
Genshin Impact· 10 min read
Is Genshin Impact worth starting in 2026?
Genshin Impact reviewed from a free account: 0.6% rates, 90-pull pity, the 50/50 and Capturing Radiance, and exactly where the resin cap stops your evening.
Free-to-play & live-service games
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Genshin Impact· 10 min read
Genshin Impact reviewed from a free account: 0.6% rates, 90-pull pity, the 50/50 and Capturing Radiance, and exactly where the resin cap stops your evening.

RAID: Shadow Legends· PC, iOS, Android
RAID: Shadow Legends reviewed from a free account: 0.5% Legendary shards, the 200-shard mercy counter, a 130 energy cap, and where the paywall really starts.

Sea of Conquest: Pirate War· PC, iOS, Android
Sea of Conquest: Pirate War reviewed from a free account: a gorgeous pirate 4X built on build timers, two gacha currencies and a VIP ladder that decides your server.

Wuthering Waves· PC, iOS, Android, PS5
Wuthering Waves reviewed from a free player's seat: 0.8% rates, 80-pull hard pity, no 50/50 on weapons, and where the Waveplate wall really starts.

Zenless Zone Zero· PC, iOS, Android, PS5, Xbox
Zenless Zone Zero reviewed from a free account: 0.6% S-Rank rates, 90-pull pity with no weapon 50/50, and where the 240 Battery Charge cap actually bites.
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Wuthering Waves is the gacha action RPG for players who want their inputs to matter. Kuro Games published a 0.8% base rate and an 80-Convene hard pity, dropped the 50/50 entirely on limited weapons, and lets a new account pick its first 5-star instead of praying for one. That is a meaningfully fairer deal than its closest competitor. What it cannot escape is the genre's daily-energy design: Waveplates decide how fast your characters get strong, and no amount of skill buys more of them.

Zenless Zone Zero is the one to play if the fighting matters most. The action system has genuine depth — perfect dodges, parries and assist chains that reward learning enemy tells — and the gacha is the friendliest HoYoverse has built: 90-pull pity with no 50/50 on weapons and pity that carries forward rather than resetting. The limit is volume. It is a stage-based game, not an open world, and the honest version of the recommendation is that you will clear the current content and then stop until the next patch.

Nothing else gives a new free account this much to do. The regions, the quest writing, the music and the sheer volume of exploration are the reason this game defined the category, and all of it is free forever. The trade is that HoYoverse never modernised the Wish system: 90-pull pity and a 50/50 are worse than what Kuro Games and even HoYoverse's own newer titles offer, and Capturing Radiance only nudges the featured-character odds from 50% to roughly 55%. Start it as an open-world game you happen to pull in, not as a collection game.

Open-world action RPG

Character action

Open-world RPG

Gacha RPG

Naval 4X

Genshin Impact· PC, iOS, Android, PS4, PS5
Adventure Rank, Resin and the AR45 artifact rule explained. Exact spending priorities for a free account, plus the four characters worth levelling first.

RAID: Shadow Legends· PC, iOS, Android
The starter champion that actually carries, why Brutal 12-3 is your home, and the shard discipline that separates a strong free account from a wasted one.

Sea of Conquest: Pirate War· iOS, Android, PC
Ship cabins, Emeralds, Conches and gang protection explained. The build order and spending rules that keep a free pirate account out of trouble.
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