To level-up your characters in Genshin Impact, you complete story quests, side quests, challenges and dungeons. Once you reach level 16, you can enable a co-op mode in which you and as many as three other players form a squad to take on more challenging quests. And the quests have plenty of content to draw on.

So far, ChibiSayu said she’s been impressed with the game. She’s especially been impressed with the game’s combat, which she said allows players to switch between characters. To maximize damage, she said, players have to constantly switch characters to get ones equipped with the necessary elements of attack, like choosing the right Pokémon to counter your opponent.

“If [an enemy] is affected by hydro, you’ll see a little symbol above his head if I use Lisa, who is electro… it will actually create a reaction, which is what the game encourages you and teaches you to do in the very beginning,” ChibiSayu said.

“Switching between characters makes [the combat] very, very fast-paced,” she added.

ChibiSayu also said the game’s production value exceeded her expectations.

“The animation is beautiful. The English voice acting is really good... And ninety percent of the cutscenes are voiced,” she said. “Also, they clearly have tried their best to introduce interesting lore to the game.”

The only complaint ChibiSayu had was that the game doesn’t work well with controllers yet. ChibiSayu said she’s a lifelong console gamer, but she still wound up testing the game with a mouse and keyboard because she wasn’t satisfied with the current state of controller support.

If you’re excited by the positive response so far and can’t wait to get your hands on this game, then there’s some bad news. Genshin Impact was originally slated for a spring release, but that looks less likely now. A closed beta at the end of March suggests the rest of us will probably have to wait a bit longer to try it ourselves.

When it’s finally released, though, the game will be available on plenty of platforms. And more importantly, it’s free. But that raises another question: How is miHoYo making money from you?

There are already some clues about one way Genshin Impact might monetize: Lucky draws for game characters.

Gacha is essentially another type of loot box. This mechanic incentivizes players to enter a lucky draw with undisclosed odds in order to obtain certain items in a game. Similar to how certain games motivate gamblers to keep going, gamers often wind up paying real money just to enter into another lucky draw. In this case, players pay in pursuit of getting just the right character. But ChibiSayu said she doesn’t think Genshin Impact’s gacha mechanics destroy the balance of the game.

“The gacha characters don’t overpower others,” she said. “You don’t need gacha characters to enjoy the game.”

MuchLoveNicole also said she hopes that monetization schemes don’t affect the core gameplay experience. “I really think they should add some type of housing system,” she suggested. “People would buy furniture to decorate.”

But for all that might be unique about Genshin Impact, it might have a hard time completely shaking its reputation as a Breath of the Wild knockoff. The landscape, monsters and even basic character movements will look familiar to Zelda fans. 

But those things might not affect the game’s success. After all, Genshin Impact is a free game that will be available on a variety of platforms. All it needs is a release date.