In "Honkai: Star Rail," you explore the galaxy on a flying train blessed by a (possibly) dead god. You gather anime friends and fight anime enemies. It is basically "Genshin Impact" in space and will be free to play next month.

In a stream earlier today, developer MiHoYo announced that "Honkai: Star Rail" will be released on April 26 and will be available for preload on April 23 PC players can get the game from the official launcher or the Epic Games Store.

The first story arc, or version of the game (even though this is the debut title) is called "The Rail Unto the Stars" and is an introduction to its science fiction world. This game, Honkai: Star Rail, is set in the same universe as 2016's Honkai Impact 3rd and features some recurring characters. However, it is not necessary to play the older film to understand the new one. It takes place many years in the future and has a different storyline.

Honkai: Star Rail, like its predecessor, is a free-to-play base game, so there are many dice-rolling characters, each with various abilities that aid in clever, turn-based combat. Enemies have elemental weaknesses that must be teamed up to exploit.

While "Honkai: Star Rail" players will be accustomed to building teams of four and equipping them with grindable gear, "Honkai: Star Rail" is not exactly an open-world game. The player travels and explores planets and advances a semi-linear storyline about an evil monster invasion. The main character, who can be male or female, has something called "the cancer of the whole world," which will be fixed in future updates as the story progresses. Other than that... Yucky.

I played a lot of the last beta test of this game and was struck by its over-the-top combat animations and really funny writing; compared to Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail feels a bit more mature and more online. There are jokes about the metaverse and a text message system with emojis. There are also side quests where you talk to plants.

The game collected over 5 million pre-registrations (open in new tab) last month.