Any game built around gacha mechanics needs to have a certain hook to keep things interesting in the long term, especially if there’s potential to invest your hard-earned dollars into it. For all their systemic sins, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad and Persona 5: The Phantom X at least piqued my interest by expanding on already-revered lore, allowing me to entwine myself in their beloved worlds. The much more enjoyable Zenless Zone Zero, on the other hand, pulled me in with a mix of high-octane combat, endearing character development, and Y2K flair. Arknights: Endfield is the latest competitor in this genre’s fierce attention economy, offering not only an engrossing sci-fi open world to explore, but another mechanically moreish addition: base building and automation. It’s a clever combination that keeps you pushing, but, after 38 hours of grinding, I’ve found that Arknights leans a little too heavily on the tropes of the genre, and stops it just short of feeling like anything more than another solid gacha option to consider for your rotation.

You play as the Endministrator (or Endmin for short) who, after a 10-year absence and an unfortunate case of amnesia, returns to the world of the living to rebuild society on the planet of Talos-II and usher in a new era of safety for its inhabitants. Taming the wilds is no small task, though, and on top of trying to remember who you were before your big sleep, you’ll also face off against a range of evil entities, including leather-clad maurauders, shifting zoomorphic creatures, and other mythic, well-dressed baddies. It’s an intriguing premise framed in a collapsing cyberpunk world, unfortunately dulled by an exposition-heavy opening with awkward stop-and-start pacing. Thankfully, this dialogue-dense beginning does eventually open up somewhat, giving you the freedom to seek out battles across the planet’s atmospheric landscape.

With a set of companions in tow, you’ll venture to the surface of Talos-II to hunt for resources, solve simple environmental platforming puzzles, and clear out zones that you can then access in a larger metagame to construct and automate machinery. To do this, you’ll build a team of up to four Operators who fight and collect items alongside you to push the lengthy story ever onwards. Early on, you’ll have a limited pool of story-specific characters to play as, like the masked Endmin, the empathetic and mission-oriented Perlica, and the spirited Chen Qianyu, though eventually you’ll be able to use a gacha currency to randomly pull new pals, too. Endfield doesn’t have the most imaginative gameplay in the genre – most puzzles involve finding and pressing a few buttons, and you’ll soon tire of trawling through the same few groups of bad guys to dominate an area. The striking cyberpunk setting does much of the heavy lifting here, especially as you transform the oppressive industrial areas into machinery-filled green spaces.

While I’d like to say the story-related issues dry up after the early game, pacing problems do come back to haunt this otherwise compelling experience, particularly as you start to wrestle with the mid-to-late game. The gap between thoughtfully designed missions and filler expeditions is far more obvious, and while some jaunts do well to provide snippets of lore, the lion’s share are monotonous fetch quests. This split is especially frustrating, as there are genuinely interesting story threads to pull at, not only about the Endmin themself but the precarious political situations surrounding their organisation.

The striking cyberpunk setting does much of the heavy lifting here.“

Throughout my playthrough, I enjoyed meeting a growing cast of triumphant heroes and elegant villains, like the leather-clad matriarch Nefarith, whose malevolent tone is as enthralling as it is threatening. New locations, like the bamboo-filled Wuling, also appear just in time to liven things up as the angular design of the opening areas starts to wane. Spirited vocal performances and sporadic helpings of humorous writing certainly add personality to the otherwise jargon-heavy story, too, which helped alleviate fatigue as I bashed my head against the same few mission types.

It goes without saying that there is an eye-watering array of currencies to consider here – a painful staple of gacha games. On top of the usual lottery-style pulls, which allows you to randomly unlock unique characters and weapons, there’s also a paid Battle Pass that rewards you with resources that can be filtered into systems that help speed up progression. You can find items to upgrade your weapon skills, as well as bolster your combat stats, with variant currencies offering specific amounts of level-boosting potency – it’s a monetary mouthful to say the least. If you aren’t keen on buying them, you can still find most currencies on the map or by completing daily challenges, but this is, as you can imagine, like wading through treacle. As costs rise and resources become more scarce, there’s an obvious incentive to pay to skip the hassle of hunting for yourself. It’s not entirely egregious, and I found that I could resist the credit card’s call in this case. But that speaks more to my own stubbornness than Arknights’ balance, which is inconsistent at best.

It’s not all bad, though, and one area Arknights makes a mark is in its character designs. In the early hours, I was more than happy with my humble team of hardworking warriors, but my feelings began to shift once I’d earned the currency needed to try out the character lottery. Every character you meet throws out a handful of quippy one-liners and flashy moves that are effective enough to tug on the heartstrings. There’s the cute peak-shredding Snowshine, whose fuzzy bear shoes and jumbo buster sword are immediately endearing. Another favorite is Arclight, a cyberpunk rendition of the Energizer bunny who dazzles with sparks and sharp movements. There’s plenty of variety available in the roster, and it’s clear developer Hypergryph has taken care to make each character stand out – so it doesn’t feel too bad when you don’t pull your dream bias.

It’s also handy that if, or more likely when, you pull multiples of the same character, you’ll earn tokens that can be used to update their “Potential,” boosting their battle stats and earning some cute art cards to boot. No matter how lucky you think you are, you’ll always pull the less desirable characters more often, and this system does well to soften the pain of seeing the same face pop up time and time again. Think of it like psychological warfare, but adorable!

Developer Hypergryph has taken care to make each character stand out.“

Beyond their appearance, I also enjoy how a character’s personality tends to shape how they move in battle, and the flashy, if simple, combat quickly became my favourite aspect of Arknights. Connecting hits are delivered with vibrant visual payoff, so much so that even my silly mistakes looked like intentional moves. As you explore, you’ll encounter groups of various enemies camped out, like sedimentary spiders or sword-wielding bandits, all of which feature level indicators hovering above their heads. Once ready to engage, you run directly at them, weapons brandished, and start violently mashing buttons to begin your assault.

Instead of controlling the Edmin alone, you can switch between all the members of your team in battle, applying flashy combos that feel engaging in motion and extremely easy to pull off. Each character has a dodge, a light attack, and a special attack that string together nicely, delivering well-choreographed synergies. Once you knock back an enemy and start to juggle them, you can also call in your compatriots to deliver electrifying blows that feel slick in motion – the Endmin flips around in style, while Perlica shoots volts through her opposition. As with the Arknights’ story, this too can lose its lustre as you push deeper into it and realize there’s only so much to find. That said, there is some meditative comfort to be found in the repetition.

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Outside of combat, the rest of your time is spent investing in the infrastructure of your base. Unlike the complex, automation-based gameplay of beloved factory management simulators Factorio and Satisfactory, Arknights’ base building is much more tame. And, thanks to lengthy explanations delivered by NPCs and the option to import handy prefabricated designs, it’s a process that ensures even the most build-averse players can create a functioning base of operations. Paying attention to this system may seem unimportant at first, but these buildings are key to delivering all-important resources. Investing in them early is important if you want to avoid the draw of the easily clickable shop.

First, you’ll plant electric pylons and connect them with relay towers to supply electricity to the area. Though soon enough, you’ll also be able to implement mining as well as machinery that can refine and process raw materials, grinding them and cooking them into new, more useful shapes. Where you choose to implement your power also filters into the platforming challenges in the open world, and you’ll need to find and power hungry machinery and unlock broken-down bases to solve puzzles and unlock more loot. As someone who hasn’t always enjoyed the intense, efficiency-focused approach of similar automation games, Arknights provides a friendly alternative that’s ripe for community collaboration and experimentation, and it does well to fuel exploration in the open-world setting.

Verdict

Arknights: Endfield is a beautiful addition to the gacha genre that stands out by blending a complex factoring-building simulation with an enticing open-world RPG. While it shines with its bright vocal performances, fashionable character designs, and funny dialogue, a slog of predictable puzzles and an Olympic-sized pool of currencies dulls the experience somewhat. Even so, with a meditative combat system and a plethora of building options to try out, it’s still extremely easy to sink hours into. If you have plenty of time to burn and an affinity for automation, Arknights: Endfield provides more than enough to keep you busy for months (and potentially years) to come.