#i’m a meta player — yes — but mostly a lore player who’s super invested into plot and characters so

[chaldeanu]

ꕤ ₊ ˙ ⊹ . honkai star rail 2.2 version thoughts

tl;dr predictable and cliche except a few situations ノ weird ups and downs in character’s writing compared to previous quests ノ should’ve been separated into two parts and focus more on the rest of the cast because, despite being hours long, it felt rushed ノ plot twists threw you out of the mood ノ the finale was… strange

it had really strong moments (not as strong as 2.1) but in the end it all was so confusing and messy, i couldn’t pay attention to the good scenes anymore. i cry easily and cannot even count how many times i cried during 2.1 and here… not a single tear. there was a pinch in my chest once or twice though but i expected to bawl my eyes out :(

i complain a lot under the cut. heavy spoilers! the quest isn’t objectively bad (far from it!) but i personally am disappointed. if i was satisfied i would be writing fics instead of this rambling hehe ALSO my writing there is a mess and i probably forgot to mention many things but idc <3

ノ gallagher. no wonder he’s a 4 star, in the end. his character had such a bad bitch moment at the very end of 2.1 to the point of people going crazy over him from love or hate (or both), and it all just… disappears at the very beginning of 2.2 — he just shows up, says “hehe, no, i’m not a bad guy or anything like that. actually, i’m not important at all, bye” and doesn’t do anything else for the rest of the quest. what was the whole suspense and tension for, then?

ノ misha . watchmaker. i don’t know what was his role…? i thought sunday was pursuing him because he hid the stellaron, but then we learn that the stellaron was in the grand theater this whole time? i enjoyed his story, i’m serious, one of the best parts of the quest and he actually helped us reveal the truth, but… i’m just so confused about what the story wanted him to represent. i won’t judge, because i really couldn’t find much explanation on reddit and it’s still one of the good sides of the quest :’)

ノ aventurine. this one hurt me. for his arc and the final cutscene in 2.1 suggested a grand return… someday. but he quite literally just SPAWNS in the hotel lobby, together with topaz and dr. ratio, and they all act as if he didn’t try to kill himself (and, in a sense, succeeded in doing so) and didn’t make a trip into the black hole. what we later learn THROUGH A SINGLE CHAT MESSAGE is that he was saved by argenti (many questions) and brought back because acheron’s slash got him out of the dream before us all. i… i don’t know… it all feels so disappointing to just bring him back off screen, nothing has changed despite the 2.1 sequence heavily suggesting on him breaking ties with the past… you cannot escape the IPC, boy.

ノ robin. girl, you deserved so much more than that. i expected her to play a contrary role to sunday’s, especially after we got these short juicy moments where they discuss the differences in their philosophy and, while their end goal is the same, their ways of achieving it split. and then he throws her into “jail” for the rest of the plot. WHAT?! i get that her return during the last fight was supposed to be epic, and it lowkey was, i got so excited seeing her feathers, but it didn’t really feel that powerful to break out of sunday’s mind. and i hoped to see her actually sing like a performance, not doing a background noise lol i think there were leaks suggesting she’s extremely important and, awwwh, how i wish now they were true… but let’s give her a chance in 2.3 i guess… though, she really should have be the main star of the quest, she’s on the banner, please!

ノ boothill. what was he there for??? i’m happy that we got to meet him finally, but i feel like he could be called by acheron just for the finale or the ending scene and leave the same impression, maybe even more intimidating one. regardless, same situation as robin — banner character and little to no importance in the (current) plotline. it’s obvious he will get some scenes in 2.3 but that means people will either like or dislike him already after his banner ends. i wish we could get some action with him during his trial and fight some enemies instead of just running around the hotel lobby for nothing.

ノ sparkle. what was she there for (again)??? all her trailers suggested that her role is to keep a low profile for most of the plot and then go wild around the festival, but the festival did not happen… and she just sleeps through the cutscene lol i saw some comments like “she’s a masked fool, she’s just there to do random stuff and cause chaos” okay but she caused nothing. it’s just unfair to fans to tease a character and admit that she was there just to waste our time in the end.

ノ sunday. make yourself a tea because this one will be longer…

i really hate this type of writing where characters promise or decide on something as kids and, fast forward, are still deeply devoted to the cause as adults. it feels like writers put no thought into the life of said character between these two points.

and, while the story with the charmony dove could be a great spark to plant the seed of doubt into sunday’s mind, it was so UNNECESSARY to repeat it three times — we get it. we got that after the first time. sure, many of us have a memory of something from our childhood that is still deeply rooted inside, but the following years usually add layers to its core.

because of the constant repetition, it really felt like he decided to follow the order just because a guy lied to him once when confessing his sins lmao i really wish there were more difficult decisions in his life that led him to doubting harmony and time after time after time realising that the order would’ve been a better choice.

another thing is that he didn’t feel at all like an antagonist that was hinted through all 3 versions? turns out he was just a puppet and a martyr following the grander scheme out of his own misery. he snapped out of nowhere, sort of. he was just mildly concerning guy in a significant political position, so his fear for control is quite understandable. i could see him going wild because of his sister’s death or something, but literally almost everything was fine at that point of the story — she was saved, we can continue with the festival, etc. etc.

overall, i’ll be honest, aventurine was more determined to kill himself than robin and sunday with bringing the harmony/order into the world. they both look so… pitiful and not motivated enough to take these major roles of the story.

ノ POV switch. useless during this quest. there’s barely any content or other groups we could follow. everything done when controlling other characters was either too short or too boring. we didn’t even get to test their skills during a fight (which could be done during 2.1 narrative switching) — so we don’t really know how robin or boothill perform in battle.

i thought that dan heng subplot will be somewhat thrilling, but, despite including a number of characters, it brought nothing — i’m honestly so sorry for boothill and dan heng fans asdfghjkl not to mention luofu crew’s appearance 🤡

the only interesting narrative was with sunday and robin, and, even then, it was dragged over hours when we could flesh out other characters in the meantime. misha’s part was actually fine but too short compared to the quest’s overall length (the part was the perfect length, but everything else was going slow and on repeat).

i must say that probably the only character that had a consistent writing across all versions, not taking too much of our time while still slowly developing, was acheron. though, her lore feels like it should be in her companion quest or maybe in the future, it didn’t bring any change to the penacony’s plot — besides the bits about her being an emanator, of course. but her writing was stable, good. aventurine peaked during 2.1 only to be tossed aside (i know 2.2 ends with him again in the clutches of death lmao but… weird continuation of his character development).

ノ the dream plot twist. that was… i don’t even know, shitty? but expected because penacony is the land of the dreams, right? especially that it turns out that the entire penacony plot was a dream because we entered the malfunctioning asdana system already under the influence of the order.

this is why we met acheron who was concerned about our arrival — she cannot be controlled by the waves of other aeons, she knew what’s happening because everyone else got affected except her.

this is why we met misha in the hotel lobby — he’s a meme, an entity only visible in the dreamscape, not in the real hotel, but since he appeared there too, it was already a dream.

this is why robin lost her voice right after coming back to penacony — the order suppressed her harmony powers.

ノ something unto death. or sleepie lmaoooo did they decide to just throw away the whole horror story? we barely start the plot again and learn that it’s just a dog and sometimes gets lost. this guy put a fight against black swan and wanted to throw hands at firefly in her battlesuit lol i’m confused why we spent hours in both previous quests running away from it and being scared just for them to reveal that it wasn’t important. or even scary.

why did gallagher “kill” sunday if he was wary of him? why was he playing the whole “i’m evil” sequence just to bring him to robin, anyway? why was sunday with us in the “other” penacony? they mellowed down every single death that had kept us in stress after the final cutscene from both past versions. i don’t know, really… what for… why…

so, to sum this all up, i’m extremely puzzled because of the decisions made during the quest. and how shallow it feels compared to the previous ones. there are some moments i do not understand, i’m just stupid, so i’m not saying that the quest is bad. but it is unnecessarily confusing with all the riddles and underwhelming if we look at the treatment of some characters. even if i finally gather the complete picture, it won’t change the fact that i was disappointed during the game — i just couldn’t take anything seriously after they pulled the “it was all a dream” card. but even before that, i waited and waited and waited for it to swallow me into the action, the suspense, the drama… and it didn’t. barely, maybe, during the theater sequence. that’s all…

#I AM SO OPEN AND READY FOR DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THIS QUEST BTW #it’s not that i have strong opinions about this but personally i feel like it didn’t stir anything peculiar in my heart this time :( #i’m a meta player — yes — but mostly a lore player who’s super invested into plot and characters so #and i honestly would love to see what others liked about this quest because i feel a bit helpless #like idk did i read something wrong or what? my one friend was also disappointed in this quest but others liked it very much #so it’s super super confusing </3 #—hoyo.