Genshin Impact

I could talk about the game's faults and surprising strengths for hours but the bulk of my feelings can be summarized as: there's a really interesting party-based open world action RPG in here... once you get past all the other stuff.

Barring the obvious gacha and free to play mobile game mechanics that are just ways to get you to play the game more and so you're more likely to spend money on it, and the slog that is the quest design, once you get into the meat of building characters and parties there's a lot of fun to be had. Experimenting with new builds on specific characters or testing out new party layouts to see how a new character you just got synergizes with others is really enjoyable and satisfying, although the process of building a character to a high level can have its fun dampened by the aforementioned mobile game mechanics like the "you have X amount of energy per day" nonsense.

The world design (when its not being hampered by the more annoying quests of the game) is genuinely quite great too, particularly in more recent areas, the Chasm zone that was released in patch 2.6 probably being one of my favorite areas to have explored in a video game, with not only interesting scenery, but verticality in the zone's design that the player has to traverse, winding paths that loop back onto each other for shortcuts, and hidden nooks and crannies with rewards for players that explore the map outside of the area's main questline. While this game did (and probably still does) have a reputation for being a Breath of the Wild ripoff, and it does very heavily base its mechanics on that game, I think there's enough subtle differences and entirely new things to make the game its own experience, and a great experience too. At times. 

It's very unfortunate that this game is so plagued with the predatory mechanics of gacha and other in-game purchases, because there is a lot to enjoy here- once you've learned to deal with the games more frustrating aspects. Also Mihoyo is somehow making a game where you can't skip the in-game cutscenes, which should be considered a cardinal sin in the year of 2022.

2024 EDIT:
I still stand by my opinions that certain aspects of the game such as the character building mechanics and exploration are very fun, however at this point the developers have refused to implement many quality of life features that player's have been begging for for ages, (event reruns, literally any improvements on the artifact system, better anniversary rewards, more interesting endgame content for people who do take the time and focus on building characters, SKIPPING CUTSCENES HOW IS THIS STILL NOT IN), or if they are included its half assed, and it's worn down any enthusiam I've had for the game and I've stopped playing. Especially with other open world f2p gachas on the horizon such as Wuthering Waves, I really have no desire to continue supporting the game as its clear that on some level either the developers or the company higher ups don't care to continue improving the game.