Honkai: Star Rail

(Inter)stellar RPG shoots for the turn-based moon

After an opening with a character called Kafka (on an intergalactic most wanted list) playing an invisible violin as alien A lifeforms warp in to try to take control of a space station, your own amnesiac protagonist (known as The Trailblazer) wakes from a deep sleep, itching to tackle the aforementioned danger. Deeply anime, chaotic, and bold, Honkai doesn't really slow down from here - start as you mean to go on.

If you've played Genshin Impact, developer MiHoYo's massively successful PlayStation hit, you'll find this a weird mix of familiar things and exciting new ones.

Going hands-on, the immediate difference is that Honkai: Star Rail is turnbased, not real-time.

You can pick a fight with the enemies roaming the pulsing, colourful, futuristic environments by running into them, attacking them, or unleashing a special skill.

How you start a fight will dictate the size of your advantage, or lack thereof, with the skills often giving you massive bonuses like making an enemy start the battle while frozen.

(Talk about an icy reception.) From there, it's all about taking advantage of elemental weaknesses to break an enemy's stance, ensuring you're able to do more damage while slowing down the rate at which foes can retaliate. In battle, each of your party  members has a normal attack, a special skill, and an ultimate - and this is where things get interesting. The party members share the resource needed to use special skills, which is generated by using normal attacks and depleted every time a special skill is used.

RAILBLAZER

For all that, things follow a standard turn-based ruleset, with characters acting according to their speed stat.