Honkai: Star Rail (HSR) celebrated its three-year anniversary on April 26, 2026. I originally started playing back when it first came out, but I stopped not too long after because I didn’t really like it.
That was because I had just been playing a different game from HoYoverse, the company that makes HSR, that I had to stop playing because of bugs. I also stopped because it was really laggy, but I realized when I started playing again this past December that I had actually originally played on the European server rather than the American one, which was why it was lagging.
Now that I’ve started playing it again for the last four months, I’m wishing I’d never quit.
The game’s story is amazing. With games like HSR where the main character is a self-insert, I tend to fully lean into that role. As such, whenever a major twist happens to a character that the main character has bonded with, I really feel it due to the immersion.
Another thing I like about the story is that HSR keeps you on your toes because it isn’t afraid to kill off playable characters.
I’d played a different game from HoYoverse before HSR, and it wouldn’t dream of killing a playable character, so I went into HSR thinking it’d be the same. That idea went out the window on my second day of playing with the first of many playable character deaths.
Because of that, you end up wanting to make sure you own your favorite characters in case you never see them in the game again. However, since HSR is a gacha game, you’re not guaranteed to get the characters you want when they’re available without spending money.
At least that’s what you’d think, but from my experience, HSR is the easiest gacha game I’ve played when it comes to getting the characters you want without spending money.
I’ve managed to get three characters I’ve wanted along with two of their exclusive items without spending money. That’s because HSR makes it really easy to get the in-game currency for pulling characters. That means if you just want to get a character for the sake of having them, you can.
In fact, I’d say HSR is probably the only gacha game where you don’t have to spend real money. I only spent money on cosmetics, but most cosmetics are free rewards from permanent events.
The only negative thing I have to say about the game is that the newer main quests are fairly long.
The latest finished questline takes 62 hours to complete, and the entire main quest line is currently over 100 hours. Because of that, if you have a busy daily schedule, it could take a while to complete. It is possible to finish in a week, but based on personal experience, I wouldn’t recommend it.
The length aside, I would highly recommend this game, especially since it’s free on PC and you don’t even need a gaming one as I play on my laptop. With the three years of content in the game so far, I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
