The gacha market has grown exponentially over the past decade, due in no small part to the success of games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail from MiHoYo. By combining AAA budget and visuals with mobile gameplay sensibilities, they managed to find their own slice of the gaming market that other developers dream of obtaining. Because of this, I feel like we see a lot of companies try to churn out their own version of Genshin or Honkai while trying to put their own spin on the formula. Arknights: Endfield, developed by Hypergryph, is the latest attempt in doing so. And while Endfield offers a beautiful world to explore with some light, but still engaging combat, it constantly gets in its own way by introducing an exhausting amount of systems that bring Endfield to a screeching halt.
Welcome to Talos-II
You begin Endfield by selecting one of two body types for your main character, the Endministrator, an amnesiac leader of a group known as Endfield Industries. After waking up from a mysterious hibernation-like period, you are thrust into the world of Talos-II, a habitable moon that orbits the planet Talos, and the mission that you started ten years previously, but have no memory of. Together with your team of operators and colonists, you must guide the Endministrator through the perils of Talos-II while also trying to build bases and settlements to help combat the local monsters and rogue criminals, known as Landbreakers.
The world of Talos-II is absolutely beautiful and teeming with life and places to explore. I would often find myself stopping to admire the scenery around me, while also picking out landmasses in the distance that looked prime for exploration. Throughout Talos-II, you will find many hidden chests and collectibles that will give you resources for progression as well as give experience to your authority level. This authority level is ultimately what dictates how far into the story you can progress, so it is important to explore as much as possible to find these hidden caches. However, by completing missions and checking off your daily and weekly tasks, you can also gain huge chunks of experience for your authority level as well.
I’m not the biggest fan of this style of progression gatekeeping, but I only had a couple of instances with my time with Endfield where I had to grind out an authority level or two to progress. It seems like they have paced out these levels well enough that it shouldn’t be an issue as long as you aren’t beelining from story section to story section.
Clear the Way
Combat in Endfield is one of the highlights of the experience, although a little on the light side. Each operator has a basic combo, a special ability, and an ultimate attack that can be activated once their meter is full. On top of this, performing a full basic combo or performing certain special abilities will allow you to trigger a follow-up attack from a member of your active party. Each operator varies in what can trigger their follow-up attack, so when putting your team together, you have to think about what operatives synergize with each other. While this adds some much-needed depth to the combat system and team composition, I still found that combat could become a bit monotonous at times when fighting basic mobs throughout the world and its dungeons. However, boss fights are where the combat is truly allowed to shine.
From the intricate moveset to the sheer spectacle, I was continuously wowed by every boss encounter throughout Endfield. I cannot stress enough just how visually impressive Endfield’s boss encounters are. Hypergryph has become a master of animation and visual fidelity over the last couple of years, and Endfield is by far the studio’s most impressive title yet on that spectrum. Additionally, each boss fight introduces unique mechanics that you will have to pay attention to if you want the best chance to survive them. This creates a sense of controlled chaos throughout these battles, where you will constantly be kept on your toes and having to dodge out of moves and adapt. It is a shame that there are only a handful of these boss encounters throughout the story, though. It really feels that if Endfield had a greater focus on its combat and boss fights, it would have benefited the game’s overall pacing instead of there being so much focus on my least favorite segments of Endfield: AIC Factory building.
Bogged Down with Busy Work
One of the things you will be doing a lot of in Endfield is setting up AIC Factories to process materials and create relay points to spread power throughout Talos-II. This system is introduced early into the game and seems pretty intriguing and simple at first. You will call forth a Protocol-Automation Core (PAC), set up some relays, and run power to them from your PAC to connect these relays to offline power sources in order to gain access to areas as you explore. Additionally, you can set up units that will process resources you will find throughout Talos-II into materials you can then turn into gear. However, the amount of these processing units and types of resources quickly starts to pile up, and the game bombarded me with literal hours of tutorials about how each one of these units functions, to the point where I was almost immediately overwhelmed and confused about what units did what and how I should be laying out my factory. These tutorials and base-building segments brought the momentum to a screeching halt and served as annoying roadblocks in the way of what I really enjoyed about Arknights: Endfield.
That’s not to say that these mechanics are half-baked or that I don’t think anyone will get enjoyment out of them; I just think that the juxtaposition between combat and exploration with the AIC system clashes when shoved into the same package. The constant shift in pace between high-energy combat encounters and slow, deliberate factory planning creates a disconnect that Endfield never fully reconciles. Just as I would get into a rhythm exploring Talos-II or experimenting with party synergies, the game would ask me to stop and reassess production lines, power routing, or factory layouts. Rather than complementing one another, these systems often feel like they’re competing for your attention.
This uneven pacing makes the AIC Factory segments feel heavier than they probably need to be. Even when I understood what the game was asking of me, spending extended stretches managing resources and infrastructure dulled the sense of forward momentum that exploration and combat worked so hard to establish. The depth is clearly there for players who enjoy planning and optimizing their base, but it can be exhausting when layered on top of everything else Endfield is trying to do. Instead of enhancing the experience, these moments frequently pulled me out of it, leaving the game feeling more fragmented than cohesive.
The Gacha Experience
As a gacha-driven title, Arknights: Endfield is upfront about how its monetization works. Rather than placing every part of progression behind randomness, Endfield separates operator pulls from weapon pulls, which helps ensure that building and refining a squad doesn’t feel entirely dependent on luck. Over time, most of the game’s key currencies are earned naturally through exploration, missions, and timed activities. There are multiple passes that you can choose to purchase and ways to pay your way through them, meaning if someone really wanted to, they could spend a lot of money on Endfield’s gacha mechanics. With that being said, I found I was able to build up enough credits regularly to keep making pulls for operators and weapons without feeling like I was being shortchanged by not coughing up any additional money.
There are still frustrations that bubble up as just part of the gacha experience, like pulling the same operators over and over again, that just really sour me to the genre as a whole. Endfield isn’t the most blatant or predatory gacha system I’ve seen, but that doesn’t mean it is perfect either. So, just be aware that if you are someone who struggles with restraint when it comes to microtransactions, you could find yourself pouring money into Endfield to get certain operator pulls or find the perfect weapon setup.
A Frustrating But Good Time
Despite its clear ambition and undeniable production values, Arknights: Endfield often feels like a game pulled in too many directions at once. At its best, it delivers a striking sense of scale through its world design, visually spectacular boss fights, and a combat system that, while relatively simple, shines when it asks you to engage with enemy mechanics through its spectacular boss fights. Talos-II is a genuinely compelling place to explore, and Hypergryph’s mastery of atmosphere and presentation is on full display throughout the experience. When Endfield focuses on exploration and combat, it shows real promise as something more than just another entry chasing the success of Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail.
Unfortunately, Endfield is frequently undermined by the sheer weight of its systems. The AIC Factory mechanics, while deep and thoughtfully designed, disrupt the game’s pacing and create a constant tug-of-war between what Endfield does well and what it insists you engage with. Combined with the inherent frustrations of its gacha framework, the result is a game that can feel more exhausting than it needs to be. Arknights: Endfield is an impressive and often enjoyable experience, but one that struggles to find cohesion. Players willing to invest the time to wrestle with its complexity will find a lot to admire, but for others, the friction between its ideas may ultimately outweigh its strengths.
Disclaimer: Hypergryph provided a PC copy of Arknights: Endfield for review purposes.
