I'll be honest, writing an Arknights: Endfield review is a pretty intimidating task. I didn't get the chance to try out the previous betas, so this pre-release build is my first hands-on experience with the game. And, having had access to it for just under a week, my main thought is that this game is huge. So huge that, no matter what I write, I won't be able to cover all of it. But, regardless, I'm going to try.
Arknights: Endfield is set in the same universe as its extremely successful predecessor, Arknights. However, it's an entirely self-contained story set in the future, so don't worry if you're entirely new to the series. You play as the Endministrator, who wakes up after being in stasis for a very long time. Following the footsteps of many gacha protagonists before you, you've got amnesia, and don't remember a thing. However, you're not entirely new to this world, as it turns out that you've been in stasis before, and your allies generally only wake you when there's a crisis at hand.
This time, the crisis comes in the form of a fierce lady called Nefarith, who is setting out to use the power of Æther to corrupt the world of Talos-II. There's also the Blight to contend with, which materializes as an unpleasant red matter that is destroying the land. Now, with the help of your close friends Chen and Perlica, it's up to you to fight off these evil forces and save the land, predominantly through fixing and constructing various forms of technology.
While not particularly original, the core narrative is solid and enjoyable, and has some truly interesting lore to back it up. I really like the unique twist on the amnesiac story here, especially as you speak to people who knew you in the past and get glimpses of the work you did before you went into stasis. This is definitely solidified by the great supporting cast of characters and wide range of species and personalities shown in the NPCs, and pushed to the next level by the brilliant voice acting and music throughout.
Outside of the story, the core gameplay mostly falls into three categories - combat, exploration, and factory building/management. Combat, at its base, is your average action game affair, but with some nice extra twists. You can have a team of four characters, and you control one at a time. The rest of your companions are mostly AI-controlled, though they only move around, attack, and dodge without you, leaving you in charge of their skills.
Each character has a basic attack chain, a special combo attack, a battle skill, and an ultimate, and you're in charge of all of these. Combo attacks feel similar to chains in Zenless Zone Zero, where you meet certain criteria to trigger them. When this happens, the character's portrait pops up near the middle of the screen, giving you a decent amount of time to activate it.
Your whole team shares SP (skill points), and certain moves and characters restore your SP quicker. You can then use one bar of SP to perform one of your characters' battle skills. Additionally, characters can either deal physical or arts damage. Arts damage is this game's version of elements (broken down into heat, electric, cryo, and nature). Physical damage also has its own sub-statuses, including things like lifting enemies in the air or knocking them down. As you hit enemies with these different attacks, you can stack the same damage types to increase their damage, or combine different damage types to create reactions.
Your focus here is to coordinate everyone's skills, combos, and ultimates, while also managing your SP and dodging enemy attacks. It sounds simple on paper, but it can actually feel quite overwhelming at first, especially with so much visual noise on the screen. However, as you continue to practice and perfect your rotations, it all begins to fall into place, and makes for a very satisfying experience.
The computer-controlled teammates are also surprisingly well-realized even outside of combat, with them joining you as you mine and forage, collecting items for you, pointing out interesting things or handy materials, talking to each other, and even complimenting you when you pull off a cool dodge or move. You can also chat to them about various topics relevant to the current story quests via your text messages, which feels like a fun mix between Zenless Zone Zero's Knock Knock messenger and the camp conversations in Baldur's Gate 3.
While it does a great job of imitating an open world, Arknights: Endfield isn't a true open world game. Instead, the map splits into pretty large zones that you must travel between, with some of them only accessible through teleport points. However, while this does make the map a little hard to read at times, I never felt particularly restricted by this while out exploring, largely due to the fact that each area is both large and dense.
Everywhere you turn, there are enemies, collectibles, forageable materials, secret areas, puzzles, and other interactive elements. Exploration is one of my favorite elements in any open or semi-open world game, and this certainly satisfied my itch. In fact, I quite often got completely sidetracked from quests due to spotting something interesting off in the distance. Each area feels like it's begging you to explore and experiment, and even without the ability to climb or glide, I never felt held back in my rambling.
This is only made better by the unique construction and factory sim elements that branch beyond the main hub. I'm not talking about the machines processing and refining materials just yet - I'll get to those later - but the option to construct various tools in order to aid your exploration and get to new locations. As you venture out, you can expand a sprawling web of electric pylons and relay towers to supply power to various locations, allowing you to open doors, set up electric drill rigs that automatically send ore to your base, and more.
You can place gun towers as back-up when fighting tougher enemies, set up a network of ziplines to get around quickly, or even repair and use constructs and ziplines that other players have placed. Not only does this make things like farming materials (especially in the late game) much easier, but it also adds a real sense of variety and creativity, contributing to a sense that you, other players, and even NPCs are all working together to develop the world around you. It's a fascinating and truly unique experience, and I really feel it's one of the biggest areas that Arknights: Endfield excels in.
Of course, the world is also absolutely beautiful, and everything feels like it slots together perfectly. The art direction here is fabulous, balancing the sharp, cold constructs and machines with the sprawling natural environments perfectly, and this even carries over to the UI and menu designs. So far, I've also found PC performance to be very smooth and well polished, though I wasn't able to play this version on mobile, so I can't comment on its handheld performance just yet.
Now, let's address the big one - the factory elements. If you're a fan of factory management games like Factorio, Dyson Sphere, or Satisfactory, you may find the factory management section of the game a little too restrictive, as you're mostly just setting up conveyor belts between machines on a flat grid.
On the other hand, if you're entirely new to this type of game, you may actually find it a little overwhelming, as there are a lot of different machines and components to juggle, and there's a pretty steep learning curve. However, while the factory simulation is, of course, a pretty big part of the base game, you can avoid most of the effort by completing the simulation stages to unlock blueprints, then using those to set up the production lines you need at any given time.
Once set up, the factories can produce a variety of goods, including consumables like healing items, a wide range of materials, and even gear sets to kit out your characters. This is a nice departure from the artifact or relic farming we've seen in other games, even if it does become a bit more complicated when you hit the highest rarity.
As you level up, you can also unlock additional outposts and trade the goods you produce with them in exchange for Stock Credits. You can then use these Stock Credits to upgrade facilities, buy gifts for your operators, and even engage in an odd little stock market system called Elastic Goods.
Of course, as a live service game, Arknights: Endfield also has a daily grind. This revolves around farming specific materials from set locations around the map, spending sanity to farm different level-up materials, and completing daily tasks to earn activity points and other rewards. Initially, these can be pretty time-consuming, but as you progress (and begin making use of those handy ziplines), it gets a lot easier. It's a fine system, but it does feature a few more elements than most other gacha games I've played at the start, making it a bit more of a time sink.
I'll be honest, having only had access to the game for less than a week and never having played before, I can't say I've explored much of the endgame, so I can't really comment too much on that. I know that there's quite a lot of grinding to do to get your characters to max level, some tough bosses you can fight for extra materials, and a mode called Etchspace Salvage, where you fight through multiple stages of enemies. A lot of which feels pretty standard, but I've not had the chance to look too deeply. I also imagine Arknights: Endfield will follow a similar pattern to other gachas and release more endgame modes in future updates, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.
Now, perhaps one of Arknights: Endfield's biggest sins is its tendency to overcomplicate things. This is especially true of the tutorials, which continue to pop up after tens of hours in the game. I admit, I'm very much a visual, "do-it-yourself" learner, so to some degree this may be personal preference. But even for those of you who prefer written guidance, many sections can feel quite overwhelming at first, with far too much information and overcomplicated jargon thrown at you at once. Ironically, this tendency to over-explain makes simple systems feel far more complicated than they actually are.
This also spreads to the gacha system. At the core, the Arknights: Endfield banners are akin to those in all the best gacha games. There's a beginner banner, a standard banner, and a featured banner that changes every few weeks. You're guaranteed a five-star character every ten pulls, and a six-star character every 80 pulls.
But there are also multiple moving parts, including several types of 'permits' (gacha pulls) for the same banner, a bunch of different currencies, a manual exchange system for excess character duplicates rather than an instant currency reward, a special one-time pity cap, an urgent recruitment ten-pull that doesn't count towards pity… And that's without even mentioning the weapons, which have their own unique gacha system that's embedded into the store and revolves around yet another type of currency and a completely different pity system.
In reality, a good chunk of these systems and caveats (such as the free ten-pulls and the featured banner's pity cap) actually seem to be a good thing for players, at least from what I've seen during the pre-release access. You get quite a substantial amount of freebies as a new player, too. But, even as a gacha veteran, initially wrapping my head around it all felt like quite a task, so I imagine people who are new to gachas or have only played them passively before will find this quite overwhelming.
I also can't help but feel that this is a tactic to confuse players in an attempt to cover up the less favorable elements of the monetization system. For example, I've been unable to see the gacha rates, and only had access to one featured banner throughout the early access, but I know that the playerbase had a lot of concerns during the second closed beta due to the lack of a solid 50/50 system and your 120 pity cap not carrying over between banners, meaning you realistically need 120 pulls ready to go if you want to ensure you get a featured character on their banner.
Overall, Arknights: Endfield is a truly impressive game with an enormous amount of content and different ideas, which, ironically enough, are both its biggest strength and weakness. It's absolutely beautiful, very well-polished, and perhaps one of the most densely-packed gachas I've ever played. However, its tendency to overcomplicate things and its many moving parts may well put many players off. I also feel quite jaded by what I've seen of its monetization and gacha system, and am unsure of what the endgame loop will look like once you've got all of your factories and characters maxed out.
Regardless, I've really enjoyed my time with the game, and am excited to see what comes next. Hopefully, after a year of solid updates, we'll see it standing alongside other goliath games like Genshin Impact - but, for now, I suppose we'll have to wait and see.