Arknights: Endfield Review
If you are a fan of tower defense games, you may have played 2020's Arknights. It was a free-to-play gacha game with puzzle elements, an exciting and unique take on the tower defense genre. Arknights: Endfield shares some DNA with the original game, but mostly it's an unexpected and impressive departure. Combining an anime style RPG with a Satisfactory-esque building simulator was not part of my bingo plans.
So what is it?
Arknights: Endfield It takes place in the same fictional universe as the first game, but on a new Earth-like planet called Talos II. You play as the “End Administrator” (or Edmin) of the Endfield Corporation, and your tasks are twofold. First you need to fight back against the supernatural Corruption, criminal gangs and monsters on the planet. Secondly, you need to industrialize Talos II for its valuable resources, which will also help you level up.
Let me just say that the English voice acting in Arknights: Endfield is surprisingly strong. Unfortunately, the narrative and script are an absolute quagmire of made-up jargon, acronyms and lore. Several hours passed and I was still puzzled by the details of the story. Luckily, most of this doesn't interfere with the action or other gameplay loops.
Next level
Arknights; Endfield has three main components: combat, exploration and base building, and gacha mechanics. However, they do not all necessarily take the same amount of time. Players looking for a game that focuses primarily on action RPGs may be disappointed.
Combat in Arknights: Endfield is a variation on familiar ideas. You can have up to four characters in your party (out of a minimum of 20), and you can switch between them in real time at will. When not controlled, the AI ​​does a fairly good job of surviving an encounter. But the big catch is how each character's abilities and special attacks interact. Your main task in combat is to optimize and build up various meters in order to launch powerful attacks alone or in combination with a team.
The combat is fast, vibrant, fun and crazy. Pressing takes a while, like everything else in the game. There are dodges and perfect dodges, and the weapons are impressive. The combat experience overall feels extremely polished and makes it easy to continue playing.
Another day at the factory
However, combat is only one element. Research is also important as it allows you to gather resources to upgrade and complete mission objectives. Simultaneously with exploration, the construction of a series of towers, power grids, transport hubs and processing plants will take hours of time.
The first hours of Arknights: Endfield focus on storytelling and combat, but soon you'll need to start laying out a network to power the various towers and ziplines that will make traveling around the zone easier. One interesting feature is that although Arknights: Endfield is a single-player game, you will be able to use structures set up by other players (unlike Death Stranding).
As the game progresses, your designs become more complex. Over time, you will completely build factories to process the minerals and other resources you collect on Talos II. Construction also means managing power, and you will need to connect to a new or existing power grid. The building simulator elements of Arknights: Endfield may not be as rich as Factorio or Satisfactory, are complex, and will take hours and a lot of trial and error to understand.
Triple Aspiration
There is no way around Arknights: Endfield's gacha mechanics, which mainly exist for premium weapons, armor, and cosmetics. Whether players want to participate or not, the struggle for currency and more or just leveling up outside of the gacha is real. It may take a long time, but at some point most people will probably invest some real money just to make things a little easier.
At least on PC, Arknights: Endfield looks pretty impressive, especially when it comes to animation, lighting, and combat effects. The environments also look good, although they are a bit lacking in textural detail. The characters are typical anime/waifu creations, but they cheekily admit when the camera lingers too long on one body part or another. I have no idea how it will look on mobile devices, but Arknights: Endfield on PC looks like a polished product and performs accordingly.
Arknights: Endfield did something that very few games do these days: it surprised me. Completely different from the first game, Arknights: Endfield offers dozens of hours of content split across almost two completely different game genres. As a combat RPG goes, there's a lot to enjoy here thanks to the way the abilities work together. When it comes to research and construction, the same amount of material needs to be researched. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that all the parts fit together logically. I'm definitely interested to see how gamers react to Arknights: Endfield and how it develops.
***PC code provided by publisher for preview purposes***
