Arknights: Endfield review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, mobile

Arknights is a series that, even if you’re a gacha fan, I would not fault you for never having played. Endfield represents a change in formula so large that it’s almost unrecognizable as a sequel to the original Arknights game. Releasing in 2019, the original Arknights was a mobile-only release gacha game that primarily focused on tower-defense. Arknights: Endfield, in contrast, is a third person action-RPG 85% of the time, and a factory builder about 15% of the time. Arknights: Endfield has a lot of interesting takes on the gacha formula that I personally found to be for the good overall, but I’ll dive into that in more specifics below. There’s a lot in this game, and Gryphline has packed the world to the gills with activities, side missions, and exploration. There’s enough here to find yourself sunken into it for a long long time, and… from what I got to play at least, it seems very friendly to free players.

So first of all, Arknights: Endfield looks, and sounds, great. The visual style is a shiny version of what many are familiar with for common visuals of gacha games at this point, but… oh my, some of the more cinematic parts of Endfield are gorgeous. Gryphline is not shy to share these visuals, either. See any trailer for Endfield and you’ll experience an eyeful of what I mean. There’s lots of imaginative takes on spectacular technology thrown around. It’s a setting that’s sort of… magic adjacent tech, where everything has mysterious glows and magnets or zero-G controllers making parts bounce and bob in a way that makes the world feel alive and developed without being constrained by modern technological expectations. Likewise, many of the audio cues in Endfield sound really good, and especially when it comes to more of the scripted portions of the story, the music and sound design really stood out to me as being great.

In my time spent with Arknights: Endfield, I was given access to play in two different ways. One way, I was offered to play from a normal start, from scratch. Just like you would a normal player downloading the game. The other, accessed through an account Gryphline supplied, came pre-loaded with all characters unlocked and at level 60. I mostly spent my time on the fresh start, but dipped my toes in to see how the characters I didn’t unlock played. To be honest… while the characters look and sound great, I’m not really sure I found much care for the difference in playing as my fresh-faced, unupgraded characters compared to the maxed out level 60 ones. While the combat is fun and engaging, the character-to-character differences in motion don’t really actually feel different enough to make me feel like I cared that I didn’t have any fancy characters at level 1. Whereas in competitor ZZZ, each agent comes with a full blown set of combos, attack bindings, and mechanics, Endfield plays it safer with a much more simple combat functionality. Essentially combat in Arknights: Endfield boils down to holding the attack button, timing your dodges, and activating each character’s ability. When you’re in combat, all four of your squad members are out at all times, participating on their own until you either swap to them or issue a command to execute their one skill/ultimate. Charge the ultimate abilities by using the skills, and it all sort of blends together. None of this is necessarily bad, as I still found the combat enjoyable, but it’s certainly not something I’d call “deep”.

Which brings me to talking about the functions of the unlockable agents. In typical gacha fashion, the primary way to unlock a character is by doing randomized pulls from a banner that is advertising a selection of multiple “main” gains. Somewhat in a realm adjacent to gambling, this system can be somewhat predatory to the wrong personality type, but in my opinion, so long as you’re okay with waiting a bit, you can get away with not paying much, if anything. I didn’t have access to the game in its full form insofar as to have the events and everything running that you would normally have as a player after the game is released, so they will certainly offer more freebies, but even in my time playing, I felt pretty good about what I received through playing. Made better by the handling of their banner pulls, being that they always give you characters 100% of the time without any filler, I do think Endfield does well to make free players feel appreciated too.

Now… while I say that, I do have to also point out some spots that offer some contention to my previous points. While yes, they are generous with the general number of character unlocks, Arknights: Endfield does have, from my understanding, one of the less player friendly gacha mechanics out there. So, for those unfamiliar, like I mentioned above, there’s a rotating seasonal “banner” that runs. Each of these banners features a character or two that is limited time availability. How many games, including Arknights: Endfield, handle this is that they give you a pity pull. What that means is that once you have pulled on the banner a set number of times, you’re guaranteed to pull something from the pool of high rarity characters. Most games, again including Endfield, will have you first encounter a 50/50 chance, and then the next time you hit the pity pull, you are guaranteed the actual banner character if you lost the first pity. Where Arknights: Endfield is unfriendly in this system is actually in that guarantee and how it rolls over between banners. From what I am to understand, the pity does not roll over between banners. Why this is bad is because you could be grinding hard for the character on the banner, and right before it ends, you’re at pull 110 out of 120 for the guarantee. You don’t manage to get the last 10 in time and you miss that character. Competitors will let you keep your progress to the pity pull for the next banner rotated in, but not Arknights. Arknights pushes you back down to a maximum holdover of 80/120. Not the worst it could be, but worth a note.

Also of note on the way Arknights: Endfield handles its gacha system is that it utilizes, in my opinion, too many different currencies to keep track of. There is a currency that is used only for the limited character banner, another one for the limited character banner (but different?), one that is only for the weapons banner, and at least one or two more that I’ve lost track of or never really figured out how exactly it applies. The menu doesn’t make this much more clear to me, but I suspect that it might have been made more confusing by my introduction to the whole thing being less than natural. Since I was playing on modified accounts that they provided me, currencies were pre-supplied, and as such, I never really needed to spend the time solving what they were for anyway. I hope, and suspect, that it would be much less confusing in the eyes of the standard player.

Where Arknights: Endfield really stands out in the genre as its own unique thing though is the factory mechanics. Within the game lies a sub-game that is all about management, management, management. If you’ve ever played Factorio before, you’ll feel right at home with all the conveyor belts and auto-miners, processors, etc. The systems involved in this “minigame”, if you want to call it that, are incredibly versatile and in-depth. There’s a whole system included to allow you to share your and download other people’s builds though, too, so if you’re someone who isn’t a big fan of this, you can sort of skip it to a degree by just using other people’s blueprints. Be aware though that there is no avoiding this entirely and it will be a large chunk of the gameplay, so if you’re not likely to enjoy a factory management sim, you may find struggles here in Arknights: Endfield.

The storytelling and voice acting are also very good in Endfield. It’s actually a bit interesting in the English dubs, as it seems like there are a good deal of chinese speakers on the cast still, and so they provide very accurate annunciations of some of the Chinese character names. A character in chapter 2 by the name of Tangtang comes to mind as one whose voice actor I found to be very interesting. Her voice actor’s accent is one I’ve not heard represented much in really any media, and I found myself really tuning in to her character because the voice was quite interesting. I think all of the characters are pretty well voiced though, even if it’s a bit odd that your main character (the Endministrator) bounces back and forth between scenes on being voiced or not.

The storyline felt captivating and carried forward in a good momentum, only broken if you got distracted chasing the open world around. I never had any issues in my time with the game feeling like I was underleveled and needed to go waste some time grinding or anything. You are the Endministrator, and important historical figure to the people of Talos-II, and you have lost your memory. They still place you in your previous role regardless of what you remember though, so you’re safely in power anyway. The story takes you on a journey through Talos-II with a group of memorable characters to take you along the way. I don’t really like spoilers in my reviews, so I will leave my opinion on that as just that much.

Overall, I think there’s a lot of good here. While the gacha system itself could use some work, the bones of the game are excellent. Strong combat, an open world, and complex factory systems offer a lot to spend your time on, and very little of it felt like filler. I hope to see Arknights: Endfield take off and expand in the future, and hopefully they take some community feedback on the few systems that need work. I’ve already seen a lot of commentary on this and the game isn’t even out yet. Otherwise, if you are interested in a high-quality gacha game with space-age anime girls with a pinch of Factorio, this might be the only game in that niche you’ll find. Give it a shot, it’s a lot of fun.

Note: Gryphline provided us with a code for review purposes.