Honkai Star Rail’s 4.0 update is shaping up to be a mind-boggling outing with the Masked Fools

Ah, Honkai Star Rail, welcoming me back with open arms. I got to get into the 4.0 update ahead of release to see what’s going on in the game. What’s new, what’s changed, who’s coming with us, and most importantly, what the Elation path is all about.

Honkai Star Rail’s Version 4.0 – “No Aha at Full Moon” – had a bit of a hitch with its release, in that we’ve seen a delay and an extension to version 3.8. Now, though, we can all jump in. Trailblazers are back on the Astral Express, zooming across the stars once more to the crew’s next destination: the very vibrant Planarcadia, located on Ahatopia.

One of my favorite things about Star Rail (other than Boothill and the fact he exists) is just wandering around new areas and finding chests, rooting through literal trash cans, unlocking puzzles, and generally getting to grips with the locale. As I stepped off the train – into an actual station this time – my eyes were opened to a loud scene in all senses of the word. Planarcadia’s Duomension City, where the story takes us, is bright.

Fun fact, it’s Himeko’s homeland, and where the Astral Express took off from in the past. Now we’re back and surrounded by giant floating emojis, people dancing in the street, billboards, ads, and livestreamers on the side of buildings. It reminds me of Zenless Zone Zero’s Lumina Square, but with the saturation turned up to ten.

You meet Sparkle, and she takes you on a tour of the city. Her showing up in Planarcadia isn’t surprising, given that Sparxie is one of the debut characters in 4.0 and a big part of it, and they’re known as the Mask and the Fool together. Then I immediately got distracted from the main story.

Sparkle asks you to play the new Cosmicon Collective card game (which is, thankfully, easy to understand), but my eyes wandered to arcade machines that had something else going on, then a café run by cats, and gamified shortcuts to new areas. They’re like Mario Maker levels, honestly – you turn into a raccoon-shaped Pom Pom variant and make your way across hazards before popping out of a pipe at a different location. I’m not very good at them, which is why I don’t play many Mario games, but I digress.

I won’t spoil the story for you, but know that it’s classic Honkai Star Rail fair. A little silly, a little strange, but packed with new and old friends that take you through the Duomension area and introduce lore you won’t have known about. It can be a little hard to follow with Sparkle talking about Sparxie, another version of herself, but hey ho – it’s not the first time Star Rail’s added a secondary version of a character, and it sure won’t be the last.

One location we do visit is… a school! That’s right, we’re back in the classroom, even though we’ve already been there and done that with the Paperfold University on Penacony. Clearly, we missed some stuff, though we’re here for two years while Sparxie does her thing. What is her thing? It’s kind of confusing, so you’ll need to play the story for yourself to find out.

What I’m sure you’re all eager to find out is how the new characters perform in combat, and what the Elation path offers. Yao Guang and Sparxie are two new five-star characters you can pull in the 4.0 update, and I tried them out. I added Topaz and Lingsha to the team just for some extra moves, but I’d be lying if I said they got a look in.

Yao Guang moved first as she was in the first slot, but Sparxie’s ‘Aha Moment’ move just destroys everything. The account I got to use had all of her eidolons available, but even before I unlocked a single one, she trounced every fight. Granted, the enemies in the Planarcadia area are probably geared toward using Elation units in combat, but my goodness, Sparxie swept the floor. Yao Guang is a suave unit, but she’s currently limited to Elation teams, and she didn’t just destroy everything, so she didn’t get as much of my attention.

I’m sure that Elation is going to be the new ‘meta’ in the game – just like DoT, physical teams, and Remembrance units before it. In saying that, I’m excited to see where upcoming characters fit, like Blade and Silver Wolf.

I’m keen to keep going with the story – Amphoreus kind of lost me a little, but Honkai’s story skip and summary feature is very much appreciated for those of us who aren’t a fan of yappers. We all know Hoyoverse games have a lot of wordage at times, and this feature is something that I really wish would appear in Genshin Impact as well.

The Planarcadia area sure seems to set up some fun updates, and brings Star Rail back to a vibrant and more silly setting. I just have one other thing to ask – where’s our five-star Sampo?