L - R: Raiden Mei, Kiana Kaslana, and Bronya Zaychik
Honkai Impact 3rdnote (a.k.a. Benghuai 3rdnote , Houkai 3rdnote , or Honkai Impact 3note ) is the Spiritual Successor to Guns Girl Z (alternatively known as Houkai Gakuen 2), developed by miHoYo. It is also their third entry in the Honkai franchise. It was released first in China in 2016, in Japan and Southeast Asia in 2017 and globally on March 28, 2018 for iOS and Android. A PC port with cross-play capability was later developed and was released globally on December 26th, 2019, with Southeast Asia getting it in 2020; the PC port was also made available on Steam starting in October 2021, though without cross-play capability.
The story follows the escapades of the "Valkyries" of the Schicksal Organization, groups of female fighters who fight against the phenomenon called "Honkai"note and its manifestations, mainly in the form of zombies and Honkai Beasts. They also clash with a rival organization named Anti-Entropy (aka "Negentropy") who are also fighting the Honkai phenomenon but have different agendas and use different methods.
In-game, you take the role of "Captain" of the flying battleship Hyperion, your Valkyries' home base, and you'll be tasked with managing the Valkyries and completing missionsnote . The gameplay follows a 3D Stylish Action format (similar to PlatinumGames works) in which you can deploy up to 3 characters in the levels, along with a simple but powerful control system. The game's content features a Story mode, which is essentially the "main" game; a number of side missions which allow you to earn coins, materials, upgrades for the Valkyries, and other rewards; and events and quests which often contain RPG and Visual Novel elements.
Honkai Impact also includes supplementary comics and Visual Novels that can be found on the main Chinese website
. Official English versions of the comics are posted by miHoYo on their Global website for mobile phone users, and on Mangadex for those that prefer a PC-accessible version. Second Eruption also has a page on this site. Some of the game's animated scenes have also been posted outside the game, such as the "Reburn" video, along with CGI-animated videos that correspond to parts of the story but don't appear in-game.
Starting from June 28, 2019, a Slice of Life short animated series titled Cooking with Valkyries (an adaptation of one of the Spin-Off comics) was released on the official YouTube channel, and a second season was aired in Summer 2020 with Chinese voiceover, with the Japanese dub aired one year later in mid-July 2021. Another series of comedy shorts called ELF Academy started airing in July 2021 with original Chinese voiceover, with the Japanese dub aired in late January 2022.
