I've always had this question in me about phone games. I couldn't figure out why most phone games were basically flash games with little extras going for them, when things like gameboy and psp had normal games on them, despite comparatively way lower specs with the pcs and consoles of their time. I always thought that you could just release a normal game that you'd put on psp or vita or 3ds (hell even switch nowadays) on phones and it'd be a fine experience.
Thankfully, it seems the folks over at mihoyo had the same feelings, cause the recently released Honkai Star Rail is basically a traditional Jrpg in every sense of the term, but on phones. Sure, you do have the f2p gatcha things, but it's a jrpg, you mainly play it for the story and character development, I've not had any reason to spend money on this thing and everything feels doable so far. First of all, the game is gorgeous. It legit looks better than a vita game. Now, it may vary based on your phone specs, but my 13 pro can run it maxed out without overheating (though it does get a bit warm) and man it's a beautiful game.
Gameplay-wise, I think turn based suits the portable format more. Genshin Impact being an action game I couldn't properly enjoy on phones, so I played it on ps4 but this game is fine for phones cause the only stuff that takes timing is the walking puzzles so you don't lose much from the weird virtual analogue stick control method.
The story itself has some very out there sci-fi concepts, and you're literally exploring universes on a magical train that runs out in space. The voice acting is great too, playing it in Jp cause that feels the most like a Jrpg and I recognize a lot of cool voice actors from various anime.
Also the music is very chill, the game has a lot of text for you to read if you want, lots of lore and backstory and stuff, and I always enjoy the feeling of isolation that the music provides as you read those. It kinda feels like you're flying alone in space.
Combat is fast and simple but still enjoyable, this time they went with a lot of passive triggers. So like, you can have shields which give you a buffer of extra hp, and the girl who puts up shields also auto-attacks whenever anyone with a shield gets hit by something, so you wanna make teams that have synergy and combine the party's various passive effects to all work together.
Also, and this is a minor gripe I've always had, enemies give you exp. It's not much, and you still need to use items to properly level up, but still, you do gain a bit of it by beating enemies too. It always felt wrong for exp to just be a thing you feed your chars like a rare candy and not be something you get by actually beating enemies. So again, I am glad to see the devs are on the same wavelength.
