Genshin Impact 7.1 - Is her second name 'all as planned' Anastasya?
I finally played the story of Patch 7.1 in Genshin Impact, and I'm honestly not impressed by the direction the narrative is taking overall. The first half of the patch was essentially just a "character quest" for Vesna, exploring the bank together with her and playing a few minigames. It was pretty fun stuff, believe me, but nothing memorable.
Then the second half gets into the actual meat of the plot with the plan to defeat Ronova, which turns out to be an endless chain of one-upping layered schemes. Somehow, they all worked precisely as expected, allowing the group to defeat Ronova and gain the ability to strike against the Heavenly Principles.
I have to say that Anastasya isn't leaving me with a great impression, mostly because she feels like a character designed to sweep all her past crimes under the rug. She waged wars, incited rebellions, and killed God knows how many people. She talks a big game about freedom from the Heavenly Principles, but she isn't really any different, unilaterally deciding for everyone else what is right and wrong.
She claims she had no idea Dottore was torturing innocent children and experimenting on them (see Collei). Does that really exonerate the de facto ruler of the country from responsibility? She did nothing while others had to clean up her mess, and somehow we're supposed to view her as a great queen?
This makes Lumine look like a complete idiot. She witnessed these atrocities firsthand, yet she never once showed the slightest bit of wariness toward the Fatui in these scenes. She was ready to kill them on sight before, and now they're best friends walking hand in hand.
I understand that they need to make these characters playable and that generating revenue is the priority, but after six years of waiting for the "mastermind" nation, this falls short of even the lowest expectations. I honestly expected more from the underground movement Rokot. It could have been a great way to operate in a nation without immediately being hailed as a savior, unlike almost every other region.
We could have worked undercover, investigating and putting an end to the Fatui's machinations. Instead, we get this soap opera featuring an infallible queen who predicts everything and executes a flawless plan without a single hiccup; not even Light Yagami could have done better. I can't bring myself to get excited about her release next patch; they just didn't do enough to make me care. Hell, I might be more interested in Danica, the stoic maid trained by Capitano. She, at least, follows a distinct archetype and executes it to perfection.
I deliberately waited a while to play the story because I was expecting a massive cliffhanger, and sure enough, we got one with Ronova preparing to drop a Celestial Nail on Snezhnaya. Is she really going to go out like that? Her boss fight was pretty dull, with Pierro doing all the heavy lifting while we basically just danced around avoiding her attacks.
She completely lacked the "final boss" presence we were expecting from the Ruler of Death. Plus, Pierro's deep-seated enmity toward her falls flat for me; she had to halt the corruption of the entire world and made the only choice available to her in that moment. People should be thanking her rather than hating her...
I guess that's enough ranting for now. I need to start leveling up Vesna and Vodyanitsa; I brought them to level 70, but never got around to finishing them. I don't know much about the latter yet, but Vesna was ultra-fun to play during the trial segments, and I want to try building a team with her as the main DPS.