Honkai: Star Rail's new Pure Fiction game mode is making the endgame grind better and more fun, and Genshin Impact players should be jealous

Honkai: Star Rail continues to hit on all cylinders with the release of the new Pure Fiction game mode that has made the often anxiety-inducing endgame grind better and, more importantly, more fun!

At launch, Honkai: Star Rail's primary endgame content was the Forgotten Hall's Memory of Chaos, which allowed players to test their skill and game knowledge against 10 progressively difficult levels of elite enemies that they must defeat with two separate teams. Memory of Chaos is updated periodically with new enemy configurations and rewards, including all-important Stellar Jade.

Genshin Impact players will find this format familiar, as Memory of Chaos is basically Honkai: Star Rail's version of the dreaded Spiral Abyss.

And just like Genshin Impact's Spiral Abyss, Honkai: Star Rail's Memory of Chaos has been a point of contention between the game's developers and different parts of the playerbase. Some players may find it too difficult, others find it too easy, while others still don't care at all — and HoYoverse has to deal with the herculean task of pleasing everyone.

Similarities between Memory of Chaos and Spiral Abyss

As someone who played Genshin Impact before Honkai: Star Rail, my experience with the Spiral Abyss and Memory of Chaos have been very similar.

I found both to be daunting challenges earlier on that I was forced to take on if I wanted to earn the rewards. And even after I eventually progressed enough to easily clear those endgame challenges, I still understand why most players prefer not to touch them even if it means missing out on some sweet rewards.

That's why I expected the team behind Honkai: Star Rail to treat Memory of Chaos like how the Genshin Impact team treated the Spiral Abyss. Which is to say, just stand pat and continue making it the DPS-check that it is and chalk things up to the game mode being too 'anxiety-inducing' for most players for them to make any significant changes.

Things seemed to be going that way, especially when HoYoverse added two new levels to Memory of Chaos when the current version 1.6 was released last December. While they also announced Pure Fiction will also be following it later on, I expected it to be much of the same. I was glad to be wrong.

Memory of Chaos largely revolved around dealing with waves of elite enemy types and bosses, which favoured single-target and blast-type damage-dealers of the Hunt and Destruction Paths. In contrast, Pure Fiction featured waves of weaker but more numerous enemies that favoured area-of-effect damage-dealers of the Erudition Path.

Bringing back 'unpopular' characters

That's the first reason why Pure Fiction has been such a good addition, as it brought many previously-unpopular Erudition characters like Himeko, Herta, and Serval back to relevance. If you ask Honkai: Star Rail players if they've recently scrambled to build up their Herta for Pure Fiction, I'm sure they would've answered yes.

The clear conditions for Pure Fiction being a points-based system dependent on how much damage you've dealt and how many enemies you've killed also removes the anxiety that often comes with trying to clear Memory of Chaos.

In Memory of Chaos, players not only have to clear a level within a certain number of cycles to earn the full rewards, they must also make sure that not a single member of their two teams must fall in battle. As a result, sustain-type characters of the Abundance and Preservation Paths were a must.

But in Pure Fiction, you can forego sustain and go all-in on damage since having one of your characters get taken down won't have an effect on your point totals. Heck you can even have an entire party get knocked out on one side and still earn the full rewards if your other team has a stronger performance. I guarantee that many players have gone on 'kamikaze'-style runs to get a full clear.

Changing the meta in Honkai: Star Rail

The metagame for Honkai: Star Rail has largely revolved around Memory of Chaos, which often dictated the perceived value of characters based on how they performed there. But since things are very different in Pure Fiction, it has its own metagame that gives more characters a chance to shine. I know that Erudition mains are eating very good right now.

That makes Pure Fiction much more fun than Memory of Chaos too. Instead of a race against the clock while trying to survive against hard-hitting enemies in Memory of Chaos, you can assemble a ragtag team of whichever characters can dish out punishment and tear through hordes of enemies with reckless abandon.

And even if you're one of those players that prefer the more 'hardcore' vibe of Memory of Chaos, then Pure Fiction isn't intruding on your fun either. Both modes have alternating rotations and will be updated independently of each other every two weeks.

Not only that, there's a significant grace period that overlaps between each new Memory of Chaos and Pure Fiction update so you have enough time to properly build and gear your characters up to clear both modes.

With Pure Fiction making Honkai: Star Rail's endgame better and more fun — not to mention other great additions like a FREE 5-star limited character in Dr. Ratio — you can understand why the Genshin Impact player in me is really jealous of how her Honkai: Star Rail counterpart is eating good.

Honkai: Star Rail version 1.6 features three new characters, namely the 5-star Ice Harmony character Ruan Mei, the 5-star Imaginary Hunt character Dr. Ratio, and the 4-star Quantum Destruction character Xueyi. Dr. Ratio will be given to players for free at the start of the second half of this version.

After version 1.6 comes the massive version 2.0 update in February 2024, which will see the release of a new planet in Penacony as well as three new characters in Black Swan, Sparkle, and Misha.

Yan Ku is a full-time dog parent, part-time (gacha) gamer, and part-time writer.

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