Arknights Endfield Beta Test Impressions

Arknights Endfield Beta developed and published by Hypergryph has changed quite a significant amount from the Alpha test so much that it feels completely different especially the visual changes presented in the Beta.  Moreover, this change is completely positive as the game feels really fleshed out and offer a sense of completion. This is done through the visuals presented in the game being fleshed out more in comparison to the Alpha test awhile ago.  Each area of the game feels unique and feels like the world while untamed, is being conquered by humanity.  Aside from that the characters all feel unique and different from one another with some more added visual flare, due to changes in lighting, and shading improving the overall look of the models.  While they have made combat the same, they added more visual flare and added some more to the combat for certain characters leading up to team builds. Moreover, they changed a the narrative a bit to focus more on where the overall plot will lead into and set the stage for the future.

Visually the game is a mixture of a realism with anime styled graphics that create a wonderful contrast that strikes the player.  The only other game that has a similar style is Girls Frontline 2, but due to how underutilized this art style is it is nice to have another game differentiating itself from the more conventional anime gacha games.

Aside from general aesthetics, the different characters in the game are all unique and stay in line with the overall tone for the Arknight’s series.  Moreover, each character shows a lot more personality through their idle animations, random dialogue, profile, and inspecting characters.

By adding in bits and pieces of a characters’ personality, which is such a nice thing to do as it adds some life to the game.  This extra dialogue while in combat, and roaming makes the experience feel a lot less lonely as it truly feels like you’re moving with a band of friends.  Getting back on track for how the game visually looks.

Gameplay wise it has several different elements mixed in, such as open combat, base building, resource management, and factory styled manager.  The combat of the game has more or less stayed the same since the beta, but the most tuned mechanic in the game would have to be the change in healing for combat being changed to 3 health items per character.  To elaborate even further each character will automatically use the healing items once they drop pass a certain percentage of their health bar. Moreover, the base building in this game can mostly be seen in the outpost system in game.  Each outpost requires certain items to maintain and to ensure it levels up accordingly, this is a nice way for players to try out different building structures and format their build zones to optimize resource generation.  Aside from that, players will need to find various resources throughout the map and collect them and connect them to the resource grid.  These resources will be used to power up the base, and will be for various crafting recipes for helpful items that will benefit the player in the long run.  To go a little bit more in depth on how the base system works is that players will need to run conveyor belts containing certain resources to go into various factory modules for the base.  Then connect them in such a way it can resemble some of the more elaborate and extensive conveyor belt systems in games like Factario and a Fallout 4 expansion.

The building is still spot on; however, one major thing is a way for players to wipe out the base and build from a fresh template as there are times when the conveyor belts get out of hand.  A wipe feature would be beneficial for players when gaining new resources, as working with a blank template is a nice thing to have especially when making extensive conveyor belt systems and needing to take into account how resource extensive some of them can be.  Moreover, aside from the base building the game offers players the chance to go into the space ship where they can hangout with the various characters, they have obtained from the gacha.  One beneficial system they should add is create specialized rooms on the ship either for each character or allow the player(s) to customize some of the interior rooms to their hearts delight.

As for the narrative of the game it is a work in process, but the team is taking strides into making the hook of the game a whole lot better.  This makes the overall narrative have a higher chance to change before the game officially releases.  However, some of the character profiles can be changed up to show some more insight into who they are and flesh out some more of their backstories.  This will be great for those who want to know more about the characters they are playing and understand their motivations.

Arknights Endfield Beta test feels great to play and overall hypes those lucky players who got the game to be more likely to play it.  Moreover, to those who streamed the game it will draw a lot of attention and overall impact the initial success of the game and longevity of the rise of triple AAA gacha games in the market.  Plus, all the positive reception from them will more or less hype of the game and from personal experience the game overall feels polished with some minor collision bugs that can be easily remedied by fixing certain collision.  However, these are all minor issues that will be resolved or not be too impactful to the overall gameplay experience as players will need to go out of their way to find them.

For more information and to download the game, visit HERE.

Related: Reviews by Kyle Manila