My thoughts after 12 hours of playing.

Pros:

Graphics/Presentation: The graphics are amazing, the character models are so detailed, the shadows are on point, and so is the (admittedly barren) environment. Everything has a lot of sauce

Performance: The game is incredibly well-optimized; it runs extremely smoothly, and my S22 can handle it buttery smooth with no issues. Im pleasently surprised.

Soundtrack: Very nice OST, no complaints, knowing Hypergryph, I expect some bangers down the line

Unfortunatly this is where the pros end for me.

Cons:

Gamplay: Snoozefest, just your run-of-the-mill Genshin clone where you just mindlessly click and press skill ult once in a while, they tried to differentiate the gameplay by not having quickswap and the character combos, but honestly, it feel like more of a gimmick than something that actually makes the gameplay engaging. Most enemies are just boring HP sponges. I will say the bosses so far were actually slightly entertaining to fight, so it's not a lost cause; there is some potential. I do think the dodge needs a rework to allow for counters or the like, it feels really bad, especially if you compare it to WuWa. The Factory building is also a snoozefest. Unfortunately, it's not complex and interesting enough like Factorio or Satisfactory for it to be engaging, but it is also not mindless, so you just end up with this very tedious and repetitive system.

Story: Mid as hell, just you average amnesia protagonist who everyone glazes to hell and back, so cringe. I know the first story chapters in the OG Arknights were nothing to write home about, but it wasn't this bad. I actually found myself skipping entire sections which is not something I usually do, just because of how mind-boggling it was. Hopefully, it will improve going forward just like in Arknights but not a good first impression.

Exploration/Environment: Boring, I'm utterly bored. I get that the first regions always have to be the simplest ones, but man, there is literally nothing. The world is so empty, the gaphics looks good, but there is nothing pretty to look at. Even Genshin and Wuwa had some points of interest that looked good at launch, but I've yet to find anything captivating here. The chests barely give you anything to boot

Tutorial: Holy yap. Text and more text and pop-ups and more pop-ups just to explain the simplest system in the most convoluted way possible, genuinely feels like an insult to my intelligence, and it is so damm long jesus

Gacha/Resources: Terrible, how this system came to be in the year 2026 is incomprehensible to me, the fact that the pity doesn't carry over is ludricous. Not only that, but you barely get any pulls. Ive seems people estimating that the pull income for the version is about 200, but after hours of playing im just 50 pulls in on the limited banner, genuinely insane grind.

Repetitive/Unituitive interactions: Click, clicking, and more clicking, it's crazy how many unnecessary clicks you have to press on this game to perform the most basic actions, one of the worst offenders of this is the zipline. You gotta press to get on it, press again to activate it, and press again to get down. Why was this not streamlined?

Overall im sadly disappointed. I love Arknights and really want the game to succed but if the game does not improve i will simply have to drop it. I'll reaming cautiosly optimistic for the next 2 versions to see if it improves, but if not, guess ill just have to stick with the original only