Honkai: Star Rail 3.4 review – Suffering builds character, the video game

Landing on Amphoreus in Version 3.0 of Honkai: Star Rail, we thought that we stepped into an epic full of heroic tales. And we did — only the saga of heroes is neatly wrapped up inside the traditions of classical tragedies and ancient mythology, providing as much material for tears as for smiles. HSR 3.4 has the difficult task of capping off this first half of the story and setting up the second half. It’s a mission made all the more unenviable by the fact that it has to follow up on HSR 3.3, hailed as one of the best versions of the game to date for good reason.

It’s a difficult comparison to make: HSR 3.3 had all the epicness and tragedy you’d expect from the climax of this type of story. It had monumental battles and deeply emotional moments, twists and turns that elicited both disbelief and understanding. It’s so perfect as a finale that it’s tough to follow up on for HSR 3.4 — but we need to look at it in a different light. HSR 3.3 was the final act for the Chrysos Heirs. It was their final moment to make an impact on fate.

HSR 3.4 is a more personal, intimate story. It’s somehow smaller in scale and bigger. It feels a little smaller, because the cast of principal characters is slimmer — HSR 3.4 focuses on Phainon, Cyrene, Lygus, and Trailblazer for the most part. Compared to HSR 3.3, which had a grand total of four new maps in store, HSR 3.4 only brings a modestly-sized area to the game.

You don’t run around a whole lot — HSR 3.4 is heavily focused on dialog and combat with little to no breathing space in which you do something else.

At the same time, HSR 3.4 trumps its predecessor in the scale of its events. All of a sudden, the happenings on Amphoreus no longer stand isolated from the wider cosmos. Instead, the stakes are rising higher and higher. I was a bit sad about having watched the latest Myriad Celestia trailer focusing on the Lords Ravagers before diving into this chapter of the story, because it explains what’s going on instead of letting you discover the details inside the game. 

Sure, we’d already suspected what was going on, but having certain knowledge of it beforehand took away from the impact the revelation had in the game — and that’s a bit of an issue because the update is, as mentioned above, very much focused on storytelling as opposed to gameplay.

But it kind of has to do that, because there’s a lot of ground to cover: In HSR 3.4, Lygus explains the nature of Amphoreus, we get the full breakdown of Phainon’s journey, the Flame Reaver, the role of Cyrene, and the identity of Mem. Additionally, we finally have appearances of March 7th and Hysilens – as well as mentions of Cerydra and Terravox – to set up their future involvement in the second half of the story. It’s a tight rope to walk for the update and at times it feels like the story veers too much on the side of filling out a checklist of explanations than being a story.

Which, oddly enough, is somewhat fitting, since the first part of the story is, in fact, framed as Lygus giving us a lecture, drunk on his apparent victory.

The gist of it is: Amphoreus is essentially a training program for Irontomb, a Lord Ravager of The Destruction with the purpose of eliminating Nous, the Aeon of Erudition. It runs in cycles, with the Black Tide evolving and learning from every single one. 

Lygus, the administrator of the experiment, appears to be a manifestation of the Emperor’s Scepter making all this possible. He hates Nous for discarding Rubert and the Scepters, so destroying The Erudition is personal for him. He reveals that the experiment is already done, successfully so. Irontomb is ready — but it needs a vessel: Phainon, subject NeiKos496.

What Lygus hadn’t considered, though, was that the Chrysos Heirs do actually want to save Amphoreus. They are not ready to give up their home, experiment or not, real or not — their own stories, their own world, is real to them. In the cycle that completed the experiment from Lygus’ perspective, Phainon and Cyrene seem to have been the two Chrysos Heirs left alive, and so instead of initiating Era Nova – which would be the end – they made a gambit.

Cyrene used the Time Titan’s powers to create a loop to pretend that the experiment goes on, while Phainon collects the Coreflames in each loop to prevent the Chrysos Heirs from accidentally ending the world. And so he did — for over 33 million cycles. In the story, we get to follow Phainon through some of these cycles and experience what effects the Coreflames and his mission have on him, how he degrades, how his personality and behavior change.

As many had already guessed, the original Phainon is the Flame Reaver. He’s so powerful due to all the Coreflames he’s taken, a dozen per cycle. At the beginning, Phainon was diplomatic, trying to gain the Coreflames peacefully. Over time, his methods became cruder, and we get to fight against Mydei, Castorice, and Hyacine in their divine forms — although we’d already faced all of these bosses before, these battles are amazing thanks to the added knowledge that these are our trusted companions we’re fighting. That, plus Phainon’s Ultimate animations making the battles truly feel like two gods clashing. If you’re into power fantasies, Phainon should certainly be high up on your list of characters to get, because his various Ultimate abilities look like they have been ripped straight from some boss.

So, Cyrene is upholding the loop – which is why she’s ‘dead’ in every cycle – and Phainon goes around collecting Coreflames, which degrades him so much at a certain point that he has to ask his current incarnations to take up the task for him in every cycle. But how does that help? Well, Cyrene reasoned that the Chrysos Heirs’ struggle to keep their precious memories alive would eventually attract the gaze of Fuli, Aeon of the Remembrance, to upset the balance and show a way out — and, lo and behold, the arrival of the Trailblazer led to exactly this outcome and as a bonus allowed Cyrene to manifest as Mem to guide and support the process.

It’s a delicious irony: The man who wanted to be a hero so badly has to become the story’s bad guy, killing his friends and shedding his humanity to give the actual hero a chance to turn things around.

With all the pieces put together, Phainon – who himself is revealed to be called Khaslana in a nod to Honkai Impact 3rd fans – directs the power he’s collected against Lygus and Nanook, buying the Trailblazer and Cyrene time for one final, decisive cycle, during which Amphoreus’ destiny can be rewritten. That will be the second half of the story.

We also learn that March 7th has already been drawn into Amphoreus, against a warning from Cyrene, setting her up to be present for what’s to come. She’s called a Child of Remembrance and her memories might somehow be crucial for the survival of the Garden of Recollection, but who knows if the voices saying that can be trusted?

Since we’ll experience the next cycle from the start, we’ll likely also get to meet the likes of Cerydra, Hysilens, and Terravox, who’d been long gone by the time we arrived in HSR 3.0. Oh, and Dan Heng finally is voiced again, which is a welcome surprise.

All in all, the parts following Phainon’s story and setting things up for the future were well done, even if some points were perhaps repeated a few too many times to ensure that even players with less of a strong attention span get the point. Lygus’ lecture veered a bit too much into the old Penaconian dialog problems, meandering here and there, but I can excuse that and put it down to what he is — poor guy’s been marinating in his own hatred and obsession for millions of simulated years, so I wouldn’t expect him to be completely sane and rational at this point.

There are some fantastic, albeit smaller moments to be enjoyed throughout the story as well, such as Cyrene humming the melody of Nameless Faces or Phainon and Mydei meeting for the first time and establishing the dynamic between each other. Once again, having built up this world and characters so much over the last six months is paying off immensely.

HSR 3.4 doesn’t reach the heights of HSR 3.3’s hype, but it establishes Phainon as a hell of a character, makes Cyrene so much more than a pretty face that’s there to bait HI3rd fans (especially since we get to hang out with her a bunch after the main story), and sets immense stakes for the second half of Amphoreus, leaving us off on a desperately needed, hopeful note.

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