Honkai: Star Rail

• 1. Introduction

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  Honkai: Star Rail, a free-to-play role-playing game from the Shanghai studio miHoYo, had 22.98 million people in mainland China pre-register before it opened its doors. Another 10 million signed up from outside the mainland. That is an enormous crowd waiting for a train. The train in question is the Astral Express, and its passengers are a handful of misfits crossing the universe to patch up broken worlds. The game stars a traveler with no memory, who carries something terrible inside. Why did a studio with a famously busy action game behind it choose slow, patient, turn-based combat? Who are the godlike beings that shape the story, and what do they want? And how does a game that costs nothing to start end up among the most profitable on phones? The answers lead through a planet of ice, a dream that turns into a trap, and a surprising number of real trains.

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• 2. Turn-Based Teams

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  Four characters is the size of the squad a player may lead into a fight. Combat runs in turns, in the manner of classic Japanese role-playing games, and the player builds a lineup before the first blow lands. Every character has a combat type that shapes the kind of damage dealt. Every character also belongs to a Path, which works like a class and sets a combat role. Each has a personal set of abilities called Traces.

  The weapon in this game is a Light Cone. Its effects switch on only when its Path matches the Path of the character holding it. Characters can also wear Relics, which echo the Artifacts of Genshin Impact, the earlier miHoYo hit that this game borrows from heavily.

  Exploration is smaller in scale than in that earlier game. Instead of one sprawling map, each world offers compact, self-contained areas filled with treasure chests, puzzles and other things to poke at. Players who want less hands-on fighting can switch on auto-battle or speed up combat. Progress can follow them between platforms thanks to cross-save.

  Then there is the money. Stellar Jade is the premium currency, earned through progression, events and achievements, or bought with real cash. It buys Star Rail Passes, and those passes are spent on a mechanic called warping, which delivers new characters and Light Cones by chance. The word Path, so tidy as a combat label, carries a much larger meaning once the story begins.

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• 3. Aeons and Paths

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  The Stellaron is known in the game as the Cancer of All Worlds, and it is the sort of object that ruins any planet it is placed on. It belongs to the Path of Destruction, one of several grand ideals that organize this universe. Each Path is presided over by an Aeon, a godlike, higher-dimensional being who governs some aspect of existence.

  People who align their wills with a Path are called Pathstriders. Those who receive divine power directly from an Aeon are called Emanators, and they tend to act as enforcers of that Aeon's wishes, far stronger than ordinary mortals.

  The ideals clash. The Abundance holds that immortality is a gift and that healing and altruism come first. The Hunt and other Paths see that same endless life as a curse, which sets up rivalries. The Destruction goes furthest, arguing that civilization is a cancer on the universe and should be erased through disasters. Its Aeon is Nanook, the game's primary antagonist. Nanook's forces are the Antimatter Legion, commanded by the Lord Ravagers, who are the Emanators of Destruction.

  Some Paths carry on even though their Aeons are dead. The Path of Trailblaze was founded by Akivili, who is now missing. Its followers are called the Nameless, and their creed is to explore, establish and connect different worlds.

  One more group stays in motion across the story. The Stellaron Hunters collect Stellarons across the cosmos and say they can see the future. Two of them, Kafka and Silver Wolf, are the ones who set the whole plot going.

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• 4. The Astral Express Route

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  An attack by the Antimatter Legion on the Herta Space Station is where the story begins. In the chaos, Kafka and Silver Wolf steal a Stellaron and implant it in an artificial body. That body wakes up as the Trailblazer, the player character. Kafka wipes their memories and leaves. March 7th and Dan Heng, passengers on the Astral Express, find the amnesiac and take them aboard as one of the Nameless.

  Jarilo-VI, a planet frozen by a Stellaron, is the first major stop. Cocolia declares the crew fugitives, and the crew learns she has been corrupted and means to sacrifice the world to remake it. With help from the Aeon Qlipoth, the Trailblazer gains the power of Preservation and defeats her. Her daughter Bronya takes over and promises reform.

  The Xianzhou Luofu, a colossal starship aligned with the Path of The Hunt, is next. Politics, meddling by the Stellaron Hunters and manipulation by the Antimatter Legion lead to a major battle. Dan Heng reveals that he is the reincarnation of a disgraced dragon-like being named Dan Feng. He helps defeat the Legion's agent Phantylia, and the Luofu allies itself with the Astral Express.

  Penacony, called the Planet of Festivities, has a vast shared dream called the Dreamscape. A glamorous festival curdles into conspiracy when people are apparently killed by a mysterious entity. The ruling Family is secretly using a Stellaron to control reality. Sunday, one of the planet's leaders, turns out to follow the Aeon of Order and wants to trap everyone in a false utopia. The Trailblazer gains the power of Harmony, and with allies the crew restores reality.

  Amphoreus is a hidden world that proves to be a looping simulated universe built by a sentient supercomputer. The Trailblazer joins a prophetic campaign to break the cycle using the power of Remembrance. Meanwhile March 7th falls ill and then becomes entangled with an alternate self called Evernight, who occupies her body. The planet's purpose is to incubate a Lord Ravager to strike Nous, the Aeon of Erudition. The Xianzhou Alliance, the Interastral Peace Corporation and Herta's forces help defeat that Lord Ravager. Cyrene, a divine intelligence tied to the world's origin, sacrifices herself to steady the timeline and gives the Trailblazer the memories of Amphoreus.

  Planarcadia is the home of the Express navigator Himeko, and the crew enters the Phantasmoon Games there. Contestants compete for the power of the Aeon of Elation. A crisis reveals that the planet balances on a knife edge, between the hidden remains of Oroboros, the Aeon of Voracity, and the Abundance that seals it away. The Lord Ravager Asat Pramad now shows himself, and the route goes on.

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• 5. Building the Universe

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  In 2019, a team set out to explore new directions for the Honkai series, and the result became Star Rail. About 500 people worked on it, most of them fans of science fiction and turn-based role-playing games. It was miHoYo's first turn-based game. The team believed the genre was popular and also lowered the barrier for newcomers, and surveys by HoYoverse suggested many players enjoyed it. Some worried it looked too retro. The developers answered that a game people enjoy will find players regardless.

  Producer David Jiang explained the logic. Honkai Impact 3rd and Genshin Impact were heavy on role-playing but had no command-based, turn-based combat, and some players found Honkai Impact 3rd too action-oriented and hard to operate. Star Rail would emphasize strategy over reflexes. The team named Persona 5 and the Trails series as inspirations, and the game runs on the Unity engine.

  The setting itself came from a small hint. Honkai Impact 3rd takes place on Earth, though its plot mentions other planets. The Star Rail team chose to grow that idea into a whole universe. They took the picture of a steam train rolling through the stars from the novel Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa, and from Leiji Matsumoto's famous manga Galaxy Express 999.

  Each planet took roughly a year to produce. The team first fixed the worldview and theme, then created characters and detailed settings, and wrote the plot last. Every planet borrows from real cultures. Belobog, named for a Slavic deity, is the blizzard-stricken town on Jarilo-VI, and its design draws on Russian architecture. The Xianzhou Luofu rests on Chinese culture and East Asian fantasy, a look described as silkpunk. Penacony blends the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, Classical Hollywood and Western modernism into twelve luxurious dream worlds. Amphoreus takes from Greco-Roman mythology, with architecture in Hellenistic, Renaissance and Neoclassical styles. Planarcadia, an amusement world known for pop culture, mixes urban fantasy with metaverse and internet aesthetics.

  Jiang hoped players would feel as if they were inside the world of the work, and he spoke of a playable animated series. To help, the team built artificial intelligence into the behavior of non-player characters, aiming to make their usually scripted actions feel more natural.

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• 6. Selling the Journey

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  Starfire Sonorant, an online concert for Honkai Impact 3rd, ended in October 2021 with the first reveal of Star Rail, which then appeared on the official YouTube channel. The first closed test began on the 27th of October. The second closed beta followed on the 25th of May 2022. Later that year, on the 15th of August, the Culture and Tourism Bureau of Xuhui District in Shanghai, where the developer is based, gave the game support from its Special Fund for Cultural Development. A story trailer opened Gamescom 2022 on the 23rd of August.

  In mainland China, the mobile version received its approved version number on the 17th of January 2023, clearing it for distribution. A third closed test began on the 10th of February, and the same day the Apple App Store page revealed the launch date of the 26th of April. One month before the public beta, miHoYo placed more than 2,000 sets of ads on Google Play. Google AdMob carried most of them, aimed at Japan, Hong Kong, the United States, Vietnam and Thailand.

  Console news arrived on the 24th of March 2023, with versions announced for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. The PlayStation 5 release landed on the 11th of October. The PlayStation 4 version has been delayed indefinitely.

  The opening theme animation, Star Travel, came out on the 25th of April, and the game launched worldwide the next day. Three days later, a first exhibition called Galaxy Gathering opened in Xujiahui. The train theme then became literal. From the 29th of April to the 13th of May, ads ran on Xiamen Rail Transit Line 1, and NFTs were issued to promote the game. In mid-May, ads went up in Akihabara in Tokyo, and a special steam train service with Chichibu Railway in Saitama Prefecture ran for a month. On the 13th of July, miHoYo launched a high-speed train from Shanghai to Wenzhou.

  Play magazine reported on what the English release demanded. Chinese idioms, memes and pop culture references had to be translated creatively, and Classical Chinese elements were rendered carefully to keep their essence. One achievement honoring a Jay Chou song, All the Way North, became Sweet Pom-Pom O'Mine, a nod to Guns N' Roses.

  Late 2023 brought food. In the United Kingdom, Domino's and Miss Millie's ran a collaboration from the 14th of October to the 14th of November. In Japan, Wendy's First Kitchen took part from the 11th of October to the 8th of November. Partners across Southeast Asia included Convivium in Indonesia, La Juiceria Superfoods in Malaysia, Mann Hann in the Philippines, Kith in Singapore, Kogoro Katsu and Chicken Club in Thailand, and Piko Coffee in Vietnam. Cheogajip covered Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, and KFC joined in Hong Kong in November. In America, Pelicana ran a December tie-in.

  In July 2025, HoYoverse announced a tie-in with the anime Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, adding Saber and Archer as long-term banners. In October 2025, Crunchyroll announced a global collaboration starting on the 6th of November, timed to Version 3.7. For the first time, a HoYoFair event, Chimerric Park, premiered somewhere other than YouTube. On the 26th of February 2026, Epic Games announced that Kafka and Blade would join Fortnite.

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• 7. Critical Reception

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  A score of 88 percent positive, from 20 review articles, is how OpenCritic summed up the critical response. On Metacritic the game received generally favorable reviews.

  Eurogamer recommended it for its delightfully goofy humour, charismatic voice cast and truly magnificent combat. The reviewers also teased the writing for tending to give one-sentence explanations for important details, yet spend eight paragraphs on the simplest plot twist.

  Rock Paper Shotgun called it still in its early stages but incredibly good fun to play, comparing it to Star Ocean, but if everyone was hotter and you could gamble. That reviewer praised combat that is deep yet approachable. The reviewer also noted that, as in Genshin, spending money was unnecessary, since all content could be cleared with the characters players get for free.

  PC Gamer admired the impeccable visual style and strategic depth. It described a tone that swings from the heroic optimism of space opera to the dark comedy of a Nier game, with a lot of Final Fantasy 14's soap opera storytelling mixed in. Its reviewer saw the sheer creativity as the main draw. Jess Reyes of IGN called it the best free-to-play game of 2023.

  Not everyone agreed. Some players criticized the character designs as lacking creativity, especially those of female characters. They argued that outfits in Genshin Impact had more variety. Critics were also split on the character progression system and on the gacha monetization strategy.

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• 8. Numbers and Honors

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  On the 23rd of April 2023, the day of pre-download, Star Rail topped the free charts of the App Store in more than 113 countries and regions. It ranked first overall in mainland China, the United States, Japan and South Korea. After the global launch on the 26th, it reached the top of the App Store bestseller list in mainland China within five hours. It placed in the top 10 of bestseller lists in 42 countries and regions. By the 28th, miHoYo announced more than 20 million downloads.

  Estimates of money came quickly. GameLook predicted that global revenue on launch day across all platforms would exceed 100 million yuan. Sensor Tower reported that the mobile version made over 100 million US dollars worldwide in its first 10 days. Of that, 44 percent came from China, 22 percent from Japan and 12 percent from the United States. DataEye counted at least 65 million US dollars from iOS and Google Play downloads within 15 days, with Japan contributing 120 million yen in total.

  The download count passed 100 million on the 6th of February 2024, the day version 2.0 launched. One estimate counted 24 million active players in April 2024.

  The awards lists tell a similar story. They begin with the Golden Joystick Awards in 2022, in the Most Wanted category. In 2023 they include the Google Play Awards, for Best Game, Best Story and Best for Tablets, the App Store Awards for iPhone Game of the Year, and The Game Awards for Best Mobile Game. In 2024 they include the D.I.C.E. Awards for Mobile Game of the Year and a Gold Award for console play at the Taipei Game Show. The most recent entry is the Ultra Game Awards, in 2026.

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