So why does everyone else seem to hate it? Genshin Imaginarium Theatre review 

Imo, the easiest change that would make Theater much less annoying is just allowing teams with less than four characters - just like it was in the event this mode was modeled after.

I actually like it too. I wish it had more replayability though. Excited to see how it evolves going forward.

I loved Imaginarium's focus on chaotic/unorthodox teams and how it's quick and painless to get all the rewards, but everyone seems to hate it for the exact same reasons. The aesthetic polish and lore integration are also great, and Abyss completely lacks those things, but people have been too angry about the gameplay to even notice. The core problem is that they added this 4 years after launch, once vertical investment became locked in as the "right" way to play ("oh, you play Genshin? who's your main?"), and this sudden change in incentives has everyone confused and frustrated. I'm so far down the build-too-many-characters rabbit hole that I have a DPS Faruzan and a crit-Kokomi, so it works great for me; but if you've spent years farming perfect artifacts for your quad-geo Itto team, Imaginarium is gonna be a rude awakening. There's plenty of room for improvement, though I hope they don't change it so much that it lets people switch back to the same two teams they've always used, that would kinda defeat the purpose. Given some time, I think people will start to like it more. Maybe once Abyss resets and they remember how half-baked and repetitive it is.

At the end of the day it bodes down to personal preference. Personally, I think Genshin has a wonderful combat system and the IT, as an endgame combat mode, doesn't showcase it properly - Forcing players to use less than functional teams adds variety yeah, but with the combat system being so focused on characters fitting together on a team properly (reactions, cooldowns, energy production), if you use a "random team" the combat loses the majority of its soul imo. There is also a middle ground between Meta team and unsynergetic teams, and that is teams that have synergy but aren't meta, example using Al Haitham with Collei instead of Nahida, so I'd argue you can add variety without disrupting the synergy aspect - Agree on the character quantity aspect - By itself the strategy aspect is a fair point and I agree, however I don't think the Theater is all that articulate in challenges structure or poses enough risks that it becomes a strong point of the mode. In this sense, if the mode had a grander scale and the boons were more impactful, unique and cohesive, it could sort of replace what it loses in terms of combat compared to more traditional content, but at the moment it's quite barebones and it would require a lot of work to become good in these aspects.

I do only agree with lightening specific restrictions such as letting you not use 4 characters and making the 'boon' be a little more broad or unique. Otherwise I like the elemental restrictions, I like the randomness of the characters you get, and I like getting limited. The event it was based on was one I desperately wished was made permanent and now it's like they answered my wishes. The best way I've seen it described as Abyss rewards quality, and Imaginarium rewards quantity. And I think that this is completely fine with how each aims in tragetory. Honestly it's so negative in discourse - I wish people would be more optimistic or at least forward-thinking in a optimistic format about it when we FINALLY getting what we've all wanted. It's like they wanted Abyss 2: Harder Now, and that's not what I think they needed [nor, in my bias, what I wanted].

Once I accepted that I wasn’t going to clear the hardest mode in one day (or even at all, and i’m not able to 36 star abyss either so i dont know why this surprised me 😅) I’ve been really enjoying it! It’s fun to have some thing to work towards that is not just a dps check. I do find the managing of which characters you have available vs the rng frustrating, but if i don’t take it too seriously it’s also fun to see which teams i end up with and how they feel.

With a roster of 76 characters, 66 of them raised & built & 63 of those at level 90, I had no issues with the 'restrictions' but found the content on a par with abyss for enjoyment. I have no issue with either as a means to an end, i.e. gaining primos, but see both as a chore to be done with minimal effort & forgotten until the next season.

The main problem I see with the current Theatre is that principal cast is three DPS and three supports. So your first fight in essence has to use one of the DPSs and all three supports, draining vigor from each of them. And the whole rest is a struggle to get enough support characters while the DPSs are having a tea break. Normal team composition is one main DPS and three supports/sub-DPS, the characters we get should respect that, even if what we get is to some level random. There are some strategies in selecting which characters to use - assuming you have them. Not using too many DPS is one of them, or you will end up with teams containing two or three DPS because you just don't have anyone else to deploy. It's not impossible to beat the challenge with such teams, but it's also not very fun experience and most importantly it's not how the game is designed to be played. Your suggestion of trading vigor could end up being a trap. 18 characters represent 36 vigor total, while the 8 fights consume 32 - there's not much wiggle room in it.

I completely agree with your points. Personally, I also like the Theater, although I don't have enough characters built. I consider it a challenge and an opportunity to build more of my characters that I'd never use otherwise.

2:26 I feel exactly the same and I wonder why no one has brought this up yet. So many guidemakers say that the meta teams are the only playable ones because they receive the highest results. And yes for the Abyss floor 12 that might be true, but that’s exactly why the new mode feels so refreshing in my opinion. Now both meta and non meta players have an endgame mode made for them.

The thing is, team building is the most fun aspect of Genshin Impact for most people including myself. Therefore, most players, don't like the idea of crippling themselves with scuffed teams which (most of the time) have almost no synergy whatsoever because of the elemental and character restrictions Hoyo put into the gamemode. I don't mind playing non-meta teams but being forced to play, for example, Arlechino and Faruzan in the same team just doesn't work. It is just not fun to being forced to play teams with no synergy.

I love everything about this game mode, except that they bungled on the challenge criteria. I can accept the mode being easy, IF they use the challenges system better. I actually really like the idea of them requiring us to knock out the chicken boss only after it's tired, or triggering a certain number of elemental reactions to clear a floor. I think those should be the requirements to getting max flowers, and not the usual "clear in 90 sec". This way, the mode becomes about finishing random tasks with weird teams, and not just reaching a subpar DPS check with half baked characters.

I also enjoyed it! I felt like it recognized all the work I've put into so many characters. And it did make me flex my team comp brain. You've got some good suggestions! It would be nice if they would just let us get more rewards and leave abyss as is.

Nice video! My biggest wish is that they make the battles take place in the open world map, eg a sectioned-off piece of mondstadt, ekanomiya, etc. TGS pointed that out and after I heard that I can’t get it out of my head how cool that would be. Genshin world map is gorgeous so let us spend more time there!

It is quite embarrassing, but I can only clear stage 5. The vishaps won't die in the allotted time, but they come so frustratingly close. It makes me sad that I'll never get those keys for the character effects coming next patch. I don't hate the game mode, I hate myself for being old and slow.

I personally loved it too ! What's everyone's on about ? Maybe it's not revolutionary but it's far from being as bad as everyone's putting it. I have 50 fully built characters, I'm happy i finally have a reason to use them. And honestly if you're endgame and you have only 8 built characters, what on earth have you been doing with your resin?

I LOVE unorthodox teams. I’ve been a Chongyun main since launch and very specifically pulled Shenhe to make a melt team just for him. That being said, there’s a difference between unorthodox teams and just straight unplayable teams. I was forced to solo Coppellius with just my Lyney due to the way the cards fell in IT and although I did manage to do it, I wouldn’t call it fun. This seemed to hold true for most of the chambers I played, where I just brute-forced it with whatever my best DPS was. I didn’t have to use supports or time ultimates or worry about rotations, just kept one character on field the whole time and hope their raw damage was enough to get through it. I hope that in the future IT can make it a little easier to make a functional team because being given three on field DPS characters just means somebody inevitably ends up being dead weight

I do have a lot of problems with the Imaginarium Theater, most of them related with the focus towards vertical investment. However, my actual main issue with this gamemode, is it's huge lack of replayability, which is the same issue as the abyss. Once you are done with the gamemode, you are done. Is just an hour or less of gameplay and nothing more. It never incentives you to come back for greater rewards, and the only benefit I see from this is just less FOMO (and there are better ways to do so) I think a good way to fix this issue is to add replayable rewards along the way. It doesn't need to be something crazy like primogems, but maybe a good amount of mora, books and artifacts could solve this issue. I really want to love this new gamemode, and I kinda do actually. But the problems overshadow the good aspects of it (which aren't that many to being with)

good video! i think IT has been really fun for me on my main acc, but i played on my friend's account who has way fewer built characters which was a lot more frustrating, so i can see both sides of this about the elemental gem issue, idk if you know bc its fairly hidden, but if you go into the stardust exchange in the shop, you can buy a green rarity material called dust of azoth for a low price which allows you to trade in other elemental gems for the type you want. to trade them you go to the second tab in the crafting table. personally i've never had an issue w/ elemental gem shortages and i think thats the main reason why, so i thought it might help

for me, it kind of boils down to lack of synergy and the vigor/4 character only team restrictions being as harsh as they are. i completely get the perspective of novelty and having to craft unusual teams, and i love doing that too! however, there's a difference between putting together unusual teams and being forced to create extremely bad ones that don't feel great to the spirit of the combat gameplay (mixing appropriate characters together for elemental reactions and fitting cooldowns). i love putting strange team compilations to the test, don't get me wrong, but it just... is not even remotely fun when you're stuck with a team with absolutely no synergy, characters you either haven't invested in or don't like the gameplay of, that all feel completely unsatisfying to put on a team together considering both of those factors. the combat just feels incredibly head-achingly taxing and boring to do anything with when there's not even a slightest bit of synergy to be had beyond the first *maybe* three or so rounds; if i run out of the characters i actually want to use, and the rng trips me up with giving me a character who's gameplay i hate instead of a character i could work with, i'm basically forced to either reset the whole thing, grit my teeth and have an absolutely miserable experience, or just quit so that i don't start hating the game. and, honestly, the third option fully just sounds like the best one to me, especially as a player who doesn't do spiral abyss precisely because of how utterly boring it is to keep resetting because oh no i lost 5 seconds. it's the mind killer.

I haven't logged into Genshin in months, but this made me want to try the game mode! I like variety too, and playing the same strong characters over and over made me pretty tired. Thanks for sharing your viewpoint!

After almost a year and a half of playing this game, I'm apparently still a noob. I have 28 total characters that are leveled enough to qualify for this mode, before the elemental requirements. There just aren't enough resources (mora, gems, XP books). I managed to get through the medium difficulty of the IT, and the experience was so frustrating that I can't say I have much desire to try the hard mode, even if I did have enough qualifying characters, which I don't. Didn't the 4.8 preview mention something about some new mode where you can use only level 90 characters? That will be such a joy for me I'm sure. Even after completing all the quests and exploration, I still feel like I'm playing catch-up, and like Hoyo keeps moving the goal-posts. After I did the IT, I bought Baldur's Gate III on sale. There's something to be said for a game that you pay for once and, in return, it gives you everything you need to play it.

Imagine waiting ✨ ONE WHOLE MONTH✨ for the reset and just finishing it within a few minutes. I hate it because the devs absolutely wasted this whole gameplay, place and lore just to make it unreplayable, they could have added more difficulties/stages and rewards so there's incentive to keep playing it. Now its just another waste of space i visit once a month.

5:49 Heh. I theorized just this morning that some upcoming Theater season will be built around Shatter... Hydro, Cryo, and Geo would fit perfectly.

An argument against the theater that I just couldn't comprehend was people being angry they "had to pull more characters now" for this game mode, with most of these complaints coming from players who have supposedly played since before Inazuma according to themselves. We have, as of patch 4.8, 40 4* characters in the game, 8 of which given for free or guaranteed, 6 more of which in Paimon's Bargains, a free Liyue 4* every Lantern Rite, another 7 of which were given for free via events since 2.2 (not including overlaps with the above), and the Traveler to add in for good measure. Chances are, even if a person has played for even a year and only pulled for specific abyss units, a lot of people should have both limited units and 4*s enough along the way to have the roster to unlock the theater on its hardest mode. It's just about leveling them to 70. That's it. No, no one has to pull for more characters now, and anyone in the position where they literally have to are too early in their Genshin playthrough to even 36* the abyss right now under normal circumstances let alone do hard mode theater.

yes yes yes!! i am a new player that began this year and i really love the challenge of imaginarium theatre. It’s nice to hear from players that have been around longer that they’re enjoying it too. Hoping this lands on a developers page and they take note of your suggestions 💛

1:10 as a long time player who've invested horizontally since day 1 (none of my 30 limited 5*s are above C0), I've always dreamed of using my wacky off meta teams to wreck havoc with the various elemental interactions in the environment. Taking away any semblance of environmental interactions from the endgame of an open world is a huge missed opportunity imo. I love the elemental restrictions (which abyss also have but subtler ; elemental shield, slimes, those flying cyclop thing), but the 4 man team restrictions on top of the vigor system is way too punishing. The idea about allowing a 3 or even 2 man team with debuffs instead is a great fix to challenge vertical invested players. Also as a player who diversifies team every patch, would really love an extra level of difficulty (with artifact/resin centred rewards instead of primos so it's more optional) that just assumes right off the bat you already c6 a limited 5*s and have the power level be adequate to that.

I absolutely love it too - and yeah that's definitely because I've got 60+ characters built 😅 Wish there was something else as well, and that the Abyss hadn't been cut down to add this, but I hope people start to enjoy it more once Hoyo tweak it a bit!

I adore this game mode, it feels like all the non-meta characters I built have a purpose now! Even Xinyan (One of my favs, but I admit, she is not strong.) carried me through the theatre :]

I like it, but it could be harder. But also, my favorite element is electro so I nearly have every electro character built making this month really easy. I heard speculation of hydro / cryo / anemo so I’m actually deciding to build kayea and Layla because I never use them but they’ll be good characters for this mode. It’s a shame that almost all the hydro units are 5* units, so if my above speculation is true, it’s going to be rough because I don’t have a lot of cryo units built either. I think a good compromise is allowing you to have 1 starter unit you can pick yourself that can be any character / no restrictions. It’s a shame to have a favorite character, build them up and not be able to use them in an end game mode until a month comes along where you fit the requirements. It also adds to replayability because maybe one run you choose keqing, but then the next run can you pick neuvillette. You can even save your chosen character for the very end chambers so if you want to kill the last boss with amber, even if it’s not this month’s elements, you’d be able to.

All id like to do IS USE MY ALOY BRUH! I think it’s great but I can’t use my Aloy Hoyo let me use my main!

I'm enjoying it, personally, and think it has potential to be better. Over the years I've spread my focus around numerous characters because I genuinely like experimenting with different team comps. So meeting the required criteria wasn't a challenge (and no, critics, I'm not a whale nor a meta slave) Ironically, because none of my characters are "da best", I've always struggled with getting 36 stars in the Abyss. But Imaginarium? Did it all after I became aware of what enemies were present. So I'm definitely the kind of Genshin player this was meant for. And hey, Hexenzirkle lore (my favorite part of Genshin.) Of course- there are plenty of flaws. I, personally, dislike how adding this took away the second Abyss reset. Just feels like another case of "can't give players TOO much." Second, I do think they should allow for teams with minimum 1 characeter rather than forcing all 4. It sucks when I know I can take the first two or three chambers out easily with just one Main DPS unit, but am forced to use 3 other units that could've been saved for layer. Third, yes- more game changing elements that force strategy or add a new layer to using characters (like in more dedicated Rogue-likes) would be nice. And just to make me sweat- I want a difficulty mode with Abyss-levels of HP. Make it hurt. TL;DR- there are things that can be better and worth criticizing. But I'm still enjoying myself and I think that if the devs are willing, there'd a lot of potential here.

Thank you for pointing out that this is a rogue-like mode! As soon as that clicked for me on the first day, I was able to easily clear it with all stars in a couple of attempts. Knowledge is power in roguelikes; maximizing your gains and minimizing your disadvantages within the bounds of the system will make WAY more difference than an extra character. You don't even need your own characters to be functional, as long as you can start the event the Trial characters can carry you. My wife and I have been F2P since week one, and this new mode has been extremely vindicating for us. Genshin wants people to play with all of their characters. It has always seemed to defeat the point of this game to only build a team of 8, but soo many guide makers insist that its the "right" way to build your account. The easiest way to stay on top of gems in my experience has been to just do all of the bosses every week.

Not everyone will accept leaks but I just gonna say portion of it... The Hard Mode is currently not THE hardest Mode. Hoyoverse basically plan to make IT has same 800 Primogem reward as Spiral Abyss which means we still miss 180 Primo from their new hardest mode later (Nightmare, Hell, or whatever they call it). The new level will rewards 30+60+30+60 Primo which are skippable if you can't finish yet. So it's possible they gonna add requirements to 4 elements and 20+ chars at once.

I hate that I can only use one of my friends characters once per patch because it would be so fun if I could use it to try out friends characters and stuff but the way it is set up right now I can't do that completely

The discourse made me feel like my point of view is a bit biased/invalid because I'm exactly the kind of player this game mode is aimed for. I've been playing since 2020 on my main and early 2021 on secondary. I have a lot of characters since I've been here for +3 years and I log in daily and like to pull for new characters most times (the highest cons I have on limited 5* are C2 in a few). I build the majority of my characters, at least enough for friendship team purposes, and invest on supports and healers with care and not just carries. This IT also was favorable for my brand of bullshit, since I'm an anemo collector and simp with everyone at my disposal, and I don't lack for strong pyro and electro mains (Arle in one, Raiden and Hu Tao in another). I found it easy to complete even on my secondary account that has less variety for being f2p, but still challenging because of the RNG crap and the need to save up the vigor for some characters for some bosses, or certain supports for certain DPS -like Faruzan when I have Xiao and Wanderer, or trying to use Benny and Kuki with a team that needs them more. That said, I'm aware my accounts aren't a normal case, and I have to reserve my verdict to a season when anemo isn't in the allowed element list and I can't cheese it by using them as filler/CC lmao. I really like your ideas to improve it! The +1 cons buff is one we had in that Inazuma rogue-lite event and it was delightful. I think there's a curio in HSR's Simulated Universe with that effect too.

I think youre my favourete GI CC, you deserve more subs! Keep going.

Your ending statement perfectly sums up why everyone feels the way they do. I've always thought it was weird that so many people hounded everyone saying "you have to invest in only a few characters, otherwise it will bite you later on!" and to that I say "where in the game besides Spiral Abyss does that affect you? No where!" The abyss is the only place that rewards vertical investment. Not everyone wants to do abyss anyways. The rest of the game heavily favors horizontal investment. Especially the open world. Want to survive Dragonspine? Build up your pyro roaster. Want to survive Sumeru? Build up your Dendro roaster. Want to survive Inazuma? Build up your electro roaster etc. Spiral Abyss has been steering everyone in the wrong direction for far too long and Hoyo realized that and made IT to counter that. Too bad it was a little too late as people are already set in their ways. Hopefully people come to realize that abyss (vertical investment) isn't the end all be all of Genshin combat. There's a reason it's so hard to get the perfect build and why there's so many layers of RNG in getting artifacts. It's because you're not ever supposed to. The reason it's designed that way is to discourage players from trying to vertically invest. But Hoyo didn't realize how stubborn people can be as they went and tried to brute force grinding for perfect artifacts anyways. Which caused people to end up hating the system because it was punishing them for playing the way they wanted. Which was not the way Hoyo intended for people to play the game. This is why I think Hoyo's biggest mistake in Genshin is not creating the artifact system, but instead is creating Spiral Abyss.

I overall enjoyed Imaginarium Theatre but I did have some problems with it. First off all, the difficulty. Imaginarium Theatre, or at least the first version of it, was easy enough that you pretty much only need 8 characters. A team of 2 relatively well built characters that have any amount synergy and works against the enemies will be able to clear most of the challenges without much issue, and with some help getting energy or VV shred from the last 2 characters on the team it really isnt a hard challenge. Like I was clearing fights with Raiden using a lvl 1 1 star polearm, lvl 70 xiangling with a level 20 catch and 2 leveled artifacts, a level 70 sucrose with level 0 vv artifacts, and a yoimiya that only used burst while equipped with Shimenawas. The mode makes it seem like you will need to build a bunch of characters, but you only really need 8 characters with decent builds, and 10 with whatever random artifacts you have laying around. And the trial characters, while not great, are still more than good enough to be almost all of your damage for nearly any fight. Second is how you get characters. I have done a total of 4 runs of Imaginarium Theatre, 1 on my main account and 3 on my alt account. On 3 of the runs I was fine with the characters I got, I didn't get the exact character I wanted when I wanted them, but it was fine enough. But my second run on my alt account, I got one cards to get more characters, and 1 of the regain vigor mystery caches. For the 7th round I had to choose all of my characters, leaving me with only 1 character + what I could get between rounds to use for the final boss. My team ended up as Baizhu, Sucrose, Xianyun, Kazuha. I was pretty much forced to just leave after that, because I had no damage or a way to deal with Coppelius' cryo shield. My last problem is just that this mode doesn't really work with how Genshin's characters are designed. There is such an overabundance of on-field DPS characters compared to off-field DPS characters and supports, compared to how many teamslots those characters actually get to use. A significant portion of the characters in Genshin do little to nothing when they are not the active character. And that is fine when you can choose your characters freely from all of your characters, but when you have a mode like Imaginarium theatre where you get random characters with limited uses, this becomes an issue. Roughly 40% of the Pyro/ Electro/ Anemo characters not including the starting 6 in the first Imaginarium Theatre, are primarily on-field DPS characters. On the hard difficulty you only really want to choose 1 on-field DPS character, because you already have 3 in the starting cast, and with one more you have enough to use 1 on-field DPS for every challenge without ending up having to put someone like Hu Tao or Diluc on a team with a character like Wanderer. Right now this isn't a big issue because you can clear even with one or two characters on a team that are completely dead weight, but if they increase the difficulty to make having dead weight characters on the team a real problem, then people will start having to build character's they have no interest in using anywhere else, just so they can clear it. Like for me, the only cryo 4 star that I have any interest at all in building is Layla, purely so I can use a shielder for both Yoimiya and Ganyu at the same time in Abyss. The reason why I haven't is that I don't usually play Yoimiya with a shielder, so I would just use Zhongli instead. Every character I have built on my account has been used for several different types of content, like exploring, abyss, domains. Its not fun to spend days worth of resources just so I can use a character for 1-5 minutes in a mode that I play once a month, and the character won't even be usable every month.

I started playing around 5 months ago and after exploring the world my favorite thing to do has been to build my characters so I feel like this mode was tailor made for me haha. I just wish we had more resin, or resources in general. I keep running out of materials 😭😄

Finally, a positive video about the IM. I personally enjoyed it as well and felt that it was making me more creative with my teams. I also like the aspect of strategising my parties and keeping certain characters for certain stages according to their strengths. There is room for improvement but I just feel all the whining by some others (especially certain CCs) is like the typical ungrateful spoilt brat genshin player who is never satisfied + doing it for content. Glad to stumble upon this channel

For bosses that drop the wrong gem: buy dust of azoth in the shop. you can get 1000 a month for not that much stardust assuming you have extra from the 750 you need to buy fates each month. alchemy table is your friend.

Fixing one major issue will make other issues much less impactful. My high priority issue is boons being totally useless compared to buying more characters. In IT, boons should be able to almost replace entire characters such as healers or buffers. A smaller change but can make most people happy is to allow under leveled characters and prop up the builds to Lv. 70 if lower (similar to HSR Divergent Universe feature)

I loved this new mode that being said I also didn't spend my whole time only working on 8 characters. I'd always start building new characters when the game became way to repetitive which rewarded my for this mode. So for all out honesty I can't wait for the next one unless it's geo lol hopefully not geo

Yes the Theatre is easy for me, because I’m an end game player who has a lot of characters but I personally don’t mind it. I love playing manager and using weird comps. Plus it’s nice to finally have a chance to use characters I’ve benched and not just unga bunga solo everything with one character. I think this mode is what Genshin needed tbh

Me too I love theatre, I built all my characters and it's great to use weird teams because those are the teams I use in the overworld anyway. I wish there was more incentive to redo it cause it's just a one and done thing- And to the people who didn't have geo characters built for when it'll get in rotation: sucks to suck

Loved the video and how you pointed to all the different reasons people have for disliking it's current state, even if you didn't agree, that's great. It's not simple at all since different players have different reasonings, but I hope Hoyoverse gets to improve it so it can feel better for everyone.

My issue with the mode, okay it's two actually: First, the contradiction of the mode itself. It is so easy that anyone COULD clear it, but so restrictive that in reality most people can't even START the mode. And people who do not enjoy levelling a few character to max potential for Abyss probably also don't enjoy building an army of them instead. It's the same amount of investment, but instead of vertical you now have to invest horizontally into all of your characters. And second, you know I wouldn't mind, not even the weird contradictory concept behind the mode, because as it is it feels like a permanent event. And we have been begging Genshin to add permanent events to add more replayable content to the game. But then WHY did hoyo have to remove 50% of the Abyss in return? It did not actually ADD any content, it just exchanged part of the content we already had for the new one. And the new one... really is just not that good, so much so that even hoyo for the first time in 4 years actually admitted that the mode is not good, and are trying to change it. But I doubt they will fix the fundamental issues with it. Also I heavily disagree that hoyo's intention behind this is to force players to make characters that don't synergize with each other to somehow magically synergize. It really just feels like a blatant attempt to motivate players to PULL more characters so they can even play this mode, because many, especially newer players, just cannot realistically fulfill the requirement with all these restrictions in place, unless they just PULL more characters.

If you like just making and playing OP teams do Spiral Abyss. For those of use who like team variety ,but still want a doable challenge, let us have Imaginarium Theater.

I also loved the theatre and gosh I hope people will realize nobody needs their yelling like a dinosaur at anything that hoyo does, theatre forcing people to step out of hyper meta with just eight characters made so many old men cry it's almost funny while I personally love many characters and for some time was sad I don't have any proper reason to have that many and use them all even in the open world but I wanted to, always. and theatre is exactly about that! im the target audience and im staying for even bigger restriction game mode - the upcoming one for 90 lvl characters only, i know this will make sad people even sadder ijbol, they all tend to have 81 character lvl on everyone who didn't need 90 lvl for their damage, oopsie hoyo said we love casual players who don't mind spending a bunch of books for the character of their liking, too sad my bad ;)

Having a game mode where you needed to find functional teams based on random characters would have been fun. What we got, was a game mode where challenge is exchanged for tedium. You can still beat everything with just one character, and the other three are just present. The restrictions end up being entirely inconsequential, and the game mode is overall very easy.

Most people are either having few characters to use or just pushed outside of their comfort zone. It is not bad, just think of it like a rougelike game.

I've kinda got the double down lol. Massive vertical investments, but also a lot of characters levelled up (which traditionally was considered a crazy thing to do). Ultimately - if the boons could be made more meaningful and the mode was made a bit more difficult to compensate, that'd be great I think. And I'm hoping Aloy is playable if not shareable. But allegedly she may or may not be I dunno.

Thank you for this! I see a lot of complaining and no one really talking about how it could be made better. I think my frustration at first was that I don't think I planned well enough for what was coming ahead. Also I was concerned that bosses would change every time you try it out - happily that's not the case but it did have me concerned. I think it mostly taught me to work harder at odd combinations and also to refine the builds I do have. A couple of characters I brought along need talents levelled desperately and that was noticeable. I couldn't get every reward but it's a challenge to work on. I thoroughly agree that the missing abyss is big though. the two resets a month were good - but there's ways they could improve abyss as well. It's got me thinking as to what exactly I want from the challenging content but I want to be able to test out even characters I haven't built to see what they could do - which is why I kind of wish it was more like the Divergent Universe they gave us for HSR. So many possibilities.

The first thing i wanna say is F the meta whores😂😂 i LOVEEE this game mode this feels like what genshin should be magical, mystical and a relief from the old abyss backdrop And i also love the elemental restrictions it feels endgame in a way where we dont run behind a timer and damage per screenshot And its funnly refreshing that U were running wierd teams too😂 my dumbass didnt know we can redeem characs thru those cards i thought they were some buffs for negative points and ran Wanderer, Faruzan, Arlecchino and AlHaitham😂 that was some team alright And you know how you mention that buffs from IT applying outside even in the abyss, well they can add these base roster units be some underused or underpowered caharcs where it would help us form new teams for abyss with characs we had benched cuz of powercreep its a win-win for both gamemodes and genshin imo where we can always use the characs we love Andd imma stop my 350 page book novel of a comment here 😂 Insightful vid as always saurus ❤

The only redeeming part of the elemental restrictions, imo, is it finally gave me a reason to build characters I've been wanting to. I've managed to get through lvl 7 but I can't get enough dmg for lvl 8 cause the characters I'm left with are weak or die in one hit

I found it neutral, not terrible, but not great either. I do prefer Abyss, as someone who (due to regretting pulling for so many characters I didn't really found fun to play) transitioned from a horizontal investor to more of a vertical or rather a "diagonal" one (though not necessarily vertically investing into meta, rather my favorite characters/teams, whether they are meta or not + I especially like to invest into teams with 1 or 2 flexible slots to still have some variety while not pulling for too many on-fielders). That said, my absolute biggest wish for Genshin endgame is to just move out of these boring empty circular rooms.

I have 2 issues with this mode 1. it's not random enough might seem like a weird complaint but the thing is wtf are you gonna do with your flowers? you can a) get more characters or b)get useless boons so in all 3 of my runs so far (I wanted the achievements for 8 boons and 8 caches) I just spam give me more characters and play the characters I wanted anyway so effectively there ends up being no rng anyways and in all 3 runs I've done I've been able to get my entire party or finish only missing 1 or 2 I only put in as vigour fodder and that brings me to my second problem 2. it's too easy I can easily clear any stage with 1-2 characters so I just dig to get my full roster (which is possible because of the problem stated above) and find the synergies I already know and already play and use the other 2-3 slots as vigour fodder actually I bring characters along EXCLUSIVELY to be vigour fodder the fix i could see to this might be a bit controversial but its to actually make it a complete randomizer every fight you get a fully random team from 18 characters add ban domains that let you ban 1 character from showing up in that run ever again as for the really controversial part -- to make sure you do not end up with 4 on fielders, tag characters with types (on fielder dps, off-field dps, buffer, healer) then have the game ensure that there's no more than 1 on fielder per team (unless there on one else to pick from) hoyo can make the labels or they can have the community make the labels (like after someone completes abyss 12 they are asked to label all characters they have over level 70)(or give players who have cleared abyss 12 an extra tab in the paimon menu where they can label the characters) and whatever category they scored the most votes in will be the label for the month

I think it all boils down to that abyss is more of a dps check, the more built your characters are, the easier it is to clear while IT is more of an investment check, the more characters you have built, the less the restrictions actually restrict you.

Its a good mode, no bad, but not awesome either. I feel like the most fun would be to just make the buffs stronger, so funny big number = more fun, instead of ok boosts. It has a lot of potential, and I also had fun!

I swear to god I can't get past Act 6. When ever I go through it I sweat like a sweaty gamer xD and I can barely get all the stars. Tbf I started in January this year so idk what I'm doing wrong 😢 Im looking at guides but I dont understand why I can only kill about 11 in Act 7. It gets very upsetting when you see youtubers say "Easiest gamemode ever" or guides saying "you can give your characters random artifacts and you still get through all stages"

When I enter this new end game. I could not play the Hard mode because I need 2 more characters......soooo against all my ideals and convictions,I decided after 4 years finally build up benett 😂😂😂 and switch the element of the traveler. There are special cards that can help you to use the character more than 2 times, etc It was fun. But still I don't like the idea of buil benett to 70

its an "End"game so you won't be able to complete it by just playing for 1 month Mihoyo will add more flowers at the beginning of hard mode to give you more options they will also give you a choice between two characters after each fight instead of just handing out a random character They will probably add one more difficulty but this will require more characters(play if you want tho this mode is not mandatory) they removed a completely useless reset from abyss, you talked about replayability but abyss used to always reset with the same ctrl c ctrl v of enemies twice a month, now every reset comes with different formations Other than that I believe the devs will make another game mode in the future, players will complain the same way if that happens tho but it will be another fun activity to do in the game

I totally agree with most of what you said! I like this style of gameplay, and having to fight with suboptimal teams. I also like the added layer of strategy that’s introduced by having to choose characters only a certain amount of times. I think they missed the mark on the buff cards though. There’s no reason to choose specific combinations, because your teams are too random to choose synergistic effects and the effects themselves don’t do enough to allow for combos in of themselves. However I want to stress the point about toggleable buffs for the featured characters - I really hatte them! It’s nice, that they’re there for newer players, but I don’t want it on my own characters. I don’t need even more help with my builds and I actually think it’s misleading when building a new character. And featured characters will obviously be new characters. So in the furore it might be impossible to accurately gauge the true strength of a unit, when wishing on it. And that is terrible. Hoyo won’t habe that though, because it helps sell even weaker characters. Other than that, I think that IT might still be able to evolve into a great gamemode. However I unterstand the frustration in parts of the community, when the mode seems half baked after Hoyo had literally years to work on it.

It just feels like a scuffed randomizer. You don’t know which units you will get access to, and most real decisions are “can I beat this level without using up my 2-3 most valuable characters.” Using teams that have no synergy at all is incredibly uninteresting. I also found that almost every round I end up regretting using a specific character because the new characters i get next round now don’t have any cohesion with each other. Ways to help fix it? Add a 4th element. Show what characters will be added to the pool before you choose who to fight with. Let us replace the starter/trial characters with our own characters. Make the buffs matter more. For instance, let us collect more powerful buffs and choose 1-2 to apply during each battle round so that there aren’t a bunch of wasted buffs every other fight.

I agreed with many of the complaints you mentioned you've seen, but the biggest downside for me for this new mode was that it took away the primos from the Abyss. I hate not having the option to ignore it, if I do, I'll miss out on like half of the primos I used to get per month. And honestly, I get what you and some comments are saying about Hoyo's intent with this mode, but honestly I think their biggest intent was just to make us feel actually pressured to pull for everyone and spend more money. 😂 I too like to be able to use everyone so I am in the process of building all my characters, but I feel like even if I had everyone decently built I'd still hate the vigor thing. Or the RNG in the characters we get. I mean I feel like the challenges of "Trigger X reaction Y amount of times." and the like would be incentive enough to not use the same team for all 8 acts. But I guess I'm biased 'cause I'm not a combat focused player so I just wanna be done with it asap, so locking me out of using my best available team is annoying for me. 😂 Whatever they do, I just hope they don't make it harder. This game has always been for casuals or chill players and I hope they don't steer from that. And speaking of, now that we have this mode, I hope the trend of making the Abyss harder and harder stops. 🙄

You like it because you can actually play it. I have competent teams that can clear the abyss sometimes with 36 stars. What does having 2 good teams mean for me in this new mode? I can do the easyest diffculty and absolutely nothing else

They could make it like Divergent Universe in HSR, where even your unbuilt units get a build and decent levels and talents for this mode.

FINALLYYY someone defending imaginarium :) my favorite part is that this event makes my traveler even more useful! she can be any element i need

I quite enjoyed it as well. Theres definitely some room for improvements but its a nice start for a new and different endgame mode. I do also like to build up more characters and i like the challenge of playing unoptimal/bad teams because im trying to save characters for other chambers. One aspect I'm just incredibly confused aboit is the support function. You can choose a support character from your friend list BUT once you "lock it in" by starting IT you can't choose a different character from that friend anymore. I don't have a lot of friends in genshin bc i rarely engage in multiplayer aspects, but i was looking forward to trying out all the characters i dont have from some of the good friends i do have. I just dont quite understand why that is a restriction in the game mode. How would it hurt the gameplay experience by letting me choose a different character from the same friend in another IT run? Why can't i try out my friends Chevruse in one run and the same friends Xiao in another run?

For me, I feel like if they didn't lock you out with level requirements and needing 12 characters that meet that requirement. It would have been received a lot better, The Spiral Abyss doesn't lock you out based on your character level or not having 8 built characters, it let's you mess around and find out, you go in with 8 maxed out characters because you know that otherwise it will be hell. For Imaginarium Theater, It's clear you can beat it with less than 18 characters who are under level 70, there's cards that restore vigor making the 18 character requirement to even start it unnecessary. It would be better if people were allowed to choose how many characters they want and have to learn the hardway that they don't have enough characters, Also, please let people choose less that 4 characters please. With those unnecessary restrictions lifted I can see many challenge runs like, trying to 8 star imaginarium Theater with only 10 characters where they must plan out everything and be extremely efficient. Personally, I enjoyed it a whole lot and the restrictions never really affected me too much because I'm always investing in multiple characters

You play the game the exact same way I do, and turns out I also adore IT.

Finally someone who also agrees that IT is a good game mode with a few small downsides. But I think level is just a bad metric to determine how much a character is build. (Thinking back to my chevereuse who was just sitting on bad hp artifacts, lvl 70, and a half leveled weapon but not talent lvl even though I had the materials) If it was me I would put a "build" meter into it (like how the game evaluates why you failed a domain) that considers level, talents, weapon and artifact levels.

The problem with borrowing characters from friends currently is that you need to meet the requirements to start the difficulty, so ability to do so doesn't lower the number of characters that need to meet the requirements. I like the idea of the game mode overall, but the execution missed the mark for me as it felt more frustrating than fun.

I also loved it! I am Ar60 and i tend to build most of ky characters, i think there are less than 10 units i haven't build, so I had fun eoth weird teams. The thing i don't understand is how sime people can complaining about it "being impossible for low ar players" like yeah its end game And how people who play only hyperbloom now complain they can't play. Thats the point, you want to build more than one team

11:20 THANK YOU I hate the fact that they buff the characters outside the game mode tbh. I want to know what my charcters' actual strength level is, not some buffed strength level that will dissapear again...

I don't think the game mode should be that bad for veteran players. I've been playing for about 4 months so it's fair enough that I can't do all the difficulties right now. I just think that this game mode will take a ridiculous amount of time for newer players to have a decent chance at. The game has pretty limited resin which limits boss,artifact, talent, and weapon material farming and then ascension resources re spawn every 24-48 hours which limits character and weapon leveling. The way the game limits you kind of forces you to level up a few characters instead of a variety. Then getting characters comes down to luck so you might not even get the right element character to level up. The only geo characters i have are noelle and garou because they were pretty much given away. I haven't gotten a single geo character from regular pulls but I have a C5 Barbara. In theory I might get more constellations before I get the right element characters. Basically newer players that don't have a lot of money to spend could be waiting around a year to have a decent shot at that the game mode and I think that's kind of crazy.

Can't we all agree the one-time big haul of primos was alright

obtained plenty primogems, and happy with the results. I don't hate the Theater. Enjoyed the experience. borrowed a character from my cousin to help.

The reason people don't like it is because they have Meta Stockholm Syndrome. They expected to build teams the same way they always had and they couldn't. So it didn't feel smooth when they can't brute force it. And it didn't reward them when they can.

I'm not pulling any character that I don't need for team building just because of this game mode

What makes theater so annoying for people is how easy but restricted it is at the same time. It's an easy mode, but you can't play all 8 waves without 18 ELEMENTALLY NON-RESTRICTED characters. It's also supposed to be an end-game mode but you can unlock it after AR 35, is this some kind of joke? Yes, early-game players can also participate if they have at the very least 6 characters other than the trial ones at level 60, but that only makes things worse for new players because then how are they gonna invest into the abyss? The theater asks you to do the exact opposite of what abyss asks you to do and that makes the imaginarium theater's existence even more unreasonable and they released it at the worst possible time. Hoyo has been making abysses harder and harder and players were and are doing their best to upgrade their characters to their best possible ceiling, yet half of the rewards of the abyss tranfer into a new game mode that wants you to use your resin in a vertical way. What does that mean, you might ask? WHY ARE YOU MAKING A HARDER ABYSS WHICH MAKES ME WANNA UPGRADE MY CHARACTERS AND RIGHT AFTER THAT GIVE ME A MODE THAT WANTS ME TO DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE OTHER MODE ASKS ME TO DO!?!?!? What I'm trying to say is that hoyo doesn't help us with both modes but makes things harder by saying "invest into one and quit the other, pick and play". I'd understand it if the abysses were easy but you give me the hardest content so far in the mode that always existed and then you transfer my guaranteed rewards from it to a new mode that has nothing to do with the old content and you ask me the question "abyss or theater?". I feel like if hoyo were to asnwer this they'd say "Oh WhY dO yOu ThInK wE iNcReAsEd ThE rEsIn CaP?", yeah like it's even enough for someone to build at the very least 6 characters at AR 35 with that amount. "YoU hAvE FrAgIlE rEsIn", then how am I gonna use it when I will need it the most, at AR 45? "NoT mY PrObLeM nOw PiCk AnD pLaY". Hoyo always does the same, they have the possibility to go 2 steps forward and they go 2 steps back.

6:16 "unlikely" That's exactly what happened with my second account of similar age as yours. This account I invested a lot in Dendro and Hydro units, since hyperbloom teams are a very strong f2p option. The only other DPS I have is Arlecchino which is in the starting cast. I have no usable Anemo units outside of Sucrose.

Me too! really enjoyed!

Just tried Imaginarium Theatre and I absolutely hated it. I don't like the fact that I can only use certain units TWICE. I know I've been playing a gacha game this whole time, and I already have been suffering from the lack of resin, but I absolutely despise artificial scarcity systems in games, like timed combat (yes, I've also hated Spiral Abyss for this) and limited usage for characters. It would have not been much of an issue if Genshin beforehand actually incentivized people to building more characters, but NO. Players did not HAVE TO, and now all of a sudden this content comes along demanding the exact same thing. Building characters are resource intensive and time consuming and the resin cap only increased by 40 with NO RESERVES other than the condensed resin that you have to craft... by hunting crystal flies. I don't know, I'm just confused as to why they decided to make this game mode as it is, when they could've easily implemented similar end game modes from their other games. Imagine a Simulated Universe-like game mode for Genshin, for instance. OR better yet, utilize Genshin's combat focused (kinda) gameplay more with weekly raids, be it solo or co-op with escalating and/or varying buffs/debuffs relative to the difficulty, elemental reactions, and environmental/stage hazards. And you know what? Why don't you make those raids an overworld objective as well, if you wanna make use of the game being open world and make players want to roam much like Bounties, but more? Either way, of course them rewards better be worth it.

idk, I completed it 8 stars on the first try and use all but 1 trials characters (Kuki). Its not that hard, its weird and awkward teams yes but not that hard.

First, this is just like Abyss so new or low AR players can't do hard mode. Second, this Abyss demands strategy if you have not built many characters or have less characters. You have to know where or how to use given characters. I would say it was easy but I struggled a lot with Wanderer since I don't have him, it took me 30 min to learn his rotation with team Faruzan and then using him early cause trial character have low damage, even with buff. For low SOL players even WuWv main Abyss Tower hard mode(hazard zone) follows same rule. And I have not completed it past 21 stars. I will need to wait until I raise SOL level to get 30 or 32 stars whatever. Till then I will not get all rewards every season.

i like it, but i wish the combat scenarios were more interesting. it's literally just circles filled with hit-sponges of enemies. PLEASE make the actual combat more interesting...

Perfect video, couldn't have said it better.

What happened to your wuthering waves video ? And did you actually post one or was I hallucinating

ty for the vid

this mod is good only if player havent tried other good rogulike/roguelite games. The moment you play something like SU from Star Rail/ Hades/ Dead Cells you understand that this mod is mid, nothing special. All this restrictions are made to force players to spend money and get more units, its artificial restricitions they doesnt fill natural (devs wanted to manipulate us in the first place making game mod fun was definetly secondary task). About gameplay of the mod: -Yeah, overworld buffs for 6 units is a scummy trick which may mislead new players to believe their new units are stronger than they are in reality. -Unit charges shouldnt prevent us from using our characters in battle, charges should be reward multipliers (Fantasia Flower) -> the more different teams we use the better rewards we get and if we use the same units all the time we dont get curency for upgrades. -Make upgrades have bigger impact in combat. Its pretty easy to beat final boss without any upgrades. -Make Rogulite elements (upgrade theater talent tree like SU from Star Rail) + increase difficulty of bosses (upgrades have a bigger impact so we have to make monsters stronger). Each season fighting final boss straightaway should be difficult, but after several upgrades of tallent tree it should be as easy as now. -Upgrades should be less niche. Devs make charges for unit usage and expect us to have access to gameplay mechanics limited to certain units, it is very unwise decision. For example they sell us buffs for Bond of Life but there are only 3 units which use BoL (Clorinde, Sigewinne, Arlecchino and only 2 of them are DD). Easy fix -> make all BoL upgrades have dual effect: 1-BoL generation, 2-buffing, if you have BoL. -Make more variety for challenges and buffs. There were quite few pretty good player made Divine Ingenuity race maps lets reuse them or random player made Rhythm event tracks (some of them were diabolical). Devs can easily reuse thous assets by chosing top 50 tracks and top 50 race maps. Now both casual and hardcore players can enjoy this mod. Hardcore players may try to chalenge final boss straightaway using the same team all the way, casual players can complete theater on easy mod by upgrading talent tree and using different teams.

I love the theater so much I replay it almost every day it's so cute, chatting with characters pretty fun and the visuals are amazing, I like the gameplay a lot, but I can understand why people don't like it they were waiting for a hardcore sweaty game mode especially after 3 years

The way the restrictions are designed is garbage, it should never lock you out of playing it if you dont have a ton of characters built, instead it should be designed in such a way that it would be extremely difficult to beat with accounts that dont have a wide roster. The way it currently is designed is just plain bad, heres an analogy to put it into perspective: Currently there is not enough reason to vertically invest and the game is very easy, so instead of making the abyss harder how about we add a new endgame mode, and if you do not have atleast a signature weapon on every character you are not allowed to play it at all because "you havent vertically invested enough", and the gameplay itself is actually just floor 10 abyss difficulty. The only incentive there to get signature weapons is just to pass the entry requirement rather than it actually improving your account. There is no reason why they couldnt just provide enough trial characters to enter the mode, just make it too difficult to actually clear. Even better design would be that the boons are designed in such a way it actually benefits people with many characters. The way it is currently is just a very artificial way of gatekeeping players from easy content and the only challenge is just getting enough filler level 70 characters for no reason. The first 4 chambers can basically always be cleared with trial characters by design and they cant just increase the difficulty because you cannot select the starting characters, otherwise it would just become own these specific X characters or lose. Chambers 5 and 6 you need 1 competent team, Chambers 7 and 8 you can just get 1 whale friend and 3 filler characters. So all you really need is just one team and a ton of meaningless filler.

i'm also in the minority. but that's not surprising. people who enjoy the game spend more time playing it than complaining about it online.

Depths of Illusive Realm is way better.

I personally against all sort of endgame. But this one i liked because it is quite stress free and easy. So much better then abyss!

too easy for hardcore, too restricted for casual. a game mode that cater for no one

Lmao it is nothing new but an event that they already did. I cleared it in one go, so for ke its nothibg but monthly inconvenience to get 640 primos. I was excited for this but this was not that good, plus ayato'd pose is boring asf, still got it cause i like him

people are just mad they dont know how most of their characters work because theyre used to playing 2-3 teams without switching them at all as a theorycrafter and overall good player i found it rather easy, but still pretty fun with the only complain being the amount of characters necessary to participate, making the level cap is the only major complain about it