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Honkai Star Rail is churning out character after character, with nearly every new version bringing us two to three new characters to pull for and enjoy. Early on, however, this led to fears that Honkai Star Rail would quickly “power creep” many of its older characters as many live-service gacha games do. Fortunately, Honkai Star Rail is creatively dodging this power creep phenomenon by using the Pure Fiction game mode, which gives “weaker” characters some time to shine.
Pure Fiction Allows Older Characters to Thrive
Pure Fiction is an endgame challenge for Honkai Star Rail that provides a different kind of challenge than the Memory of Chaos (MoC). The MoC does require some level of strategy and matching weaknesses but is generally more about the damage you can output while utilizing any buffs provided to you. Pure Fiction is somewhat similar, but it focuses more on AoE-damage and certain archetypes of characters.
Pure Fiction changes every half-patch or so and will provide buffs based on different types of damage. For instance, the last Pure Fiction challenge buffed damage-over-time (DoT) damage, while the current Pure Fiction challenge buffs follow-up attack (FuA) damage. This doesn’t mean much on its own, but it has allowed characters that were perceived as weak by the community to shine, encouraging investment in these characters that would once be left in the dust.
One of the best examples of this is Herta, a 4-star Ice Erudition character who was once considered to be one of the worst characters in the game. Herta’s special gimmick allows her to unleash a follow-up attack whenever an enemy reaches 50% HP or lower. As you can probably guess, this follow-up attack is relatively weak against single-target bosses, as this might only occur once or twice per fight against a boss with tons of health. Pure Fiction, however, assaults you with low HP enemies, presenting a different challenge. This environment allows Herta to thrive, and dare I say, actually function as a meta character.
Pure Fiction And Other Modes Keep Honkai Star Rail Fresh
The way the Memory of Chaos and Pure Fiction change up every so often is usually designed to benefit characters appearing in the current banner. For instance, this follow-up attack buff aligns nicely with Jing Yuan, who at the time of this writing, is enjoying a featured rerun banner. (Ironically, another character who may be perceived as “weaker” by some.) However, other characters will always benefit from certain buffs as well. Characters like Himeko and Dr. Ratio are also thriving in the current Pure Fiction.
There is somewhat a downside to this model, however. While it’s certainly good that characters like Herta can see a resurgence, oftentimes, this leaves some other characters irrelevant during certain patches. I don’t particularly think this is a bad thing by itself, but it does create a bit of FOMO when you don’t have a certain niche covered. For instance, I don’t have any strong DoT-focused characters, which caused me to struggle in the last Pure Fiction rotation.
What’s evident is that players will eventually need to pull for characters of all types to cover all the possible weaknesses and damage archetypes, such as DoT, FuA, traditional single-target damage, etc. This leads to a heavier investment in the game than you might expect. But honestly, Honkai Star Rail has a huge variety in content that it’s not a big deal if you can’t clear one Pure Fiction rotation. The alternative to this? I never get to put some of my weaker characters on the frontline to shine. That’s not very kuru kuru.
