(Genshin) Nod-Krai is a Death by a Thousand Cuts
Read my blog pls, I've been logging my thoughts on Nod-Krai for 3 of the 4 patches (acts 5 and 6 were so bad I had nothing to say)
Nod Krai is a quest chain I have a really big bone to pick, because rather than having a few big issues, it's death by a thousand cuts. It doesn't know how to focus on things appropriately and doesn't trust its audience enough to let certain scenes just be without massive amounts of setup. That, combined with its villains moving pretty randomly, makes it difficult to invest in the action and tension of the story.
In act 1 alone, we have multiple character introductions that do nothing except show us the model of the character we're talking to and sell us on them, just in case the player doesn't go through the whole quest (which is quite possible, seeing as it's 8 hours). We have a bunch of time spent on Frostmoon Scion-Fatui beef that ends up going basically nowhere, as well as Lauma’s internal struggle being clumsily written in. Call me harsh, but I generally believe that personality and character should inform plot, but even if they don't… just don't include it, if it isn't important. That's what story quests, character anecdotes, and character stories are for. There isn't a shortage of ways to implement character content outside of the story. Or, better yet, integrate Lauma's character into the plot, perhaps by having Rerir attempt to tempt her into helping him by raiding the Fatui base for the moon marrows, or something, after they were stolen by the Traveler. With such a flexible character, it's a real shame that they didn't use his shape shifting powers against other characters.
“During Nod-krai, the first act has taken the player well around the whole map, from the Frostmoon Scion’s civilization to the Krumkake workshop and the Fatui base. By playing through the quest, similarly to Mondstadt and Liyue, you are naturally forced to cross long distances on your own, which are also geared to drop you unsuspectingly into world quests (none of which I have played). There’s also more stealth elements, although in Nod-krai this takes the form of a puzzle segment rather than actual stealth, which is a wise choice as the game’s stealth mode is pretty horribly designed and not very fun to play through.”
This is what I had written after playing through the first 2 acts and I included that the game was good at adding tension. 6 acts later, I must rescind that statement. It simply wasn’t enough compared to what we were promised.
The Jahoda heist on the base is cool but could've used cuts to the dialogue, just have us go through the setpieces normally. Less is more in situations where you wanna convey an atmosphere of tension. Speaking of which, a lot of scenes that should have tension end up lacking it because the characters just speak for too damn long. A good example of this is Sandrone yapping at us after we break into the Fatui hideout. It’s just unfortunate that the developers didn’t trust us with a couple of well placed lines rather than a fount of mediocre ones.
As for act 2, I have my own issues with that. Flins’ backstory is poorly integrated and ends up being recounted in act 5 anyways, and the investigation takes way too long. Genshin has never written a good mystery (with the exceptions of Ayato, Yelan, and Emilie’s story quests), and this was no exception. Unfortunately, it was dull, and we should have skipped the investigation entirely. It also doesn’t help that the encounter on the beach is marred by, as you might guess, more meaningless drivel. We end off with another 10 minute monologue from Sandrone about a Fontaine quest chain that no one understood at the time and certainly doesn't care about now. This was probably the biggest misstep in the quest line so far, but don't worry. It gets worse.
At times like this, I’m sure that people will go “but isn’t it necessary to devote time to these sort of things in order to make them have a proper emotional impact?” It’s true, you do need some time. However, I’d ask, do you remember the Dainsleif Chasm Archon Quest? A well written quest that had a strong impact with Halfdan’s sacrifice. The total length? 42 minutes without combat and travel. 55 minutes with that. So no, these 8 hours were not necessary.
Act 3 is the best-paced act in the entire NK AQ line, and I have a blog about it which also explains my issues with act 4. TLDR, it's fast an efficiently paced, with each scene attempting to add value and not overstaying its welcome.
Act 4 spends about 30 minutes too long in Rerir's head showing us new ways of killing children off screen. The paperwork scene? Simple. Beautiful. Brutal. Rerir walking down the spinning hallway only to find dead kids? A retread of the previous scene where he's training only to realize the dummies are dead children. Not to mention the Nefer part, which lacks tension because even though rerir dragged us in, he doesn't do anything. No enemies, ominous glitching, puppeting people to call Nefer out on her killing them, etc. Imagine if instead of things just progressing normally, Rerir's abyssal powers warped the memories so that everyone was blaming Nefer, saying she shouldn't be alive, she's a murderer and a liar, etc. That would've justified that fight scene at the end way more. There's also entirely too much time spent on planning and divvying up who's going where- just have the viewer figure out what each character is doing at what point as it's happening. I promise that 90% of us will be able to get it by the time the scene's over.
Acts 5 and 6 have the worst pacing, act 5 in particular. Invisible Columbina is cool, but then we spend way, way, way too much time with Wanderer, Durin, and Albedo messing with phantoms (again, even though I love wanderer, and I thought that last scene where the ghost finally realizes he's dead was great). But it didn't need to be so long. Hoyo needs to figure out "How much legwork do I have to put in to make this scene hit?" and they have a really bad grasp on that. They always overestimate the amount of time they need. Then in act 6, we get the domain, which is visually fun but ultimately pointless, and the festival, which I enjoyed, before the final Dottore cutscene. I understand a fair bit of these are foreshadowing for the twist in act 7, but frankly speaking, a scene shouldn't exist if it's purely foreshadowing. You should be fitting those instances into other scenes. A good example is how they had the yellow shield around hiisi island during act 2's cutscene, which was just there for a moment and they talked about it a little afterwards, but it wasn't obtrusive. A bad example is the interstellar reference with the books, which was a contrived scene that existed purely for foreshadowing and would've been cut otherwise.
Acts 7 and 8 are marginally better in this regard, except for one thing: The World Formula. I forgot to bash on the previous "Sandrone yaps about Fontaine WQ lore" segments because it is so painfully clear that there was some lore that was intended to be worked in through the Fontaine AQ and that she was meant to be there. No one who didn't play the WQ will care about what she's talking about now, no one who played it will want to hear it again. Speaking from two angles, as I have a friend who skipped the fontaine WQ chains. The world-formula is a macguffin and should've been treated as one, but instead copious amounts of time are devoted to it, as well as the sidelining of Wanderer from the final fight. Why? Why? One of the few emotional cores pre-existing that people care about, and it would've been so good to see him, Arlecchino, and Columbina jump Dottore, but instead they have... Nefer, Lauma, and Flins instead. That final fight's lineup was all sorts of wrong, man. I don't have issues with the pacing there, though.
But y'know what, while I'm on that final fight... Why the fuck were Varka, Wanderer and Arlecchino sidelined while Lauma, Flins, and Nefer were boxing Dottore instead? If anything, those roles should've been reversed. Nefer fixes her chessboard to help Sandrone run the world formula, but needs to be there to run maintenance. Lauma and Flins use her Moonchanter powers and his Fae stuff to bring down the moon with the Witches' help. Meanwhile, Varka, Arlecchino, and Wanderer assemble as a perfect squad that's strong enough to believably box Dottore, but also not strong enough to beat him.
Afterwards, the whole Justice League shit was annoying. It was just a bunch of NPCs and 4 stars, no goats whatsoever, and it felt really unearned too because the faction war stuff never materialized.
In total, what would I say about this chain? After 26 hours of total story and “gameplay” content, to me, it's unfathomably disappointing that all they were able to do with that time was create a story that barely exceeds the quality of Natlan (15 hours). I don’t know what to say. At this point, I’m tired of Genshin’s story. It hasn’t been good for over 50% of its runtime, and I know that if they just chopped it down heavily, it could be so much better, yet they refuse to take that simple step. I gave Nod-Krai a chance all the way through to the finish, and I ended up burned. They took all the wrong lessons from Sumeru, Fontaine and Natlan, and if Snezhnaya is anything like this… no thank you.
Posted Feb 7, 2026, 11:10 PM UTC