Hello everyone. It’s time for another look at Hoyoverse’s gacha games and another clear division – where are all the four-star characters? Recent releases in Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero and especially Honkai Star Rail have been very limited and we wonder why.
Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail had 14 and 13 four-star characters respectively at launch, but the number of novel additions has since declined to the point that Star Rail only released three novel four-star characters throughout the entire 2.x update period, and Genshin only has two options for Natlan so far.
As the Honkai Star Rail is currently entering its third version, it still lacks four-star options. We know of several novel characters that will appear in the 3.0 and 3.1 Honkai Star Rail banners, and they are all five-star rarities. Given the novel summoning mechanics, this is pretty crazy – sure, we get a path focused on Trailblazer summons for free, but surely a four-star option instead of just the five-star Honkai Star Rail Aglaea would be reasonable for a free-to-player? Especially since it’s in the second half.
For example, each novel region in Genshin Impact hands out a four-star unit to showcase the mechanics of that area. Fontaine gave us Lynette, Natlan gave us Kachina, and Sumeru gave us Collei. But Honkai said no, deal with it, do you want a summons? Pull five star. Little do they know that my team of Jing Yuan and Sunday will get me through this without the need for Aglaea.
As part of the 1.x patches for two of Hoyoverse’s biggest gacha games, the company gave us at least four additional four stars in each of them. Zenless Zone Zero, on the other hand, gave us… one thing. Please Hoyo, I have more than MC6 of all my A ranks and it’s getting really monotonous having the same ones multiple times in all the ZZZ banners.
There have been further patches with the release of dual S-rank agents. That’s ten novel S-ranks, with two more planned and one single A-rank in the mix – good aged ZZZ Seth is keeping the fortune with the nine A-ranks that debuted at the game’s launch .
Here’s a handy chart showing the four-star rating at launch and in subsequent versions of Hoyo games for my fellow visual learners:
| On leave | In patches 1.x | In patches 2.x | In patches 3.x | In patches 4.x | In patches 5.x | |
| Genshin | 14 | Four | Seven | Nine | Six | Three (so far) |
| Honkai | 13 | Six | Four | None (so far) | – | – |
| Zen-free | Nine | One | – | – | – | – |
Do I need to mention Kaveh from Genshin Impact? One of the best designed four-star characters in all of Hoyo games, with an entire event dedicated to him? Unfortunately, his set didn’t live up to my expectations, but I still decided to give him a C6 a try because the man’s personality, style, and story importance were well above four stars. Everyone I know who plays this game downloaded it just for him.
This proves that Hoyoverse can definitely prepare a perfect four-star along with characters that are considered mid-range, such as Sethos from Genshin Impact, 500th electro DPS. But for gamers who don’t want to spend a lot on a five-star solution, this is probably their saving grace.
I’ll digress for a moment – there are certain characters like Sigewinne or Emilie from Genshin Impact and – dare I say it – Topaz, Bailu or Yanqing from Honkai Star Rail should perhaps be given four stars instead of five. While two of them are standard five-star banners in Honkai, for a long time there may have been several four-stars instead of just five.
On the other hand, there are certainly some four-stars that should be five-stars, like Genshin Impact’s Xiangling and Ororon due to their kit and story importance respectively, but we really don’t need any more higher rarities at this point.
I’m not saying companies should flood their rosters with second-rate four-star players. I’m also not saying they should flood the squad with four-star players at Xiangling’s level – but a few more options would be nice, especially in Zenless Zone Zero. It’s probably demanding to come up with and balance sets that are useful or inventive and aren’t on par with or better than the circumscribed five stars, but there’s definitely room for more sub-DPS or decent support characters, even if they’re situational. Will we get an A-rank healer for those who don’t choose Astra Yao in ZZZ? When will we get a four-star in HSR that will get us a summons?
It just seems like the number of 4-star releases continues to decline and I’m not sure why, even if we’re thinking about chasing profits – as mentioned above, it’s not like people don’t specifically focus on 4-stars and they’re often harder to get earning than five stars due to lack of warranty. Sure, five stars is great, but having a lineup of 50/50 or even more than half stars seems a little unfair. Plus, a few four-stars every now and then can really assist five-stars feel more special. Please, won’t someone think about our wallets?
Either way, while we eagerly await the next A-Rank, be sure to download the novel Zenless Zone Zero Codes, Genshin Impact Codes, and Honkai Star Rail Codes to add more attractions to your stash.
