Arknights: Endfield Preview - Satisfactory Gatcha

The popularity of action adventure gacha RPG games in recent years is evidently growing since we’re getting new entries in the genre every year. These free to play games have tons of content with a good mix of action and fun puzzles backed by great visuals, but they also have the most predatory premium currency gambling system called gacha that is here to stay it seems. Newest entry in the genre is Arknights: Endfield by Hypergryph set in the same universe as their mobile turn based RPG/tower defense game Arknights. Endfield is a full-fledged open world action RPG gacha that heavily introduces industrialization mechanics to set itself apart from the competition.

Another Day, Another Hero With No Memory

The game starts with one of those incomprehensible anime sequences where big philosophical questions of life and death are mixed with stunning visual sequences of fighting bigger than life creatures. You’re left confused hoping that answers will come soon.

You are Endministrator (or Endmin for short). Ideological leader and CEO of an industrialization corporation that lost his (or her) memory and you’re facing immediate crisis on Talos II. Through never-ending cutscenes and tutorials you’ll be guided through various game systems as you discover the backstory and game mechanics of Endfield. Story and storytelling are always the weakest points of these games. Endfield is thankfully bearable in this department despite the fact that you are playing someone akin to Elon Musk, who is far from being a pleasant human being that deserves looking up to.

Flashy Combat Animations With Mobile Gameplay Simplicity

There’s nothing in Endfield combat we haven’t seen before in this genre. You’ll fight using basic attacks and a special ability that will lead to combos with one or more of your three teammates until you fill your ultimate gauge and cast the most powerful abilities to end your enemies. You’ll discover synergies between various elemental and physical attacks that will grant bigger damage bursts. The true skill in combat is combining the right characters together in your team so they synergize well and then equip those characters with correct weapons and upgrade correct skills for them. You don’t want to waste precious character upgrade resources on the wrong skills. Rest is just clicking a few buttons at the correct time and being able to notice poorly visible enemy attack indicators that signal you to dodge. Dodging is important because I felt that the healing skills of some characters were not that great and that I would rely on healing items more than on my teammates. Min-maxers will surely have a field day trying to create team and gear setups that will get the most out of combat.

All of this is set in a good looking world of Talos II where you’ll meat various enemies; from Mad Max human tribes to endemic lifeforms. Visually, the game is sharp and sometimes stunning. The industrial theme of the game makes everything a bit cyberpunk-y though. Everywhere you turn there will be machinery and shipping containers that put a jarring note on greenery and beautiful skies. All of this has great performance, and you’ll be treated with good visuals even on average PC configurations.

Fair Gacha Oxymoron

Character progression is still based on upgrading your characters with both their levels as well as their weapons and their levels. Another layer of gear has been added in the form of armor pieces and kit, so you’ll be able to spend even more time getting your favorite team of characters fully geared up. The best teams that will be able to face the biggest threats will have to be obtained through the gacha system. You will get various currencies that will enable you to pull characters and special weapons from special events.

The fairness of the gacha system is tolerable and is far from the worst gacha systems out there. Character pulls have been separated from weapon pulls so your chances of getting a specific character/weapon you’re after are split among those two pools. Featured weapons are guaranteed after 80 pulls and after 100 pulls you’ll get a special Arms Offering Crate that lets you choose a high tier weapon, further reducing RNG. There’s loads of opportunities to get free pulls that will enable you to get good characters and weapons even as a free-to-play player.

Industrial Mogul

Very soon as you start creating gear for your characters you’ll notice that some items can only be crafted if you produce materials with your factory. The factory system in Arknights: Endfield is so detailed and extensive that one can’t but feel overwhelmed. I’ve spent hours just going through various factory and production tutorials.

For example; You’re able to get some flowers from the field that you send to your depot. You can than hook up your main factory facility to output those flowers to a Shredder component that will produce Buckflower powder. On the other output you’ll put Amethyst ore that will be refined into Amethyst fiber. You’ll send that fiber to a Moulding Unit to produce Amethyst bottles. Bottles combined with the Buckflower powder in a Filling Unit will finally produce healing items called Buck Capsules. You can then use these to heal your team or sell them to increase the Region Development Level so you can produce more complex stuff and have more space for your factory.

Describing just one production chain took so much and yet there are dozens of production chains you can create and automate. Once you dive into this it can be very satisfactory to set everything up and, in the end, reap the rewards of your labor. Unfortunately, getting there is a long process of learning various interconnections between multitude of components and getting raw materials. You’ll be setting up mining nodes and getting power to those and then expanding power capacity of your factories. It’s all very cumbersome and time consuming.

In the end I have the feeling that this super detailed and engrossing industrialization system will be the biggest problem for Endfield. I can imagine a great number of players will just be put off by the complexity of it all. How many people have dreams of being meticulous organizers and process managers?

Terminology Horror

Another big drawback that I keep seeing in this genre is the sheer number of new terms and names that are thrown at you. PAC, AIC, Regional Stock Bill, Basic HH Permit, Protocol Capacity. What is the deal with these games? Why do they have to have dozens of currencies? Why do we have to learn so many new terms? Why can’t the Main Factory be just that instead of Automated Industry Complex? I’ve spent more time browsing the game’s database trying to figure out what certain game mechanics are or looking for what each building does than creating things. Overcomplication is the number one problem of Endfield.

How To Be Different Yet Stay the Same?

All of the games in the gacha RPG genre since the success of Genshin Impact have followed exactly the same formula. Beautiful open worlds with loads of things to discover and loot filled with fun puzzles to solve and anime style cutscenes galore that usually have a mediocre story or storytelling mechanics. They are a joy to play for casual players and provide deeper mechanics for those that want to dive in deep and become the best in the game.

But, you can’t just be a clone of Genshin Impact anymore. You must set yourself apart somehow. Endfield heavily invested in the industrialization aspect of the game. You’ll be able to create production chains on a scale never before seen in an RPG game and more resembling Factorio or Satisfactory type of games than anything else. The amount of time for planning, grinding and setting up the industrialization will take up half of your game time. I’m certain that this is very interesting for a certain number of gamers out there. However, do most players of these games really yearn for smell of industrial grease while they order around building industrial complexes like Henry Ford, Elon Musk or Jack Ma (of Alibaba fame)? Would they rather enjoy a semi-fantasy story set in beautiful nature helping them escape their urban, industrialization-filled, lives?

Personally, I found myself engrossed in getting right the production lines, but at the same time it became a big chore I was not looking forward to after a while. This will not be the case for everyone though and I can see people being really obsessed with these systems.

If you enjoy gacha games and the idea of building industrial complexes does not repel you, you should give Arknights: Endfield a chance. There’s a lot to do and see in the game and if you plan correctly and spend enough time grinding, you’ll be able to get all that you can out of it without spending a dime, which is all one can really ask of these types of games.