Arknights: Endfield is engaging and gorgeous, but held back by its predatory gacha system

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I haven’t played much of Arknights. I tried the game for a short time, but I didn’t enjoy tower defense gameplay, so I stopped. An unlucky start with the random character pulls also discouraged me. I generally don’t get into gacha games unless they really grab my attention – whether through fun gameplay, appealing characters, or a fair way to spend money.

I decided to try out Arknights: Endfield. Unlike the original Arknights, which is a tower defense game, Endfield is more of an open-world action game. What makes it unique is that it combines this action gameplay with base building, a genre I don’t usually enjoy. However, I was drawn in by the game’s stunning character designs – it’s easily one of the most visually impressive gacha games available.

The game looks amazing and runs incredibly smoothly. Even with the graphics settings maxed out, my computer (equipped with a 7800 XTX and Ryzen 5 5600X) handled it easily, consistently delivering a stable 60 frames per second. While a 120 FPS mode is available, the game indicated my system didn’t quite meet the necessary specs, so I didn’t try it out.

So, I got to try this game on the test servers, which was awesome! But honestly, I’m a little worried about how well it’ll actually run when it officially launches. I’ve played a bunch of gacha games before, and they usually seem smooth during beta testing, but then things get really shaky when everyone starts playing at once. Hopefully, this one will be different!

During testing, I had access to two accounts. One was a brand new account, letting me start the game from the very beginning. The other was a more advanced account that had already finished the initial story and unlocked most of the game’s systems for the first area. I mainly used the advanced account to test combat, and it was about halfway through the story – specifically, starting at the second chapter. This meant I had access to the Wuling region, but hadn’t built any structures there yet.

Endfield differs from most games of its kind by letting you control your entire team at once, rather than just one character. Everyone shares a single pool of skill points (SP), displayed as a gauge above their health. To succeed in battle, you’ll need to coordinate your team’s abilities and find powerful combinations, making careful timing essential to maximize your SP.

Besides regular attacks and abilities, the game lets you dodge, but it uses stamina. If you time your dodge perfectly, it costs less stamina and also builds up SP, letting your team use their skills more often.

The game really focuses on building up your base, which we call the AIC, or Automated Industry Complex. You can construct various buildings all over the map, and they fall into four main types. Combat buildings help you in battles, either by attacking enemies or supporting your team. You can strategically place these buildings and even use them as spots to passively earn resources while you’re away. Other buildings are designed to help you explore the world more easily, like ziplines that let you quickly reach different areas.

The game features two kinds of structures that collect resources on their own. Building your base can be done in a detailed, manual way, or you can use the game’s blueprint system. Blueprints let you quickly construct pre-designed structures created by the developers.

The game also lets you copy base designs from other players. I didn’t really try this out much, though, because I wasn’t very interested in building bases, and the account I was using for testing already had a complete base in the early part of the game.

I also received an account that was already well-established, having completed the first area and unlocked the second chapter of the story. This allowed me to try out the game’s gacha system, which included enough in-game currency for approximately 300 pulls based on the current version.

Endfield’s character acquisition system is similar to those found in popular games like those from HoYoverse, offering limited-time characters and a ‘pity’ system that guarantees a rare character after a certain number of attempts. While the account had all characters available, players still need to collect duplicates to unlock special abilities. However, Endfield is more lenient than many similar games, needing only five duplicates of a character to fully unlock their abilities, compared to the usual six.

One thing I really dislike about gacha games is how many different types of currency they use. It’s confusing to remember what each one is for. For instance, there’s one currency for getting limited-time characters, but you can also get a similar one that expires. The game’s interface doesn’t help much either, making it hard to figure out which currency does what. Plus, you often have separate tickets for rolling for standard characters versus weapons.

While the game borrows its character acquisition system from popular gacha games, some additional features make the experience frustrating. It takes around 120 pulls to get the featured character, and getting duplicates requires even more pulls. This is especially tough on players who don’t spend much money or play for free, and the system resets after each attempt – you either get what you want or you don’t. The initial 300 pulls aren’t enough to fully upgrade the featured character, as you need around 240 pulls for the second duplicate. This makes the game feel less rewarding than advertised. However, I’ve heard from friends that this high pull requirement is similar to the original Arknights game.

I’m really impressed with Endfield so far – the combat is exciting and the graphics are among the best I’ve seen in a gacha game. The story seems interesting too, but I’m hesitant to fully commit because the gacha system feels overly aggressive, even for someone who plays a lot of these games. I’ve never been a fan of the gacha mechanics HoYoverse uses, and unfortunately, Endfield’s version feels even more frustrating, making it hard to get invested.

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2026-01-20 17:57