Roles are fundamental to most role-playing games, especially those played in teams, like Honkai: Star Rail. Such classifications are also often rigid and classified into categories, like the primary damage dealer, support, and tank. HSR closely followed this formula during its early days. However, the game recently started to stray away from convention with its roles, and that's especially apparent with the new Remembrance-Wind unit Hyacine.
Honkai: Star Rail officially categorizes its characters using Paths. Lore-wise, a Path is a manifestation of universal philosophy that the game's characters can choose to follow. Pathstriders who put their will, dedication, and faith into a Path can be granted special powers by the Aeon that presides over it. Paths affect gameplay by functioning as somewhat of a class system; for example, The Hunt characters focus on dealing big single-target damage, and The Abundance path typically consists of healers. While the characters in the first few Honkai: Star Rail versions stuck to the official classifications of their Paths, the latest additions seem to be straying from this convention, for better or for worse.
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Hyacine Follows the Trend of New Honkai: Star Rail Characters Going Above and Beyond Their Role
Hyacine is a Chrysos Heir guarding the Sky Coreflame while also being a renowned physician. Therefore, it makes sense that she'll be a healer-type character. Based on the pre-release playtests, Hyacine looks to be the best area of effect (AoE) healer in the game yet: she provides teamwide burst healing with her Skill and ult, while her memosprite, Little Ica, heals allies immediately after they take damage. What makes her even more remarkable, however, is her ability to go beyond what's expected of a prototypical healer.
Hyacine is a Healer and Sub-DPS in One Unit
Healers in most RPGs often trade damage for healing capabilities, which is apparent in HSR's older Abundance units like Bailu and Luocha. However, the game is reaching beyond the boundaries of traditional healers for its newer sustain units like Hyacine. This is because she can significantly contribute to the team's damage with her Memosprite’s attacks.
Pre-release footage sees Little Ica doing more than a hundred thousand points of damage to enemies with their follow-up attack. With the right team composition and build, which includes action advances from Remembrance Trailblazer’s Mem and a Dance! Dance! Dance! Lightcone on a Harmony support, Ica can attack frequently. Hyacine can essentially do double-duty as a sustain and a sub-DPS, making her one of the highest-value 5-star pulls for a Castorice team comp.
HSR's Characters Have Been Subverting Roles for a While
Hyacine isn’t the first unit to go against the grain of their role. Aventurine, a Preservation unit, can also be built to deal with big damage using his follow-up attacks while keeping the team safe with consistent shields. Meanwhile, Abundance’s Lingsha can deal massive AoE damage while healing the whole team using her skill, ult, and Memosprite attacks.
Tribbie contributes consistent damage with her follow-up attacks and her ultimate while keeping her important buffs up for allies. This was not the case with older units like Huohuo and Ruan Mei. It seems like the name of the game for HSR’s newer support and sustain units is reliable damage on top of already-great buffing, shielding, or healing kits. Acheron is also another example of a character subverting their given role. Nihility usually involves using damage over time (DoT) or vulnerability debuffs to weaken enemies. However, Acheron uses debuffs mostly as a contribution to her ultimate charge, dealing big damage with it upon activation. She works more like a Destruction unit rather than the usual Nihility DoT DPS like Kafka or Black Swan.
While HSR’s Paths give characters a straight and narrow philosophy for characters to follow, its gameplay concept is much wider and more diverse. It only makes the game more interesting. If it allows effective sub-DPS sustains, who knows, maybe there’ll be a Destruction support or an Erudition healer in the future.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 83 /100 Critics Rec: 90%
- Released
- April 26, 2023
- ESRB
- Teen / Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes, Simulated Gambling, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items), Users Interact
- Developer(s)
- HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo)
- Publisher(s)
- HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo)
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- Unity
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Turn-Based RPG
