Hands on with the Honkai: Star Rail v4.0 experience

The last article I wrote for Honkai: Star Rail was going over the details of the upcoming Version 4.0 release. Since then, HoYoverse generously offered up the opportunity to play Version 4.0 and experience Planarcadia early. Having spent about a dozen hours or so playing with the new characters, experiencing the story, and generally taking in the sights and sounds of Planarcadia, I’m prepared to share my thoughts on all of it.

It’s best to start off with the main attraction of Version 4.0: Planarcadia. This new planet is a fictional world come to life and boy does it leave a fantastic first impression. Full of the kind of sights and sounds you’d expect from an Asian city brimming with life. Exploration is a blast with all the alleys and little nooks to find, the platforming segments that can either help you navigate across certain parts of the city or find chests within them. There’s also a new style of puzzles that require you to rotate a 2D plane in a 3D space to “paint” certain parts of it to make them solid and let you platform with those objects. Planarcadia is so full of whimsy and still has some of the overhang of a crime family really enabling a super unique feeling planet compared to what we’ve had with previous locations such as the Xianzhou or Amphoreus.

 

The two new characters following the path of Elation feel great, even if the Aha Moment is a little overstimulating sometimes. Sparxie and Yao Guang fit on a team together like a glove to demolish all the bosses I’ve thrown them against. I’m eager to see where the new path goes with time, especially since we only have the two characters currently. Even as of the live public server branch, we’re unsure when Elation Trailblazer will make their debut, so keep an eye on that as versions progress beyond 4.0. You’ll need to get a hold of new Elation Light Cones as well since they obviously can’t use the other Paths’ options. Burning skill points to increase the Elation stacks until Aha decides he’s satisfied and steps in for a big attack feels really great and it has me curious what future Elation characters might do when they trigger their own Aha Moments.

 

Not to mention that for new players, you’ve got the opportunity to really kickstart a team of your choice with a new planet. We’re at a point in the game where there’s so many options for characters you can pick from and build around, and 4.0 introducing Elation means that as a new player, you can jump in and get a headstart on pulling for that archetype. Especially with a new Novaflare round of buffs, there’s even more options than before bringing older characters back into the limelight. The Black Swan and Sparkle buffs are so massive that people running DoT teams or any team using an action advance support such as Bronya or Sunday have another insane option. Sparkle was always good, but her Novaflare enables her to further buff your DPS units to extreme levels. Black Swan’s Novaflare was even more insane and rocketed her back up to the top for damage even as a DoT unit. Combined with the option to pick a free character including units like Sparkle, Kafka (who works great in DoT teams), and more, you really can’t go wrong in Planarcadia and the Version 4.0 patch from what I’ve gotten to experience.

 

Between the free characters, the great change of pace in the story from the latter half of Amphoreus (if you’ve played it, you know), the new cityscape that is quite honestly my new favorite location in the game, and all the new characters to look forward to, you really should make a return to Star Rail if you’ve been away for a minute and are curious about where we’re at. If you’re new, definitely consider giving it a shot. There’s even a bonus to let you convert trace materials for leveling character skills at a 1 to 1 ratio this time instead of a 2 for 1, so you really can kickstart your Elation team. With characters being important again like Silver Wolf, Blade, and Himeko, as well as new faces like Sparxie, Yao Guang, Ashveil, and Pearl, I think 4.0 is just the start of a real treat of a patch cycle for Honkai: Star Rail.