Crimson Desert — The Cliffs and Open World of Pywell

A Week at the Factory, or a Review of Arknights: Endfield

I wasn't very familiar with the Arknights universe, but I knew that the game of the same name was very, very popular, so much so that there's a ton of various figure merchandise of its characters. Even I have a Siege figure by BeBox in my collection. Naturally, I tried the game itself 3 or 4 times, but for some reason, I could only last a couple of hours at most before abandoning the project. Nevertheless, I was looking forward to the release of Arknights: Endfield and thought it was an excellent way to get into the world of Arknights. And, in fact, I wasn't wrong. But let's figure out what kind of beast this Arknights: Endfield is.

Wow, you're a sleepyhead. Even yesterday's storm didn't wake you up.

In terms of the story, the player is to take on the role of the so-called Endministrator — an incredibly powerful being who commands the power of Originium, thanks to which they can erect incredible technological structures and thereby help humanity settle in a new place. I don't know exactly what happened to Terra, but its inhabitants had to leave their homeland and settle on the planet Talos II. To be more precise, Talos II is a satellite, but who cares, right? And so our Endmin, being a very intelligent being with considerable abilities, managed to found the Endfield corporation, whose task is to make the planet habitable and generally stand guard over life.

Our protagonist wakes up on a lifeboat of an orbital space station after a decade of stasis and, thanks to amnesia (oh, how convenient), finds themselves on the same page as the player, who knows nothing about the game's world. But the local director, Replica (sorry, Perlica), quickly brings the Endmin up to speed. Well, that is, she tries, but suddenly a distress signal comes from Talos II, and we urgently need to grab a chainsword, a couple of boltguns, and drop from orbit onto the heads of those who dared to terrorize the local population.

And the spirit for this was found in the Agellows — these elemental creatures that arise from special beacons that suck resources from the planet. But, of course, they don't appear on their own, and someone clearly stands behind the attack on the local scientific center. And even the local barbarian population suddenly switched from chaotic raids to quite thoughtful attacks. This is s-s-suspicious. And that's exactly what we have to figure out, while simultaneously dealing with the aftermath of attacks and raids. And with that, let's finish with the story. I'd rather share my general impressions of the narrative.

To be honest, I didn't experience any wild delight from going through the main storyline. I can't give it any rating other than "It's okay." Yes, sometimes it was quite interesting, and sometimes it was so stuffy and uninteresting that my hand itself reached for the dialogue skip button. This, by the way, applies to both the main story and side quests. Although I really liked the Surtr arc, but I'm a fanboy, so don't take me as a benchmark.

But what Arknights: Endfield cannot be denied is its diverse characters, each of whom can boast a unique level of cliché. Want a genki idiot? Here's Chenka for you. Not enough stupidity on screen? Take the local oyabun Tantan as an addition. Want something more romantic and not so stupid? There's the Chinese dragon-wife Zhuang Fangyi. Love fashionable gyaru? Take the dragon with a great butt, Yvonne. Just be careful with the loli-wolf girl Rossi. She might bite your throat out. But my personal favorite is the cold snake-woman Fluorite. And most Arknights: Endfield players share my opinion. Although if you think about it, in a gacha game, you can't do without a huge palette of characters of all kinds of personalities. You have to make money somehow.

The main thing is to know when to stop

And here we move on to earnings. Or rather, to the gacha system. I admit honestly, without special guides and a shot of vodka, it will be quite problematic to figure out the local character banners. It should be noted right away that we can guarantee getting an event character for 120 pulls on their banner. This is cheaper than some competitors and is undoubtedly a plus.

In projects with gacha, there is always a chance to get a standard character instead of a limited one. It's a shame, of course, but everyone has been through it. Many players are used to the fact that after losing on a banner once, the next legendary will definitely be the limited one. But in Arknights: Endfield, it's somewhat different. You can lose on the event banner as many times as you want; you only have one guarantee for the event character — 120 pulls. And this guarantee does not carry over to the next banner, so if you don't have currency for 120 pulls, it's better not to even start.

There is also a guarantee for a six-star operator, and it equals 80 attempts. But as I said earlier, you can lose non-stop and get your fem-boy dragons. I, by the way, am one of those people.

But that's only half the trouble. You can get used to such a system, especially considering that Epic Seven taught me the 120-pull guarantee in its time. But my biggest dissatisfaction was caused by the fact that you cannot spin the weapon banner for the same currency as the character banner. We are not counting premium currency; there are no whales among us, so you will spin for weapons using so-called cashback, obtained from the character gacha.

Imagine this situation: you threw a couple of dozen spare pulls into the event banner, pulled Surtr (Lævateinn), but don't have enough cashback for her signature sword. And what to do? Spend money? Keep spinning the banner for that currency? What if, besides Surtr, you also want Tantan, who has already been announced and will appear who knows when? Then dumping your hard-earned in-game currency into current banners for cashback is definitely not an option. Then you're left sitting without a signature weapon for your waifu and waiting for a rerun.

It seems like you spin the weapon banner for free, but the very lack of opportunity to directly spin for the needed signature weapon using the currency farmed in the game is a bit disappointing. Yes, in the long run, you will always have some amount of currency for the weapon banner if you don't spin for every signature. I won't talk about the greed or generosity of the local gacha, because we would need to look at how much currency they will give us with each content update. It's obvious to a hedgehog that at release, they poured so much of this currency on you that you will definitely get Lævateinn. It could only be worse when you win your 50/50s in a couple of 120-pull guarantees. That's when it will be incredibly frustrating.