Honkai: Star Rail’s new event leans way into Pokémon

Call me trashy, but I’ve always enjoyed the humor in Honkai: Star Rail.

The developers describe the game as a “space comedy” and as such, have never been afraid to lean into referential humor. Many of the flavor texts and quests make reference to Rickroll, or other sci-fi popular media. The Matrix. Now, the developers are gunning for the Pokémon crowd with a new event called Aetherium Wars. The premise of its gameplay isn’t just wickedly similar, the writing is also stuffed to the brim with references and love for the beloved monster catching video games.

Honkai: Star Rail The developers of Hoyoverse have created a turn-based role-playing video game. Genshin Impact. . Star RailPlay as the trailblazers – a team of adventurers that travels from one world to another on a train intergalactic. Generally speaking, the game doesn’t play anything like Pokémon. The game does use turn-based battles, but it’s a completely different combat system. Players build skill points to interrupt turns at any time. There wasn’t much all that felt like Pokémon, that is until the 1.4 patch dropped.

As part of the latest patch, developers launched an Aetherium Wars event on Wednesday. It is a game in which the Trailblazers and March 7th take over monsters to use as weapons. Combat is similar to that of the main games, but you are fighting as monsters and challenging other characters in battles. And while the combat isn’t quite like Pokémon, many details come across as direct references to Pokémon.

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  Hoyoverse Image via Polygon
  

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  Hoyoverse Image via Polygon
  

This is the man in charge of running the tournament Star RailGiovanni is the character’s name, and he happens to also be the leader of Team Rocket. If an NPC sees you, they’ll start a battle and an exclamation point will appear above their head just like in Pokémon. Prior to starting the battles, the NPC will say the most inane one-liners that remind me of lines Pokémon trainers shout before battles. At the end of the first Victory Zone, you needs to challenge Serval and Pela to a fight and they reward you with an item that’s basically a gym badge. Also, I won’t spoil the ending of the event, but it contains an incredible nod to Red’s appearance in Pokémon Gold, Silver” Crystal.

It’s not the first time a Hoyoverse game has contained an event that fans compared to Pokémon. Genshin Impact The event was a battle between fungus and players. However, the social media chatter has been sparked by all of these references. Someone even recreated an anime’s original intro using characters from Star Rail.

Want to be the best? Honkai: Star RailThe game is compatible with mobile devices, Windows PCs and PlayStation 5