Introduction

I won’t deny I’m insanely picky when it comes to gacha games. Besides the fact these games can be big time and money sinks—my poor wallet—they often aren’t very substantial. Yeah, they might have hot anime waifu to collect and semi-fun gameplay formulas but most of the time…they just die out and I delete them off my phone for other games.

Enter Arknights, a tower defense game with gacha themes. I played for a little while but never found myself invested. Yet, no one can deny it was a quite popular game by developer Hypergryph. Not surprising, a sequel was planned but here’s what did shock me…Arknights: Endfield isn’t anything like the original.

What big changes have been made to this quite popular title and should you still consider downloading it? I’m about to find out in my review of Arknights: Endfield for mobile for SunsetNerdVerse!

Gameplay

Those who loved Arknights and really wanted a true sequel to that in every shape and form…you might want to stop reading now. Arknights: Endfield, again, is vastly different than the 2020 game. Gone is the tower defense strategy in lieu of an open-world action-adventure RPG with…gacha elements.

Okay, yeah, not everything has 100% changed but Arknights: Endfield is a totally different game and in many ways, these changes are welcome.

Players assume the role of the Edminstrator (Edmin usually for short) who has been “awakened,” losing his/her (you can choose their gender) memories. What you do know is that you are tasked with helping your company colonize a dangerous planet known as Talos-II. How do you accomplish such a task you might ask? Simple, you build resources and beat the crap out of anything deemed a threat.

Arknights: Endfield is 90% action-adventure RPG and 10% building/resource manager. Let’s talk first about the core gameplay. As the all-powerful Edminstrator, you must help your team of “operators” beat the various threats across the land who both want to kill you and take the resources of Talos-II for themselves.

Combat is pretty straight forward. You have a single attack button, a dodge mechanic and a special attack system. Where Arknights: Endfield feels great is dodging enemies and attacking them never gets old even if it is extremely simple.

You can win most fights with just button mashing the attack over and over but bosses or larger groups need you to mix it up. You can dodge attacks to gain a means of countering or use combos based on your character’s abilities. What’s cool is if you make a team that works correctly off one another, you can create some heavy combos that do a ton of damage and look flashy.

Operators mostly play the same sadly but there are some that have some unique means of attacking.

When out of combat, you’ll be exploring and this is where the base building/resource management comes into play. Like most gacha games, you can find tons of resources to level up your team or “headhunt” for new operators—or use money too—but this is the normal for a gacha game.

The base building is kind of neat. Players can build up various systems to power up facilities and even make new resources. Like the combat, it’s simple but compared to the extremely simple Arknights, Arknights: Endfield is at least trying to give players more to do than just watch battles unfold.

I did enjoy exploring and making bases the way I wanted to. I do wish there was a bit more building freedom but I wasn’t expecting Minecraft when I downloaded Arknights: Endfield.

Now again, Arknights: Endfield is a gacha game and that means several things…tons of menus to navigate for events, items and rolls. As per usual, I do try to invest some real money into gacha games I like but I doubt I’ll be spending hundreds on Arknights: Endfield as its roll system is very…cruel.

It took me at least 200 rolls before I got my first true 6-star operator—the game gives you one as a means of introducing you and pushing you to believe luck is on your side—which annoyed me quite a bit.

I also hate there’s so many menus from crafting equipment, items to use, operators to enhance, parties to form and the list goes on. Even after playing for almost 10 hours, I still feel menus are being added…too much Arknights: Endfield.

Graphics

Original Arknights wasn’t a bad looking game but aside from the character models and the various attacks, it was simple more often than not. Arknights: Endfield changes it up like the gameplay with visuals that honestly surpass some console titles I’ve seen.

Character models for instance are now fully developed, no longer in sprite form but 3D models—think Honkai: Star Rail—and backgrounds aren’t small and compact. Now Arknights: Endfield is set in a fully explorable open world with tons of secrets to find, enemies to hunt down and materials to gather.

The visuals are vastly improved with beautiful settings and cutscenes that might make Blizzard games turn their heads in shock. Arknights: Endfield is gorgeous and if there was any minor gripe—and I really don’t get bothered by it—this would come from some of the NPCs looking lackluster compared to your party or the main cast.

Clearly though, Hypergryph learned from other action-adventure RPGs and realized they could use the success of Arknights to make Arknights: Endfield look fantastic.

Sound

Arknights: Endfield music is…okay but the voice acting is pretty solid. I’m sure fans of gacha games with English or Japanese voices will know who these characters are in other games but they do a good job of keeping to their characters and making their personalities shine.

The music too does work when the battles get epic or you need to just mellow out exploring but none of the OST was that captivating to me. Overall, Arknights: Endfield’s sound is pretty forgettable but I won’t say it ruins the game—just nothing to really go wow about.

Story

At first, I was going to write off Arknights: Endfield’s story as simple like the gameplay and sound. After a few hours though, I really began to enjoy the tale being presented.

Yes, it has that generic anime protagonist who’s OP but also has amnesia feel but Arknights: Endfield has a pretty big world setting and plenty of characters that populate it.

I personally loved reading about some of the characters and hearing their reactions or seeing them in the story was intriguing. There’s also some subtle nods to the original Arknights for those big fans out there which is nice.

I do think the story has room to grow and with possible additions could be quite large but for now it’s good and I like it enough to say it’s a strength of Arknights: Endfield.

Overall Impression

Arknights: Endfield has a lot of potential and while I didn’t care to invest much of my time in the original game, I can see myself playing this for quite some time.

That being said, those who aren’t fans of gacha games and/or want a bit more substance to their action games might overlook Arknights: Endfield, which would be understandable.

Still, for what it’s worth—plus it’s free—Arknights: Endfield is great and given more updates and characters, I can bet this will be a long-running title. Just please fix your gacha system to be a bit more forgiving…

Conclusion

Arknights: Endfield hasn’t fully changed my mind about the gacha genre but it did prove one thing—there’s no excuse for lack of effort. Beautiful visuals, solid (but simple) gameplay format, good story and tons of creative designs make Arknights: Endfield a great free game even if it’s still a gacha title.

I can imagine the big gameplay changes might turn away original fans and invite new ones or maybe make for some new action/RPG fans to be born…that only time will tell.

Though I do hope developer Hypergryph finds success as I think they have proven love and care can make even a gacha game tons of fun!

—Aaron