Well, I did thought about posting my thoughts, even more so after
spindoctor reminded me that it's been... a while.
And not much to say, I never finished most Fontaine zones because they're very dull and the Atlantis storyline put me to sleep...
With Natlan, the music is fantastic and it looks great, but I haven't finished the story either. I didn't even remotely like the first chapter, the circus of those arena fights really come out of nowhere and certainly nothing like what was hinted at prior to release, the entire region was clearly retconned to hell and back to be as conventional as possible.
I have almost negative interest in most characters, Chasca and Citlati would look right at home in Honkai, Mavuika looks like she's from the Sons of Calydon more than being an Archon, the cultural influences are surface level at best, even more so than in Sumeru and since everyone is white, it's hard to take anyone seriously, especially the Hawaiian part that is... a giant resort where Mualani plays maracas.
But I stilll got her and... she's not fun to play, supposedly there's a fix to her burst targeting coming, but she's still a nightmare as soon as mobs move or she's not on flat ground.
Kachina is one of the worst playing characters yet, and Kinich I can't stand and hate maybe even more than Xiao. His fighting style, his (non) personality, his horrendous pixel art gimmick...
And of course, since I haven't finished the story, I couldn't get the extras from completing Mualani's quest in time, because Hoyo is tripling down on FOMO everywhere, and soon that will even apply to exploration.
And it's not "just extras" like some might say, it's obviously here to raise up their faltering daily activity. In the face of the increasingly terrible Imaginarium Theater, I couldn't even try to finish it this month, and the Spiral Abyss I haven't bothered with in literal years...
All Hoyo games have trash tier endgame, trash tier pacing, and as much as I like Genshin because the exploration actually makes it a game rather than a waste of time like the others, I'm getting to the point where I'm zoning out the deluge of shitty events, shitty characters and shitty story... I doubt I'll continue playing. I didn't love Fontaine, but the story and the characters were really nice (well visually, the gameplay of Clorinde or Sigewinne is a gaggle of bad decisions), but it's all gone downhill since 4.2, and now 5.1 won't even have a new zone to explore...