Genshin Impact Zelda "Clone" Accusations Had Dev Team In Tears

It is still a gacha game and for that reason I will never respect it.

This game has garnered BILLIONS? Why do I feel Nintendo missed some sort of bus with this ….what looks like a clone to BotW?

By the way I really dislike these smug CEOs for blatantly riding off of another company’s coattails.

Does the game play like Zelda BotW?

There's nothing new about unoriginality in the games industry. I don't think that it's exactly a negative thing either, more of a good idea usually is great for fans! But when the game you're taking inspiration from has a whole different pricing structure, the core gameplay loop is completely changed. I don't disagree with the devs on how botw and genshin are 2 very different experiences. I have friends who swear by genshin but refuse to play botw and vice versa. I do think that genshin gets way too much hate compared to the ocean of other gatcha games that have much less interesting concepts, but it's really just not for me. I much prefer the business model of pay first, then play. I do play lots of free-to-play games, but I've never paid a single cent on one of em'. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but I think the gist is that LEAGUE OF LEGENDS SUCKS AND RIOT WILL NEVER GET A SINGLE CENT OUTTA ME

@Magrane No, not particularly. There’s some similarities, but that’s more under the umbrella of the open world genre than BotW itself.

@Magrane It definitely took inspiration from BotW. The game has a similar art style, it's open world, there's gliding, and you can climb up any surface. But beyond that, the game really does have its own identity and doesn't just feel like a cheap rip off. The combat is completely unique, they add a ton of events with a shocking variety of gameplay modes, and the game is much more dialogue focused. Despite being a gacha game, the devs definitely put a lot of effort into it. I can understand why a lot of people avoid gacha games and I respect that, but this one is much better than a lot of other f2p games on the market.

@Magrane It does not, it’s very different gameplay-wise, pretty much in every way other than art style

😂😂 Oh come on! Genshin Impact is litterally the videogame equivalent of "Can I copy your homework?" Who does he think he's kidding?

Question : Would you like to see Genshin Impact one day released on a Nintendo platform?

Me: NO.
I don't even like waifus with hentai / ecchi looking.
I prefer playing kids games like Paw Patrol, My Little Pony, Story of Seasons, Cooking Mama, etc than playing that waifus game.

@FishyS search on YouTube "Genshin Impact vs BOTW". Some of the animations are nearly 1:1.

If this game wasn't from China it probably would have been sued into oblivion years ago.

Small note, but the president (and co-founder) of miHoYo is named Liu Wei, not Lie Wei.

@Coalescence Great way of saying you haven't actually played a meaningful amount of Genshin without directly saying it in as many words. Honestly, it's core mechanics, structure, worldbuilding, narrative, alternate gamemodes, visual design, honestly everything about it, has been very firmly established with a distinct identity from BotW. Most similarities are superficial and related to elements not remotely unique to BotW, or any other game, for that matter. Genshin is not without flaw, god no, but your take is so obviously that of someone who doesn't know jack about it.

Being the Breath of the Wild hater that I am, I didn't expect much when trying out Genshin Impact, but I can honestly say I enjoyed that game a lot more than the one it was inspired by. Maybe it was because I got lucky with my gacha rolls, or because I'm a sucker for an endless grind, or maybe it's just that my expectations for a clone of a game I didn't like were a lot lower than my expectations for a highly anticipated sequel in one of my favorite series. Regardless, I had a much better time with it right off the bat, and ended up playing pretty consistently up through the big frozen mountain update. The gameplay loop loses its shine pretty quickly once you run out of new content, but given how long it's been, I think I could go back now and easily get another hundred hours of fun out of it. I intended to do so whenever the fabled Switch port came out, so hopefully they'll follow through on that with Nintendo's next console.

never cared much for either game tbh. Genshin is just a generic gambling arpg and botw was sorta boring and i have no reason to go back to it with totk out now.

@Magrane Not remotely the "BotW clone" it can look like on the surface. Entirely different gameplay systems and narrative style (one that, while sometimes slow-paced, also delves far deeper into the genuine nuances and personal conflicts of its characters, even NPCs, than any Zelda game), far more fleshed-out world/lore, entire alternate gamemodes that are shockingly robust and developed and continue to be expanded (namely an entire TCG mode as well as a Sims/Animal Crossing-style housing mode), and more. There are issues to take with it, no doubt, but lack of effort, inspiration, or quality is not among them. It isn't for everyone, on a structural level and with how time-consuming it is, though as a free-to-play game where essentially all content can be enjoyed without spending money, it's worth at least checking out and seeing if you enjoy it on a base level.

@FishyS I'm afraid to ask... Toxic how?

Other then the similarities that @Cynas already mentioned the game really is it’s on thing in my opinion, the combat is different, the characters are different, it’s has its own story, while botw really does nail the wild aspect of the game, having breakable weapons, finding random shields swords and whatnot, finding wild horses to tame, which Genshin has none of. Sure during the beta i Definitely can see why it was called a clone, it even had fire updrafts at a point, but now with the new region release, (which looks nothing like botw mind you) I just don’t think it’s a clone anymore, it’s so much more different, and I used to think that before playing it, expecting to get ftp botw, I didn’t get that at all.

The way I look at it, so many games are similar to each other, that it is very easy to call them ripoffs, but we don't. After all, do we call Shantae a ripoff of Castlevania or Metroid? Do we call Halo or Call of Duty a ripoff of Doom? Do we call The Legend of Zelda (the original for the NES) a ripoff of Hydlide?

To me, it's not so much the gameplay, but rather the world it builds. And miHoYo built a world that is chock-full of lore, stories, and memorable characters. And this Wednesday, we will be getting yet another expansion to that world and lore.

I won't lie, but I genuinely enjoy the game, regardless of its comparisons to BOTW or TOTK. If anything, that's part of the appeal for me. I end up playing every day to do the daily commission quests, not only to get the Primogems, but also to progress in the Battle Pass.

I honestly want to see the whole mystery behind the "Truth of the World," how Khaenri'ah fell, what the Traveler's Sibling's role is in all of this, and to see whether or not brother and sister will reunite and live the rest of their days in happiness.

And yes, I would like to see it come to a Nintendo platform one day. It might not be the Switch (at least, the current version of it, assuming that Nintendo's next system is the Switch 2), but I would like to see it. While I primarily play it on my PC, I have played it on mobile, and occasionally the PS4 or PS5. It's frankly high time that it comes to Xbox and also Nintendo.

"Accusations"? lol.

@Magrane There are really only a handful of similarities, namely gliding and climbing. But those are easily found in other games that predate BOTW. As it is, you have to climb towers to light up parts of the map in games like Middle-earth: Shadow or Mordor and Assassin's Creed.

If anything, BOTW copied that element from those games, but we don't criticize Nintendo for that. And the open-world mechanic has been done many times before, such as with The Elder Scrolls series (namely Skyrim).

Beyond those two gameplay elements, the two games could not be more different. The combat is different, the exploration is different, the story is different, the lore is different, and so much more.

Personally, I enjoy Genshin Impact more than I enjoyed BOTW, due to its world-building. Speaking as a writer, I am always down for a good story with excellent world-building. And that world is set to expand even further this Wednesday with the release of Fontaine.

Frankly, it's grown out of BOTW's shadow and stands on its own two feet as a solid F2P game, gacha element or not. That such a robust fantasy adventure game can be played for free, and on mobile devices like iOS and Android to boot, is frankly quite impressive to me.

I honestly can't help but wonder if the reason why people call it a ripoff of BOTW, even today, are doing so because it was made by a Chinese game company instead of a Japanese, American, European, or even a Korean one, and that it's just anti-Chinese sentiment on their part.

Genshin Impact never "cloned" any more of BotW than BotW itself had "cloned" of many open world and/or survival action works before it, but there's little reasoning with fan idiocy. Me, I've enjoyed what relatively little I've played so far but I'm certainly waiting for the long announced Switch port, especially as the other sampled options don't offer enough portability for such an experience (not to get started on the Android port apparently expecting you to have it as the sole app ever installed storage-wise😏) and Deck's chances still seem vague as with many online games. Most stuff this side of Steep and seemingly Dangerous Driving 2 (the latter having been apparently overhauled into next Saturday which may have raised the dev or publisher's graphic appetites as well) does make an eventual landing, and I can't be expected to assume that a game my Pocophone F1 runs quite fine while getting occasional slowdowns in Disney Heroes of all titles is too much for a machine that stomachs Witcher 3, The Outer Worlds and No Man's Sky. And - if the fandom oh so insists on dragging it into the discussion - Link's latest game arc as well.

Here's to some overdue news in the coming months. I could finally drown myself in books alone, literally Skyrim-style (I have unironically used the latter Switch port as a commute reader app of sorts before, and GI has proven to have its own share of lorebooks to collect and worm through).

@nhSnork I need them to port it soon, I love having it on the go and I’m starting to run out of space lol.

@AstroTheGamosian Wow! Someone remembers Hydlide.

«Would you like to see Genshin Impact one day released on a Nintendo platform?»
I don't really care about it now.

@Snatcher «...I love having it on the go...»
Well... It is gacha game. It requires internet connection. Yeah, you can share mobile Wi-Fi with Switch, if I don't confuse, but still... DRM...

@Magrane What bus? Look at how much FeH alone made for Nintendo lol. Nintendo is no stranger with Gacha.

On a side note seeing a Genshin article here I thought this was finally the confirmation that the Genshin port was cancelled for Switch after years of silence.

@Vyacheslav333 Oh what I mean is just taking it around the house and stuff, anywhere that is just not the console. Also I am running out of clave so a switch port would be great.

@Snatcher Oh. Understood.

@Anachronism @AstroTheGamosian That is exactly the same story I have heard from so many of my friends. People who couldn't get into BOTW but loved Genshin, and vice versa. I am more of the latter. I tried but just didn't feel Genshin. So, I think people that dish out the hate, saying Genshin is a clone really don't know what they are talking about. I think Mihoyo has really done their homework and established themselves as a top tier developer. Star Rail only proves Genshin wasn't a fluke.... respect to Mihoyo where credit is due.

Genshin Impact isn't a bad game. As a matter of fact, many people cited it as one of the better gacha games (though that may not apply today, necessarily). The only thing I would like to devs to do is to be transparent around the Switch version.

I used to say I’d never play Genshin Impact because it was Gacha and a Zelda clone, but it’s really quite a good game on its own. You can do quite a bit if you’re playing free to play - it doesn’t truly SHOVE the transactions down your throat and you can get quite a few characters by just playing without paying. That said the gacha aspect is there and it is ruthless if you’re trying to get a specific character.

But man, it’s a really good story. I highly recommend anyone that likes a good story to play through the main Archon story quest and even a lot of the side and character story quests. It’s made me laugh, cry, this game I swear has some of the best story writing.

(And some of the blandest for a lot of the little side quests, but boy the main story is amazing)

It’s a game I definitely wasn’t expecting to like as much as I do.

And don’t get me started on the music. The full orchestrated soundtrack is gorgeous, and each region matches a real life area and the music is very authentic to those regions. (Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic, etc). I recommend the soundtrack alone! You can find it on Spotify.

Not sponsored or anything at all. I just wish people would give it more of a chance, at least for the story. It’s very very different than BOTW, and so is the combat system. You play using a rotation of four characters and you rely on their interactions to deal damage to enemies. Sort of like Xenoblade Chronicles mixed with Pokémon battles but different from that, even.

@ModdedInkling I feel like - they’ve all but confirmed they’re working on a cloud version, and I feel like that cloud version is what we’ll see on the Switch. But they’re stalling any announcements as long as they can until they get it working fully. The PS4 struggles hard with Genshin - I don’t think the Switch would fare well at all. And definitely now that it’s taking 30GB+ storage on mobile and over 60GB+ on PC…

@N8tiveT3ch this is the boomer-take equivalent of current gaming scene lmao

gacha is pretty much the only sustainable way, aside from battle passes for a company to make money from a game while also being free to play.

granted the high quality of genshin, HSR, and other notable gacha games like Blue Archive and FGO, tbh its not so much different as a patreon fee to support those dev to keep developing and expanding the product

average FFXIV players pend at least 10 bucks a month just to play the game, average genshin player spend way less because there's only so much whales out there and they're the one sustaining the game, the rests are F2Ps

accessibility is the key here, in a sense its a win win solution for everyone as the disadvantages of premium games (from the Dev PoV) are they can only charge money as much as the game cost, while with gacha, people with enough money to burn will keep spending it as its their privilege and you cant decide how people spend their own money

BOTW itself is not by any means a bad game, but so does genshin. both can exists at the same time catering to their own audience with their own identity.

and no... wall climbing and gliding is not invented by Zelda.

@Anti-Matter the idea that you vaunt your personal taste, in may I say very eccentric preferences and then want to do away with what others might attractive in a fantasy dating/relation ship element. To me that says you maybe need to seek some time away from games rather than doubling down on very specific elements of a fantasy world. That's just me though.

Don't forget Nintendo themselves admitted they took inspiration from other western Rpg's for BoTW, they weren't the first to use a glider or have a stamina system, and definitely weren't the first to have an open world game. The issue people had over genshin was just so childish, if anything Immortals Fenyx Rising was closer to being a BoTW "clone".

I don't like Genshin but I'll give it the fact that it looks and runs better than BOTW or TOTK for that matter.

@OptometristLime
I personally never like the female characters in anime style with seductive / Moe looking as I felt really disturbed by their looking.
I am 38 years old dude but I prefer handsome looking male characters with some muscle / athletic body over than waifus female characters.
Also, the micro transactions, gargantuan GB size, no physical release, too many disturbing looking waifus really make me turned off with genshin game.

It's a gacha game with no offline, I spit on it.

I don't generally have a problem with 'copying' in gaming,
many genres have been created that way,
but I must confess that it was slightly galling to take Tears of the Kingdom to my sister's house and hear her say that it looks like Genshin Impact.

It sucks that people had a hard time when we all accused them of copying. But I don't think you're allowed to talk about how we accused them of copying Zelda without us even knowing if the game is ever still coming to the Switch. I think they're extremely rude for not even mentioning the game once a year. It's been so long that we've been waiting. At least give us a yearly "it's difficult but it's coming" or just tell us right now that it's not happening. I think they're real knuckleheads for treating Switch owners like this.

@ToDaisy You think its rude for them to mention the game with the Switch but not rude for the litany of dense Nintendo fans who accused them of copying BOTW?

I can see many of them here in the comments section.

We probably won't be getting this game because lets face it, read these comments, these are shills here. Plain and simple. The game would have flopped on the Switch because anything not made by Nintendo isn't good to them.

I'm glad Nintendo isn't getting this game, the fans do not deserve it at all.

@N8tiveT3ch I understand the sentiment.
But to be honest, as of now you could probably spend 300+ hours just to complete all the Main Quests and side-Quest without even noticing that you can spend any money on it.

For the record I haven’t spent a single cent on the game and I have two of my dream characters.

@Safhier I find it hard to believe a game funded by its country government can only survive through Gacha as F2P. Usually those kind of games can survive with minimal monetization because they can be maintained by taxpayer money.

A person endlessly putting money in the hopes of a single character pull is not the same as a patreon donation. In patreon a large number of people donate small amounts. In gacha a small amount of people are paying high amounts, they aren't donating they are being taken advantage of.

There's alternative avenues for a free game to make money than taking advantage of players w/ lootbox/gambling. Adverts, or Merchandise where you can get what you paid for.

I don't think it's a Boomer take to think Gacha is an insidious model. It's not good, it just happens to be the current most lucrative model for mobile.

Still? I thought they moved passes this that was ages a go they made comments like that also there's so many open world games not just BOTW.

@Dr_Lugae Some gacha games are more predatory than others, but I would say Genshin is one of the better ones. It has a guarantee system, so you wouldn't have to spend an "endless" amount of money to get a character. It's a max of 90 pulls to get a 5 star, which has a 50/50 chance of being the focus character, and if you fail that the next 5 star you get is guaranteed to be the focus character. On average they release one new 5 star per patch (usually one, sometimes none, sometimes two), and even f2p players can get enough pulls to get 1 new 5 star per patch, so if they play regularly a f2p player can usually guarantee a 5 star they want every other patch. Actually, there hasn't even been a new 5 star released since May 2nd. The company seems much less focused on pumping out as many characters as possible to squeeze all the money they can out of people, and actually takes time to build up a smaller cast of well written characters.

It's a gacha game that stole botw's art style. They saw an art style that people liked, blatantly stole it, and made a F2P gacha money machine.

This is not complicated. They shouldn't be expecting anyone to respect them or take them seriously.

From the perspective of someone who's been playing Genshin since day 1:

It was a clone. It was brushing against the line of plagiarism, even. But even though it was just a clone of Zelda at that time, it took gameplay mechanics from many other games and now it's a cluster of many, many other games, with its own characters and great music (which at the beginning brushed against plagiarism as well, one of the pieces from Dragonspine sounds like it was going to Morrowind's exploration suite at any second)

@ATaco it runs better but on PS5. I don't think it's fair comparing BOTW from Wii U/Switch with Genshin from PS5. (Ps4 version actually worked about as well as BOTW, if such comparison is needed).

I will say it again, that Genshin on Switch is not happening as Mihoyo simply aren't skillful enough. They barely made it work on PS4

@Dr_Lugae as somone who actually playing the game, i can tell you that their gacha model is one of the most least predatory, they have clear rules for the spark and provide enough currency for even F2P player to find success and collect decent ammount of characters

idk where you get the funded by governtment bs is because afaik what hey got is subsidies for their achievemt promoting CN game industry, and you know what, government financial boost happens pretty much everywhere in various business sector

sure they have more than enough money with this business model and dont exacly need that much to survive, but you know who else doesn;t need all those extra money to survive?

pretty much every twitch streamer out there who put less work than average people really yet people gave them money to live in luxury

in the end those who spend "endless money" as you call it for a chance to get a certain character is someone who will probably spend those money on other stupid ***** with or without gacha games / lootboxes

those who not as fortunate tho, can still enjoy the game and find joy playing it for free, even better they're the ones who wins them ost as they can keep playing high quality game for no cost

if anyone ever feel "forced" to spend money on the game, all i can say is the said person is probably have issue to begin with and probably lack any ability to make proper judgment from the start

@Safhier there is.notning "Boomer" about calling the gacha model parasitic or just plain scummy. It is. That is the point. It is designed to make you spend money. One of the reasons why genshin has so much success is because they amount of work and effort they put into it overall makes it feel like it's worth it. However, this is a game they could have made as a standalone. Less characters, more actual "main story." And I say this as a long time genshin player. Let's not defend this kind of game model. They just managed to do a less scummy gacha.

@Reztobi I have to say that's actually well put. I didn't think people were actually hating on the game. I just thought people were like "hey, that looks like this" but I checked and there is indeed quite a lot of hate. Which A. I didn't expect from this community. And B. Is indeed uncalled for. Especially for a free to play game. That's like spitting I'm grandma's face when she knits you socks that look similar to store bought ones you like. It's indeed very toxic. I do still hope we get this game since the Switch is my only gaming platform.

Doesn’t matter if they deny it. It’s definitely true. There’s parts of us we don’t face that cause denial within ourselves making it possible to actually lie to our own minds. They saw the success and they copied it, changed a few things added overbearing disrespectful monetization and swept the template under the rug. I have zero respect for this game and its developers. Doesn’t matter if they cried, I remember being excited for this game when I saw it so long ago to be completely betrayed by my first exposure to gacha games but definitely not to overbearing microtransactions. I walked away disappointed. Plus they’re not even talented enough to get a switch port out. It’s been what 4 years?

I mean games copy each other all the time, it isn't shameless plagiarism most of the time (with a few obvious exceptions), it's called inspiration.
Like, BOTW itself borrowed loads of ideas from other games that came before it and transformed them and combined them in a way that hadn't been done, and then added their own ideas and boom you've got yerself an awesome game.
Genshin, love it or hate it (personally I'm pretty indifferent to it) did exactly the same thing, borrowed a few ideas here and there but ultimately it is a completely different game that many people seem to enjoy, so why not let them enjoy their thing?

There's no point in hating on it so heavily. If you don't like the online only thing or the gatcha stuff, that's cool play something else.
I played for like 30hrs or so before it got super grindy and the only way to keep playing is either to play like 5 mins every day or to pay loads of money so ultimately I decided it's not for me but more power to those who love it!

Why do people gotta be so negative?
Happy Gaming everyone!

GI is such a great game!

Never bought anything but its super good!

@Vyacheslav333 Thanks to the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) for that. Looking up the game myself, it turns out that it came out for NEC PC-6001 and PC-8801 computers in Japan in December 1984, well over a year before The Legend of Zelda came out in February 1986 on the Famicom Disk System in Japan.

Hydlide was eventually released for the Famicom in Japan a month after The Legend of Zelda did, and eventually for the NES in North America in June 1989, roughly two years after The Legend of Zelda debuted in the West.

Is it necessarily as good as The Legend of Zelda? That's open for debate. In Japan, it was well-received for its innovative gameplay and exploration mechanics. In the West, it was regarded much more harshly, in no small part due to The Legend of Zelda, which improved upon Hydlide's formula.

And going back to AVGN, he tore the game apart in his review (although that's basically his shtick, even for good games, such as Majora's Mask, Zelda II, Earthbound, and Super Mario Bros. 3). He also tore apart its successors, Super Hydlide and Virtual Hydlide, even though the former game was also fairly well-received.

In any case, however, Zelda did have a lot of similar elements to Hydlide and other fantasy adventure games that came before it, but I have never heard anyone call it a ripoff of those games. But I have heard time and time again that Genshin Impact is a ripoff of Zelda, namely Breath of the Wild, even though there are only a couple of similarities in gameplay.

Which leads me to suspect that the real reason behind that line of criticism is because it was made by a Chinese game developer and not a Japanese, America, European, or Korean one (i.e., the "traditional developers). Since there is this reputation amongst Chinese companies to produce cheap knockoffs of official products, my guess is people assumed that this was the case here as well.

But if I am being honest, I enjoy Genshin far more than I enjoyed BOTW. Much in the same way that the original Zelda improved on Hydlide's, Genshin improved on BOTW. Plus, with all these regular events that expand upon the world, lore, story, and characters for the game, it keeps me coming back, whereas I haven't played BOTW in years after completing it.

As such, I call Genshin the Oreo to BOTW's Hydrox. Both are similar cookies, with Hydrox having come out first. But Oreo is sweeter and absorbs milk better than Hydrox, and thus became more popular, so much so that people now think that Hydrox, not Oreo, is the ripoff.

I wish more people would look at the game with an unbiased eye and let it stand on its own merits, not basing it on what came before. The more that we do that with all forms of media, the better off we'll be.

@Anachronism I never thought I'd see this comment here, but I'm very glad I did. I can only agree with every word!

So probably no Switch release then, not that I am overly bothered tbf.

Drawing inspiration from games is age old. There are a fair few open world games out there but not as many with the BOTW type design and gameplay framework as I thought would b produced after the game's success. I guess it takes too much work.

@stiligFox Exactly. Speaking as a writer myself, I am always down for a good story, and Genshin gives that in spades. I am also not sponsored, either. I'm just a fan of fantasy games who likes a good story, and this was one of them. There were all sorts of emotional highs and lows.

Some parts made me laugh uproariously. One example was when Barbara was praying to Barbatos for forgiveness for the damage to the Holy Lyre der Himmel, not knowing that the very god she worshipped was standing right next to her and was the one himself to damage it. Then there was the part of the Of Drink A-Dreaming event, where we saw Eula get drunk (my favorite part of that was when she belched after complaining about how the people of Mondstadt will never accept her or allow her in their taverns).

But I also cried at certain points (such as when Ei/Raiden Shogun was recounting how she wept when she held her dying sister, Makoto, in her arms, when we saw the ghostly visage of Dunyarzad--whom we all thought had succumbed to her Eleazar and the stress on her from the Dream Samsara--watching Nilou's dance at the end of the Dream Samsara, or when Nahida/Lesser Lord Kusanali wiped Greater Lord Rukkhadevata from Irminsul's memory and then collapsed to her knees, sobbing her eyes out).

@AstroTheGamosian «Thanks to the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) for that.»
Haha! Same with me. 😄

@Vyacheslav333 Yeah, there were a lot of games and consoles I had never heard of, but learned about thanks to him. In a way, he is almost a professor of gaming history, while still making the videos funny and engaging.

I feel for em. Game doesn't even have that many similarities aside from the look and scale of the world map.

I did not plagiarise my homework. It is just heavily influenced by friends answers.

Worth keeping in mind that in Chinas courts, Apple (as in Apple Computers) had a copyright infringement case raised against them for infringement on the use of the name iMac. Apple lost.

The style of BotW was heavily ripped off. Period.

@solidox I agree, Botw heavily ripped it's style of from anime and earlier cel-shaded games. :3

I'm personally out of the age range to have experienced it myself (29) but weren't people calling every FPS that came out after Wolfenstein/Doom a Doom clone back in the day? This is really nothing new.

i do hope they bring this game to either switch or its successor.

@Primarina honestly it should come to switch or its successor since it would fit well on consoles and wont overheat like it does on the phone.

If you took random screenshots from both NES Zelda and NES Hydlide (and removed the player sprite) you’d still be able to tell the two apart. Not so sure it would be as easy to do that with BOTW and Genshin.

Also, I want to point out I do not have any problems with Genshin, but I can definitely see why people say it looks “rip-offy”. BOTW’s massive cel shaded open world and freedom to let the players avatar occupy just about any space within it was a big deal back in 2017. The level of exploration that climbing and gliding afforded the player were iconic and done in a way that had not really been seen before. (Seriously, I keep seeing in the comments that BOTW lifted these mechanics too. From what? Spider-Man on PS1? Snaking up mountains in Skyrim? 😂)

I don’t think Genshin is a rip off of Zelda, but I definitely think a couple BOTW’s main defining mechanics that made it special were lifted wholesale and dropped into Genshin and it’s jarring. If that wasn’t the case, this article wouldnt be a thing in the first place lol.

Genshin Impact was just the first of many “Breath of the Wild clones” that proved to be nothing of the sort.

Since I loved Breath of the Wild and really wanted more of it, this was incredibly disappointing.

In tears as they design a game around manipulating people into gambling with real money, all the production values they blow on this game are the same as all the lights and sounds on slot machines that are meant to tantalize and create a dopamine feedback loop, even the pity system it and others have is directly taken from casinos which will keep gamblers hooked in with things like free plays, food and drinks based off win/loss analytics.

@riki_sidekicks thats because it was literally NOT A CLONE. It was never intended as a clone. Thats just what many people here ran with.

@Razzy give one example of a game that BOTW looks like graphically besides Genshin. Genuinely curious.

As an old fogey who generally hates f2p mobile games, Genshin is only really cancerous if you're impatient and impulsive. The monetisation is entirely ignorable with a bit of intelligence and willpower.

Play it as a explore em up ala Skyrim or BotW, be intelligent about what characters you go for, ignore the endgame as much as possible and it's a great game with an incredible amount of content to see and explore at a very reasonable price if you stick to Welkin or go fully free.

Playing it with a fairly decent PC through a flagship TV is quite the experience at times, I'm not going to defend the characters and writing, but damn the game world itself is easily the star of the show for me. It's visually breathtaking at times and the lore is endless.

I'm pretty sure that the Switch port is actually canceled because Sony helped invest into the game before the money was rolling in. I wouldn't be surprised if they got console exclusivity for Genshin in exchange for helping Mihoyo make a native PS5 version. I feel like Nintendo would've help Mihoyo with compression if they actually had/are making a Switch port.

So dumb. I can hear the devs crying..."Whyyyy are people saying we copied that game we obviously, shamelessly copied? Whyyyyyy......". Yeah, boo-hoo.

Wait, nobody said they were crying over the BotW comparisons.
You just glued two stories together to make it relevant for this site.

I’m just wondering when can I have some those misunderstandings on the switch.

He can cry a river for all care. I don't have a sliver of sympathy for gatcha garbage. Mihoyo's games indeed look beautiful and if they made game with the quality one can expect from a full price release I'd gladly pay for it. The fact they ONLY do gatcha is all the proof I need that they have no respect for players. They don't wanna sell a piece of art, they want us to gamble our money away.

Why does this garbage even still getting covered here? It's not even on Switch and it's not coming to Switch.

I have never heard about these types of accusations, so when I read this article and the comments I was... well surprised kind of.
Art style thing is the most idiotic claim here. Genshin art style is MiHoYo art style. Like, Honkai Impact came before BOTW and its art style is the same art style as Genshin's (and now Star Rail's)🤷 There were people saying about having two games' screenshots compared... Well I did it, you can do too, and I still was able to tell where's what.
BOTW wasn't the first to have climbing, gliding or a vast open world, and Genshin wouldn't be the last.
Look, I know sometimes we love something a lot, hold it dearly but it doesn't mean that we should hate everything which even remotely looks like the thing we love... It's just not reasonable.
I tried BOTW and... it was boring af (maybe because I never was a Zelda's fan), but I don't hate it, we are all different and we all enjoy different things.

@AstroTheGamosian Yeah, I'm agree with you.

I'm not going to call this a clone until I've played Genshin. I was going to try it when it released on switch. The switch release never came... I can't decide if it's good or not.

Back when DOOM made waves as a freeware demo, a ton of games came out that looked like it and were always called "DOOM clones," nowadays a number of these games have been lauded on their own merits. That's the wave I feel BOTW has left on the gaming landscape.

@Magrane It plays nothing like BotW. It's a completely different type of game with a completely different gameplay loop. It may share some similar look and a similar gliding/climbing system, but what modern game doesn't take inspiration and some mechanics from other games.

@UltimateOtaku91 true but no one brings this up, but instead go off about gacha games and mention them ripping off BOTW.

I'm loving the North American Switch release along with Phantasy Star Online and Dragon Quest X. (Sarcasm)

@NintendoJunkie I mean, I enjoyed BOTW, and I enjoy Genshin. I just love high fantasy in general. I'll take it any way it comes.

I’ve tried it.
In my opinion it only looks like BotW. The combat is more like Immortal Phoenix Rising.

@Twofacedtao People made some comparisons to BotW because of the combination of an anime style and grass + blue sky 🤷‍♂️
Nobody cried over that. There were people who reacted negatively to the gacha mechanics of the game and now somehow NintendoLife found a way to turn that into a BotW story

@PinderSchloss have you read other comments here? I've reacted to these comments, since I knew nothing about this accusations 🤷 People in comments are genuinely hating Genshin just because it is supposedly a "rip-off".

They stole ideas and themes. One can't just gloss over it. If they just said we used ideas and credit Zelda for showing things can be done and upgraded to make more fun. At least give credit where it's due. Copyright or IP theft is different but giving credit does soften claims and people are all the more happier. Better yet why not make a Offline aka Pokemon where you can have offline OpenWord and connect to go around the world gaming at different portals ops and that would expand your gaming player coming aboard.

Over played this game in the beginning. Didn't think of it as a "Zelda clone" eventho some stuff look like botw design wise.
But they def used some stuff directly from it.
If they just said something like; yeah we where so inspired by that game, lol.