Is Honkai Star Rail Pay-To-Win?

Honkai Star Rail is a free-to-play open-world RPG. As is common practice with free-to-play titles nowadays, most of the revenue for these games comes via the inclusion of microtransactions. In some games, microtransactions are barely noticeable and don't affect the flow of gameplay at all. However, in others, it is very obvious that the developers are incentivizing their player base to spend money in order to avoid annoying obstacles and roadblocks hindering their progress. 

So, the question still stands, is Honkai Star Rail pay-to-win or free-to-play friendly? This article will cover everything you need to know about the freemium structure of Honkai Star Rail!

Is Honkai Star Rail Pay-To-Win?

No, Honkai Star Rail is not pay-to-win. As it stands currently, enough premium currency will be made readily available throughout the course of the game for players to continue making progress. Yes, Trailblazers will need to save their precious Star Rail Passes and Stellar Jade to save up for a particular five-star character, but this is par for the course in any gacha game. Low spenders are not supposed to acquire every shiny new unit in the game and are instead incentivized to utilize the tools already on their account.

Additionally, at the moment, there is no sign of any kind of PVP content in Honkai Star Rail. Similar to Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail looks to be primarily a PVE game. If this continues to be the case, there is absolutely no need to spend any money at all in order to stay relevant with a constantly adapting PVP meta. Players will be able to take their time and tackle content when they choose. Spending money is usually required in games with a PVP scene in order to stay relevant.

That being said, spending money on Honkai Star Rail will almost definitely speed up your progress. Not only will you be able to build out a solid account full of powerful characters, but spending money instead of spending time to farm certain materials will ensure those powerful characters you summoned get even stronger much quicker. 

Overall, HoYoverse has proved that they know how to handle a business model when it comes to freemium games. Both Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact have stood the test of time, and both player bases are relatively satisfied with the microtransactions present in those games. If you want to spend money in Honkai Star Rail, go right ahead. But if you want to be free-to-play, there should be no issues.