminals. Nahida herself even says that many people will not be able to endure this process and the Traveler's friend, Dunyarzad, nearly dies during this time to her Elezar. Presumably more people fell ill and/or died during this period due to the mental strain of living out the same day 168 times without rest, though Sumeru City doesn't seem much worse for wear at the end of it. The Sages even mention they will continue despite casualties, suggesting that there were people who died during this process.
  • At the climax of the Fontaine Archon Quest, the entirety of Fontaine is hit by a massive flood that reaches to the top of the Opera Epiclese. While Neuvillette prevents the people of Fontaine from being dissolved by the prophecy, and the entire Fontaine cast participates in operations to rescue the people and get them onto boats, a flood like that should still cause massive devastation and plenty of deaths for those who couldn't float to the surface or were trapped in buildings. It stands out when compared to the more gritty portrayal of the prior incident in Poisson, which in addition to the lifes lost, depicted numerous injuries due to the panic and the emotional turmoil of the survivors.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: As one would expect with how Genshin Impact rose to extreme heights in online presence, fandom size, and profitability merely weeks into its release, not everyone is on board with this game becoming popular:
  • Within the fandom, it has already attracted more critics after the honeymoon phase ended, with complaints ranging from valid gameplay issues such as the Scrappy Mechanics; the scarcity of Primogems, the gacha system, the low chance of getting 5★ characters, and the way higher-rarity characters are balanced.
  • The game's popularity is sometimes blamed for making Loot Boxes or gacha games even more mainstream. Being a Gateway Series isn't always seen positively because it also attracts more critics against gacha games in general, specifically against the games being compared to Genshin. Older gacha communities were surprised that more websites, content creators, and media outlets began to cover gacha-related topics after Genshin's release. Others simply hate how this game overshadowed the older gachas' fandoms despite of its flaws. While these complaints appear whenever a new popular gacha/lootbox-type game is released, it was especially overblown when Genshin rose to prominence.

J-O

• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains:
  • While Il Dottore and Scaramouche are the overarching antagonists in Sumeru's Archon Quests and mastermind the main threat, the Sages of the Sumeru Akademiya are much more disliked.
    • They're responsible for causing or exacerbating most of Sumeru's long-term problems, including the same ones that drove them into the Fatui's arms in the first place. Not only do they shun their own current Archon Lesser Lord Kusanali in favor of clinging to the memory of Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, but as more is learned about the latter, they have proven to be everything that she wasn't.
    • Where Rukkhadevata loved the dances of her close friend the God of Flowers and created the Aranara to have power over dreams, the Sages ridicule both dreams and the arts as frivolous. Where she was warm and compassionate for all people including the people of the desert, the Akademiya as an institution proves to be both racist and elitist, and the Sages themselves are intensely unpleasant individuals if Grand Sage Azar is anything to go by. They revere her as "the great tutor", yet when the newborn Kusanali appeared to them and had no more intelligence than a child, they locked her up in the Sanctuary of Surasthana instead of teaching her the ropes, forcing her to find her own way while the Akademiya's ability to generate academic breakthroughs plateaued, ostensibly from lack of direction. Yet instead of reflecting on the mistakes they have made thus far, they choose to help Il Dottore ascend Scaramouche to godhood so they can have a new "god of wisdom" to follow like lemmings, going as far as using the very Akasha their Archon left behind as a tool of control to mess with the brains of Sumeru's own people to achieve this goal, meaning that for all their supposed devoutness as Rukkhadevata's disciples, they are the most unfaithful of all, committing the highest form of blasphemy against her possible by perverting all she left to them in order to replace her.
    • As leaders, as devotees, as teachers, and as students, the Sages are complete failures on all accounts, and Sumeru suffers for it in the present. Unlike the Fatui, however, they don't have the charm or memorability that make Il Dottore and Scaramouche the more popular antagonists. To top it all off, their "punishment" could very well be considered a slap on the wrist, since all they get is exiled from Sumeru City. Given everything Azar and his cronies did, many wish they had gotten a far worse punishment.
  • Dori, despite not being on a villainous scale like the Fatui or the Abyss Order, is disliked by numerous players due to her reputation as an annoying, selfish, greedy merchant that preys on her customer's weakness to earn more Mora, especially with regards to her role in bankrupting and continuing to increase Kaveh's debt as well as turning Layla into a financially struggling student. Her backstory explains her current behavior, but it completely falls flat as she has no problems taking advantage of even innocents just to earn Mora (such as her attempts to drain an Eleazar-inflicted Collei out of her hard earned savings, which might have succeeded if not for Tighnari's timely intervention).
  • Little Que'er is a minor NPC that is otherwise completely irrelevant to the story and pales in comparision to the actual villains of the setting, but many players loathe her purely for her needless hostility, even going as far as to issue death threats just for talking to her. In the Version 1.3 Lantern Rite, she displays disturbing implications on wanting to harm a civilian associate of Sun Yu, painting her as someone who is more than willing to hurt people who can't fight back. Unlike most NPCs with vile personalities and no redeeming qualities, players can't do anything to her to put her in her place, resulting in them having to put up with her insults for years. The devs likely took note of the fanbase's opinion towards her years since the game's release, in which they silently released a new set of Liyue Daily Commissions in Version 3.3 (an otherwise Sumeru and Inazuma-focused patch) where Sun Yu decides he's had enough and chooses to travel abroad to fulfill his goals by himself, leaving Que'er a broken mess afterwards.
  • Degui, the owner of Third-Round Knockout (whom Zhongli is a regular at), is widely disliked by the fandom for being a very greedy merchant whose business practices would make even Dori wince at his methods - he rips off his customers by only providing them with half the food instead of full, so that it'll force customers into buying more, and swapping the booze-flavored desserts the customers ordered with bland-tasting ones. He also chews out at Zhiruo for simply doing an honest work, even calling her methods stupid. And lastly, he has the gall to tell Zhiruo that she should listen to him (and only him) and not the customers she is serving (via through his Insane Troll Logic fallacies), not taking into account that this very practice is what led to his business being in decline in the first place. The most shameless, and grating, act is his commission (Wine with a Taste of Freedom), where he asks the Traveler to fetch him some Dandelion Seeds in an attempt to create a knock-off version of Angel Share's signature Dandelion Wine without asking for the Dawn Winery's permission.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • For the long-time miHoYo fans, the Unknown God made a strong impression because she looks like miHoYo's mascot Kiana Kaslana. The similarities made Honkai fans stick around and guess how this game is connected to the older games, so it's common for the lore and fan theory enthusiasts to wait for cameos and expies.
  • Some players joined Genshin because their favorite voice actors are here (such as Fischl being known to Maaya Uchida fans, or players who want Zhongli because they like Keith Silverstein's voice). Others joined because a Genshin character's playstyle reminds them of someone else (such as Devil May Cry fans who compare Ayaka to Vergil). These players often admit saving up their Primogems in order to guarantee the character from the gacha.
  • This is a common occurrence for the various Genshin Concerts. Fans of a specific performer will see the concert only for their favorite artist and may make a YouTube fan video that uploads the one performance and cuts out the rest of the concert. An example is Band-Maid appearing in Genshin Concert 2022, their main audience are over the age of 50 and have little inclination for a Chinese anime-inspired gacha game.
• Lady Mondegreen: Some of the English voice-lines, if misheard, can be chuckle and meme worthy.
  • "Make rice cake."^note "Make my escape."
  • "Chicken hamster!"^note "Shaken and stirred!"
  • "Sketch it!"^note "Scratched ya!"
  • "With all my street!"^note "With all my strength!"
  • "Come into me!"^note "Come into being!"
  • “Let’s sniff them in the butt!”^note ”Let’s snip them in the bud!"
  • "Flying mythical beast!"^note "Mighty mythical beast!"
• LGBT Fanbase: This game quickly amassed a loyal following of gay and bisexual fans due to its anime-like art style and a cast full of attractive and flamboyant characters. The somewhat gender-neutral writing for Aether/Lumine helps, since it features Ship Tease with characters of either gender.
• Like You Would Really Do It: The 4.2 trailer for Masquerade of the Guilty shows the Traveler failing to catch Navia as she falls towards the Primordial Sea. No one bought that she would die for good, even more so since Genshin's own drip marketing revealed she would be playable in the next patch two days before 4.2 went live.
• Love to Hate:
  • Scaramouche. Despite being a sociopath without redeeming qualities who revels in chaos, he's amassed a significant fanbase, many of whom love him for it. Even after becoming playable he still gets this treatment, with his voice lines and animations confirming he's still the arrogant little shit the fandom knows and loves.
  • Grand Sage Azar is such an unrepentantly abusive scumbag that many fans find him to be a breath of fresh air amidst the game's many Tragic Villains, with many more enjoying him finally and thoroughly getting his just desserts at the conclusion of Chapter III.
  • Il Dottore, the morally ambiguous doctor with a grand ambition to create beings that surpass Gods, with one of his projects using Scaramouche as a basis for creating the new God of Wisdom to usurp The Dendro Archon's role, all the while having charm that the sages such as Azar don't. No wonder Collei is terrified of him.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Ningguang is the Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing and owner of the Jade Chamber, where she performs economic research with the help of her vast spy network, ranging from store owners to Liyue's children. After the death of Rex Lapis, Ningguang immediately gets to work on combating the Fatui's attempts to destabilize Liyue's politics. To this end, she invites the Traveler to the Jade Chamber and offers them to take any object from there, predicting that they'd choose a paper from her wall of research and so places a report of Fatui activity there in advance, predicting that they'd investigate. Pulling an Enemy Mine with the Adepti after the release of Osial, she helps lead the attack on the released god, culminating in her performing a Colony Drop with her Jade Chamber to reseal him, which helps proves the Qixing's right to rule to the Adepti. Hearing of Osial's wife, Beisht, being sighted nearby, Ningguang starts reconstructing the Jade Chamber to lure her out for a more properly prepared counter-attack to further prove the Qixing to the Adepti, namely the still skeptical Cloud Retainer, ultimately succeeding. Cunning and shamelessly manipulative, Ningguang nonetheless puts Liyue and its people above all else.
  • Zhiyi is Uncle Tian's pupil who, desiring to become his successor, made a deal with the Fatui by slowly worsening Tian’s health with poison by using fish soup’s favour to hide the one of poison, even turning it from lethal to slow-affecting, meanwhile feeling remorse over such betrayal. Knowing that the Fatui will just use him as a puppet, he tricked the Fatui ambassador Yusupov’s minions with rumours of treasure at Qingxu Pool and captured them. Later tricking Yusupov into drinking a poison wine meanwhile secretly collaborating with Yusupov’s power hungry right hand. Spending the majority of the time of the Story Quest in planning ahead of Yelan and the Traveler, Zhiyi comes very close to becoming Tian’s successor. After being exposed and imprisoned, Yelan mentions him being very cooperative.
  • Focalors is the Hydro Archon, bearing the burden of her predecessor's sin of creating Fontaine's people from Primordial Seawater. Faced with a prophecy that declares her people will be wiped out, Focalors sets off to challenge the Heavenly Principles themselves to avert it. She splits herself into her divine and human halves, cursing the human "Furina" with immortality, tasking her with pretending to be the Hydro Archon and demanding absolute secrecy about the truth, forcing her to live with her loneliness for five-hundred years while Focalors hid within the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale. Once Neuvillette and the Traveler stage a trial against Furina for her deceit, unintentionally playing into the prophecy in the process, the Oratrice gives a verdict declaring that the Hydro Archon is sentenced to death. Focalors appears before Neuvillette, revealing her plans to deceive the Heavenly Principles to make it appear that Furina fulfilled the prophecy, and admits that she had him become Iudex to make him sympathetic towards humanity's plight. She then accepts her fate, using the Indemnitium gathered by the Oratrice to create a blade powerful enough to kill her and completely destroy the seat of the Hydro Archon, restoring Neuvillette's authority as the Sovereign Dragon and allowing him to absolve Fontaine's people of their sin. In her final moments, she apologises to Furina, freeing her from her curse and letting her live her life as a normal human.

• Moe:
  • Paimon is such an adorable little Fairy Companion who remains cute in all of her varied facial expressions. In the Japanese dub, Aoi Koga even nails her performance well with her girly voice.
  • Amber has a rabbit motif to her, which itself is already a recipe for cuteness. Then you add on the fact her Baron Bunny is an explosive stuffed animal, and that she sews them herself and cuddles with them... yeah. Pre-release material further showcase her cuteness, such as her infamously scrapped Idle Animation where she dances.
  • Barbara. It's hard to argue with Albert after watching her be reduced to a blushing, flustered mess after reading compliments directed at her.
  • Sucrose. Her soft voice, coupled with her lack of social skills made her a favorite among fans.
  • Xiangling. Her adorably quirky personality alongside her hilarious culinary antics and charming design have quickly made her a fan-favorite within the community.
  • Ganyu is a short, young-looking lady with Qilin horns, fluffy hair, and a shy and self-deprecating, yet gentle demeanor. Add in her Big Eater tendencies yet also her concern for her weight, and her embarrassment over Cloud Retainer's stories about her, and you get someone you just want to hug. And even more so after Xianyun's Character Teaser showcases how the Cocogoat looked when she was a little girl! It's clear her status as a Ms. Fanservice (as an adult) isn't the only reason for being a fan-favorite.
  • Yun Jin, in an unexpected case. It's made apparent in her Hangout Event that her stuffy, serious demeanor is mostly an act and she's in truth a much more laid-back, and at times downright mischievous, person. In one ending, she even glomps the Traveler from behind under the guise of taking a photo of them.
  • Collei is a Cute Clumsy Girl with an undying admiration of Amber that's equally as cute. Her voices in every language are also very cute, and her backstory, as detailed in the webcomic, makes her a woobie that only adds to the huggable factor.
  • Nilou is equal parts pretty and adorable. Her airheadedness, soft voice, and appealing design made her an instant fan favorite.
  • Layla. Her cute appearance and character as an overworked college student with Sleepwalking tendencies made her an instant hit with the playerbase.
  • Most of the "Short Female" characters are virtually this by default:
    • It's clear the developers had this in mind with Klee — a very young and diminutive bomber that attacks by hurling explosive stuffed animals at her enemies. Just look at the PV for her banner. Her soft voice no matter the language (and her personality) only add to this.
    • Qiqi is a cute zombie girl with a drawn out emotionless, yet soft voice that makes one want to protect her and not the other way around. And of course, who couldn't forget the time she asked for "Cocogoat milk"!^*How it looks like? Where to find it? Where it comes from? Her answer: "Don't know."
    • Yaoyao, who keeps care of her elders like a tiny younger sister, and attacks with stuffed animals, similarly to Klee. Even in-universe, the Adepti love Yaoyao.
    • Sayu. A tiny ninja dressed in a mujina suit that rolls around like a ball for her Elemental Skill. And she's voiced by none other than LilyPichu in English.
    • Nahida. Her tiny appearance (especially compared to the other archons), mixture of both naivety and innocence despite being such a smart girl, her animations during gameplay, and general Woobie qualities have caused the fandom to fall in love with the radish, and swear bloody vengeance on anyone who dares harm her.
  • Some of the young boys, especially Mika and Freminet, also count. Despite being accomplished warriors, both of them also happen to be innocent Shrinking Violets; Freminet, in particular, has a Dark and Troubled Past similar to Collei. His sad lines when you ascend him and his status as The Woobie only makes you want to hug the poor boy.
  • The Flavors of the World animatic at the end of the Moonchase Festival included a brief shot of several Liyue characters as children. Hu Tao as a little girl in particular made many fans squee.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • While Grand Sage Azar was a highly unpleasant individual from the start, he crosses the line by using the Akasha to trap the entirety of Sumeru City in a dream loop, almost resulting in the death of Dunyarzad and likely thousands more.
  • Il Dottore crosses it before the events of the game by murdering Niwa and giving his heart to the Kabukimono to fabricate a lie that Niwa killed his own servant in order to manipulate the Kabukimono, making Dottore indirectly responsible for Scaramouche's villainy.
  • Noailles comes off as a frustrating By-the-Book Cop at first, but he crosses the line when he breaks his agreement with Caterpillar to let Lanoire, and only Lanoire, go from the Fortress of Meropide, then states that those without documentation (which he knows applies to Lanoire) will spend the rest of their lives imprisoned. This despite knowing that Lanoire is an innocent child who's only there because she was born there. Additionally, he's deliberately bypassing the courts, and if the Traveler points it out to him, he shrugs it off. At that point it becomes clear that he's more of The Unfettered Principles Zealot.
• More Popular Spin Off: Despite Genshin Impact being miHoYo's most popular entry due to having more global exposure, as far as miHoYo franchises are concerned, its Honkai series is considered its flagship and main series, with Genshin being a fantasy spin-off of it with a lot of expies from there.
• Narm: The ending cutscene of Prologue Act 2 is supposed to be a dramatic or heartbreaking moment as Stormterror thinks that he has been betrayed by his friend Barbatos/Venti. But in the English dub, it can be surprising or funny to realize that he is being manipulated by an Abyss Mage who has an adorably high-pitched voice.
• Narm Charm:
  • A lot of Scaramouche's character can be derived from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and there's the obvious fact his name and theme are direct reference to the song. Even more, his creator is the Electro Archon (so, thunderbolts and lightning), and said creator's Archon name is Beelzebul (a corruption of Beelzebub). All of this comes off as equal parts awesome and silly. In his Character Teaser as The Wanderer, the moment he says "I wish I'd never been born at all" (another line in Queen's song), it does nothing to detract from the absolute Tear Jerker the scene is.
  • Neuvillette's English "Heavy Attack" voice-overs are, compared to the other languages, much more aggressive-sounding, with many people pointing out how unnecessarily dramatic they sound to the point of memetic mutation. Fans, however, still love him for it and consider it fitting for the Iudex.
• Not-So-Cheap Imitation: Early previews derided the game as a cheap The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild knock-off. Then it launched, and all expectations were thrown out of the window. Although comparisons and references to BotW are inevitable, the game has grown into its own beast, and the comparisons are done in a less negative context. For instance, PC Gamer described Genshin as "a bigger, more ambitious blend of Zelda's open world, an actiony JRPG, and a mobile gacha game, with co-op play tossed in on top".
• Older Than They Think:
  • The "Paimon is Emergency Food" joke quickly became a widespread meme as soon as this game launched on September 2020. However, anime fans pointed out that Genshin Impact isn’t the first to use the "Emergency Food" joke; Excel♡Saga had this with Mince, One Piece had this with Chopper, and Dragon Ball Z Abridged had Goku refer to Icarus and Oolong as his two emergency food.
  • Some memes and fan nicknames actually existed from older gacha game communities, but this isn't noticed early on by those who had Genshin as their first gacha. For example, "Apologems", "F2P btw", and "Rate-up is a lie!" already existed in the fandoms of Fate/Grand Order and Granblue Fantasy.
  • Genshin is the first miHoYo game of many players since late 2020, so it was common to think that this game started some trends when they actually existed before in previous miHoYo games. For example, this game is inspired by Breath of the Wild, as confirmed by miHoYo on interviews. However, this isn't their first attempt at taking inspirations from another IP; their previous game, Honkai Impact 3rd, is inspired by Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. This reaction is also carried over to the gameplay and animations. Ayaka Kamisato is commonly described as a "Vergil clone" ever since the beta tests because her charged attack is just like his Judgement Cut, but miHoYo already copied Vergil's techniques before. Yae Sakura has several moves lifted from him, and her Goushinnso Memento battlesuit also includes his Judgement Cut.
  • Players were impressed that miHoYo, a company that mostly worked on mobile games, included several references to third-party media. It's not their first time doing this; their previous game, Honkai Impact 3rd, is also full of references. Outside of miHoYo, several mobile games are Reference Overdosed as well, such as Arknights, Azur Lane, Fate/Grand Order, Girls' Frontline, and Granblue Fantasy.
  • The Raiden Shogun is quite famously known among fans and non-fans alike for pulling a magic sword out from her chest, to the point where people joke and heavily associate such action with her. However, contrary to popular belief, she is not the first character who did this, in fact, the whole "booba sword" schtick has been done many years earlier, by Shura Kirigakure of Blue Exorcist fame.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Tighnari's original English voice actor, Elliot Gindi, has had his reputation damaged following allegations of him grooming underage girls, among other things (such as mocking Chloe Eves, the VA of Rukkhadevata and Haypasia, for playing NPCs, as well as being a general piece of work to deal with). This resulted in various voice actors, both in and out of the Genshin community, denouncing and removing any mention of him. miHoYo themselves eventually cut ties with Gindi and replaced him with Zachary Gordon. As a result, any mention of his short-lived voice acting career is eschewed in favor of discussions about his predatory behavior and abuse of fame to abuse unsuspecting fans for his own gain.

P-S

• Pacing Problems: The Inazuma Archon Quest is considered to be a more ambitious step-up in Genshin Impact storytelling, but condensing its plotlines into three acts was to their detriment. Acts 1 and 2 were dedicated to introduction and setup, but that left Act 3 with a myriad of elements to satisfy, including the Vision Hunt Decree, the Resistance, and the Fatui's machinations. As a result, some characterization and subplots like the Resistance and Raiden Ei rush to their conclusions and therefore miss a stage or two in their development. miHoYo seems to have noticed, as Sumeru and Fontaine's Archon Quests — both of which have been much better received — have five acts each instead of three.
• Padding: The Tatara Tales questline takes place over seven real world days. One quest in the storyline is unlocked each day, and it is necessary to complete the questline in order to purify Tatarasuna. The end result is that while it is possible to purify all of Narukami and Yashiori Island in a day or two, completely purifying Kannazuka will take much longer. It is the first line of World Quests in the game to behave this way, making the attempt at slowing the progress of early birds who would have quickly cleared Inazuma more obvious.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • The in-game web event "Stone Harbor Treasure Journal" panders to Otome game players; it features Lumine as the Traveler meeting up with Zhongli and Childe, with everything after that playing out similarly to a Dating Sim in terms of interface and choices, minus the actual romance elements. You can even choose which character to partner up with for work out of Zhongli and Childe. Debatable canonicity aside, the web event clearly exists mainly for the purpose of Fanservice, though it also serves as a way to get free primogems and mora should the players complete the missions.
  • The game encourages the shipping portion of the fandom pretty heavily, through the characters flirting with the Traveler regardless of their sex and giving the Traveler the option to flirt back, to certain pairs of characters having shipping potential, if not outright shippy dynamics with each other.
  • On Genshin’s Japanese channel for the video "Zhongli: Dominance of Earth", the thumbnail makes it seem as if Zhongli is longingly gazing over at Childe despite the fact that this scene doesn’t show up until the very end of the video and has nothing to do with Zhongli’s in-battle capabilities.
  • The game's advertising campaigns seem to be well aware of the popularity of certain ships, particularly Zhongli/Childe, as they received a Hoyoverse ad which implied a closer relationship between the two of them. The end of the ad even has them reuniting in Liyue again, something fans have asked for for over a year.
  • Various official character-centric Twitter posts, such as posts celebrating holidays or birthdays, tend to tease the characters potentially having romantic feelings for the Traveler/reader. This doesn’t always translate to nor is it ever fully communicated in the game, and is mostly played up for Fanservice.
• Paranoia Fuel: Balethunder areas in Inazuma give a Geiger counter-like sound effect. If you've watched Chernobyl or played Fallout or S.T.A.L.K.E.R., you know that can only mean bad things.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • Just like fellow miHoYo game Honkai Impact 3rd (and perhaps because of the overlapping players between the two fandoms), the YouTube portion of the Genshin fandom makes a lot of MMD videos having the characters dance to music, or imitate memetic videos and comedy skits. miHoYo has officially released the models for the fanbase to use, though they’ve banned using them for NSFW purposes.
  • Since Genshin is graphically-demanding as a Tech-Demo Game, it's a popular choice for stress-testing devices, and it managed to attract tech-savvy crowds who primarily review gadgets on YouTube.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: In Jean's story quest, Barbara gets extremely flustered when talking about healing her, stuttering something about love before denying she has any personal investment in Jean's well-being. Many players have interpreted this scene as Barbara having a crush on Jean, making it a bit surprising to find out later the actual reason Barbara is so worked up is that Jean is her older sister. If you have Barbara, she talks about an older sister in one of her idle-lines, but doesn't say who it is; you more or less have to look it up. The Midsummer Island Adventure storyline fixes this, as Barbara and Jean are both main characters there. Among other things, Barbara has a Freudian Slip and refers to Jean as Big Sis twice in the first act alone.
• Play-Along Meme: Chapter III Act V has Rukkhadevata getting Retgone'd with all memories of her disappearing from everybody's minds. This has fans jokingly asking about who Rukkhadevata is, and why Kusanali is called a Lesser Lord when she is the "only" Archon in Sumeru.
• Player Punch: Before they were rewritten from Version 1.3 onwards, the Oceanid's previous dialogue lines were easily interpreted as if the players are intrusive "murderers" who are constantly fighting a protector of the waters. Because the Oceanid is the go-to boss for farming Hydro Ascension Materials, players would repeatedly hear these words:
  Voice of the Water: (At the start of the fight) So, murderers from our homeland have come on a futile journey to harass the people of the Qingce waters...
  Voice of the Water: (At the end of the fight) We but only seek tranquil waters. Why should we be denied such a thing?
• Popular with Furries:
  • Keqing is often mistakenly believed to be a cat-girl due to her hair buns resembling a pair of cat ears, which made her quite popular with fans of such. Even when the misconception is cleared up, her attractive design is still a big part of her Ensemble Dark Horse status.
    • Sumeru introduces another contender who is an Eremite bodyguard, Dehya. Like Keqing, some fans mistook Dehya as a lion-girl.
  • Hilichurls, especially the massive, buff Mitachurls and Lawachurls, have gained a small following in the Furry Fandom thanks to their adorably monstrous designs.
  • Ganyu, thanks to her goat-like horns, has a surprising amount of fanart of her drawn as an actual goat.
  • Inazuma introduces Gorou, a dog person, and Yae Miko, a kitsune. It's common to draw them as a shiba inu and a fox respectively.
  • Fontaine brought with it an entire race of Ridiculously Cute Critters called Melusines, whose slug-dragon-bunny type Cartoon Creature design heavily endeared them to cute cuddly creature fans, though giving them Self-Fanservice into curvier appearances is also popular in fanart.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Despite the Fontaine Archon Quest focusing on a prophecy that the country will sink and that its people will dissolve into water, the real horror during the first and second acts actually comes from the serial kidnapping and murdering of young women that had been going on for two decades. Their bodies being dissolved by Primordial Seawater can bring to mind how many real life criminal organizations have disposed of dead bodies via strong acids. And while their souls seemingly merging into an Oceanid is utterly fantastical, their kidnapping, murdering, and body disposing is something that is a very real life scenario.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • The buffs to Geo, added mainly to improve Zhongli after his release prompted backlash, also launched the often-neglected Noelle into the spotlight. As the only other Geo character with a shield-generating skill, she can just as effectively use the new damage bonus and resistance debuff from teaming up with any other Geo character—making her a powerful jack-of-all-trades unit (especially with all 6 constellations), when she was formerly only worthwhile as a backup healer. She's also essential for fighting the new Primo Geovishap boss, since Geo shields are the only thing that can reflect its most devastating attack regardless of what element it's using.
  • Likewise, the aforementioned buffs to Zhongli have been very well received. Casting his shield ability is now far more safe and timely now that he has additional interruption resistance AND creates a pillar if the maximum number of them have not already been summoned. Speaking of his shield, it now has an additional universal RES debuff on surrounding enemies, giving him an edge over other shield-based characters and making him useful in even non-Geo elemental teams. Finally, Dominance of Earth (his 2nd unlocked passive skill) now gives him an additional damage bonus to his attacks and the pulses from his pillars that scales off of his maximum HP, allowing him to function as an effective, hard-hitting bruiser and tank. Zhongli's buffs turned him from a Master of None with an unfocused skillset to a Jack of All Trades that can fit into just about any team and in almost any role - definitely befitting the Geo Archon.
  • The Shadows Amidst Snowstorms event redeemed Reckless Pallad in the eyes of many of his previous detractors after he finds and rescues Joel's father, and then thanks Bennett for passing his luck onto him, despite the latter's worries that the unfortunate circumstances that led Pallad to Joserf in the first place were because of his contagious misfortune. Though while fans have forgiven him for his actions in the previous Dragonspine event, this hasn't stopped them from continuing to be annoyed with his random events.
  • Sangonomiya Kokomi was intially dismissed due to her negative crit rate modifier in a DPS-heavy meta. However, due to meta shifts and further features released in later versions, the general consensus on her usefulness has skyrocketed. Although her Elemental Burst, which scales off her high HP, gives her decent damage output, her biggest value is easy Hydro application. Her Elemental Skill, in addition to healing allies at an astonishing rate, is a very useful off-field Area of Effect Hydro Application. Furthermore, since her Elemental Burst refreshes the duration of her Elemental Skill, she can maintain constant Hydro application and healing with enough Energy Recharge and proper timing. Add Tenacity of the Millelith's 4-piece set bonus to that, and she can maintain nearly 100% uptime on that as well. Combined with a fully refined Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers, she can buff one character's Attack by a whopping 68%. Between her Hydro application and her potential attack buffs, she has become a mainstay in Freeze, Electro-Charged, and especially Bloom teams.
  • Electro saw a major improvement with the advent of Dendro and the Quicken reaction in version 3.0, as the Aggravate reaction introduced alongside it deals flat damage whenever Electro damage is dealt to an enemy with the Quicken aura. Additionally, there's no limit to the amount of Aggravate or Spread reactions that can be triggered on a Quickened target, unlike every other reaction which will consume the gauge of an elemental aura until it is depleted. As a result, Yae Miko, Lisa, and Keqing, all of whom deal Electro damage frequently, have become more worthwhile units.
    • To add to this, Quicken has a unique interaction with Fischl that further benefits fast Electro applicators. Fischl's Ascension 4 talent, Undone Be Thy Sinful Hex, causes Oz to strike enemies when your active character triggers an Electro-related reaction, which Aggravate counts as. The kicker is that this follow-up strike is also Electro damage, which would trigger another Aggravate on the Quickened target. If Fischl is at C6, this can mean your active Electro character can cause three Aggravate reactions (one from the active character, one from Fischl A4, and one from Fischl C6) to happen with a single attack. This is why Quicken favors fast Electro applicators like Yae Miko and Keqing above all.
  • Kuki Shinobu was viewed as a mediocre healer with a confused kit and nonsensical split HP and Elemental Mastery scaling upon her release. However, upon the release of Dendro and weapons in Sumeru that synergize with her kit, the playerbase warmed up to her and now view her as an invaluable party member in Dendro-related teams, especially for Hyperbloom.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • Version 1.1 hugely improved material farming, such as giving the player more things to do in the open world by introducing the Reputation system and its corresponding weekly quests, increasing the maximum Resin cap from 120 to 160 while also adding Condensed Resin to use on Leyline Blossoms and Domains to yield more rewards in one go, and adding another new item to make finding Elemental Oculi easier.
  • Version 1.3 buffed Zhongli and the Geo element in general.
    • With his 2nd unlocked passive, all of his attacks (including normal attack and elemental skill) now gain additional damage off a small percentage of his total HP. When he uses his charged elemental skill, if he hasn't erected his pillar (his uncharged elemental skill) yet, he'll also automatically create said pillar; he'll also be more resistant to flinching during its animation. His unique shield gains a property of decreasing the elemental and physical resistance of enemies in a small radius around him. While miHoYo still intends for him to be a support primarily, he at the very least no longer suffers from very low damage.
    • For Geo characters in general, Geo Resonance was improved: all characters gain 15% shield strength, and while shielded, dealing damage to enemies will decrease their Geo resistance by 20% for 15 seconds (on top of its original effect of increasing damage dealt while being shielded by 15%). Geo shields (including Zhongli's and Noelle's) are improved to be able to resist all elements as well as physical attacks equally instead of just Geo damage.
  • After fans complained about the Difficulty Spike from the higher world levels that they can't avoid, 1.4 added the ability to lower your World Level for easier encounters, albeit with less rewards from Resin challenges.
  • Version 2.0 adds the ability to choose which region daily commissions will take place. This makes it easier to navigate around the map and complete them faster. Due to a smaller pool to draw from, it also increases the odds of receiving region-specific commissions such as Pirate Invasion or Tales from Winter which are required for achievements.
  • A minor one, the sign next to the Crafting Bench in Inazuma city was relocated further from it to prevent interacting with it accidentally. This made Inazuma many players' preferred stop for purchasing goods, cooking, crafting, and commission rewards due to being located all in one small street.
  • Main healers like Qiqi and Barbara had long since fallen behind before 2.3, as players had long since been staying alive through shields, dodges, and invincibility frames provided by Bursts, which usually mitigates enough damage that secondary healers like Diona who provide additional utility can easily keep up, to say nothing of Bennett. 2.3 takes steps to address this by introducing the Ocean-Hued Clam artifact set, which inflicts extra instances of damage based on the amount of healing the equipped character does, including over-healing past characters' maximum HP. This allows main healers to offer more utility even while remaining committed to their main role.
  • Many people were furious at the change of Yae Miko's totems going from targeting random enemies to targeting the closest enemy at the start of Version 2.6 especially people who spent money to get her C2 constellation which would increase the range of her totems. A mere week after Version 2.6 began, this change was fully patched out of the game, with the totems going back to targetting random enemies.
  • Specters used to be a notorious case of Goddamned Bats ever since their introduction. Version 2.8 brought a long hoped-for nerf to specters, making them less durable and removing their immunity to vacuum abilities.
  • "Spices from the West" event featured the ability to give characters placed in Serenitea Pot various dishes, and, in addition to gaining companionship points, get different replies based on how well the dish matches the recepient's tastes. This event coincided with an extended teapot maintenance, which prevented players from changing characters present in the teapot, or even adding them if none were present by the time of the maintenance. Onwards from version 2.8, all of the characters' replies are available in their profiles, including the characters who were released after the event ended.
  • Before Version 3.0, grinding for specific elemental artifact sets used to be one of the prime cases of Scrappy Mechanic, since artifact domains offer two sets of artifacts, with no guarantee of getting a specific set. Version 3.0 adds all of the 5-star artifacts from versions 1.0-1.2 to the Mystic Offering system, allowing the players to trade unwanted artifacts for those from the desired set.
  • Pre-3.0, Hydro Resonance used to boost incoming healing, which was only helpful if the team had a healer with overall little value in combat. The release of 3.0 changed it to boost Max HP, which is far less situational, since several characters (such as Zhongli, Hu Tao, Kokomi, and Yelan, with the latter two being Hydro users) have abilities, not just healing, that scale with their Max HP.
  • Players have had mixed feelings about Electro reactions since launch, as all three of its unique reactions, while usable and with their own fans, have quirks that force the usage of particular builds and playstyles to be effective. Also, none of them directly amplify Electro damage the way Melt and Vaporize do for their respective elements, which gave Electro main DPS characters a comparatively lower damage ceiling. The Dendro update granted Electro new reactions, namely its own amplifying reaction in the form of Quicken/Aggravate, which tacks on an additive bonus to the base damage of Electro and Dendro attacks if they trigger Aggravate. While this unusual approach doesn't create huge individual single-hits the same way Melt and Vaporize do, it's well suited for characters that deal damage across multiple hits, which arguably describes the bulk of Electro characters. This has resulted in a surge of popularity for Electro-based teams.
  • The Traveler's Anemo and Geo kits were generally considered to be subpar. 2.0 and 3.0 introduces an Electro and Dendro Traveler respectively whose former is designed to aid in acculumating energy for Damage-type characters to easily redeploy their Elemental Bursts quickly (especially for those with huge energy requirements), and the latter is a solid Dendro support with a strong kit designed for reliable Dendro application.
  • For the longest time, Magical Crystal Ore was considered nigh useless due to the fact that it required Resin in order to be refined. 3.0 would introduce the Ultra-Hot Burner Lamp Test Model, which uses ore to speed up the production of ingredients, with Magical Crystal Ore being one of the ores that can be used in it, making it far more useful than in refining.
• Salvaged Story:
  • The "Windblume Festival" event's story is considered this to many who are disappointed over the "Lantern Rite festival" event (due to lacking the appearance of other Liyue playable characters despite the trailer showing them), with the story having every single playable Mondstadt character possible to be included in the event's story. The ones who don't appear, such as Klee and Fischl, can be found mentioned in the Festival challenges' scores commenting on their opinion of the minigame and how they are doing with it. And if they are not satisfied enough, miHoYo actually did an event that had every playable Liyue character making an appearance in it with the "Moonchase Festival" event.
  • Kokomi's character quest fixes a couple of complaints centered around the character and the storyline. The first one is that we don't see much of Kokomi's strategic intellect throughout the main story, leaving it as more of an Informed Attribute, so the entire Quest centers around Kokomi's intelligence but also makes it clear that the islanders are exaggerating because of their belief in her. Kokomi is certainly very intelligent and demonstrates it throughout the peace talks and handling of Watatsumi Island, but she is hardly omniscient and she lives under constant stress just to live up to the insane expectations of the Watatsumi people. The second is that fans did not appreciate the fact that the Raiden Shogun's character quest did not dabble into the consequences of the war, so Kokomi's main conflict is centered around these consequences, with many soldiers from the Resistance suffering from PTSD and refusing to leave the result as just peace due to the deaths of so many of their comrades.
  • Many players felt that Xinyan was conspicuously neglected, since her only implementation in the game was the bare minimum standard any playable character has, but she had no appearances in the Archon Quests, no Story Quest or Hangout Event, and no appearances in Liyue event material. She was also left off of the Genshin Impact Concert cover art despite canonically being a musician. The Moonchase Festival event in 2.1 rectifies this by giving every Liyue character that was released at that time (and Baizhu) a speaking role, and many were pleased to finally see Xinyan make an appearance in the second part of the story, even giving her a small profile splash when she appeared. Following this, she featured as a lead character in 2.2.'s "Labyrinth Warriors" event, further bringing her into the game's story. Finally, "Summertime Odyssey" of version 2.8 not only featured Xinyan as one of the main characters, but also had a quest and an entire area dedicated to her.
  • Many players felt the resolution of the Inazuma Archon Quest to be unsatisfying, with the Raiden Shogun/Ei in particular coming off as Easily Forgiven and Unintentionally Unsympathetic, and her Character Quest failing to even bring up the negative effects that her actions had on Inazuma only worsened this. Transient Dreams, her second Character Quest released in 2.5, takes great strides to address this; Ei displays genuine Character Development as she acknowledges her immaturity, comes to truly understand her sister's idea of eternity, and decides to let go of the past and strive for the future. At the end of the quest, she engages in an epic centuries-long battle with the Raiden Shogun puppet, the manifestation of her old ideals, and manages to defeat it, firmly proving her resolve to amend her past mistakes and lead Inazuma properly. In addition, she abolishes the Sakoku Decree and opens Inazuma to the outside world again.
  • A good portion of players considered the scene where Kazuha, Gorou and the rest of the resistance army show up in the Tenshuukaku just in time to be an Ass Pull that had little explanation to how they got there so quickly. Ayato's character trailer is revealed to take place around that time period, and it reveals that he had been helping the resistance to infiltrate Tenshuukaku. Notably when the Sumeru Archon quest did something similar, it specifically shows how Rahman's Eremites were able to get into Sumeru City via Cyno.
  • Paimon is considered by many players to be annoying due to finding her bratty, childish, and selfish. However, detractors warmed up to her more in the Inazuma and Sumeru Archon quests because it showed the side of Paimon that truly does care about the Traveler. Notably, when she tried to wake up the Traveler after they lost a duel with the Raiden Shogun and broke down in tears upon reuniting with them after they had disappeared from Sumeru City.
• The Scrappy:
  • Albert, who was initially a minor background NPC that occasionally appears in one daily commission, started to gain more ire from players once he got more spotlight in Barbara's Hangout Event and the Windblume Festival, which showed just how much lengths he will go in the name of his obsessive crush on Barbara like stalking her in Wolvendom and planning to make a two-story tall "commemoration statue" of her without her consent. It's also heavily implied that he was the one who set up the unnecessary goose chase which included a vague threat that made Barbara worry over Jean's life, just for the sake of giving her a gift. Players started to hate Albert due to how annoying and excessively creepy he is.
  • Royce, a former member of Benny's Adventure Team that's encountered in Bennett's Hangout Event. He only appears in one scene, but that one scene, where he treats Bennett like crap over his supernaturally bad luck, made many fans declare their hatred of him. Being a vocal detractor of a character as loved as Bennett pretty much dooms you to this on principle.
  • Xin Cheng, Royce's Liyuean Substitute is the pilgrim who calls Ganyu, another well-loved character, useless after she refuses to give him a blessing despite him doing nothing whatsoever to earn it. Unlike Royce who can be made to eat Bennett’s awful meal for one of the Hangout endings, Xin Cheng doesn't get any comeuppance in Ganyu's story quest.
• Seasonal Rot: Chapter II of the Archon Quest is often considered to be this. Its first half, up to the first fight with the Raiden Shogun, was rather well received, but the rest was almost universally regarded as too chaotic and rushed, with most of the Inazuman characters having little impact on the final outcome. It doesn't help that Raiden's first Story Quest, which was added in the same version and chronologically follows the Archon Quest, didn't provide anything substantial to the plot or her character and was more like a date. Fortunately, the story content after that has overall been seen as a significant improvement.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Paimon's default form might be a small flying Fairy Companion, but it didn't stop fanartists from depicting her as a teenager or a grown-up woman. Klee, Qiqi, and Diona also have fanarts where they're drawn as grown-ups.
  • Many female characters in fanarts are drawn with bigger breasts and/or hips than what they're shown with in-game. This game's curve standards being more modest compared to most gacha games plays a role in this tendency. Mona and Ganyu are the biggest offenders, but it's hardly limited to them.
  • Beidou and Dehya have the same slender figure as most tall female characters in the game, but fanarts, mostly from the game's Western fanbase, tend to bulk them up to bodybuilder proportions.
  • Barbara's Summertime Sparkle outfit is often redesigned as a one-piece swimsuit, removing the parts that cover the tops of her thighs and putting even greater emphasis on her bare legs.
  • Raiden Shogun unsheathing her sword from her chest is already fanservicey enough, but most fan art depicting this will have it drawn from directly between her breasts, often giving her a bigger bust size and lower neckline as well.
  • Younger looking male characters such as Xiao, Bennett, Razor, and especially Albedo tend to get this from fans, being frequently physically aged up, drawn taller, or drawn more muscular than they actually are in the game or official art to make them more sexually appealing. ^note Interesting, this only usually happens to the aforementioned characters, as Chongyun, Aether (who at best might be drawn with abs), Scaramouche (who's short stature is usually memed) and Xingqiu's designs are usually left alone.
  • There is a single picture of the Narzissenkreuz Institute children as kids, and their in-game appearances as adults use generic NPC models. This was all it took for various artists to give handsome Bishōnen redesigns to Alain, René and Jakob. Alain is usually depicted as an Unkempt Beauty as well as a Long-Haired Pretty Boy due to him wearing lopsided goggles and having a short messy ponytail as a child. The single mention of the character "Miss Jacoba" also caused Attractive Bent-Gender fanart of Jakob.
  • Most fan art depicting Arlecchino in the outfit she wore when ambushing Furina at night often remove the hooded cloak and depict her sleeveless top as a Sexy Backless Outfit.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • The game might focus on having a 4-character party and the reliance on character switching to take advantage of the elemental mechanics, but there are still players who would solo the raid bosses using a specific character. While this challenge mostly depends on having well-built endgame equipment and/or Game-Breaker characters, some players tried unorthodox playstyles and succeeded. For example, a content creator on YouTube managed to solo Childe using Barbara even if she was only doing Scratch Damage and the entire fight took an hour. Another popular challenge for Barbara involves building her as a damage-dealer (instead of her intended Support Party Member or Healer playstyle), and killing bosses using her alone.
  • "No Gacha Runs", or defeating end-game content with the Starter Mons or characters obtained for free after completing certain tasks. There are those who take this challenge even further and try to go full F2P by not spending on the gacha at all. Others might give a leeway for Noelle^note Since Noelle is guaranteed from the first 10-roll on the "beginner banner." None of the non-gacha units use Claymores or the Geo element (besides Geo-aligned Traveler), and Noelle covers both., Barbara^note She can be obtained from a permanent event., Xiangling^note She can be obtained after clearing the third floor of Spiral Abyss., Aloy^note She was given out for free during version 2.1 to 2.2., Collei^note  She could be obtained from the "Graven Innocence" event and, following 3.1, is a reward for clearing floor four of the Spiral Abyss. As well as her being a Dendro character, which only the Traveler would be able to cover otherwise, Lynette^note She can be obtained after reaching Adventure Rank 25, and as an Ousia-aligned character, she guarantees you have at least one unit from each Arkhe alignment, with Pneuma already being covered by a Hydro Traveler. and characters given out for free during limited-time events such as Fischl^note She could be obtained from both the "Unreconciled Stars" event and the "Summertime Odyssey" event., Dori ^note She could be obtained from the "Fabulous Fungus Frenzy" event and Diona ^note She can be obtained from the Energy Amplifier event., counting them as starting F2P units among the likes of Amber, Kaeya and Lisa.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The opening cutscene shows the two Travelers fighting an unknown woman who intends to "end their journey". Except that, to longtime miHoYo fans, this woman looks very familiar...
  • Signora losing a duel to the Traveler and being mercilessly executed by the Raiden Shogun for her loss, per the rules.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer:
  • While exploring out in the open, it's easy to get distracted by the Mysterious Seelie that float around because following them to their final destination (called "Seelie Gardens") rewards you with loot. You can spot them unexpectedly even if you're just heading out to a quest point, and following one may cause you to spot another in the distance. Sometimes, you need to follow two or more Seelies just to unlock one loot or activate one switch.
  • The elemental Oculi (used to upgrade the Statues of the Seven) also tend to distract players. They're only shown in the mini-map when there's one around you, and since they won't show up in the bigger map, it's hard to resist the chance of grabbing them immediately.
  • The Windsong Lyre gadget from the Windblume Festival event (which is different from the one used in Ballads of Breeze) allows the player to compose their own music by inputting notes on the screen. In theory, this allows players to create original compositions or renditions of the game's music, but the item became an instant hit when players and YouTubers used it to create remixes of iconic music from various series, be it video games, movies, TV shows, anime, western animation, famous musicians or bands, you name it. Despite there being an in-game disclaimer discouraging players from doing this, it nonetheless became very popular for this reason, and many were tempted to spend more time composing remixes with the lyre as a result.
  • The Grand Narukami Shrine features the fortune slips, which are directly based off of Real Life Japanese Omikuji. Each day, you're allowed to pull one slip from a fortune box and exchange it with Gendou Ringo to know your fortune, and if your slip contains a misfortune, you can then hang it up on a special hanger to turn your fortune around. This serves no purpose gameplay-wise outside of two hidden achievements, but many players pull fortune slips primarily for the experience of Japanese fortune telling alone, and the way the slips are written can also be applied to real life stuff as well. For many westerners, this is the closest thing they have to experiencing such a tradition outside of visiting Japan itself.
  • Genius Invokation TCG, similar to Gwent, is a surprisngly in-depth card game built in as a side game in a game that has otherwise nothing to do with the genre, with a hefty amount of cards to collect, a wide range of options for deck building and even animated card skins to grind for. Unlike the Witcher 3's in-game version of Gwent, however, where you could only fight the AI, Genshin allows you to play Genius Invokation against both your friends and other random Travelers online via matchmaking, and on it's launch in 3.3 you'd be hard pressed to find people doing much else.
• Signature Scene:
  • The Inazuma chapter can be summed up in exactly three scenes: Raiden Shogun drawing her sword from her chest, La Signora being mercilessly executed by Raiden Shogun, and Kazuha awakening his friend's dead Vision and using both of his Visions to parry a direct hit from the Raiden Shogun's Musou no Hitotachi, which is canonically stated to have split Yashiori Island in half.
  • Among the Character Demos, Zhongli's is easily the most well-known and popular. In particular, the scene where he casts his Elemental Burst while saying "I will have order!" in synch with the beat drop of his theme is the most fondly-remembered.
• Squick:
  • Okay, Bennett, we did not need to know about the case of diarrhea you got from eating Jueyun Chilis.
  • The game is surprisingly casual about this sort of thing happening, such as instances listed in Xiangling's background and her instances as a Lethal Chef, often - though not always - Played for Laughs.
  • In patches past, the NPC Ulfr in Mondstadt mentioned that he wants to confess his love to a girl named Flora. Seemed harmless at first until you realize Flora is that little girl who sells flowers in the city. To make matters worse, she isn't an adult character that just looks like a child, a child NPC named Chloris is her OLDER sister. This was likely because Flora was an adult in the beta, but was changed to a child when child NPCs were added late in development, with Ulfr's line not being changed to account for this. Eventually, this situation was rectified by changing Ulfr's lines so that he sees her more as the little sister he never had.
  • In Chapter III Act VI, you are told by Eide to craft a strange medicine to resuscitate his now-a-Hilichurl son. One of the ingredients are what appear to be a red version of Rukkhashava Mushrooms, which Eide grows in a nearby field, the details of which he refuses to elaborate. Much later, in the present, the Traveler and Dainsleif dig the field and find a male and female skeleton which they theorize to be Eide (or rather, Chlothar) and his wife, implying that the mushrooms were grown with the wife's corpse as the fertilizer.
• Strangled by the Red String: The Traveler is subjected to Ship Tease with most of the characters they interact with (some moreso than others), whether it occurs during the main story or during their Character Quests, or Hangout Events with the Four-Stars. While this does make a lot of the Traveler's pairings with other characters popular due to showing how the relationships develop, there are some instances where their Chick/Dude Magnet status can feel somewhat forced regarding certain characters.
  • Kokomi's Character Quest has a small Ship Tease moment near the beginning where the Traveler and Paimon discover her journal and her unique "Energy Point" system, with a note being made of how the Traveler's return gave her a massive boost in points, much to her embarrassment. This is in spite of the fact that when the Traveler met her and interacted with her during the Archon Quest, their relationship seemed less romantic in nature and more akin to that of a Reasonable Authority Figure and an Ensign Newbie, with their relationship seeming rather professional and more of the focus being on the Traveler's relationship with Teppei and their reaction to his death before they're thrust into assisting Miko in her attempts to get through to Ei. This can leave players scratching their heads as to which point Kokomi would have fallen for the Traveler considering how little they interacted on casual terms before her quest.
  • While it can make sense when you take into account dialogue you gain levelling up your friendship with her, this can also feel like it's the case with Keqing, especially for those who don't have her and in turn aren't privy to said dialogue. As one of the few Five-Stars to not have a personal Character Quest, the Traveler's interactions with her are limited to Liyue's Archon Quest and events, only one of which has her and her friendship with the Traveler as the central focus. When they first meet her in the Archon Quest and she expresses her Naytheist views, what's Implied at most is that the Traveler at least have a better impression of her compared to say, Ninghuang, and they hardly interact after their first meeting. The next time they interact is during the Moonlight Merriment event Quests, with more focus being put on Keqing's budding friendship with Xiangling, the investigation into her grandfather's notes and the strange stone Beidou found, and most of their time alone together is spent discussing one of those three things. Yet during the Second Lantern Rite, the Traveler and Paimon casually suggesting that they hang out during the fireworks show elicits a flustered reaction from her, which is especially uncharacteristic considering how her Friendship Quotes depict her as rather blunt in regards to her possible feelings for them, which can make this seem rather forced.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys: An extremely common issue in the fandom, as posting gameplay videos or comments about characters and/or teams that are deemed to underperform in comparison to alternative options will frequently result in unwanted advice, criticism, and outright hostility to either the character or the person posting from players who advocate for using characters and teams that are deemed to be "meta."
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: While it's more of an issue in the Western community, there are debates on which voice pack is better; Is it Japanese because of the Animesque art style? Is it Chinese for the native/original language? Or is it English since some of the popular English VAs are in this game as well? Korean for the sheer rarity of having a Korean dub in a widely released game? While everyone can agree that every language option has its perks, making it easy to switch between them without losing out on too much, it's less agreed upon which suits the characters or the look of the game better.
• Superlative Dubbing:
  • Brenna Larsen's performance as Navia received high praise during the scene where Navia chastises Neuvillette for his inaction when he could have stopped her father, Callas, from dueling Clorinde to the death. There's also her breaking down in tears after Melus and Silver are killed, and then her begging them not to leave her when they save her from being dissolved.
  • Amber Lee Connors has also gotten a lot of praise for her performance as Furina, both in moments of comedy and moments of distress throughout the Fontaine Archon Quest, especially during Chapter IV Act V.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Raiden Shogun's first Story Quest came under a lot of flak for still being structured in a dating sim-esque way like those of Lisa's, Ayaka's or Yoimiya's, even though Ei is, at that point, a very controversial figure whose story should be focused on dealing with her own issues and the consequences of her actions. However, her second Story Quest gets much more praises, due to being exactly what the first one should have been by thoroughly letting her see the will of her people, settling things with her puppet, and finally understanding her sister Makoto's will and what she should have done for Inazuma.

T-W

• Take That, Scrappy!: More like "Take That, Base-Breaking Character", but Dori is an extremely contentious character who usually receives the Karma Houdini treatment. Not only is she arrested in Cyno's character quest after trying to scam the Matra out of money, but in the "Receiver of Friends From Afar" event, the Traveler shames her for trying to get away with underpaying Faruzan and Layla and tricks her into spending far more Mora than she intended to on their meal, effectively giving her a dose of her own medicine.
• That One Achievement:
  • Aside from the "Master Sniper", both the achievements from the Marksmanship achievement line are extremely difficult to achieve.
    • "Nothing Special, Just Practice" requires players to shoot a falcon mid-flight, and it's going to take you a while. Unlike most other birds you find in the game, falcons are much rarer and can only be found in certain places. And when you do find a falcon, they often remain fly in a relatively large circle, while cannot be startled, they move extremely fast, requiring precise timing with your shots and constant trial and error, not to mention that most of them tend to be found in places that do not have reasonably high vantage points to line up a good shot.
    • "Der Freischütz" is basically the "Master Sniper" achievement taken up a notch. Whereas the former can be achieved rather simply, to the point that you'd probably pull it off by accident, this achievement requires a lot of pre-planning and preparation. For one thing, the game doesn't really specify what "very far away" means, so expect to search for a good sniping point for a while until you find one where you can get a good shot of the enemy. And since the game doesn't follow No "Arc" in "Archery" and your target might not stand still, expect to be doing a LOT of trial-and-error trying to correct your aim before you finally get it.
  • Completing the game's bestiary requires the player to shoot down multiple falcons, as there are three species of them in the game and animals must be either killed or captured with a Ubiquity net to be added.
• That One Component:
  • Billets are needed to craft some weapons that are free-to-play accessible, and there are five types of Billets for each weapon type; Swords, Claymores, Polearms, Bows, and Catalysts. However, the sheer scarcity of Billets makes them very difficult to obtain because they're a Rare Random Drop from Weekly Bosses that have a 12% chance of being included in your reward pile, which is only compounded by the fact that you can only fight these bosses once per week and there's a random chance of receiving a Billet type you never sought after. Billets are also available in specific flagship events that only air once per update (which is usually a month-and-a-half on average), so trying to get them becomes a game of patience and luck.
  • Crowns of Insight are needed to max out your character's Talent levels to level 10, and you would need at least three of them to cover Talents for your Normal Attacks (which includes Charged Attacks and Plunging Attacks), Elemental Skills, and Elemental Bursts. The problem: they're mostly available in limited time flagship events, meaning that the game demands your attendance and participation in them if you ever hope to see your character's stats maxed out. Some can also be acquired through the offering systems from Inazuma onward, but not too many.
  • Certain Ascension materials have become infamous for how deceptively hard they can be to get:
    • Violetgrass is notoriously tedious and time-consuming to obtain, and it's needed to ascend Xinyan, Qiqi, and Baizhu. The range of this item covers most of Liyue (which is a very large nation to begin with), and they're very spaced out individually from each other with hardly any concentrated spots to farm efficiently. And since they're found on cliffs, they're very easy to miss and require climbing and/or gliding to reach which costs stamina. Thankfully, you can buy them from a few shops in Liyue.
    • Onikabuto beetles are needed to ascend Itto and Heizou, but they're very spaced out from each other across four of the six Inazuma islands and they tend to be found on trees that contain Lavender Melons, making it easy to mistake them as such because both items share the same purple color, size and shape. The large search area combined with few concentrated spots to farm makes grabbing Onikabuto beetles a daunting task. Not helped is the fact that roughly half of them are in areas that will slowly kill you just for being in them.
    • Rukkhashava Mushrooms, a Sumeru plant needed to ascend both Collei and the Wanderer, are difficult to find in a similar vein to Onikabuto. Even worse, they are often hidden within bigger, difficult to climb mushrooms and in underground caverns that aren't easily accessible unless you know exactly where to look, and rarely are they accessible from waypoints. Although you can purchase them from Ashpazi in Gandharva Ville, only 5 can be purchased every few days, which doesn't alleviate this much in the long run.
    • Scarabs, Cyno's ascension material, are a whole new level of pain to farm. First, they're placed haphazardly around the huge open desert usually by themselves far from the nearest waypoint. Second, many of them are locked underground and require sidequest completion to find. Next, they are a similar color to the background and blend in with the sand storms and tumbleweeds. And finally, they move so even if you are using a guide map, you have to dig around to find where they wandered to.
  • Crabs and Eel Meat aren't strictly necessary as they're for cooking, but they're some of the most annoying ingredients to collect. First, they have a limited spawn area, which are shoals across Teyvat. Second and most importantly, they will hide if you get close to them, so you have to dash and catch them quickly or bring along someone who will not spook the wildlife, like Sayu or Yaoyao. Eels are extra annoying because they spawn in clusters of 2-3, meaning the moment you grab one, the rest will hide. Crabs have become less tedious to collect over time, as Inazuman shoals are littered with them, and there's a specific island north-east of Mondstadt where you can collect a ton of them in a single run. But Eel Meat remains a pain to collect, as even after desert eels were added to the Sumeru Desert expansion they blend in with the desert sand, making it hard to see them.
  • In terms of enemy drops, the Handguards dropped by the Nobushi and Kairagi enemies have a disproportionally low drop rate when compared to others, even on high World Ranks. You're lucky to get more than one Old Handguard from a single Nobushi/Kairagi (the lowest-tier of the item group), let alone a Kageuchi Handguard or Famed Handguard, making farming Handguards especially tedious.
• That One Disadvantage:
  • The Condensed Ice debuff at Forsaken Rift drains your stamina until removed. Since this is an Action RPG game, dodging is integral and you can't dodge without stamina. Worse, there are icicles falling at random, and while you can see the Crosshair Aware, having no stamina makes you unable to dodge in time and get stun-locked by the icicles. To make matters even worse, the Cryo Abyss Mages can add their own icicle attack to the mix, resulting in your health bar magically disappearing in seconds.
  • Slowing Water increases your skills' cooldown. This can be frustrating as most characters rely on their elemental skills/bursts. Catalyst characters can circumvent this to an extent with their normal attacks, especially when breaking the Hydro Mages' shield near the end. Ayaka works quite well, also, since her sprint imbues her standard attacks with Cryo and can be refreshed as needed, and especially because all of the enemies are Hydro, since Ayaka truly shines when she can freeze enemies.
  • Corrosion rapidly became a lot of players' least favorite status ailment to deal with, both in the overworld and in domains. What it does is that it causes your entire party to gradually lose health overtime, ensuring that before long, you'll be forced to switch to your healer and pop their Burst to avoid a team-wide Death of a Thousand Cuts. What's worse is that it ignores Defense and deals damage based on Max HP, which means even the party's tanks will be whittled down by this before long. This debuff also makes popular Game Breakers less effective, as Bennett can't heal the entire party in one go, and the Corrosion damage goes through shields generated by units like Zhongli.
• That One Level:
  • Dragonspine, the first region added to the game after launch. A massive mountain infested with some of the game's worst Demonic Spiders, including Fatui Skirmishers, Ruin Graders, and Lawachurls, all at level 90. The "Sheer Cold" mechanic leaves you constantly scrambling towards sources of heat or else you'll slowly freeze to death, with certain areas making you freeze even faster than usual. Cryo enemies are everywhere and you often have to light fires yourself to stay warm, forcing you to rely on Pyro units. You can craft a gadget that will create a source of heat for you on the spot, but you have to raise the Frostbearing Tree found in the area to Level 4 to do so, which requires exploring enough of the mountain to collect 30 Crimson Agate, and uses Starsilver, an ore you can only find within the mountain. Many players have vowed to never touch this region again once they've completed all the quests for it.
  • Chasing Shadows is a very hard mission compared to everything preceding it. There are two optional fights that give no reward and can be skipped by bribing or scaring the guards (Wooden Shield Mitachurls can only be killed by a non-bow Pyro character, which are unobtainable without grinding for wishes, so skipping the fights are highly recommended). The boss of the level is another story. The boss is a Pyro Fatui Agent that deals 500-1000 damage per hit (your characters at level 17, like the game recommends, have around 2500 health), attacks extremely fast, turns completely invisible until you beat the visibility into it, teleports to you and deals a hit every 0.5 seconds or so, leaves exploding, permanent landmines after every hit that deal more damage if touched, clones itself up to 5 times, and takes about 200 hits to kill, again at the game's recommended level of 17. This wouldn't be so bad with healing, except you also can't bring any healing items into domains, so no healing before or during the fight. Every single source of damage is also Pyro, so you'll have constant Damage Over Time if you run into an enemy the wrong way. Fire damage is based on a fraction of your max HP, so level grinding will not save you. Good luck no-hitting all 20 flamethrowers and the 2 large Pyro slimes at the start of the mission. The cherry on top is that there are no checkpoints anywhere in the level, so if you die to the boss, you have to restart the entire level, all over again, including killing all those enemies and inspecting every object in all 4 rooms of the dungeon to get the key again. TL;DR: You have to clear an array of flamethrowers, kill a ton of enemies, inspect around 20 objects and kill an invisible, teleporting boss without getting hit or you pretty much have to restart the level.
  • Floor 7 of the Spiral Abyss became infamous as the biggest barrier for most players. It purely consists of Fatui squads, notoriously difficult enemies that cooperate to heal/buff each other and trigger reactions on you, and three Electrohammer units (a literal Lightning Bruiser) are among them. Their most perplexing feature, however, is their special Elemental Barrier that reduces all damage taken significantly and (for most of them) can only be broken with attacks of specific element, so you need to think carefully about who to bring for this level. Even if you can deal with these in the overworld, Floor 7 is in the split-floors section, so you'll need two separate teams that can fight them independently. Floor 8 is almost trivial by comparison.
  • Any area with Balethunder is the bane of many a player's existence. Similarly to Corrosion, Balethunder ignores shields and drains HP slowly. While it is possible to protect yourself with an Electrogranum, Electrogranum spots can be few and far between and disappear quickly until they are leveled up to their maximum level, which requires exploring areas with Balethunder to complete. The player will also be hit with lightning strikes in Balethunder areas, which can easily kill characters. Even worse, several Inazuman World Quests give players no choice but to interact with the Balethunder to complete them.
  • Yae Miko's "Anti-Raiden Shogun training" in Inazuma's Archon Quest frustrated quite a few players, especially those playing on higher ping. Simply going through the motions isn't enough; the game makes you participate and the quest won't progress until you succeed at dodging enough of the very fast lightning attacks (regardless of whether you actually take damage from them or not) making the entire thing an irritating ordeal. Additionally, this takes place over grass and Pyro damage taken from burning grass if trying to destroy the orb with the use of a Pyro character like Bennett or Diluc will count as you getting hit by the machine's finishing move and failing the challenge. It may take a player a long time to realize that Pyro is failing the challenge for them because the game designers seemingly failed to account for the fact that other things besides the machine could hurt the player while in the arena.
  • Enkanomiya is absolutely huge and unbelievably labyrinthine. The place has so much topography, that your minimap might as well be useless; you could be searching for that icon that appears on the map, only to realize it's located in an underground cavern whose entry point is on the other side of the island. Additionally, it is absolutely crawling with difficult enemies, including the new Bathysmal Vishaps, Ruin Guards in groups of two or three, and Abyss Lectors and Heralds. The place is rich in lore and has interesting puzzles and challenges, but the deep combing required to fully explore the place is not everyone's cup of tea.
  • The Chasm takes many of the things that made Enkanomiya and cranks them up even further. It's composed of gargantuan caverns from start to finish, and scouring every inch for content requires a whole lot of climbing and gliding because the sheer vertical topography of the map dwarfs any other location seen so far. In addition, areas seemingly adjacent to each other on the minimap are not always connected, and the ones that are tend to be joined together by deceptively small tunnels, some of which need to blasted open. Just navigating the place is immensely confusing, and that's not getting into how dark it can get, which requires use of a special gadget that lights the area and helps unlock puzzles. The new Shadowy Husks are relatively few in number and not that difficult, but the average level of enemies in the Chasm is much higher compared to other areas, and the Chasm is also heavily populated with Fatui, Abyss enemies, and Ruin Machines (including the Ruin Grader), not to mention the jump scares provided by Adult Geovishaps smashing through walls for a surprise attack. Several enemy groups are encountered in tight spaces or on narrow cliffs and platforms, making engaging them effectively a difficult task. Making things worse is that unlike the aforementioned Dragonspine and Enkanomiya, completing the Chasm and its corresponding quest chain is mandatory in order to progress the main story, which means if you don't want to get locked out, you better get to work.
  • Sumeru is the fourth major region visited, and it's hard. Better hope you prepared yourself and studied up for the land of Wisdom, because you're about to get schooled:
    • While Enkanomiya and the Chasm had confusing topography, up until this point the overworld at least had most of its stuff spread out in the open on the surface. No such luck in the land of Wisdom; on top of having an expansive overworld rivaling the size of its neighbor Liyue as opposed to the limited island topographies of Inazuma and Enkanomiya, it has many, many caves and tunnels underground, some of which wind around and dig down several layers deep. This got so confusing that in version 3.4, the devs added in markers to indicate which waypoints were underground and as of version 4.0, have added a layering system to the map to make it easier for players to tell where they are underground. In addition, compared to Liyue's open plains, Sumeru's surface as of 3.0 is often filled with dense jungles that make it easy to miss things like Dendroculi or the Dendrograna puzzles, not in the least because Dendro green is easy to miss among all the leaves.
    • Combat-wise, the big thing is the introduction of Withering Zones: special areas with one main Withering Tumor and a number of secondary nodes that must be removed in order to get rid of the zone, and each node destroyed either spawns more enemies or unleashes an attack. Withering Zones are especially dangerous because they stack a nasty debuff on the party that reduces their physical and elemental resistance. The more stacks the party has, the more damage taken, and once the max number of stacks is reached it just flat-out kills your whole party. Players that rush in assuming that they can just kill everything and be done with it may be in for a rude awakening if they fail to take this into account.
• That One Puzzle: Unlocking the "Hidden Palace of Guizang Formula" Domain in Luhua Pool. It's barred off behind a magic seal that requires activating three specific Pyro monuments out of six total in a set configuration. Your only hint to the puzzle is a nearby holographic device that reads "Let anyone who follows in the footsteps of the immortals kowtow before the treasure's gate.", but it's so obtuse in its wording that, unless you're lucky to figure it out through pure guesswork, you'll be confused as to what it actually means since there are no additional clues that point towards the order you need to activate them in.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • In Version 1.3, significant portions of Barbara's English voice-over were changed to make her generally calmer and more soothing. This drew backlash from players who had grown used to her previously more energetic and coarse performance, with many complaints centered around the fact that her calmer tone doesn't match the energy in her animations like her old voice did.
  • The playable version of Rosaria in Version 1.4 brought one of the strangest controversies when it turned out that miHoYo reduced her chest size compared to her first appearance in the Dragonspine event. Many players were remarkably upset by this change for reasons which are not difficult to guess, though it was likely done just to make her fit better into the existing animation systems. The side of the fandom that does not enjoy the sexualization of the female characters in the game welcomed the change with open arms, however.
  • The changes made to Theater Mechanicus in Version 2.0 when compared to its Version 1.3 counterpart have been less well-received by veteran players. Mechanici level progression was no longer permanent and didn't carry over between stages like before, with the system being changed to rely on RNG-based Fortune Sticks to get the most out of their effectiveness. Enemies sometimes come in with buffs such as Regenerating Health and Power Nullifiers that render many of the older strategies from 1.3 ineffective, and larger enemies like Lawachurls and Ruin Guards are borderline tanks that can push through even well-placed defenses. Many players also note that it requires a lot of hands-on involvement and multitasking than before, which can be overwhelming for those who are not good at these fields. In all, the overhaul to Theater Mechanicus has caused many returning players to either adapt to new strategies they're not used to or quit the minigame altogether, citing it as an unnecessary Difficulty Spike.
  • In the third act of Liyue's Archon Quest, Ganyu referred to the current Dendro Archon with male pronouns, but only in the English text and voiceover (as well as the text for a few other languages, presumably due to being based on the English localization). However, at the end of the third act of Inazuma's Archon Quest, Yae Miko refers to the "deity of Sumeru's people" as a "she" in all languages; version 2.1, the update that introduced the act of the Archon Quest, also went back to Ganyu's line in the aforementioned Archon Quest and changed it to have her text refer to the Dendro Archon as a "she", while the corresponding English voiceover was eventually suspended. Although the result of a translation error, it nevertheless drew backlash from some fans, who accused miHoYo of genderbending the Archons after the Raiden Shogun, the first onscreen female Archon, had such positive reception that it compelled them to retcon what would have been a third male Archon to a female character, leaving Barbatos and Morax as the only male Archons and turning a 4-3 split into a more uneven 5-2 gender balance in the Seven favoring women.
  • This could be said in general about the new outfits several characters received in version 2.4 to comply with Chinese censorship laws, especially since their original outfits are completely inaccessible to anyone in China or on an international account made after 2.4 (almost making it Fan-Preferred Cut Content), but Mona's especially is considered a big step down from the Leotard of Power she had originally. While there are those who like or prefer the new outfit, you'd be hard pressed to find any fan art of Mona wearing it.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: During the pre-release news and early announcements of the game, some Chinese fans (particularly Nintendo fans) were so angry that the game copies elements of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that when miHoYo announced their cooperation with PlayStation, someone at the ChinaJoy 2019 event reportedly smashed their PS4 to the ground in public. Ironically, a Nintendo Switch release for the game was announced later on, so Nintendo clearly doesn't have a problem with it. While this has been subsided after the game was released and while players and critics described Genshin as a Not-So-Cheap Imitation, this initial reaction still remains as an impression for some.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Hu Tao is conspicuously absent from the Liyue chapter of the main story, even though the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor was putting the Geo Archon himself to rest, with Zhongli handling most of the proceedings instead. Given her unorthodox methods of advertising her business as well as the surprising seriousness with which she takes her occupation, it's odd that she would miss such a historical event. Not being playable yet didn't stop Tartaglia, Zhongli, Ganyu, or Xiao from appearing.
  • Much of Keqing's potential as a character is largely left unexplored. Her personal stories detail the origin of her skepticism, her desire to prove humanity's potential, her struggle with the tumult left in the wake of Rex Lapis' death, and her eventual reconciliation with her Archon and attempts to live up to his example, all of which would make for interesting material in story quests...except that's basically all the focus the subject gets. Considering that it's her dream for Liyue to outgrow its god, one would think that she'd be in greater focus and scrutiny after her Archon's death, but she's only introduced in the third act, in an appearance that barely amounts to more than a glorified cameo. Her appearances in Moonchase and Fleeting Colors In Flight meanwhile are set after she's already made her peace with the divine. Her personal conflicts are resolved offscreen without player input, and the impact she could have is often fulfilled by other characters. For example, when showcasing the brilliance and tenacity of Liyue's people, it is usually Ningguang who gets the spotlight with the Jade Chamber, often relegating Keqing to distant supporting roles. This is especially egregious upon the release of the Chasm. Aside from missing yet another excellent opportunity for her to contemplate the increasingly complicated relationship between gods and humans, the Chasm itself is not only explicitly under her purview as Yuheng but sealed off with a magical barrier at the Qixing's order. Getting her explicit permission to go galavanting on in the deep ought to have been the first thing the Traveler did, yet she is barely an afterthought, having apparently came running to the Chasm with worry when she heard the Traveler had gone down there. Again, not that even this much is seen of course; this is from the words of her subordinate.
  • Around the start of Chapter I Act IV, it was mentioned that the Treasure Hoarders had somebody called "The Grand Thief" helping them out. Sounds like the Grand Thief could have been a good antagonist, right? Too bad that the Abyss Order killed him before the protagonist even had a chance to interact with him.
  • The 2.1 Inazuma update brought several issues with underrealized characters and plot points (as seen below) that do not go well with the fandom, with examples including:
    • From the first Inazuma Archon Quest, it was illustrated that Kokomi, the Divine Priestess of Watatsumi Island is a brilliant strategist and pretty much the only reason why the Sangonomiya Resistance have any chance of stalling the Shogun Army's advances despite them being vastly outnumbered by Shogun's forces. However, her much-discussed brilliance didn't get to take center stage at all during the 2.1 updates, not to mention her minuscule role in moving the story during the second Archon Quest that left many players disappointed because of her highly underrealized role in the whole main story. Only in her story quest (after the Archon Quest is over) can we see her strategic mind coming to play.
    • La Signora ends up being this after her death at the hands of the Shogun because not only does this happen immediately after it's revealed that she's THE Crimson Witch of Flames in her boss battle, but the story never really expands upon her backstory in any meaningful way outside of a single Artifact set. Not to mention, she was a character built up to be an incredibly dangerous force only to be killed off rather anticlimactically in a chapter where her presence had little, if any, buildup.
  • Rosaria was absent during "Shadows Amidst Snowstorms", an event revolving around suspicions against Albedo. As someone who is very wary of him, his origin, and his activities, it was a missed opportunity for her not to be involved in this storyline. Instead, Eula who was having her banner at the time took over this role.
  • While the "Akitsu Kimodameshi" event in 3.3 was generally well-received for its gameplay and story, many felt disappointed that Kujou Sara made no appearance in it whatsoever despite the event revolving around a Yōkai festival, since Sara is a Tengu. Additionally, many felt that it would have been a perfect opportunity for Sara to interact with Itto and other characters, but were left ultimately left disappointed.
  • Most of Kujou Sara's appearances after the Inazuma Archon Quest can be summed as merely brief cameos in other Character Quests, Hangouts and events, the most spotlight she has being in a side-quest in the "Hues of Violet Garden" event, and even then most of the focus ends up being on Sayu. This is compounded further by the fact that as of 3.7, she is one of the only two Inazuma 4 Stars who have has yet to receive a Hangout Event, with the other, Kirara, being a recent addition to the cast.
  • How the fandom reacted to the Eremite NPCs. A number of them have unique walk and idle animations akin to the playable characters, if not better in some cases, which implies that they have their own characterization. Despite this, they're still disposable NPCs that the players are forced to fight and defeat whenever they encounter them. Jeht and her sidequest arcs that contain friendly (well, at first anyway) named characters that mostly use the unique Eremite models seems to be a response to this.
  • In her own franchise, Aloy is an adamant atheist with a history of exposing the truth of her world's magics and "gods," uncovering the evils, schemes, and threats of the past, and saving the world from all of the above, all themes very relevant to Genshin. She does nothing. She has no story participation and the applicability of her character and exploits isn't explored. The Akasha System and Akasha Terminal earpieces in Sumeru City are even very similar to the smartphone-like Focuses that are a central technology to Horizon, one of which Aloy even continues to wear in Genshin. No comment is made on this similarity.
  • The real Focalors, especially since she was killed off almost immediately after she was introduced, and thus, technically the first Archon out of the Seven to not become playable.
  • When Cloud Retainer was announced to be getting a playable human form as Xianyun, people began hoping the same would be done for Moon Carver and Mountain Shaper. However, while the two of them do get human forms as Houzhang and Jiehu respectively, their forms use generic NPC models, which effectively dashed any hope of them being playable.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The Lantern Rite event, "All That Glitters", features a teaser trailer of the playable Liyue characters wandering around the city and enjoying the festival before the event was officially launched. However, when the event is finally launched, beyond meeting Kaeya and Xiao in the main Story Quest, none of the playable Liyue characters featured in the video trailer appeared even once, with the event's exclusive quests (Not counting the story) consisting mainly of Liyue NPCs and their stories. This left a group of players feeling that the supposedly joyful and exciting Chinese New Year commemorating event come off as underwhelming as there is a lack of development for playable characters who are yet to have a Story Quest of their own such as Chongyun in favor of the Liyue NPCs and their stories, and the lack of presence of the playable Liyue characters featured in the event's video trailer in the overworld made the event feel more lonely than exciting.
  • If there is one thing that players mostly agree about the 2.1 updates, it is the Sangonomiya Resistance was heavily underutilized in overthrowing the Raiden Shogun. Despite the buildup of a climactic war between them and the Shogunate, only a handful of them stormed the Tenshukaku and it was not even explained properly how they managed to reach the Tenshukaku in such a short amount of time. Beidou who had never even had plot significance until the Inazuma arc was left out despite her deciding to join the resistance and Kokomi who previously led the charge was not present there, which disappointed so many players who wanted to see her throwing her lot against the Shogun in the climactic battle in the Inazuma story arc.
  • Despite the Labyrinth Warriors event explicitly taking place after Inazuma's storyline, Tartaglia never brings up Signora's death, only talking about how Scaramouche has gone rogue since taking the Electro Archon's gnosis. Considering the events of the Liyue storyline, you'd expect him to be quite pleased to hear about the Crimson Witch's demise.
  • A common complaint about playable characters' birthdays is that they may invite you to celebrate with them but no in-game event exists where you do.
  • When the "Hues of the Violet Garden" event was announced, many players had high hopes that Venti and Zhongli were finally going to reunite with the Raiden Shogun after spending many centuries apart. By the end of the event, only Venti had any relevance to the event’s story, while Raiden only appears once in a side quest, and Zhongli never arrives in Inazuma, leaving many players disappointed over how they had a wasted opportunity for a reunion between the three Archons.
  • In Chapter III Act I, Katheryne shows up during the Sabzeruz Festival and uses a significantly more casual tone, with the plausible-sounding explanation that her stiff mannerisms are something she adopted to cope with having to repeat the same phrases over and over again as part of her job. Chapter III Act II reveals that Katheryne is an android and that Nahida has no qualms about taking over her body as a result, which suggests that the part about relaxing while off the clock was a lie and that Nahida was actually observing the Sabzeruz Festival incognito. As anyone who works in customer service can attest, receptionists genuinely do enter "robot mode" while on the clock, which would make Katheryne significantly more relatable if she was telling the truth. The part about Katheryne being an android was predictable due to her voicelines, but the fact that Nahida is able to hijack bodies was not known at the time, so players who were anticipating that the twist would be saved for later could conclude that Katheryne is such a Ridiculously Human Robot that she even acts humanlike, which isn't the case.
  • When Scaramouche/Wanderer was announced to be playable, a great number of players were hoping for an eventual reconciliation between him and Raiden Ei. But once players complete the Interlude Chapter Act III, Scaramouche proceeds to Ret-Gone himself from Irminsul, which erases Raiden Ei’s voiceline about him, meaning that any chance of reconciliation between the two is now rendered null and void, leaving a lot of players disappointed.
  • Baizhu's Story Quest is the first time that Hu Tao and Qiqi were both characters in the same plotline. For a long time, it's been All There in the Manual that Hu Tao realized her mistake when it came to trying to put Qiqi to rest when the latter did not want to be put to rest and has been trying to mend their relationship. This plotline didn't clear things up. In fact, without the context from Hu Tao's biography, it's easy to take a couple of Hu Tao's lines as Hu Tao still trying to bury Qiqi, which Qiqi does herself.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The "Dirge of Bilqis" World Quest is this to some fans.
  • It takes place after the Bittersweet Ending of "Golden Slumber" where Jebrael sacrificed himself to stop Samail. The quest initially starts out hopeful, with the Traveler reuniting with Jeht who has found herself a new family in the Tanit tribe that her father was a part of, and they promise to help her find the Eternal Oasis so Jeht can lay her parents to rest there. However, it's revealed that the reason why Jebrael left the tribe was because the leader, Matriarch Babel, tried to arrange the deaths of the expedition team he was a part of, and Babel is actually a wicked megalomaniac planning on overthrowing Nahida, who sics the other members on Traveler and Jeht near the end of the quest. The quest ends with the almost the entire Tanit tribe dead at the duo's hand, even the more sympathetic members like Tadhla, and the only one who escapes their wrath is Masseira who doesn't care that his daughter was killed.
  • To make things worse, before she is killed, Babel revealed that she made Jeht Persona Non Grata to the other Eremite tribes, meaning they'll attack her on sight and her being half Eremite means she won't be accepted by her mother's side of the family either, leaving the poor girl truly alone, other than the Traveler and Paimon. However, even that relationship was strained during the quest due to Traveler making a contract with the only being who could help them find the Oasis: Liloupar, the racist Queen of the Jinnis who makes Tirzad look like a saint. The Traveler takes a neutral stance between Jeht and Liloupar which comes off more as excusing the jinn's horrible behavior to someone they consider a friend. Liloupar is also later revealed to have orchestrated the destruction of her husband's kingdom in revenge and took sadistic pleasure in her family's suffering, which makes her just as bad, if not worse, than Babel. Overall, the darkness of the quest, the lack of sympathetic characters, and the one's who do are being subjected to a Trauma Conga Line can make it real hard to care about what's happening, much less finishing the quest.
• Too Cool to Live: When Focalors is finally met, she turns out to be one of the most daring and brilliant characters in all of Teyvat. When faced with Celestia's prophecy that would see her people drown and dissolve in the Primordial Sea, she responds by concocting a 500 year plan to wrest control of that fate from the Heavenly Principles and ensuring the prophecy ends not with the destruction of her people but with their salvation instead. In the process, she destroys the seat of Hydro Archon and returns not just her power but Fontaine itself to the Hydro Sovereign, the most major shakedown in the world's order since the Cataclysm and an outrageous act of defiance in the eyes of Celestia. Naturally, she has to die to accomplish this.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: The circumstances surrounding Scaramouche, or the Wanderer, has lead some to view him as a transgender man. A prototype puppet created by the female Ei to be her vessel, he himself goes by male pronouns and presents in a masculine manner. In a cutscene, it is shown that his past attire included a veil frequently worn by real life Japanese noblewomen. Much of his character arc involves him feeling different from other humans and longing for something to make him feel whole. He tries and fails to be that which he was created as, until he finds his own identity. He named himself in the past, and asks the Traveler to give him a new name in the present.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • "Seize the Day" is a limited-time daily login bonus event. While it usually lasts for several weeks, the rewards only cover 7 days of logging in. It's also emphasized as an "event", which means that it's Temporary Online Content and not a default feature. While there is a longer-term login bonus, it's done through Genshin's community forum HoYoLAB rather than being in-game, meaning many who don't engage with the site aren't aware of its existence.
  • Tsurumi Island introduced a new climate effect simply called "Fog" where if you spend too long in it, you'll be booted out of enshrouded areas to the nearest teleport waypoint, and you need to light up the Electro Stormstones to temporarily dispel the effect in order to continue exploring. However, once you complete the "Through the Mists" World Quest, the fog around the island disappears permanently and removes any sort of unique challenge it brings along with it, and said Stormstones become useless as a result. Many players have cited that, out of all the climate effects so far, the Fog effect is the most underutilized, and unlike Balethunder (which has Musoujin Gorge as the only permanent area to reside in after it has been cleared everywhere else), there are no other areas to go to where Fog can be encountered.
  • Alternate outfits can be obtained to change a character's appearance. However, as of the 4.2 update, only ten alternate outfits have been released (with an additional four if the outfits redesigned for modesty are counted). The pattern is to release two outfits at a time, meaning they are spaced out over several month periods.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: While the Traveler does have good reason to be cautious of the Fatui, some felt the cold reaction to finding out Lyney and Lynette were involved was a little overblown, considering they'd done nothing remotely harmful thus far. Not helping matters is that a short while ago, the Traveler had an amicable reunion with another Fatui member, Childe, who unleashed a monster on Liyue.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The Raiden Shogun/Ei. The game aims to portray the true Ei as a tragic, misguided figure whose divinity and experience with grief and loss led her on a stubborn path that harmed her subjects. Once she is defeated, she shows remorse and immediately rescinds the Vision Hunt Decree. This whiplash change in attitude and the seemingly easy forgiveness by the people of Inazuma during her story quest means that she comes off as a Karma Houdini, as the game seemingly forgets that she was a tyrannical ruler who stole people's Visions, and knowingly sat back while her country dissolved into a bloody civil war funded and stoked by the Fatui. Though Kokomi's quest expands on the topic, overall the Raiden Shogun can come across as far less sympathetic than the game claims. At the end of the Archon Quest, Ei doesn't back down on her insistence of eternity because you managed to change her mind or because she was moved by her people's determination, she stops because Yae tells her that her self-imposed eternal isolation isn't fair on her. Even In-Universe there are few Sangonomiya troops (Ooizumi and Gorou) who felt that she (and by extension the Shogunate) got off way too easily, especially with how they made the innocents suffer while the Vision Hunt and Sakoku Decree was active. This is only fully averted 4 updates later, in version 2.5, with the second chapter of her story quest helping to live up to the tragic, misguided depiction that Mihoyo originally aimed for.
  • Baizhu is presented as a little shady, but ultimately a well-meaning doctor. And in a sense, he is, as he's motivated primarily by compassion. Where he gets into unsympathetic territory is that his ambition leads him to a dubious course of action. Baizhu is an Empathic Healer as a result of a contract with Changsheng. While it's technically possible to use Changsheng's ability to manipulate qi to extend the user's life span, most die young as Only the Pure of Heart can accept her contract. Baizhu's conclusion was that the life of those who contract themselves to Changsheng is worth as much as anyone else's, and so he decides to achieve immortality through other means. Those means are poisoning himself, as was the downfall of many alchemists in the real world. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that Qiqi is under his care, who he adopted to further this goal. Suddenly, Hu Tao's concerns that Qiqi is in the wrong hands aren't so crazy. While she goes to unjustifiable extremes to take Qiqi away from Baizhu, Baizhu's attempts to stop her don't solve anything. He does nothing to actually prevent Hu Tao from kidnapping Qiqi. Instead, he hides Qiqi, and he's not always successful. Ultimately, Baizhu is failing to be the adult by looking at the situation from Hu Tao's perspective and coming to a compromise in order to defuse the conflict, as it's clear that it won't otherwise be resolved. The matter has been brought to the Ministry of Civil Affairs several times already. Even if it's not possible to convince Hu Tao to come to an agreement, simply naming a godparent would be enough to put Baizhu in the clear, as it would answer who will take care of Qiqi when he's gone. Unfortunately for Qiqi, when the subject comes up, it's glossed over. The end result is that Baizhu can be taken as foolish and irresponsible, making it seem less like he has a difference in philosophy from Hu Tao and more like she's right about him.
  • A lot of things involving Furina, though in this case it's not her but, rather, the other characters' behavior towards her, because her treatment at at their hands makes them seem more shockingly callous and brutal than they should be.
    • Many players were left increasingly uncomfortable by the brutal spectacle that is her own trial, which sees her shamed and interrogated in a public venue by the very people she respects and trusts. While they are clearly not comfortable with the whole affair either, they see no other option, believing that the secret Furina is keeping is crucial to helping avert the incoming calamity, and that she's being frustratingly obstinate for no clear reason. Unfortunately, Furina herself can't tell them, even during her one potential opportunity where she could have told the Traveler in secret, and Freminet is too late with the first tablet to prevent the whole fiasco from happening since everyone was walking right into enacting a crucial event in the prophecy). Her pleas grow frantic as she desperately tries to hold on to her resolve, which gets weakened as she realizes that nobody believes her, and finally dies altogether as she slips into near-catatonia at her failure, not reacting even to "her" own death sentence. And when it's all over, she's unceremoniously cast aside to pick herself up in the aftermath almost alone (aside from Neuvillette making arrangements to ensure that her general well-being is taken care of for the foreseeable future, and story breadcrumbs mentioning things like Clorinde checking up on her), adrift in a society that neither needs her nor necessarily wants her anymore. And she never once receives a direct apology onscreen for all the horrible things that the "heroes" did to her. Given the fact that their actions also pushed the prophecy into its endgame and put all of Fontaine in danger, it makes them come off as a Karma Houdini in the ending.
    • The Traveler and Paimon get smacked with this hard during Furina's Story Quest. Her mental health is still obviously poor following the events of the Archon Quest, but their treatment of her, while relatively friendly, comes off as having the subtle delicacy of the Raiden Shogun's Musou no Hitotachi, as they still act as if Furina is the same bratty drama queen she presented herself as when they first met despite knowing the truth. Despite Furina still clearly recovering from the scars of acting as Archon for 500 years, and verbally stating that she is setting up boundaries against acting out yet another part while she sorts out who the "real Furina" even is, they continue to press her for solutions until it's clear that they'll come up empty. Even then they leave off with the final word that the theater troupe will still need help, which depending on how one reads it can come off as explaining why they were so desperate for her help, or a guilt trip to plague her conscience, intentional or not. This is especially jarring considering how the two of them are normally more delicate and sympathetic towards people going through tough times. It also doesn't help that no character mentions the time between the climax of Fontaine's Archon Quest and the start of Furina's story quest. Since the latter unlocks immediately after the former, it's natural to assume that they also happen in quick succession despite there being reason to infer that it's actually more like a few weeks^note There is a clear time-skip between Fontaine flooding and Charlotte's article, during which the debris from the flooding is cleared away, and Furina also had enough time to run out of groceries despite her character profile describing her life immediately following the flood as minimalist and shut-in . It's one thing to want to pull a friend out of a rut she's become stuck in, it's another to try doing so when her trauma still seems quite fresh.
    • When she sneaks after them, the Traveler catches her eavesdropping and yanks her into the spotlight. This by itself, while uncomfortable to watch, isn't necessarily bad as sometimes people need prompting to start their recovery, and she indeed gets back on her feet. However, the people giving the push should be someone trusted, and ideally with baby steps into a controlled, safe environment. This is anything but; Fontaine is unsure at best about its former Archon, and actively hostile to her in the case of Poisson (which she forces herself to visit, and indeed runs into a disgruntled crowd that she has to steer away from). The production she is helping with is the troupe's final performance, to honor its late director whose life was taken by Vacher, and the play's story itself hits disturbingly close to home for Furina. Last, but most certainly not least, Paimon and the Traveler are hardly close friends; they spearheaded the worst trial of her entire life. Because her interactions with them during the Archon Quest itself are relatively limited, and almost always on opposite sides, they don't have time to build up friendly rapport, and it's not a very good rapport; Paimon's usual jabs and barbs and the Traveler's snark, which may have been appropriate with the more histrionic act Furina had put on before, come off as particularly mean-spirited towards the more vulnerable side of her. Oh, and they still haven't apologized for anything.
    • Most of all, the Story Quest has an unsettling disregard shown for Furina's agency. Her decisions are overshadowed and often overruled by the various factors that drive them, most prominently the Traveler and Paimon barging into her life during a difficult period, and often seems like she's dragging herself after the others so as to not be a burden. In the end, her return to the stage is marred by how she only did it because the lead actress's illness acted up once again, leaving it up to her to keep the show going. Oh, and the troupe reveals her involvement without her consent, putting her back in the public eye and ruining her chance to at least try out the slow life before deciding whether it's for her or not.
• Unexpected Character:
  • While many fans have been anticipating future crossovers with other franchises, the first guest character being Aloy wound up taking everyone by surprise.
  • Wanderer's reveal was a big shock to fans, because those up-to date on the story recognize he's actually Scaramouche. The death of La Signora, a character with a non-NPC model, has stirred up fans causing them to speculate which Fatui Harbingers may end up playable. The Balladeer is a hot topic of debate whether or not he would survive the Sumeru Archon Quest due to being its antagonist.
  • Few people were expecting Mona Megistus of all people to show up in Fontaine during the Archon Quest, given her status as a Mondstadt character.
  • Not many people expected Cloud Retainer to become playable within three years into the game's lifespan.
  • For Valentine's Day 2024, three character illustrations were released featuring girls from the game with Valentine gifts. Navia and Lynette weren't unusual, but nobody was prepared to see none other than Jeht getting official artwork in the same vein as playable character.
  • Likewise, three character illustrations were released for White Day 2024, featuring guys with White Day gifts. While some people joked about Enjou receiving a White Day artwork after Jeht received hers on Valentine's Day, few people expected it to actually happen.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Bennett gains this reputation as the game grows. In-universe, he's infamous for bringing misfortune to his adventure team, as well as being misfortunate himself. Out of universe, he started that way too because people thought he wasn't as strong as Diluc, another Pyro character. But over time, the players warmed up to him due to his strong supporting skills and endearing personality.
  • Fischl was unpopular as a kid and didn't really have any good friends until she "met" Oz, and she's still an outcast within the Adventurer's Guild, with the others avoiding her as much as possible due to her strange behavior. Naturally, players love her in part because of her strange behavior, as well as her gameplay strengths.
  • Tartaglia (Childe) is hated throughout Liyue for summoning Osial and nearly destroying the Harbor, and even his fellow Harbingers seem wary of or want to avoid him. Many players love him for his Mr. Fanservice design and Affably Evil Blood Knight personality.
  • Before she appeared in person, Hu Tao was mentioned several times in other characters' voice lines, most of which are negative. Qiqi outright hates her, likely because she's a zombie and Hu Tao's own leaked voice lines mention a desire to "put her to rest." Zhongli can't stand her, Chongyun doesn't appreciate her disrespect for exorcists, and even the ever-positive Xiangling complains about her habit of startling people for a laugh. Xinyan and Xingqiu only give vaguely neutral appraisals of her. In the fanbase, however, she became wildly popular as soon as her design and voice lines were leaked, due to the same exact oddball-prankster traits that make her a nuisance to the other characters.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Paimon has a voice in most language versions could go either way (what with her being mascot-sized and having a voice to match), wears a very gender-neutral outfit, and her (distant) namesake from the Ars Goetia is explicitly identified as male. Early dialogue in Kaeya's Story Quest, however, confirms that both Paimon herself and the Traveler identify her as female.
  • There's some "medium male" model characters with somewhat feminine designs and in some cases voiced by women in certain dubs, such as Venti,^note His male Japanese voice actor also counts due his much higher-pitched voice than most male voice actors. Xingqiu, Tighnari, Lyney, and Freminet.
  • Razor looks more like a tomboyish girl than a boy at first glance. In this case though, the confusion disappears as soon as he speaks (at least in both English and Japanese).
  • Fontaine's first 5-star character, Lyney, fits this trope so well as to feel almost like a deliberate invocation of it, given that his (rather feminine) outfit has him in short-shorts complemented by thigh-high stockings and garters. A closer examination of his design does reveal some more masculine-coded components that aren’t obvious at first glance, but still, it's hard to look past those garters. Quite literally in the case of some fans.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion:
  • Shortly after launch, the word Primogems was subject to ambiguous pronunciation because fans weren't sure whether to pronounce it as "Pry-mo-gems" (in reference to the word "primordial", given the otherwordly nature of the gems) or "Pree-mo-gems" (a play on the word "premium"). It wasn't until the version update livestreams a few months later that fans eventually learned that the latter pronunciation is the official one, but newcomers to the game (especially those who haven't watched the livestreams) still have a habit of using the former pronunciation.
  • Tighnari's name is an Arabic one, which leads many to believe that it would have an approximate pronunciation to the Arabic one ("Tig-na-ri"). Through localization, however, the English dub settles with the pronunciation "Tie-nari".
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Elemental Bursts of some characters (especially the 5★) aren't just well-animated for a 3D game, they also send out a lot of color-coded elemental visual effects on your screen at once. If several players or characters use their bursts in quick succession, expect to see lots of vibrant colors.
• Watch It for the Meme: More players hopped into Genshin Impact in order to know what the fuss is all about a game being called "Breath of the Waifu", why anime meme communities keep on mentioning it, or why the "Paimon is an Emergency Food" and "'Ehe' tte nandayo?!" memes became widespread on the Internet since late September 2020.
• Woolseyism:
  • Some of the more comedic dialogue options for the player in English do not exist in the other regional translations of the game. Unlike the usual issues with the translation, this is usually given more of a pass as it’s brushed off as the translators having fun and trying to give the Traveler more personality.
  • Most of Itto's English lines are ad-libbed, letting Max Mittelman do whatever he wants as long as it's somewhat similar to the original script. Itto is adored in the English fandom because of his over the top and wild personality.
  • Most of the Elemental Reactions generally share the same name across multiple languages, while a few are variously translated depending on the target language.
    • The original name for Swirl is "Diffusion." One set of translations use wind-related terms like "Whirlwind" or "Turbulence," while another keeps it similar to the original with "Spread"^note Not related to the Dendro-Electro reaction known as Spread in English or "Dispersion."
    • Catalyze and Bloom are an interesting case. Their original Chinese names are 激化 Jīhuà ("Intensification") and 绽放 Zhànfàng ("Blossoming"), and their respective sub-reactions are named by modifying these base terms with an extra character—for instance, 超激化 Chāo-jīhuà ("Hyper-Intensification") is Aggravate, and 烈绽放 Liè-zhànfàng ("Intense-Blossoming") is Burgeon. Some textual localizations (like English) forego this naming system by using synonymous terms instead, condensing their names at the cost of making their connections less apparent at first glance.
    • The German and Korean localizations use Flammenspross ("flame sprout") and 발화 Balhwa (homophonous to 發火 fāhuǒ, "to catch fire") for Burgeon, referring to Pyro's role in the reaction.
  • English translation adopts a more or less liberal approach to many proper nouns:
    • "Shén zhī Yǎn" meaning "eye of god" is translated to "Vision".
    • "Shén zhī Xīn" meaning "heart of god" is translated to "Gnosis".
    • "Xiéyǎn" meaning "evil eye" is translated to "Delusion".
    • "Tiānkōng-dǎo" meaning "sky island" is translated to "Celestia".
    • Titular "Genshin" (or "Yuánshén" in Chinese) means "primordial/original god". In English, it's "allogene".
    • "Chénshì Qī Zhízhèng" ("The Seven Who Rule the Mortal World") is translated to "The Seven Archons").
    • Fatui Harbingers are simply "executive officers" ("Shíyī Zhíxíngguān") in the original.
    • Tartaglia's codename "Gōngzǐ" meaning "Young Noble" is translated to archaic word "Childe". Arlecchino's codename "Púrén" ("Servant") and Scaramouche's "Sǎnbīng" ("Skirmisher") become "The Knave" and "Balladeer" respectively.
    • All the Vision types have normal element names in Chinese, but English uses Gratuitous Greek.
    • "Fǎqì" meaning "magic tool" is translated to Catalyst.
  • Dori's idle chat is usually a cutesy song about how she loves Mora. This is consistent in all languages except Japan. As Tomoko Kaneda is Dori's Japanese VA and she's known as a voice actress who can deliver hilarious high-pitched voice, Dori's Japanese idle chat is an eardrum-penetrating, screechy song on purpose to take advantage of Kaneda's natural high-pitched voice and existing reputation and strength. This particular version becomes more notable than the rest.

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