In some ways, Arknights: Endfield is following Genshin Impact's footsteps remarkably closely. With both games, an established gacha developer has pivoted to a much more ambitious open-world RPG that has a better shot at drawing in hardcore gamers who aren't quite so keen on mobile games. But that is where the major similarities end. As I learned in Endfield's recent technical test, its world and combat are very different from Genshin's, and more importantly, it has an entire second game – an unexpectedly deep Factorio-style base builder – up its sleeve.
Endfield is so different from Genshin, in fact, that it has maybe the best chance yet at meaningfully competing with it by finding a sizable audience outside the sphere of Arknights, the developer's hugely popular tower defense gacha game. Based on my test time, I may well be among that audience come launch, because I like this game a lot more than I thought I would.
It's a gacha game, all right
I am hugely envious of the people who'll find themselves in the exact center of the video game Venn diagram that developer Gryphline has created here. Some games just feel made for you, and for fans of Arknights, open-world games, RPGs, gacha mechanics, and also base builders, Endfield will fit like a tailored suit. As someone who loves RPGs, likes open-world games, can enjoy building bases, tolerates gacha mechanics, and only knows Arknights by reputation, I had more tepid expectations going in.
Endfield's story perfectly meets those expectations by opening with amnesiac nonsense that I struggle to remember after just a week. You play as the Endministrator – I'm still not sure if I love or hate that name – freshly and hastily awoken in such a way that you left most of your memories behind in your little cryo sleep chamber. You're basically the magical repairwoman (or man, depending on which protagonist you pick) of Endfield Industries, renowned for your mystical ability to instantly build and fix stuff, which I actually kind of like as a silly but fun way to canonize base-building mechanics. But so far, perhaps because I have no Arknights experience, I'm not really feeling invested in the cast or world. That said, I tend to get attached to characters who are strong and fun to play, so I'd probably find my favorites among the game's SSR-rarity lineup anyway.
The meat of the technical test was much more engrossing than the world, to the point that I'm still kind of sad it's over and I can't play anymore. Stubbornly ignoring the story for the time being, I would break Endfield into three main gameplay components: the gacha grind, combat, and base building.
I unfortunately couldn't get a good feel for the game's economy in the limited test – that is, how easy or tedious it is to pull new characters and upgrade the ones you have – so that's going to remain a question mark for now. But frankly, this bit is probably most likely to change in the leadup to release, so that's not much of a surprise. Using regular-ol' Arknights as a reference, I'll assume the gacha bit is fine. It looks like the usual stuff: enhance your weapon, level your abilities, and slap on some gear (some of which can be crafted rather than farmed via RNG, which is refreshing after years of getting burned by Genshin artifacts). But I'm infinitely more excited by the other elements because gacha mechanics will always, at best, be inoffensive.
"Strategic elements" is selling it short
To my delight, combat in Endfield feels like a middle ground between Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 – not quite as dynamic as the second one just yet, but with much more going on than the first. It's a real-time 3D RPG that leans more into strategy than action. You don't perform combos like you would in the likes of Final Fantasy 16 or Tales of Arise; to use basic attacks, you hold The Attack Button to automatically hit the closest enemy with standard swings of your weapon. If that sounds boring, that's because it is. That's why depth is layered in through the party system instead, and it works pretty darn well.
Each of your four team members essentially act as abilities on your hotbar. When I tap the Endministrator's key, for instance, time freezes and the linear AoE marker for her default skill pulls up. I'll aim it in such a way that it hits as many enemies as possible and then let it rip, chipping away at the stagger meters of anything I hit and priming my next basic attack to deal a bunch of extra damage. From there, I can follow up with another party member's ability, like the uppercut move of draconic humanoid Chen Qianyu – by the way, almost everyone in this game has animal features like horns or fluffy ears or scaly tails – who launches enemies into the air to disrupt incoming attacks.
Some characters (perhaps all characters, but I don't know that for sure just yet) have alternate skills that can be swapped in. The Endministrator's linear skill can be replaced with a lunge that ends with a small cone AoE, and you can use this to deal damage while also repositioning to dodge enemy AoE markers. Similarly, you charge up an ultimate by using your skill a set number of times, sort of like a proxy cooldown, whereas skills have traditional, to-the-second cooldowns. The Endministrator's ultimate is a humongous semicircle AoE that deals extra stagger and damage, making it useful for controlling groups.
Combat quickly becomes a mix of crowd control, aligning and avoiding AoE markers, and chaining skills together in the most efficient way possible. Combining certain debuffs lets you deal more damage or spawn energy orbs that you can detonate for heavy hits, and this is a much more effective way of fighting than just spamming whatever skills you have off-cooldown. You also want to save some skills to interrupt the red-ring special attacks that bosses do. There's a degree of sequencing to Endfield that livens up fights, and I'm looking forward to theorycrafting parties with more units at my disposal.
Putting the industry in Endfield Industries
To be honest, I don't know why I've spent so much time banging on about the open-world RPG part of this open-world RPG when it's all just a smokescreen for the real shit: base building. There's no other way to say this; Endfield just straight-up turns into Factorio after a point, and I was caught entirely off guard. You harvest resources from remote mining nodes connected by custom ziplines (a fabulous addition for an open-world game), refine and process things at specific machines, and then send them down conveyor belts to be crafted into new components that will become more machines processing more resources. You budget and route electricity, assign inputs and outputs, and hoard all manner of ore. Up and up and up the scale of your engineering ascends, a perpetual motion machine powered by an unshakable instinct to collect and perfect.
At first, I thought this would just be a cute little minigame, maybe a way to automatically farm some of the materials you'll need for upgrading characters. But then I saw the tech tree unfurl before me like an abyss that stares back, and I realized that Endfield isn't playing around. I was being serious earlier that there is an entire other game inside this game. I spent a good few hours tinkering with my first base, importing ores and optimizing conveyor belt assembly lines, and I didn't make a dent in Endfield's tech progression. I don't think it will fully measure up to premium base builders and factory sims like Factorio, but as an additional mode in a free RPG – hell, the test version of a free RPG – it seems unbelievably good.
I don't know how much crossover there actually is among fans of open-world games, RPGs, Arknights, base builders, and gacha games, but the two main gameplay loops of Endfield both seem solid enough to keep a huge range of players on the hook. I'm not even the biggest base building guy, but even I found myself sucked into that side of the game. The idea of playing Diet Factorio in order to streamline a gacha resource grind – and have a lot more fun with that grind as a result – is something I never knew I needed. Endfield is an eclectic mix of ideas that I need to see more of, so I'll be following it very closely as it moves toward its PS5, PC, and mobile launch.
