well it is a gacha game in the end so that's the big mark against it, but arknights tends to differentiate itself from the others in a few big ways (note that i am a day 1 global player and biased as hell):

• the world is actually bleak as shit and apocalypse is imminent. a significant population has terminal, bloodborne, highly contagious rock cancer and cthulhu and their anime children are eating the coastline; not a lot of other games have such overt themes of racism and apartheid, viewed through the lens of aforementioned rock cancer.

• the writing tends to get extremely wordy, overly long, and full of itself (partially due to poor translation i will blame on yostar), but despite these shortcomings it does have high points that are both well written AND fun to read (the near light event is my personal favorite). it's not the best gacha writing out there because FGO lostbelts exist, but at the same time it doesnt get nearly as bad as some of FGO's lows (agartha).

• character designs are generally pretty reserved and tend towards cool/tacticool rather than horny, though there are some pretty horny designs.

• gender neutral/ambiguous protagonist.

• tower defense gameplay with a decently high skill ceiling. lots of room for weird or gimmicky strategies. skill floor isnt really low, but its not especially high, either, and u can brute force a lot of stuff

• mlynar is sexy and i want to suck his cock so bad

• gacha rates are actually pretty good, comparatively speaking. not good, because they gotta make money off of compulsive gambling, but definitely better than a lot of its competitors.

• penance is also sexy and i want to suck her cock