Arknights: Endfield

Have people never played a mobile app game or gacha ever? Like what are you 12 years old and just discovering how the world works? And to the people that give a 1 star review because your phone can’t handle it? Ask mum to buy you a better phone for your birthday. Jesus christ. Just had to get that off my chest because it’s mindless people like that which end up spoiling reviews for half decent games like this. Am I giving this 5 stars? Absolutely not. It’s been out for a year on PlayStation and does not have endgame yet or any meaningful loot drop mode like the current big gachas have (genshin, wuwa, zzz, nte) so it’s already not a contender for top 10 due to that fact. You can’t expect people to continue buying for nothing. Once you get to the top, you want more. You don’t want to eat at the buffet to feel full, you want it to taste good so you come back for more another day. Add an endgame that actually drops tickets, originium, or endgame worthy rewards and I’ll bump my rating up. Until then, it’s just a 4 star game and not even close to the same playing field as the top gachas.

I want to start by saying Arknights Endfield is amazing if you can get past the oroberyl and originium system! It has great graphics, unique character designs, and great connection through Arknights. The GFX and battle tactics have room for improvement but for coming out this year, it's on an average level. The reason I am giving this game four stars is because though everything else is simple and thorough, the main part of the game is battling and production. Tower defenses usually need the player to be in the meta in order to pass phases or level up. Unfortunately, Arknights Endfield basically forces you to pay if you want any character (guaranteed and not). You either use originium for a character's weapon or to create oroberyls for the character themself. The originium is hard to get later on in the game, especially if you don't get the protocol passes. There isn't much to explore or obtain and only one main event that is currently going on. Overall, it may be hard to obtain characters since it takes 5,000 oroberyls for one ten pull and 250 for a guaranteed 6 star and ~80 for a 6 star in general. This game would definitely be worthy of a 5 stars when they work on these. For now, I won't be spending any money and don't recommend it unless you're full out paying to win. So long as money is spent, they'll probably never fix this system.

This game has hooked me in a way no gacha game has in quite some time, if ever. I had been looking forward to it, but it has exceeded my expectations in every way. The story is solid so far. It does start a bit slow, but I never felt like it was boring or a bunch of exposition dumping or repeating of stuff we already know. To a degree it, at times, can be a little hard to follow as someone who isn’t super familiar with the Arknights universe, but otherwise it has been entertaining, and I like the characters and their interactions a lot. Speaking of characters, they’re genuinely gorgeous with such a high level of detail, and the game as a whole is stunning. The gameplay is probably the best part for me. Navigating and exploring the world feels fun and rewarding, and the combat is solid, but the real winner is the factory gameplay. It is genuinely so fun and addicting, it feels like something I could sink hours into trying to optimize my production lines. I also find it incredibly impressive the amount of freedom you have in the world to place different structures (zip-lines, power relays, etc) practically wherever. I don’t think I’ve played a gacha game that has embraced its open world quite like this. Overall, I am incredibly impressed by the game after pouring 30+ hours in the last few days, when I play it time literally evaporates, it is that good imo. It isn’t for everyone, the factory system definitely has to be your kind of thing (though there are blueprints and other means of streamlining it if it isn’t your thing), but this game hit a lot of the right nails on the head for me and I’m excited for what is to come in the future.