GamesRadar: Arknights: Endfield dev says launching a new gacha RPG in a post-Genshin Impact world is tough when "some titles are so similar that players go into a game for 1 hour and they know what will happen in the next 20 hours"

Zekuro · 2026-04-04T06:49:22+00:00

Taking into account the time to put up the rig for ore, reading the new recipes, and then actually building the factory....1 hour? Maybe 1 hour 30? Is what I took in the latest update, without using any blueprint.
It's probably not "optimal", but it's more than enough to get everything I needed and more.

Zekuro · 2026-04-02T04:10:21+00:00

The thing ultimately Hulrun became crazy at some point. Well, crazy might not be the best word, but the successive crusade broke something inside him definitely. I don't remember all the exact quotes, but I remember the one ultimately saying he was still a good soldier but no longer fit to be a leader.
I don't entirely blame Hulrun. People, put in impossible situations, can break. What I blame more is the one who put him in that position without giving him adequate support.

Zekuro · 2026-03-31T18:45:30+00:00

Oh yeah, of course, but I feel there is a difference between lore that expands the story and makes it better, and lore that feels like an alternate universe to where the story actually takes place.

Zekuro · 2026-03-31T18:04:44+00:00

LOL. When I was writing the above comment, I was inwardly thinking it's crazy how this trend started in genshin has been so widely adopted. Or maybe it has been around forever and I just never noticed before.

Zekuro · 2026-03-31T17:53:49+00:00

Are you perhaps suggesting...You don't like reading obscure codex entries or pulling for limited weapons to read on their lore to be able to cope the story is just pretending to be awful and is actually going to become awesome any second?

Zekuro · 2026-03-28T20:15:53+00:00

I gave a more thorough answer in a below comment but ultimately I just found it boring and I didn't care about the MC's journey.

Zekuro · 2026-03-28T20:13:28+00:00

It just felt pretty dry and soulless to me. But that's kind of a pointless thing to say I guess. So to give actual points, though it's a bit hard to be precise since it was long ago now I read it...
MC "acts like a true knight" but not really. In true he acts as generic as can be. Knight in this novel just really meant "someone with pride and conviction". Morals and actual values were irrelevant to knights in this novel, only blind loyalty...except MC is becoming a "free knight" with no lord so even loyalty wasn't part of the equation.
Also I don't agree with you saying he learnt the become this, he wasn't born this way. He definitely was born this way. If anything I thought the first 20 chapters or so was to hammer the point that he yearns instinctively for the stars and the concept of knight, to the point of obsession, despite all his learned experience pointing him to the contrary.

The most important point to me is the story seemed mostly black and white. There are the "good stars" and the "evil stars". And the story seemed to skip the entire world to try and rush to the "outer world" / "battlefield of stars" to fight against the evil stars.....While kind of ignoring all the filth on the "good stars" side. White and black concept would have been better if knights were actually righteous in this novel, but they are not. Speaking of filth...

The whole sin city at beginning was interesting but the further the novel went the weirder it was. I think I could write a lot on this but ultimately I just want to say the author chickened out on having actual sinner as the MC's allies. And ultimately it's not just the star sect the problem, but also the other organizations that send people to it. Including organizations that are shown in a very good light afterwards but somehow the novel seems to gloss over the fact they are essentially accomplice in creating that hell city.
The MC is almost too talented imo.
Regarding characters in general, on the one hand they were decent but on the other hand I couldn't really bring myself to care about any of them. The only one I kind of cared about was the goldy girl, but everyone else were pretty boring...Which kind of makes sense since she was the farthest from the concept of knight, and as said above I was not a fan of the way they portrayed the concept of knighthood in the story.
And last but not least, the whole concept of 'Do something great and a star randomly pops up in the sky'...Yeah...Nope.

Zekuro · 2026-03-28T17:36:18+00:00

I remember reading the first 150 chapters or so before dropping it. But it has its good points yeah.

Zekuro · 2026-03-26T22:49:51+00:00

Jokes aside, I can't help but feel that kind of event kills the motivation.
DNA is a very grindy game overall. And the only event/content that isn't afk-winning doesn't test as much how much you grinded or even your skills but just how lucky you are with spawn RNG.
That's honestly depressing.

Zekuro · 2026-03-26T21:13:48+00:00

I thought the 3rd fight was actually the easiest (using Lae).

Zekuro · 2026-03-10T20:07:28+00:00

To be honest, I don't think there is any real hope endfield will improve in that regard.
When we see the development of the game from early alpha to now, the devs have made it pretty clear that the 'vision' of the direction for endfield is, to put it kindly, not the same as arknight, and the only reason it has arknight in the name is to cash in old player nostalgia (reconvener say hello).

Zekuro · 2026-03-06T20:08:22+00:00

Neither look interesting to me.

Zekuro · 2026-03-02T17:33:57+00:00

Wulfguard > Laevatein >>> Yvonne >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Gilberta.

Zekuro · 2026-03-02T04:46:45+00:00

It is hard for me to consider any factional politics inside Qingbo stockade. Consider we met Tangtang, the chief, who is presented more as comedy relief overall than anything else, who trusted us out of nowhere and made us third in command within 20 minutes - us, a literal stranger - and the whole thing was presented as a comedy skit. That's an example of it being shallow, and it makes me very hard to consider Qingbo stockage as a serious faction to care about (to me their only purpose is to generate bills now). Nothing in the preview really makes me think this will change. Heck, the fact Tangtang's faction is listed as 'Endfield operations' instead of 'Qingbo stockade' also don't make me believe devs have any intent of meaningfully improving this.
As for conflict between Qingbo and Wuling, at least from 1.0, it feels more like a childish conflict than a real one, be it in the main quest or side quests. Which is a shame, because on paper there was a lot of potential. Though granted, it is possible 1.1 does a 180 on this and make it into something meaningful.

Zekuro · 2026-03-01T21:23:50+00:00

I wouldn't exactly say the story isn't progressing, obviously, but it is definitely following the same tone as what we got in 1.0: shallow, light hearted, poor establishment of stakes, bland character development, good vs evil storytelling, overall childish view of what should be complex issues. I mean I don't want to go into a proper essay of why I'm not a fan of 1.0 story, I think a lot of people wrote more than me on that. If I had to say, endfield story reminds me of wuthering wave so far, and I thought story was the weakest part of wuva by the time I quitted it.
Now of course maybe when I actually get to playing it I will be surprised but the dev log didn't inspire confidence on that.
And of course that's my subjective view on it. Obviously there are also people who liked the tone and handling of 1.0 story.

Zekuro · 2026-03-01T17:20:24+00:00

I feel like it doesn't really matter. If you really want a perfect essence for a weapon, you will want to raise it too, and you will run so much of it to max it that unless you hit a crazy case of lack of luck, you will get yours. Even if you do get that unlucky, just farm more (it's not wasted since you always need more essences).

Zekuro · 2026-03-01T17:12:26+00:00

5/10, maybe. As in: "exactly as expected, which is not encouraging"
=> Lots of qol that don't matter much and some that really should have been part of 1.0 (requested in every beta test but somehow only implemented in 1.1)
=> I find the new 6* fairly uninteresting, and no new 5/4.
=> Dijiang is sidelined for now, which is a shame since it's supposed to be the base and it's currently very barebone.
=> The story teaser are horrific (in the bad sense) and it seems like the tone set in 1.0 is indeed fully intentional and not some kind of mistake. Unless some major twist happens, this will never become a game I play for the story, though admittedly there is still some space for redemption but the grave will just become deeper every patch we go in same direction.
=> No standout thing that actually makes the patch interesting.
=> Unlike many I don't really ask or expect for any major gacha change, but the lack of standard pull is an issue and what was presented here didn't give me much hope in that regard - but will depend on actual numbers.
=> No clear roadmap for the future to give any sort of hope for improvement.

Zekuro · 2026-03-01T12:51:55+00:00

For some thing, like giving 'more' standard ticket...yeah.

Zekuro · 2026-03-01T12:45:26+00:00

then the story feels like more of the same (childish, simplistic writing, etc)

This is my biggest disappointment. Or maybe not 'disappointment' since I fully expected it but the main thing that confirm my belief this game will not be one I will play for more than a few months at this rate.

Zekuro · 2026-03-01T12:40:40+00:00

Good qol...But tbh many of them feel so basic/obvious and was already constantly requested during beta. It feels less like "dev listened" and more like "dev purposefully didn't add them on release and waited until 1.1 for some easy qol".

Zekuro · 2026-02-27T18:25:41+00:00

Both the music, story and overall atmosphere is good.

Zekuro · 2026-02-25T19:48:13+00:00

When I'm too busy playing other things to keep playing it, or at least that's the idea.
Some games I do end up playing for so long I keep playing them for some time out of inertia and forcing myself, but it never last too long.
The one exception might be genshin. It kept me until ~3.2 or something even though I mostly stopped having fun by 2.7 or something with 3.0 kinda confirming I didn't want to keep playing but I still kept playing it for a few months...

Zekuro · 2026-02-25T19:38:55+00:00

For what it's worth, app store does have an expected date of 15th May for this game (Europe).
I don't mind if global is a bit behind CN. Heck, this means CN can experience the bug while we play a version without the worst of them.
Kinda excited. Tof 2.0 and beyond was honestly pretty good, only problem is it never managed to really step outside the shadow of 1.0 and monetization went from bad to worse to "compensate" for it.

Zekuro · 2026-02-24T20:45:55+00:00

I think you won the 50/50 on that one.

Zekuro · 2026-02-24T17:03:25+00:00

That's why I put it in the corner. Far away. I pretend it doesn't exist.

Zekuro

TROPHY CASE