General Discussion

Castorice and LC acquired! now for team comp...

Come on Anaxa... please come home already...

ngl, amphoreus' story reminds me of inazuma. the two couldn't be any more different—amphoreus is far, far longer than inazuma—but both main stories of those regions felt/feel like such a slog to go through. ...actually, a better comparison might be liyue? idk lol

sure, there's the problem with how bland hsr has presented amphoreus' story, but the beats, the characters, the overall plot? not engaging. at best, i don't care about the flame chasers or their journey; at worst, i hate them. i just want the plot to switch back to whatever therta and the astral express got going on.

i dunno. probably an unpopular take, but i can't help but vent because i used to enjoy hsr, and i derive a huge chunk of that enjoyment from the story. i want to fully enjoy hsr again but i couldn't. :(

i'll probably keep on playing again long enough to make a good team around castorice and continue chugging through amphoreus, but damn if i don't wish the story to be different.

y'all my luck is mildly insane. I got Cas and her LC in 50 tickets total, so I had a whole lot of tickets to spare and figured I might as well toss some at Jiaoqiu's banner since I had enough to get to soft pity once... he came home. and I still have 180+ tickets to spare for Anaxa. what is this.

[quote name="@Steffon" date="2025-04-18 04:25:22" ] ngl, amphoreus' story reminds me of inazuma. the two couldn't be any more different—amphoreus is far, far longer than inazuma—but both main stories of those regions felt/feel like such a slog to go through. ...actually, a better comparison might be liyue? idk lol sure, there's the problem with how bland hsr has presented amphoreus' story, but the beats, the characters, the overall plot? not engaging. at best, i don't care about the flame chasers or their journey; at worst, i hate them. i just want the plot to switch back to whatever therta and the astral express got going on. i dunno. probably an unpopular take, but i can't help but vent because i used to enjoy hsr, and i derive a huge chunk of that enjoyment from the story. i want to fully enjoy hsr again but i couldn't. :( i'll probably keep on playing again long enough to make a good team around castorice and continue chugging through amphoreus, but damn if i don't wish the story to be different. [/quote] valid points! I think the problem with the plot right now is that there's a lot of setup happening, and while I'm glad that some of the very early points are already being paid off (see; Mydei's character arc), we are very much still in a setup phase... and that can get boring pretty quick if you don't care for the characters. Penacony suffered from a similar problem, to the point where it was very easy to forget Misha existed because the game just forgot to include him until he was absolutely needed (which, tbf, did help the plot twist at the end, but it was definitely bad for the story overall). it's a common writing pitfall, really. happens in books a lot too. it's just more obvious in HSR since we're stuck waiting for the next update after every few chapters. all that to say, I personally am invested in the characters and enjoy the plot because of that, but having the plot be carried entirely by the characters at this point in time is definitely hurting the story and I totally understand your sentiment. I think the payoff will be worth it in the end, it's just gonna take a while to get there. also, sidenote, while we're on the topic of problems with the writing, I am so mad that the third Path of Amphoreus is the Destruction. gosh darnit Nanook stop trying to be involved with everything. I would like for the other Paths to get some screentime, thank you very much. tbf, it isn't unexpected and I kinda guessed it from the moment a certain plot point was introduced, but it would've been nice to have... I dunno, honestly, literally any other Path. imagine how fun it would be if the third had been the Enigmata... especially since we already got a little taste of Their power in Penacony (thanks Gallagher!), it would be such a fun followup to see more of the Enigmata in action, meanwhile Fuli and Nous are doing Their best to keep Them from obscuring Amphoreus entirely... ...there's a fic idea in there somewhere, I might need to follow that thought for a while and see if it goes anywhere.

somehow got both castorice and her LC. i'm so happy i got back into hsr rn

I don't understand why people have such an issue with the companion quests. I think it's nicer to have them split off. I really dislike that they were lumped into the story because it made it feel like we didn't get too much of an opportunity to get to know the characters well enough because the plot moved forward. I don't feel any particular sort of way for any of them. Which is such a bummer. ):

@LouckyKoneko i find that i couldn't really care less about amphoreus' cast because they're too...larger than life? and i just can't relate to that. that extends to amphoreus' story as a whole too—i understand that we're playing an epic here, but the characters and plot feel like they're so full of themselves that there's no room to ground them a bit.

...i don't know how i can explain this better, but i can't help but compare the backstories of any of the chrysos heirs with, say, aventurine or the cloud quintet. aventurine's story is compelling because hsr really went out there and showed us how bad he had it when he was kid. the cloud quintet is shrouded in tragedy, and we're still feeling the impacts of that tragedy today. i don't think i could say the same for any of the chrysos heirs because their origins have always been detached from each other and are altogether bigger than themselves, if that makes sense?

(disclaimer: i have just started with 3.1's story. i heard nothing but good things with mydei's character arc, and the little that i've seen already looks promising!)

so, yeah, with the plot of amphoreus so dependent on their characters, and the characters themselves not really feeling so compelling (to me), it's hard to enjoy the story.