Genshin Impact 1.4 Review – Windblume Party

With the release of 1.4 in Genshin Impact, we have yet another event with a lot of content to enjoy. This time, we’re talking about the Windblume Festival.

We recently covered the Hangout Events in our impressions article, but today we’re diving into the real content of version 1.4, the Windblume Festival. This will highlight all four activities: the rhythm game, shooting gallery, domain with random challenges, and a free-fall game.

Ballads of Breeze: Breeze to the Rhythm

First, let’s talk about the rhythm game, which can be attempted at any time from the main menu. Select the event, then your song and difficulty, and almost immediately, the countdown for the song will begin. It is very similar to your typical rhythm game. When the circles overlap, press the button or correct key or tap the circle if you’re on mobile.

The number of notes increases as you crank up the difficulty. And the more notes you manage to press in a row without messing up, your score will increase—simple enough premise. The rhythm offering was a nice touch, but I feel the note pacing could be an issue for those used to other rhythm games’ fast pace in later difficulties. The note speed in some parts might be too slow, or sometimes the slower-paced parts of some songs might throw players off.

Bullseye Balloons: Aiming Woes

Next up is the shooting gallery minigame, Bullseye Balloons. To play this, you must look for a “balloon” icon on the world map and then interact with the signboard located there. I highly recommended you clear out any enemies before attempting, though, as they won’t despawn for the challenge.

And well, as is with bows in general, aiming with a controller in Genshin Impact doesn’t really feel natural. While it might be possible, it’s definitely a challenge to properly aim at the balloons before they vanish and move on to the next wave. I usually play with a controller, but I could only get a high score when I switched over to a keyboard and mouse.

Floral Freefall: Gliding Through the Skies

Floral Freefall has players jump from a platform and slowly glide down while collecting items, which convert into points. You earn bonus points if you successfully manage to land at the flower garland on the ground.

This game is pretty simple. There’s really not much to it. In fact, it is pretty similar to the gliding challenges we’ve seen before in Version 1.2. Except, this time, the focus is to get as many items as possible and land in the garland located in the ground for bonus points instead of going from point A to B within a time limit.

Peculiar Wonderland: Through the Looking Mirror

During Peculiar Wonderland feels very familiar. Here, you play through 3 challenges selected at random, and then you’ll be tasked to defeat a powerful boss, which changed throughout the event. And if you accumulated enough “Facundity” points, your characters would get a buff to assist you in the fight.

The minigames are really simple and quite easy to understand. They remind me of party games similar to Mario Party. My favorite would be the “No Falling!” game, probably because gliding is such a smooth experience in Genshin Impact. On the other hand, my least favorite would be the Barrage Minuet, as it gets pretty hectic and frustrating not to get hit.

You can also tackle Peculiar Wonderland with friends (or with random players) via the Co-Op feature. The game recommends you do Co-Op because the bosses are quite tough to beat, even with leveled characters. For myself, it took 3 minutes to beat the bosses on my own, whereas with friends, my time was shaved down to less than 1 minute and a half.

Festive Anecdotes: Lantern Rite Quests, Again

Finally, when it comes to the Festival Anecdotes, players can interact with most of the Mondstadt characters and NPCs, such as Venti, Barbara, Rosaria, Kaeya, etc. Just like the Lantern Rite quests from 1.3, we have a lot of NPC-related quests. From collecting materials to even mixing a strange beverage. These quests will reward you with Primogems for all your hard work, and you’ll also get to learn a bit about the Windblume Festival’s lore.

However, unlike the Lantern Rite, the quests weren’t as irritating to complete. They were all pretty straightforward, which was appreciated when compared to the amount of warping you had to do for the Lantern Rite.

Genshin Impact Version 1.4 introduces new ways to interact with the game and spend time in this world. However, for the most part, there is very little to do here that feels like you are progressing a real narrative since your spending your time in mini-games or focusing on hangout events. It’s essentially fluff as we wait for new areas such as Dragonspine from version 1.2.