Honkai: Star Rail 2nd Anniversary Concert review – A magnificent crowd pleaser at the perfect moment

It’s been a bit of a rough year for Honkai: Star Rail so far and not everyone’s happy with the current state of the game, but the 2nd Anniversary Concert this past weekend felt like a turn towards a brighter future — it brought back memories, whet the appetite for the future, and generally ended up being an immensely enjoyable time.

Similar to last year’s concert, the livestream was offered completely for free and had English subtitles for the global audience, which wasn’t just nice for the little speaking sections — the Chinese versions of the songs everyone knows and loves have quite different lyrics from the English versions, so it’s great to get those on the screen and delve a little on their meanings.

This brings me to the first highlight I want to mention for this year’s concert: We finally got to hear the crowd. To me, one of the more enjoyable parts of watching a concert is the energy emanating from the live audience, and the people in Shanghai delivered on that. Last year, microphones didn’t pick up the crowd at all, distorting the nature of the atmosphere a little. However, this year we got the perfect amount of crowd noise, which made the interactive sections of songs much better to listen to. I expect that the crowd interaction was further improved this year because more Chinese versions of songs were used than English ones, which was another smart decision that helped the atmosphere.

I also loved the crowd chanting stuff during the intermissions, even though I didn’t get what they were saying.

Speaking of intermissions, though, it felt like the general flow of last year’s concert was a little smoother. More performances flowed into each other almost seamlessly in 2024. It’s not a big deal, but it’s certainly a noticeable difference when you compare the events.

What’s more important anyway is the music that was played — and HoYoverse didn’t miss a beat there. The fact that we almost had no repetitions compared to 2024, some beloved staples aside, and still ended up with banger after banger tells you all you need to know about the OST for this game. But it’s not just the selection that was great, the order of things was really well thought out, I found.

We started off with the main theme and then got a selection of character trailer themes: The Herta, who showed up in person and promptly fired the conductor, was followed by a live performance of No Dazzle, No Break from Reol, who gave us some Awoo’s that gave me goosebumps. 

A surprising highlight – and one of the instances that really showed how in-tune HoYoverse is with its community – was the mix of Argenti and Boothill’s trailer themes and the accompanying show act. To put a spotlight on this niche pairing during the anniversary concert was cool and the music lived up to the moment.

Kafka and Firefly got their moments, before we moved on to Penacony with an appropriately energetic Chinese version of White Night, which really got the crowd going — and more than made up for the somewhat cringey English version from 2024. The presentation moved up a notch during Aventurine’s jazzy theme. We didn’t get a full version of the infamous Acheron x Black Swan Rondo – or the Yuri anthem, as some might call it – but it showed up to lead into Acheron’s theme.

More HSR:

The church of Sunday was up next with Dominicus’ boss theme – absolutely delivering on its theatrical origins in the live performance – and his trailer theme, which included moving two pianos around on stage. Chevy made a perfect appearance here with Hope Is the Thing With Feathers and some rather spectacular visual effects to bring back the memories of that boss battle. 

After another emotional Chevy song, Owlbert brought us some comic relief and made the introductions for two fanmade songs that got a chance to shine on the big stage — we got Jingliu’s story as told in Sword Upon Snow and the absolute meme fest that is Dr. Ratio’s Metaphysics of Bathing. It’s brainrot of the highest order, but another win for HoYoverse’s community attunement. I had some good laughs thanks to it.

As always, the following Xianzhou Luofu portion was filled to the brim with Chinese culture, from martial arts performances to elegant dances worthy of an imperial palace. I loved this infusion of cultural performances into the concert last year and I loved it this year. They elevate the music and always have something to say about the characters — like showing the inspiration for how Lingsha moves in the game or having nine backup dancers to symbolize Fugue’s tails.

Amphoreus made a great musical debut at this concert, though I’ll say that Tribbie’s theme took me a bit out of it due its vastly different style. The Glory of Kremnos and Epitaph, though? Truly stunning, almost ethereal performances. Shoutout to the warrior dancers performing during The Glory of Kremnos — the way their shadows were used on the columns at the start was amazing.

I also can’t emphasize enough how much I loved the Chinese version of Nameless Faces. The singer gave it her all, the crowd loved it, and the lyrics hit so much harder now that we’re in the middle of the story arc and can see where it’s going. And what to say about the Flame Reaver? He’s an aura farmer in the game and in real life.

The 2nd Anniversary Concert started with trailer themes, went into Penacony, then fan songs, then the Xianzhou Luofu, and then Amphoreus, roughly representing the game’s second year. HoYoverse didn’t forget a hefty dose of nostalgia, though, and that’s what the end brought.

We got Wildfire, Interstellar Journey, and On the Journey — three banging crowd pleasers one after the other. Then they really wanted to jerk some tears out of us by bringing Come With Me Take the Journey as an encore and playing it over key moments from the story. A job well done and an audience utterly enthralled. That’s over two hours gone by in a brief moment, full of funny and melancholic moments reminding us of how far we’ve come with these characters.

And then, of course, they sent us all into a climax by having Saber shout “Excalibur!” to reveal the details on the HSR x Fate collab and teasing a brand-new Honkai game for good measure.

Say what you will about the state of the game at the moment, HoYoverse doesn’t miss with its music or its shows — and that sort of hype, momentum, and general emotion is exactly what Honkai: Star Rail needed at this moment.