Genshin Impact Version 2.4, released on January 5, 2022, added two new characters, Shenhe and Yun Jin - However, several fans in Japan are unhappy with their addition, what happened?
Shenhe is the brand-new 5-Star character of Genshin Impact, a Polearm, Cryo user who works really well as a support for other Cryo characters.
Meanwhile, Yun Jin is a Geo Polearm 4-Star with an incredibly cool design mixing Chinese Opera and gothic lolita fashion.
Both are cute, cool, and strong additions to the lore, with Shenhe's arrival progressing the Archon Story Quest, so why some Japanese players are unhappy?
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Genshin Impact: Part of the Japanese fanbase is unhappy with Shenhe and Yun Jin being Polearm characters
Ever since Shenhe and Yun Jin were first confirmed through Drip Marketing as the new characters of Version 2.4, several Japanese players have been complaining that Genshin Impact has too many Polearm characters.
Polearm characters or #æ§ã‚ャラ in Japanese has been regularly trending on Twitter ever since Shenhe and Yun Jin were first revealed on November 22. And it spiked up again with their release on January 5.
Most tweets are complaints about how barring Ganyu, all the character banners in 2.4 are Polearm characters. This is mainly whales speaking, as they're unhappy that the new character, Shenhe, is another Polearm when they already have so many 5-star Polearm characters.
Some players are also complaining about not having good Polearm weapons, which makes sense too.
Are there too many Polearm characters in Genshin Impact?
Objectively speaking, Polearm is the newest weapon type in Genshin Impact. As far as I know, Xiao was the sole playable Polearm character in Closed Beta Test 2 before release. And Xiangling was the sole Polearm character in CBT3, which I participated in, and at release. So it's normal for more and more Polearm characters to be released.
Once a new Weapon type is released, we'll probably see a lot of new characters using that weapon too.
At the end of the day, this debacle is pretty interesting as it's one of the sole times I've ever seen a sizable part of the Japanese Genshin community complain about something. The Genshin Impact English community and Japanese community are completely different. As I explained back in September, there was barely any discourse about anniversary rewards in Japan for example. And needless to say, there are many Japanese players incredibly happy with Shenhe and Yun Jin's release too.
What do you think? Tell me in the comments and on Twitter @A_iyane07.