Now we come to the inevitable part of this review, the gacha mechanics and monetization. There are two parts to the gacha system: Headhunting and Arsenal Exchange. Oroberyl is the currency for Headhunting and Arsenal Tickets is the currency for Arsenal Exchange. Origeometry is the premium currency which can be exchanged for either currency. One Origeometry can be exchanged for 75 Oroberyl or 15 Arsenal Tickets. All three currencies can be gained for free by playing the game. Oroberyl can be obtained by completing daily missions, main story missions, and by exploring. Arsenal Tickets can be gained by completing the Weekly Routine and Headhunting. Origeometry can be gained by completing main story missions and submitting Aurylene at TP Points. Headhunting is for getting new Operators, and they’re usually split between Chartered Headhunting and Basic Headhunting. Chartered Headhunting is a limited time banner and has a featured 6-Star Operator, while Basic Headhunting does not. Headhunting can be performed using Oroberyl, and it takes 5000 Oroberyl to do 10 pulls. In Chartered Headhunts, you are guaranteed to get the featured 6-Star Operator in 120 pulls, but a 6-star Operator is also guaranteed at 80 pulls, though it’s a 50-50 on whether or not you’ll get the featured there. The first 30 pulls in the Chartered Headhunt grants a free 10 pull, but this 10 roll does not count toward pity. After obtaining the featured Operator, it’ll take you 240 pulls to guarantee getting the Operator’s Token, though, you may be able to get a duplicate of the Operator before then. These are used to power up the Operator and raise their Potential. Arsenal Exchanges are similar in that they have the limited time Issue known as the Smelting Forge Issue and five other permanently available Issues. Each Issue has a featured weapon, and 80 pulls will guarantee you the featured weapon. Forty pulls will guarantee you a weapon of the highest rarity, though like with Headhunting, it’s a 50-50 shot of it being the featured. It costs 1980 Arsenal Tickets to perform an Arsenal Issue (10 pull). There is no single pull option for these Issues, but you can purchase certain weapons outright with Arsenal Tickets without going through the gacha process, if you choose to go that route.
If you’re willing to spend real money on the game, there are options open to you. There is a monthly pass that costs $4.99 that will give you 12 Origeometry immediately and Oroberyls and Sanity Boosters every day for 30 days. There is also a battle pass known as the Protocol Pass with three different tiers: Basic, Originium Supply, and Protocol Customized. Protocol Customized costs $9.99 while the Originium Supply tier costs 29 Origeometry. The Protocol Pass gives you different rewards as you raise its level. Protocol Pass experience can be gained by completing Pass Missions, and these are listed in the Protocol Pass menu. In addition to these passes, there are bundles of currency you can purchase as well as options to straight up buy Origeometry, with the highest cost option being $114.99 for 280 Origeometry plus 70 bonus Origeometry, though I do not know if that price will stay the same in the game’s full release.
If you’re patient, you’ll be able to rack up the Oroberyl necessary to get that featured 6-Star Operator or weapon, but it will take a while. You gain a decent amount of Oroberyl daily (200), so long as you’re diligent with completing daily missions. You only get 100 Arsenal Tickets weekly for completing the Weekly Routine, so that may take a while to save up if you don’t do any Headhunts. If you perform a 10x Headhunt, you get at least 380 Arsenal Tickets (20 for a 4-star Operator, 200 for 5-Star Operator). If you’re lucky and get a 6-Star Operator, that’s 2,000 Arsenal Tickets to your name. If you wanted to guarantee you’d get the featured 6-Star Operator, you’d need 60,000 Oroberyls saved up. If you were just saving Oroberyls by doing daily missions, and assuming 6,000 Oroberyls every 30 days, you’d need to save for around 10 months. For Arsenal Tickets, if you’re diligent, you’d make 400 a month on Weekly Routines, so in five months you’d have enough for an Arsenal Issue. Though, obviously this’ll be much quicker if you also perform Headhunts to get some extra Arsenal Tickets. In regards to the Protocol Pass, I appreciate how you can basically get the Originium Supply tier for free. Origeometry can be gained by just playing the game, so you should be able to save enough to unlock that tier. If you level up the Protocol Pass completely, then you get 32 Origeometry, so you make three more Origeometry back than you put in. And you also get a free 6-star weapon of your choice. But, you gotta make sure to level up the Pass completely before the period ends or else it’s all for naught.
I’m still not too big of a fan of gacha mechanics in games (even though I play a bunch of them) as they can really bite you. For Endfield in particular, it is pretty pricey rolling for 10 pulls, and if you’re staying F2P, you really have to pick and choose your rolls wisely, else it could compromise your chances of hitting the featured Operator guarantee. And if you want to save up for a duplicate of the featured Operator? I would forget about it. The cost and risk is too high, and the guarantee is much harder to get to than when you first try to get the 6-Star Operator. I appreciate how Arknights: Endfield gives you free ways to gain this currency, but it still takes a lot of patience and diligence to save up what you need. Arknights: Endfield‘s gacha system is actually not too bad compared to some others I’ve seen. The pity system for both Chartered Headhunting and Smelting Forge Issue is pretty generous. But, once you get that featured Operator from the Chartered Headhunt, you have to show some control and stop, because then the pity system becomes pretty outrageous. All in all, the system is pretty okay, and you can probably get around not spending any real money at all, if you really try.
Arknights: Endfield’s visuals, so far, look great. The Operators’ designs, especially the higher rarity ones, have very eye-catching designs and look unique from one another. Personally, my favorites were Yvonne and Ember. Yvonne is very stylish while Ember is this badass, greatsword wielding knight. Their 3D models are very expressive, and this is especially true with Chen. She’s so expressive with her body movements and her facial expressions, she’s a joy to watch. Her involvement in story scenes tends to get a smile out of me. The enemy designs on the other hand weren’t too special, but I did like Nefarith’s look and that first big baddie shown in the Prologue. She just screams villain and that Prologue enemy was something else. But, they have plenty of time to add more foes with more eye-catching appearances. The environments look good too and they vary between regions. Valley IV has a lot of sprawling greenery while Wuling takes a lot of inspiration from Eastern environments. Of all the locations I’ve seen, Wuling City is probably my favorite because it’s this nice combination of Eastern, modern and sci-fi aesthetics. The special effects from the Operators’ attacks are all visually appealing too. Of the things Endfield did well, the visuals are near the top, and I hope they keep it up with any new characters and regions implemented.
The music in Endfield is pretty good, so far. I’ve already found two tracks I really enjoyed. Both of these tracks sounded really epic, one played right off the bat in the Prologue while the other played during an event outside Wuling City in Chapter 2. The other tracks were solid too, as were the sound effects utilized. Arknights: Endfield offers four different voice options (Chinese, Japanese, English, Korean) which is great. More options is always better, though I chose to go with Japanese for my playthrough, and the characters all sounded great. Related to the languages, Endfield has 14 different text languages to choose from, which is wonderful because it makes the game more accessible to more players. When it comes to the sound design and the different languages available, I give it two thumbs up.
Arknights: Endfield’s PC version runs very well. It comes with full controller support and has multiple different graphics options to choose from. The menu has two bars at the top to tell you how much your current settings affect your device load and GPU memory usage. There are five different graphics quality presets (Very High, High, Medium, Low, Very Low) to choose from, but you can customize each option available to help fit your PC. Personally, I tried to push this game as much as possible, so I ran it at the highest settings with 4K DLDSR and DLSS Quality. I also set the framecap to 120, and the game gave me a big old warning since it said it would exceed recommended settings. Even with all that, the game tended to run at or close to 120 FPS in Valley IV. It did struggle a bit more when in the Wuling region with the FPS dropping to 100-110 range in forested areas and 90-100 FPS during battles there. It stayed at a range of around 90-100 FPS in Wuling City, but the lowest drop I saw was when it hit 80 FPS in the Institute of Materials Science in Wuling City. But, overall, it ran pretty smoothly. I also tried the game out using DLSS Frame Generation on Auto setting. It ran smoothly there too, and my OSD said it was running at 165 FPS, though I’m not sure how accurate that is since my knowledge of Frame Generation isn’t the greatest. But, the option is there for those whose hardware supports it, and it supports Frame Generation up to 4x. I did have some gripes with the PC version, though. First off, I don’t know if I’m just too used to higher framerates, but the game looked a bit odd when capped at 60 FPS. The motions just didn’t look as smooth as I thought they should be. Second, I do wish there were text descriptions for each graphics option, just to help players choose which is best for their system. Last, there aren’t any traditional anti-aliasing options available. The only options available are upscalers like TAAU and DLSS. I think having more AA options would be a nice touch, just so players have more choices available to them. But, overall, the PC version runs very well, and those who choose to play this version will enjoy how it runs.
Arknights: Endfield is a solid game. It has fun combat, a robust building system, expansive environments to explore, and is a visual treat to look at. Unfortunately, it’s held back by its work-in-progress nature and gacha mechanics. If you’re looking for a free game to play with fun gameplay and nice visuals, I think this is the game for you. Arknights: Endfield has tons of room for growth and a lot of potential, so I look forward to seeing how it proceeds from now on.
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Access to review build provided by the publisher.
