Arknights: Endfield First Impressions - Whoa, Perlica is so fluffy! *pets head*

Arknights: Endfield released today, and I jumped straight in to try it out since it was one of the games I was most anticipating among recent releases. The game is set in the same universe as Arknights, but in the far future on another planet with a completely new protagonist.

The story so far (I only completed the first chapter to finish the tutorial) seems to be a standard RPG tale. The protagonist is an amnesiac who awakened 10 years after falling into a coma and doesn't know his position. However, he seems to be an extremely important person in the company (according to everyone who meets him) and possesses special powers.

The prologue seems to indicate that the world is "repeating" and that this is just another iteration of those cycles. However, considering they never really expand on it, that may just be speculation on my part. Either way, it is not a masterpiece so far, but I think no one expects the first chapter to be one, as there needs to be some buildup.

Many of the faces we see are extremely familiar to people who played the original game. I am assuming they are mostly just cameos in the form of characters that look the same but are actually different people. Think of Gilberta looking like Angelica or Laevatain looking like Surtr.

The core gameplay is divided into two different parts. One is the classic action RPG with open-world exploration that we have grown accustomed to from various other games like Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves. The second part is the factory building aspect, and that is where the game is quite original in the gacha world.

They basically rebuilt the Factorio gameplay in high-quality 3D. You build factories, connect them to power, and create paths for materials to enter and items to exit. You create a nice loop that generates resources for you passively, even when you are logged out of the game altogether.

Aside from the incredible scenery, one of the highlights of the game for me is the character models. The characters all look extremely fluffy and smooth in both appearance and animation. Just looking at Perlica (who is basically the voice of the protagonist) makes me want to fluff her hair and ears all day.

The gacha is a bit confusing, to be honest. It seems similar to the Genshin Impact 50/50 system, but it adds extra complexity that makes it hard to understand and quantify what you are doing. You have a 50/50 chance at 80 rolls and a guarantee at 120. The 50/50 carries over to the next banner, but the 120 does not. You get a free 10-roll after 30 rolls, but this does not count toward the 120-roll guarantee.

For the weapon banner, you can roll using currency you receive as a return from rolling in the character banner. The numbers sum up such that you are almost always getting the weapon too if you are not lucky enough to get the character before the guarantee. You can save up these currencies for the next weapon banner, though.

Overall, I am enjoying the game, and I can see this becoming a mainstay in my gacha lineup. Hopefully, they will keep up with good content flowing in every 3-4 weeks like the others do, and I think it will have a long life. Now I am going back to play more, and maybe we can have another post in the near future talking about other elements of the series. I saw that there is already an event running, so I am curious to see how they handle them.

You can see the latest updates of my gameplay on Arknights Endfield on the stream page.