The Windblume’s Breath event, or Windblume Festival, is back in town in Genshin Impact. Like most Mondstadt events, it’s a great time for everyone. This is obviously a good thing, especially after the last Archon Quest. This Windblume festival is also special in that it mainly focuses on characters from Sumeru rather than those from Mondstadt. Not only does it bring Collei’s personal history to a satisfying conclusion, it also introduces new additions to the great lore of Impacto Genshin.
The Windblume’s Breath event in Genshin Impact focuses on Collei. The traveler and the others watch her struggle to become her ideal self. Her anxieties around her social skills and the kind of person she really felt like. It’s nice of Sucrose, who suffers from very similar issues, to be the one who contacted Collei. However, I found it a shame that despite Collei’s history with Amber, they didn’t actually interact with each other. Even so, Collei’s development as he became himself was very enjoyable to watch. Instead of continuing to imitate Amber, she becomes a better version of herself, vowing to help others like Tighnari, Cyno, and the people of Mondstadt helped her. This is a big event for Collei fans! I’m sure some people also became fans of her because of this event.
Collei was amazing, but what was important to me personally was getting to know Cyno. This event marks the first time we’ve seen Cyno in its natural habitat and it doesn’t disappoint. Give this man his own show on the Comedy Channel. His jokes are terrible, sure, but everyone’s reactions to them and Cyno remaining blissfully unaware of their exasperation is what made them work. He doesn’t even seem to realize how sad he is. It feels like it’s all in one episode of The Office. The various localization teams have done an amazing job with (terrible) puns to approximate what the original Chinese jokes were.
Of course, these types of major Genshin Impact events usually have their fair share of minigames. The Windblume Festival was no different. Unfortunately, none of the minigames made me want to play them after I finished collecting the rewards. My least favorite was Floral Chess. But I think that’s because it’s just Pac-Man and I’m not really a fan of it. I heard it was hard on consoles, but the rhythm game on PC was really cool! HoYoVerse’s rhythm maps are really one-note (ha!), so I’d recommend checking out the community-shared ones if you want to play a real rhythm game.
What I enjoyed the most at this year’s Windblume Festival was seeing the stage where Collei and Sucrose are talking. It’s always great to see characters interact with each other organically without the Traveler acting as a buffer. If you’ve read my Honkai Star Rail preview, you might know that I personally don’t like voiceless player avatar characters. While the traveler has become endearing over time, much like a kidnapper can become sympathetic through Stockholm Syndrome, it’s still unfortunate that we rarely see character interactions without them being physically there. Collei and Sucrose’s conversation was so sweet without interjections from Paimon or the Traveler. We’ll finally be able to see different sides of each character if this trend continues. Some characters definitely put up a facade around the traveler compared to when they are with their closest friends.
This year, the Windblume Festival started on a high note and then ended with a little whimper. He introduced us to the existence of the Hexenzirkel, which is an organization of powerful witches. They will likely appear in the story proper at some point in the future. Maybe some members will even be playable. But the final cutscene is a story drop instead of the usual “Where’s everyone now?” it was a bit disappointing. It wasn’t even such a big reveal that it deserved to usurp the current festival spotlight. These region-specific festival events are always so character-driven that you wish they ended with people we know and love instead of faceless entities.
Genshin Impact is available for PS4, PS5, Windows PC and mobile devices.