NOT THE WAIFUS.

And no, I'm not a whale, either. But I DO feel compelled to give them some money because of one simple and often underappreciated category: the music!

For the anime lovers, I do apologize for the lack of waifu material, though

Yea the music in Genshin Impact is insanely good. It made me realize how much it was lacking in BoTW. I still play it cause of the waifus and exploration though.

INORITE?!  The Liyue tunes were all warm and welcoming, and then I hit Inazuma, and as I start exploring the islands, the music has this tense air to them and I'm just like, "how did they make even BETTER music!?"

Funnily enough, I have none of the waifus except Lisa which everyone gets lol... I have bad luck on the rolls

I'm pretty excited to see what happens with Sumeru's music!

I played and completed all of Mondstadt and Lyuie as a F2P just to confirm that it truly was F2P and not P2W. I have supported the game through battlepass and welkin during my time playing it. Truly a great game that deserves support, but I will never whale. While I love the game, I do not want to directly support the gacha system.

I mean, I don't think anyone here's a whale.  They're super rare and often don't even show up in the communities: they're just out there spending tons of money because they can and don't care lol

Though, the irony about you saying you don't support the gacha system is that primogems are extremely easy to pile up and that gacha rolls are (essentially) completely free.  Meaning, I've never spent ANY money on getting characters: the only money I've spent is getting xp books/mats because I'm trying to expand my prime squads' elemental and weapon variety.

The gacha system itself can be constantly rolled for literally zero real world dollars because you literally get primogems from everything you do, and they do that ON PURPOSE, because they want you to get some ideal waifu you want to upgrade only to find that you don't have nearly enough materials to bring her up to speed and now you have to either grind everyday for a week or just spend some money haha

In fact, I find it interesting you by the gnostic hymn (battlepass), I find THAT more grindy than anything else because I have to constantly complete things in it in order to get the stuff.  I haven't paid for a single battlepass, yet lmao

Oh I know, it is easy to get in game primos with dailies, events, and quest rewards.  Thats not what I meant.  When I say I will not support gacha, I mean I will not spend any extra money on the system to get more rolls.  The entire concept of gambling with real money is not what I directly support.  As an in game mechanic without spending any extra cash, the gacha within Genshin is no worse than what you would find in Xenoblade 2.

The reason I buy the Battlepass is because it in of itself is extremely easy to do with plenty of time to spare, and you know exactly what you are investing in.  I guess Welkin in a sense is getting me a few extra rolls, but the value is there and 5 bucks for a month is not bad at all.  For the quality we are getting with Genshin, that seems like fair support to me.

Is it possible to beat this game without paying?

I played for some time and was thinking about getting back to it, but I don't want to progress the story and getting stuck to a paywall.

Afaik you can play the entire game without paying anything because the base 4 characters you get covers all the needed elements and you can unlock Noelle with the free wish you get after the intro section which gives you the last element.

There are boss fights and such which require specific characters to beat but those characters are provided to you during the mission and after you finish the required mission, they are no longer in your party. The wishes aren't too hard to get imo if you like exploring and playing the game so as you put hours into it, you probably will get a good number of new characters regardless.

I think most people just buy the $7 cad monthly subscription which gives you 90 Primogem every day until it expires and 300 gems both of which you can use to unlock more characters.

Barbara and Xiangling are also guaranteed as you progress as well.  Not to mention in game primos are easy to save up on for event characters you may want later.  So you will have far more than just the free ones to choose from as you keep playing.

So to answer the guy you quoted, Genshin is one of the few truely F2P games out there.  All content can be finished without hidden paywalls.  Those that spend money either just want to support the game, or they don't mind paying up to collect as many characters as they can.

I mean, not arguing the logic (I get that you don't want to "gamble", that's the core of your statement), I just mean as long as you're playing the game and paying real world money, you're supporting gacha lol

The good news to me is that the gacha is actually entirely free.  If you really think about it, with all the primogems you get from playing the game, the gacha system doesn't cost you a penny.  Where they really get you is if you keep amassing waifus and realize the game sorely limits or is lacking the resources to bring them all up to speed with your primary squad, so you end up either grinding over weeks to get 2-3 new characters up to lvl 80+, or you spend money to speed it up.  I recently rolled Eula from the event (my first actual waifu material roll!), and it's been hard getting her ascended and leveled up without having to consume large amounts of fragile resin or primogems to farm for XP books and mora, not to mention using boss fights to gather "artifact food"...

I mean, the answer IS "yes", BUT it will present large difficulties without a more expanded squad than the base characters you get.  The DPS and overall movesets of five star characters, in general, absolutely trounces the "base" (free) characters.  The GOOD news is that you'll amass a roster just from playing the game via primogems and rolls, it's how much you invest in WHICH characters (you will NOT have enough resources to get them all to max levels) where the decisions need to be made.

Hope that helps!