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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

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Previews:

The Gamer

Arknights: Endfield risks overloading players with its relentless deployment of distinct content, but that's better than a stale concept that's thin on bespoke features. From the visually stunning sci-fi setting and impressive storytelling (the English voice acting is great, by the way!), to the gripping real-time combat, it seems the guiding principle behind this big-budget gamble is to offer something for everybody.

The result is a very positive first impression, despite my remaining concerns over an unknown monetization scheme. And that part sure ain't going away until we experience those drop rates firsthand. Endfield wasn't even on my radar before now, but it's now a front-and-center upcoming RPG.

Dualshockers

One of the first pieces of information we got about Arknights: Endfield Beta Test II was that it would take players around 50–60 hours to complete everything it offers. I barely scratched the surface with my nearly seven-hour playthrough. While HYPERGRYPH did provide several save slots set in the endgame, I preferred starting from the very beginning since I had no prior experience with it.

As soon as I booted it up, my first impression was sheer awe. Arknights: Endfield already looks and feels more pristine, gorgeous, and sharper than most live-service games it'll inevitably be compared to. The English voice dub was spot-on, the framerate was stable (granted, I was playing on a beastly PC with maxed-out settings in 4K), and overall, the game just felt great to play.

[...]

It's one of the first times I've played a live-service game that genuinely feels like an RPG first and a gacha game second.

Hardcore Gamer

The biggest factor that helps the combat of Endfield stand out from other Action-RPG gachas is the character's party. Many similar games only have a single character on the field at a time, compared to Endfield, which has your entire party of four attacking enemies at the same time, while also allowing the player to instantly switch which one of them the player is controlling with only a single button press. There's even a team assist attack mechanic, which activates after a successful combo.

Despite its simple combat, Arknights Endfield does a good job at making sure that each of its 23 playable characters plays differently from each other. A character like Akekuri could specialize in fast but weak attacks at a close range, while someone like Perlica could do high damage and attack from a range, but at the cost of her combat speed being much slower than others.

This uniqueness extends to the character's skills as well. While a large number of the cast simply perform a powerful attack when their skill is activated, there are many characters who do something truly interesting. This can range from tossing a spear into the ground in order to call it to your location later, damaging all enemies in its path, to giving your attacks an elemental buff that'll inflict a status effect on enemies after a few combos.

Game Rant

The end result, or at least the Beta Test 2 result, for Arknights: Endfield is one that I can't describe simply. Arknights: Endfield is a free-to-play action RPG with factory simulation features that delivers strong cinematics, features strong character development (narratively and combat-wise), has a strong (and growing) community focus, rewards players who log in daily, has features I'd hope to see in bonafide companion RPGs, has all the exploration features you could want, and an extensive array of supplemental features that round out a unique experience. I don't think Arknights: Endfield will be for everyone, but it certainly welcomes them all with a strong feature list.

Pocket Tactics

If you're as new to this world as I am, let me give you a quick rundown before I get into what I experienced during my time with the Arknights: Endfield beta. At its core, the game is a sci-fi fantasy action RPG with some gacha mechanics layered on top. You start the game off as either a male or female Endministrator, who is thrown into combat with various gnarly monsters, before suddenly waking up with a bad case of memory loss aboard a large space station.

As the story progresses, the gameplay changes and opens up a massive factory building element that, once again, felt a little daunting as it's not a genre of game I've spent a lot of time with. However, this fear was quickly washed away, as Light explained that in this new beta, they took on player feedback to add blueprints that make the system much simpler. He also said that you don't necessarily have to take part in the factory element, though it will make everything progress a lot slower.

COGconnected

There's a clear Death Stranding inspiration present in Endfield. Things like ziplines constructed by you and other players appear throughout the regions you visit, and other helpful structures like pylons. Blueprints designed by players can be shared, which expedites the construction process.

These are all great ideas that aren't revolutionary, but new for Arknights. AICs don't interest me much but they may draw a new audience. Generally, Endfield is striking me as a game that allows you to get what you want from it. AICs aren't entirely necessary for a fun gameplay experience. There's much on offer, whether you're there exclusively for the story and characters, world exploration, combat, or factory building.

[...]

The game looks stunning, paired with good sound design and great music. On that note, the band Starset performed some of the game's music live at the event, including a new song written for Endfield. The awkward aspect I mentioned earlier? It was this: A rock band bordering on metal dressed to the nines performing heavy music to a seated crowd of roughly fifty media personnel and a few influencers in a small hotel ballroom. The band killed it, but the experience was pretty funny. The band knew it, we knew it, but it was alright. It was an idea better suited for a conference or The Game Awards.

HYPERGRYPH has emphasized their effort in reworking the story and designing rich areas to explore. From my experience, their work is paying off. Mobile gaming has come a long way in a short time. It's one thing for Endfield to run smoothly on PC and PS5. The most impressive feat will be its performance on mobile. Between the fidelity, animations, large maps, and real-time combat, it may be a miracle that the game runs well on older phones.

The Outerhaven

Even after nearly six hours with Arknights: Endfield, I left eager for more. There's still plenty to test in Beta Test II, such as the shared facilities system and the new pity mechanic. In the earlier region, shared facilities already exist. You can use structures like another player's zipline towers, but maintaining them requires repairs on your side. I'm curious to see how this system behaves in proper multiplayer scenarios.

Overall, Arknights: Endfield shows clear progress since the first beta. I'm eager to dive even deeper once the new beta goes live on my own setup. The developers mentioned that the build we played was still not final and that additional changes are planned for the public test.

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Applications for Beta Test 2 (PC/Mobile) are still open until Nov 17 at 05:00 (UTC-5). Once you've completed the recruitment survey, and if you're selected, you'll be able to participate in the closed beta scheduled to start on Nov 27 (UTC-5).

PC/Mobile CBT2 recruitment survey → https://survey.gryphline.com/s/307f02139423c46f3fdb9fa69e3a1eda

There's also a CBT for PS5. The sign-up period currently has no cutoff date, and the start time for the technical test is still unknown.

PS5 CBT2 recruitment survey → https://survey.gryphline.com/s/836757b2624e8632b10f22ef28339a4c

 

[Spyxos]

Something is off with the artstyle. But otherwise it looks interesting.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

I like everything I see, except for the dual MCs, I'm so fucking sick of it, reaching my limit with this dumb bullshit.

Other than that, it just looks and sounds fantastic, top notch JRPG.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

To say I just can't wait to finally play it, is to say nothing. Thankfully and probably I won't have to drop any other gacha I play, cuz I can bypass base building thing entirely, not the management though but still, one less thing to not worry about at all.

The CBTII recruitment will end in 2 days from now, so hopefully if any of us signed up for it, we'll know if we got picked or not soon. I also hope that it's the last CBT and right after there will be full release before both WuWa and ZZZ anniversaries. They sure took a lot of time to polish and tweak the game as best as they could so I've zero doubts that we'll have a great game to play at launch.

 

[Felessan]

Something is off with the artstyle. But otherwise it looks interesting.

It's their trademark artstyle
Something like you can recognize Minaba artstyle immediately in GBF, so is Arknight keep it's artstyle quite coherent

I like everything I see, except for the dual MCs, I'm so fucking sick of it, reaching my limit with this dumb bullshit.

Yeah
Male MC is redundant

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Some interesting stuff here about the modified Unity version they're using to build Endfield. Apparently the poly count for their character models is between 80 - 100k. No wonder they look so detailed!

Arknights: Endfield devs heavily modified Unity to accommodate the game’s 100,000-polygon characters models and massive factory systems - AUTOMATON WEST

Arknights: Endfield developer reveal details on how they tackled the (rather demanding) graphics of their first 3D title in the series.

automaton-media.com

During the conference, the development team shared details about the game's elaborate graphics, the implementation of which required heavy customization of the Unity engine.

For example, the character models for Endfield use about 80,000~100,000 polygons each (40~50,000 in the mobile version), which is, according to Hypergraph, about 1.5 times the average polygon count in other 3D games. Additionally, the game will display up to 4 playable characters on-screen simultaneously, which is quite demanding in terms of rendering. Endfield also features factory management/automation gameplay (similar to that of Coffee Stain's Satisfactory), which means that the factory itself and the movable objects you deploy around it will also be constantly rendered on-screen, adding to the load. In conclusion – Endfield is a pretty heavy game, and to make it work, the development team had to significantly modify Unity's rendering pipeline.

Earlier this year, the development team behind Endfield told AUTOMATON about some of these modifications. While Unity's base structure, editor and tools were left as-is, everything else was overhauled, with the graphic rendering system getting a complete makeover. "The engine's fundamental architecture uses a data-oriented ECS (Entity Component System) approach, allowing game components to be processed more efficiently. On top of that, we fully revised the graphics API to meet the game's strict performance requirements," they explained.

Additionally, Hypergryph developed their own shading technology that supports multiple platforms. As explained by the devs, "It's often quite difficult to render dynamic shadows for distant objects, but in Endfield, dynamic shadows are rendered across the whole field, including objects in the near, mid and far background." Even for the factory building system, Hypergyph implemented numerous optimizations and modifications to achieve dynamic lighting and shading, using in-house ECS-based data processing and rendering techniques.

I also forgot to post this gameplay preview trailer from yesterday: