Arknights: Endfield Is Ready for Beta Test 2 [Hands-On…

Arknights: Endfield is an upcoming free-to-play action RPG with factory simulation features, which sounds like a mouthful, but I was largely impressed by how Arknights: Endfield packages all of its features into a strong, cohesive product. This sequel clearly represents a significant evolution from its predecessor, the tower defense game Arknights, and serves as a major testing ground for developer Hypergryph.

The Best War Games recently attended an Arknights: Endfield media event in Los Angeles, where we could check out the content of Beta Test 2. Everyone excited for the upcoming game should mark November 28 on their calendar, as that's when the beta test will be in players' hands. It'll be interesting to see how such an ambitious title is received by a wider audience at this stage, but as for myself, I was largely impressed. There are a few quirks, however, but the kind that I think Beta Test 2 will help alleviate.

Arknights: Endfield Defies Simple Definition

Arknights: Endfield's ambitions mean it's hard for any kind of genre description to do it justice, as there are multiple layers to the free-to-play game. One of those layers, of course, is the story. Taking the Endministrator (the player) and Endfield Industries to a new planet, Talos-II, the player becomes caught up in some kind of grand conspiracy tied to the Endministrator's past. Not least of which is an Endfield Hub base being attacked, tasking the Endministrator and their Operators with facing LBs, which are groups of bandits, in a world with various issues itself. The narrative I've seen so far, while somewhat lengthy with constant cutscenes and dialogue with other characters, managed to get its hooks in me. I wasn't able to see everything it offers, but after playing the opening sequence, a couple of hours after that, a few boss fights, and later gameplay sessions, I found myself curious about the story—especially its antagonists.

It's worth highlighting that the narrative has plenty of cinematics, giving players plenty of cool visuals, awe-inspiring character intros, and genuinely immersive moments. No one would be wrong if they also called Arknights: Endfield a cinematic free-to-play action RPG with factory simulation features; however, there is a little catch in this. In the bigger cinematic moments, the Endministrator (Endmin for short) will operate as a voiced character, but they are largely voiceless when given dialogue options. Those don't really add to immersion as dialogue should, as it's largely a shock, and it's somewhat inconsistent. Some dialogue options did result in the Endmin saying something, so that will take some getting used to. Overall, this cinematic and narrative layer wraps itself around some genuinely fun combat.

Of everything in Arknights: Endfield, the combat and Operator design was my favorite. Essentially, players will control up to four characters, or operators, at a time (with the roster consisting of 20+ characters). Some may be more straightforward, while others are a little more out there. One operator is a Panda, the other looks like a Dungeons and Dragons-style Dragonborn, and there are plenty of characters in between. I don't think you could accurately call Arknights: Endfield a companion-based RPG, truly, but I think companion-based RPGs could learn from the way its Operators work in combat. Players can switch control between Operators at any time, while players can still combo and utilize action skills for each character regardless of who they control. The combos are genuinely impressive, as each has a unique trigger, and players can pull off some cool moments in combat with them. As Endfield lead designer Ryan told me, these combos were inspired by tabletop and card games like Magic: The Gathering, with the combos genuinely feeling like a complex stack resolving in MTG.

There are action skills, combos, and ultimates that can be triggered in combat, while players have perfect dodges, unique standard and final attacks per character, and so forth. I could see this growing stale in the long term, but it never grew old on me in the several hours I spent playing it. If anything, I wanted more of the combat layer and could do with less of the narrative layer because it was pretty constant. Overall, though, it really did shine when we faced some of the bosses. I faced a major story boss, which I will not spoil here, and it added the right level of challenge to really let the combat shine. Everything mattered: standard attacks, combo triggers, ability skills, elemental types, weapon types, etc. And of course, there is a lot of crafting in Arknights: Endfield to create proper loadouts for weapons, gear, and so forth that could make the difference between a strong character and an OP character. The crafting game layer here is quite complex, but not overwhelmingly so.

Similarly, I would also describe Arknights: Endfield's factory sim features as quite complex, but not overwhelmingly so. There is plenty of onboarding to prepare players for it, and there is a library of tutorials to access later. Arknight: Endfield is about establishing Endfield's tech across Talos-II and developing the planet into a home, so these factory features fit rather well from a narrative and gameplay standpoint. It seems quite intuitive, based on my experience, and there is player freedom in how they engage with it. During my chat with Ryan, he did explain that players will be able to invest in it as much or as little as they want, so if someone wants a heavy factory simulation experience, they have it. If they want to focus more on the narrative and combat, they have that as well.

Arknights: Endfield Feels Like a Little Bit of Everything

And while this is already a cacophony of features, there are plenty more in the game. There are live-service and gacha mechanics, zone-search style mechanics, boss-grind features, exploration features, returning features from the first game, and more. The list could go on and on, and as long as players are not forced to engage with everything, I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. It does kind of feel like you could throw a dart at a list of popular features from dozens of genres from the past year or two, and you would certainly hit a feature or mechanic that appears in Arknights: Endfield. In my experience, such game design carries with it two risks: it could be harder for the game to have its own identity, and it could overwhelm players.

Throughout my experience with Arknights: Endfield, however, it doesn't necessarily feel like it falls victim to either of these risks. That makes it clear that Hypergryph is swinging for the fences—and swinging hard at that. The way everything is packaged, explained, and intertwined means I don't really see any reasons to be concerned about Arknights: Endfield' s game identity, with it being pretty obvious a few hours in what the core experience is like. That doesn't mean long-term gameplay won't run into issues, but based on my time, I am not as concerned about that as I would be with other games. It does throw a lot at players from the get-go and features a lot of menu diving, meaning it could still overwhelm players, but the improvements to the onboarding experience are obvious. As long as players provide feedback and Hypergryph works on this with Beta Test 2 as well, I don't feel all too concerned about that.

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.

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