Honkai: Star Rail’s Sparkle is coming to Honkai Impact 3rd in November 2024

HoYoverse is collaborating with itself

HoYoverse

Following the smoothest collab negotiations of all time, Honkai: Star Rail character Sparkle will be debuting in Honkai Impact 3rd on November 28, 2024, during update 7.9.

The Masked Fool is a surprising choice for many fans, given that some characters in HSR are taken from Honkai Impact 3rd directly, such as Welt, or are alternate versions of prominent HI3 characters, such as Acheron, Himeko, or Bronya.

HoYoverse previously confirmed that Honkai: Star Rail and Honkai Impact 3rd are two sides of the same coin, taking place in connected universes, so a little crossover is not unexpected.

However, you’ll be disappointed if you’re expecting HSR to get a character from HI3 in return – similar to HI3’s previous Genshin Impact collab, which saw Fischl become a playable character in the sci-fi game, this event seems to be a one-way street. Naturally, that makes sense from a business perspective – the primary goal here is likely to get HSR players to try the older game.

Still, fans of crossovers need not fret: HSR will collaborate with the Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] anime in Q3 2025, as was announced during the version 2.4 livestream.

Honkai Impact 3rd was released in 2016 as a free-to-play game for iOS and Android (the PC client came out in 2019) and received a massive expansion, dubbed Honkai Impact 3rd Part 2, in February 2024, which had new characters, an updated UI, reworked mechanics, and other modernizations in store. 

In terms of gameplay, it’s closest to Zenless Zone Zero from the current “big three” HoYoverse titles.

Honkai Impact 3rd was an important milestone in HoYoverse’s history, becoming the company’s biggest success thus far and providing the necessary resources for the development of the game that would see the studio rise to worldwide fame and popularity – Genshin Impact.