Arknights: Endfield
Developer: Hypergryph
Publisher: Gryphline
Platforms: PC (Previewed), PlayStation 5, Mobile
Release Date: TBA
Price: Free-to-Play
It’s been over five year since fans of Arknights were able to step into the dystopian near-apocalyptic setting of Terra where its inhabitants, if not suffering from some form of discrimination due to their various races, were suffering from a highly infectious and incredibly deadly disease called Oripathy. Despite Oripathy gifting those inflicted with it with magical abilities and Originium, the valuable mineral it comes from, this plague has led to those infected being persecuted throughout the world. At the time, players took on the role of the unnamed and masked Doctor suffering from amnesia who led Rhodes Island and its countless operators to try and help wherever possible, all while battling hostile forces from every side.
Nearly three years ago we learned that Hypergryph was taking the previous tactical RPG/tower defense title to the next level by developing a spin-off entry in the franchise called Arknights: Endfield. Looking to put an action-based spin on things with a focus on base-building, we’ve spent nearly the last two weeks battling, building, and traveling through what Arknights: Endfield’s current closed beta test has to offer, leading to some interesting insights about what this action game filled with familiar terms but likely unfamiliar mechanics might have to offer. Of course, considering this is only a closed beta at the moment, many changes might be made between now and the full release which has yet to be given a date at the time of this writing.
Now one thing that can be hit or miss with a spin-off is whether or not it actually requires newcomers to have knowledge of the original game to actually make the most out of it and, while it is true that this is a closed beta at the moment, this fact is likely to go unchanged even on full release. The answer to that question with Arknights: Endfield is most certainly yes, or at the very least have the bare minimum of knowledge about most of the game’s plot up to if not past defeating Patriot to best understand the references being made and lore drops that occur throughout the game. In fact, while a large portion of the characters currently available in the closed beta to be “headhunted” are original to this release, three operators in the form of Surtr, now called Laevatain, Angelina who is know called Gilberta, and even Aurora now with the name Snowshine. Along with these current Rhodes Island characters being brought along longtime fans will recognize numerous namedrops of Warfarin as well as the appearance of Kal’tsit of all characters, making this one that newcomers may feel a bit left out in the cold on if they haven’t already dipped their toes into the Arknights storyline by the time this one releases.
Anyways, starts fast and hits the ground running by having players, taking the role of the Endministrator, attempting to defend an unknown base from enemy attack. Using what little skills the player has at the moment and venturing through a poignant flower field harkening back to a frosted rabbit, they’ll force back the enemy force only to find that the entire thing was a dream while their body was undergoing stasis recovery onboard the ship Dijang as it hovers over the planet named Talos-II. An unknown amount of time has passed between the events of Arknights as well as what happened to the Endministrator, but their recovery has left them with no memory of their past, once again, and it is only through the helpful guidance of Perlica that the rest of the crew has managed to keep the ship stable even as the world of Talos-II proves to constantly be an issue, whether it is the wild life, mother nature itself, or even the residents already there trying to drive these intrepid new adventurers out.
Despite starting strong, the storyline of Arknights: Endfield almost feels like it is simply going through the motions once players put boots to the ground. Part of this is due to how extended the game’s tutorial can be as it drip feeds new characters to slowly grow the player’s party to four members and various mechanics, but also due to some rather… shallow writing. This includes not only the plot where the main villain is only interesting for so long before she starts to feel rather generic. The Endministrator rarely speaks for themselves and their presence as an amnesiac savior to the people of Talos-II is an odd choice, as players meet former allies that simply talk about how great they once were all while many other storyline characters are introduced in a manner that shows that they all already know each other and have for years, leaving the player as the odd man out.
There are some exceptions to this, with Perlica being perhaps the best of the cast so far as far as the storyline goes. She plays the cool-headed but occasionally flustered assistant that is the straight-woman to the more outlandish characters’ antics, be it activating a robot or trying to make us feel bad by having it sacrifice itself later on, or dealing with Chen’s boundless enthusiasm or someone teasing her about being with the Endministrator so much. Characters will talk with one another and make little discussions as players explore the field which is a nice touch, though it feels like these should be expanded upon more. In fact, while it makes sense for the beta nature of the game, it would be better if there were more ways to interact with non-story related characters in general as the only way to properly do so is through assigning them to factory slots in the base on Dijang and giving them gifts and even then this only tends to result in a bit of extra exposition about a character’s past similar to how it was in the original game. Given how far some of these more complex gacha games have grown with character interactions and “bonds” through recent years, it would be nice to see Arknights: Endfield take this step as well.
When not partaking in its story or trying to get closer to some of the operators, players will be taking part in the three main aspects of Arknights: Endfield, exploration, combat, and of course, plenty of base-building. While the closed beta test did not allow for controllers to be used to play the game at the moment, PlayStation button icons did appear here and there, likely meaning controller support is on the way for the full release. Now the combat system is fairly standard for an action RPG but one that is a bit more advanced for a gacha game like this. Unlike a certain other title with a flying annoyance, all of the player’s party will enter combat and fight at once, with players controlling one unit directly at a time to deal out standard attack chains, finishing blows, and dodging incoming attacks. Depending on the operators that the player has out on the field (the Endministrator is not required) players can chain together various finishing attacks as well by triggering special conditions, some of these are as simple as performing a full combo or falling below a certain amount of health while others may require inflicting a status ailment for an ally to come in with an assist attack.
As players fight they will have three skill bars that regenerate during fighting and every skill used with a press of the corresponding character’s number button takes up a charge. When a character’s ultimate is available, a long press of the same button will trigger the powerful move. This helps make combat feel intuitive and fast paced, with plenty of moving parts and making it so players can really feel like they are actually fighting with their team as a whole rather than a constantly morphing character. That being said, it is easy to see how team synergy might play a major role in how well a team can fight together. For example, in this closed beta Angelina is given for free on the third day but while she is a six-star (highest rarity) character, slotting her in alongside Perlica, Laevatain, and Avywenna didn’t feel like the best fit despite her strengths. Instead, sliding in Snowshine for support often seemed to not only allow my team to survive stronger opponents but even finish fights faster as a result.
Of course, some of this does come down to the standard grinding elements that come into play in a gacha game such as this. This includes gathering materials and leveling up the player’s Endministrator level to unlock equipment blueprints to equip to their operators and boost their stats, making sure they have plenty of healing items that can thankfully be set to be used automatically when the right circumstance is met, leveling up the character themselves or their weapon, unlocking skills and level caps, all that good grinding jazz. Many of these elements make use of the returning “Sanity” feature that is basically the Arknights version of replenishing stamina where resource focused fights require Sanity to access and grind out required items to strengthen the team. This is part of the exploration mechanic as well as the general feel of traveling throughout the semi open world of Arknights: Endfield. While the title isn’t completely open world, there are tons of optional locations and areas to explore and uncover, including little bits locked away behind the building mechanics that we will go over shortly. This means that there is always something interesting to find, even if it is simply an Aethor core to boost the character’s stamina level, though it usually will result in a rare chest or little puzzle to solve for even better loot. It is worth noting that while stamina is used to start running it does not cost it to maintain at the moment besides increasing the amount of times players can dodge in a row during combat and, at the moment, there is no swimming, climbing, or gliding around. The closest thing to gliding is using ziplines players can install throughout the world to travel around quickly besides using predetermined fast travel points.
Outside of combat, Factory building and optimization is perhaps the next biggest component in Arknights: Endfield. Players will initially be given a central hub of sorts where they will establish most of their factory and then run power-lines across the countryside, powering various dead facilities along the way or installing new useful tools along the way. The main factory is all about trying to become as efficient as possible, with players able to drop self-mining rigs down on ore veins to constantly pull in supplies, setting up automated workflows with conveyor belts to transfer raw materials to threshers or refiners and then transfer that then transfer back to the warehouse. This allows players to create automated resource chains for the simpler materials that are often used to craft everything from standard healing items and base equipment to more powerful gear. There are even little issues players will need to fix from time to time, such as jammed machinery, to make sure their factory loop stays efficient. Combine this with the fact that, as mentioned before, players can use zip-lines to easily maneuver around locations of importance either to their current farming/grinding target or a potentially valuable but hard to reach location and there is a lot of reward when it comes to proper base-building and fine-tuning things. That being said, it does feel like it gets to be a bit much at times, perhaps taking a bit too much away from the actual exploration, especially since it is easy to see this type of mechanic being something that players can easily hyper-optimize the joy out of.
Thankfully Arknights: Endfield looks absolutely outstanding running on PC at the moment. Not only is the interface incredibly smooth and mostly easy to handle with a mouse and keyboard at the moment, but the world and character designs are exceptional as well. Characters move fluidly both inside of menus as they are being upgraded and in the field whether they are fighting against enemies, using an ultimate, or simply in an idle animation where there are surprisingly quite a few, including some where it appears that the character’s will follow the camera with their eyes. The world itself is also quite detailed and vibrant, striking a solid balance between realistic and fantasy that the Arknights team has always tiptoed, and it makes sense as it appears that many of the artists that worked on the original title have lent their talents to this new 3D entry.
Now time for the nitty gritty for every gacha game and how the rates are for characters and weaponry. Like the original game, Arknights: Endfield offers characters with rarities up to 6* though in the beta the lowest rating available was only a 4*, while weapons came in rarities all the way from the most basic 1* to 6*. In the closed beta we had the opportunity to draw from the standard banner that would eventually guarantee a 6* rarity character within 50 pulls, something that is often included as a bonus when a game launch sor for new accounts to give players a chance to obtain at least one of the base 6* units early on. The other banner is the limited headhunting banner, called “Limited Target Operator” and is where most players will want to spend their headhunting tickets and Origeimetry which can be converted to Oroberyl, the general pull currency awarded from completing dailies and limited tasks. The pull rate for a 6* operator is unfortunately incredibly low, clocking in at 0.8% though the chance of pulling the targeted character is the very familiar coin-flip of 50/50.
Now, unlike what many people are familiar with, Arknights: Endfield makes use of a different kind of guarantee when it comes to targeted headhunting. Unlike many other gacha of the same type, at least at the moment, this game utilizes a mechanic where 120 pulls will guarantee that the player will obtain the targeted character no matter what. It is worth noting that a hard-pity is instilled at 80 pulls, with the soft-pity raising 6* rates starting at 65. This means that if players pull and get a 6* character that isn’t the targeted character, then they will now need to pull to at least 120 to obtain said character unless they have stellar luck. Generally, in these types of gacha losing the coin flip for the targeted character will guarantee that the next 6* obtained, even in the next targeted banner, will be the targeted character. This is unfortunately not the case here as the guarantee does not carry over from banner to banner. This leads to the double-edged sword of offering a smaller investment to guarantee obtaining the target character, where awful luck might require 160 pulls to obtain instead of 120, but also that players cannot take a missed opportunity to instead turn their sour luck into good luck in the next banner. This is an interesting take and will likely divide players and it will be interesting to see how it is handled past this closed beta.
As for the weapon gacha, it is also an interesting mechanic. Rather than using the same currency as “Operator” currency to roll for weaponry, players will obtain “Arsenal” currency when they roll for characters. This is the currency used to draw for weapons, making it completely separate and allowing users to focus on gathering characters without losing out on weaponry for said characters. In this closed beta the weapon banners are multiple and feature all manner of weapons ranging from guns, to lances, to drones, and of course various types of swords. The rate of obtaining a 6* weapon is not too bad, but obtaining the targeted weapon of that banner is shockingly low, clocking in at only 25% while the weapons themselves come at 4% and guaranteeing the target weapon at 80 rolls. Players can also currently straight up use Arsenal tokens to purchase rotating weapons. This leads to a rather unusual balancing act between obtaining weaponry to properly equip characters and what to target next while also assuring that players can focus on pulling characters instead of their specific weaponry.
Recommended
Arknights: Endfield makes for a bold start and offers some exciting action gameplay that sees the player’s entire party enter the fray at once, making for more exciting looking battles and ones that can actually have a bit of strategy involved combined with some rather elaborate factory and construction management that will likely be surprising for some. Combine this with some unique takes on some familiar gacha mechanics and it will be interesting to see just where this upcoming gacha will end up, especially if it can refine its storyline between now and release.