Forced party setups are almost always a nice thing, and they did it in a somewhat less punishing way; by using the character in your roster if your character is at max level (that seems to be the condition I think, instead of some complex rule to calculate strength). Great for immersion, and can sometimes increase the difficulty of a fight due to a lack of synchronization, but that's just part of the immersion IMO.
I've quite enjoyed the story myself. It's a simple story, but also ties up some loose stories and gives them an ending, especially if you've paid attention to character stories and NPC interactions, loose ends that have basically been around since the launch of the game.
Some people will probably find the whole poem thing meh and maybe confusing. It's actually a nod to a few traditional Chinese cultures all related to poems, which mean it’s a chance for those who don’t know to have a peek at the culture, or it’s pure nostalgia for those who grew up experiencing it.
Lots of moments in Honkai Impact 3.
There’s literally a YT channel that collects tears from streamers playing the game.
https://youtube.com/@Ollyt_
There’s a lot of context needed to understand why anyone would cry playing through HI3 though. I’ll give a high level summary here, but I highly encourage people to play it, even if it’s a gacha game. You can really ignore the gacha and just play the game for the main story. Do be warned that the story isn’t something suitable for kids — it can be quite a bit too heavy for them.
The theme of self-sacrifice is covered quite extensively, with the main character being the centrepiece of the theme. There’s also deep self-loathe, with an eventual self-acceptance, also from the MC. Mix that all in with some sense of duty.
There’s also a tragedy, but from the tragedy, a narrow path to hope was born. The people in the tragedy mostly hoped only for a simple life, or to live their lives atoning for their sins, but circumstances forced them to become warriors against a great, unstoppable force of destruction. As if to make things harder to swallow, their digital clones that survived into the future have to experience yet another tragedy that would eventually destroy all of them, and the player will see this through. Yet, in the second tragedy, these clones further sowed the seeds of hope for the future.
Chinese company or not, HoYo has pumped out a lot of very human stories that I think deserves attention and praise. Genshin Impact has also started to go down a similar path.