A new Destruction character with plenty of firepower is coming to Honkai Star Rail. Move over, Firefly, because I’m talking about the freshly revealed Yunli. That’s right, HoYo has decided that it’s not enough to have one pint-sized destroyer on PS5, but the studio is doubling down on girl power. It’s a bit strange that Yunli is also a fire Destruction character but… WAIT, what do you mean she’s Physical?
That’s right, despite her entire identity being built around flames – she’s the “second-youngest prodigy swordmaster of the Flamewheel Octet,” after all – Yunli doesn’t actually wield the element of fire in the RPG game. It’s a bit of an odd one, but I can imagine HoYo’s taking its cues from the likes of Demon Slayer here, whereby the flames we see manifesting around her are possibly illusory.
So what else do we know about Yunli from the reveal post? Well, she’s from one of the other ships in the Xianzhou Hexafleet, the Xianzhou Zhuming, and is the granddaughter of General Huaiyan – one of the seven Arbiter-Generals of the Cloud Knights alongside Jing Yuan. Unsurprisingly, parallels between her and Yanqing have already been drawn online, which is probably why Jing Yuan was so keen to introduce the two during the Cosmodyssey event – big dad energy.
Though HoYo has yet to confirm what Yunli’s kit will look like in the space game, initial leaks have already surfaced. Reliable insider ‘UBatcha’ tentatively reports that “she’s basically Blade plus Clara. Some HP drain, main damage coming from a super counter (follow-up attack) and Ultimate” – spicy. As far as UBatcha’s aware, Yunli’s FuA is blast-based, rather than single target.
HoYo has certainly been going progressively harder on releasing FuA-based characters as time’s gone on. Between the likes of Aventurine, Robin (a dream buffer for FuA teams), and the recently announced Jade, this playstyle has quickly become one of the game’s most exciting. While I’m still more of a DoTs enjoyer (this has nothing to do with the fact I lost my Aventurine 50-50…), it’s certainly getting harder to ignore how good the FuA line-up is now. Hopefully, Yunli will continue the trend.
For more of the latest on the best PS5 games in the land of RPGs, check out the big Baldur’s Gate 3 mod news. Additionally, read up on why our Kingdom Hearts 4 Summer Game Fest dreams have potentially been killed by a recent Geoff Keighley Q&A.