IMO Genshin's lore has always been great and engaging, but I find the on-screen action and plot just...Meh.

Like, it feels like there is never any stakes, if there are, it amounts to nothing and no character ever develops in any meaningful way. The game's presentation also sucks with the utterly robotic and awkward dialogue scenes, game needing 5 minutes of dialogue to get a simple point across, excessive use of "tell, don't show" and abusing fade to black for anything they can't be arsed to actually animate.

They seem somewhat aware of this (maybe) as recent story and event quests tried to improve on it. Though Traveler is pretty much a lost cause. They are just a complete failure of a main character and add absolutely nothing to the story. If anything, I wonder how much better the story would be if there was no Traveler & Paimon at all. Witnessing events from the PoV of the characters involved, seeing them solve things on their own and interact with each other rather than having to constantly acknowledge Paimon (and traveler). I really don't remember having a main character so badly executed that they literally make the story worse and less enjoyable, lol.