Honkai: Star Rail

With stellar storytelling and satisfying progression that offer dozens of hours of content that newcomers and hardcore players can enjoy, Honkai: Star Rail is a free-to-play RPG that might hook you for months – without making you feel like you have to pay.

Some subtle improvements to the grind and flexible turn-based tactics mean Honkai: Star Rail's off to a fine start.

Despite its gacha systems, Honkai: Star Rail is an impeccable turn-based RPG with a killer visual style

In many ways, Honkai: Star Rail shows a refinement of Hoyoverse’s work up to this point. The game eschews the excesses of an ever-expanding world from Genshin, instead creating tightly designed, linear worlds and dense systems from start to finish. You’ll fight to save the world with dazzling snow bunnies and text your new friends in the meantime. Rather than restricting the developers and their vision, Star Rail’s design leaves ample room for them to build out other aspects of the game. By pairing a refined, turn-based system with a comedic, lighthearted writing style, Star Rail’s future route looks like it’ll be a smooth ride.

Not just great for a free-to-play game, Honkai: Star Rail is a genuinely fantastic RPG with slick combat and an engaging story loaded with content. The biggest caveat is, while generous, its gacha system may tempt some players into unwise purchases.

Honkai: Star Rail is still in its early stages, but this free-to-play turn-based gacha game is incredibly good fun. With a strong opening, heavy focus on story, and simple but deep turn-based battles, this RPG is bursting with potential.

Honkai: Star Rail, already a tremendous success, transfers to PS5 flawlessly – and is almost guaranteed to become one of the most-played games on the platform. In some ways its bite-sized nature means it's more at home on mobile, but its beautiful anime art style and stunning animations deserve to be experienced on a big screen. While its narrative is occasionally overwritten, and it demands players invest a lot to experience it to its fullest, this is a live service executed impeccable. And the truly exciting thing is that the best is yet to come.

Honkai Star Rail highlights the issues that Genshin Impact had despite how many issues have been addressed. The game's barebones RPG mechanics will definitely improve over time, but it still will take a lot to convince any enthusiast to pick this game over other turn-based RPG gacha games.

Honkai: Star Rail continues to do something that many live-service games struggle to achieve: it makes staying invested feel worthwhile. Planarcadia builds on the momentum of previous arcs with a story that once again proves the universe doesn't revolve solely around the Astral Express, while giving returning characters meaningful roles and long-overdue development. At the same time, new traversal mechanics, side activities, and character evolution systems ensure the experience continues to grow beyond its turn-based foundations. Most importantly, Star Rail never feels content with simply maintaining the status quo. Whether through its worldbuilding, evolving cast, or willingness to revisit and reinvent old favorites, it consistently finds new ways to reward both emotional and mechanical investment. Three years in, the Astral Express shows no signs of slowing down and Planarcadia is further proof that some journeys only get better the longer they go on.

The 3.0 update is, basically, a new beginning