Arknights: Endfield – Closed Beta Test II | Impressions

Publisher GRYPHLINE’s second Closed Beta Test for their up-and-coming free-to-play 3D action role-playing game with strategy elements ‘Arknights: Endfield’ has come and gone and with it, my hand tremors and thumb sucking habits have returned. Withdrawal is one heck of a feeling (no I don’t suck my thumbs but I do chew up my nail, force of habit) and there’s no game I’m quite looking forward to spending hundreds of hours on other than Endfield this month. Because few are the games out there, that I have willingly spent thirty plus hours of my life on not once but twice with all my hard work wiped yet I am still waiting to return and do it all over again.

I actually didn’t get into the Closed Beta II test at first. I signed up through the normal channels like everyone else did, got nothing, and sort of just kicked rocks and looked down at my shoes while all the dorks on YouTube flaunted their test access. I cannae lie, I was just a tad disappointed, but I suppose it was a good thing because otherwise I’d have never finished my ‘OCTOPATH TRAVELER 0’ review on time (if ever) had I been let in.

But a light would soon shine through this darkness, for I was able to gain test access as a media person. See, lads! Complaining about video games does have it merits. You just have to do it through the right channels. Unfortunately for you, I’m not here to complain about Endfield—further from the truth, it’s one of my most anticipated games of the year and I will be there day one when it launches later this month across PC, mobile operating systems, and PS5 consoles.

To Seek Out a New World

I’ve already written up a lengthy piece on the game from my first time around with it during the first Closed Beta test run. As such, I’m not quite sure how to begin this piece without trudging through all the basics again—so I’ll do just that! But, to change up the pace, I want to begin by describing my experience with Arknights: Endfield and why I hold such an anticipation for a free-to-play gacha game of all things in a year that is rigged with so many insanely good-looking releases (and one outright industry-wide bomb, if it doesn’t get delayed again). Because in some gaming circles, those two terms usually draw ire and understandably so as I’ll cover further along, but that’s not changed just how excited I am for this game.

When Endfield was first shown off a couple years back, we got a brief glimpse at the sort of game it was going to be. A 3D action and strategy title that was presumably going to be a free-to-play game. The industry still had Genshin’s insane success in not just mobile and PC circles but the traditional game’s community fresh in its mind and we were seeing previews of upcoming good-looking and avante garde approaches to the free-to-play games as a service (hereon “GaaS”) market, particularly from Chinese developers no less. At the time, I was a passive fan of the mobile tower defence game ‘Arknights’ and when I saw Endfield’s announcement, all I thought was “oh, that’s kind of neat” and then I proceeded to forget about the game for the next how-many-years that passed.

It wasn’t until the first round of Closed Beta signups came around and a good friend forwarding a me to that until the game came into my purview. I signed up, expected nothing, but somehow made it in and tried out the game with absolutely zero expectations in mind. When that beta came to a close, however, I was left wanting more—the action gameplay (despite its faults) meshed well with the strategic gameplay systems that players would use to interact with the overworld and their own characters’ progression. On top of that, even though the game was locked to some weird 720p-esque resolution during that beta, it still looked drop-dead gorgeous thanks to strong lighting and colour composition that highlighted the best part of a bleak, almost postapocalyptic-like world that somehow has no trouble incorporating our cel-shaded animal cast who are all bubble and brim.

So, I’ve been pretty damn happy to jump back into a game I’ve been waiting to play for nearly a year now.

With that little prologue out of the way, let me get back to the game at hand. Arknights: Endfield is an action-adventure game that blends strategy into its management, combat, and world exploration. Players take on the role of the “Endmin” as they pioneer the land of “Talos-II”, a whole-new planet that has seen its fair share of war and turmoil as differing factions work to make it a new home for… I guess I can call the animal residents of Terra “humanity”. Due to some factors unseen, your playable character (you can choose either the male or female body type) has been asleep for ten years and the whole crew of your ship has been patiently waiting your reawakening.

See, the residents of the OMV Dijiang consist of nurses, engineers, specialists of all sorts that are essential to your pioneering efforts—but they can’t work at their best without you because of the technology that you’ve built: the Automated Industry Complex system (“AIC”), which harnesses the power of an earth element called Originium to power/develop/expand tools that make coexistence with the harsh world of Talos-II possible. Unfortunately for the cast, it turns out that your long slumber sort of conked your memory a bit and you don’t really remember much of anything, including the things you’ve made. What follows is a journey of self-discovery, helping one another, and a battle against external forces that seek to drive your team, “Endfield Industries”, and every other faction out of Talos-II.

The game begins with the same tutorial the original Closed Beta test had, except now we get a new boss to test out the game’s refined combat system with. This boss is huge and extravagant and, honestly, does a great job of highlighting the kind of challenges players will face and how to engage them mechanically. Combat has changed quite a bit, so lemme break off this paragraph to explain it in detail below:

Endfield’s combat system gives players a full auto-combo, a dash (which becomes a directional dodge on a “perfect evasion”), a specific skill, and an ultimate ability. Your auto-combo builds stagger (every action game’s favourite mechanic) on the enemy once the combo is completed, but you can also build stagger by using skills or ultimate attacks. Building stagger is important because breaking a foes stance not only lets you deal massive damage and lets you whale on them for a short while before they recover. It’s in your best interest to build stagger whenever possible, but you can’t just spam skills willy—not only do you have a short three-bar SP gauge that you need to keep an eye on, but some enemies will launch attack that can only be broken with skill deployments. Running out of SP when a unit gets grabbed by a chunky baddie is a recipe for disaster, especially at high level battles.

Each character’s skill varies depending on their class and their element, which can come in handy depending on the situation! Some classes such as the Defenders can apply buffs yes, but our genki snowboarding polar bear-esque sweetheart Snowshine will deploy a shield in real-time when her skill is deployed. By timing this shield to an enemy’s attack, not only will you build stagger, but you’ll also stun some baddies briefly, which is incredibly useful especially for those that may try to rush in your direction when you have little time to react. Elemental reactions are also incredibly useful, as they can cause inflictions when one element interacts with another. Lastly, successfully landing skill hits allows players to order a teammate to follow up with an attack; by building those up and timing it just right, you can unleash absolute hell upon anything that stands in your way.

Combat is wholly improved with this beta. In the previous beta, fights felt clunkier, less intense, and generally unfun to engage with due to the way characters advanced towards baddies in addition to a rather clumsy dodge behaviour. Now, the player can reposition themselves thanks to directional dodging that can only be performed when you evade an enemy’s attack right at the right moment. This also fills your SP gauge which in turn, lets you keep up the offensive and retaliate when need be. It’s still simple enough that you can pull off even the toughest feats on your touchscreen (which I did while borrowing my little sibling’s iPhone 16) but just about as technical as you can get through skills, enemy mechanics and behaviours, and your own movements. Standing still will work against simpler mobs, but you don’t want to stand in the way of a hammer when it’s about to come crashing down on you.

Factoring in the Factory

Now, look. If Arknights: Endfield was just an action role-playing game, I’d probably have dropped it by now. Sure, the combat is fun, but the game is more than just that: it’s also part base and factory management! See, when you’re not advancing the game’s story or chatting it up with Endfield’s cast face-to-face or through the in-universe “Baker” chat app, you’re pioneering and building a new home on Talos-II. The game’s map is not an open-world but rather a number of zones connected via tunnels and the like—this is largely because a lot of the exploration you’re going to be doing isn’t just by running into abandoned facilities and expecting them to open their doors to you: you’ll need to build out the AIC!

The AIC system is essentially a hivemind of machinery all connected by invisible wires that can not only transport electricity between nodes, but also entire items can be shifted between complex systems from all over the planet. How this system works, I have no idea. I think it was explained briefly, but between so many story cutscenes my brain was starting to tune it all out. I wanted nothing more than to immediately hop into the game’s factory building, but it will take you at least twenty hours of gameplay before Endfield lets go of your hand. And even then, a lot of the machines you build out need to be unlocked by finding these little not-Oculus logos marked pop-up balloons around the map to get the skill points you need.

But without really getting into the finer things, here’s how the factory works: the AIC can power on structures that can either:

• Mine valuable ores
• Harvest plants
• Power grinders and conversion facilities
• Or just outright power shuttered doors and consoles dotted around Talos-II

The first three work hand-in-hand by letting players collect resources that they can then convert to special items that can be either used for quest requirements, world exploration, and/or equipment for their characters. Equipment in particular is incredibly important as it enhances base stats and you’ll need specialised armour, accessories, and gloves that best suit each unit. The lovely Chen Qianyu, for example, would benefit best from an attacked-focused set of armour and the only way you’re going to be able to make this stuff is if you engage with the factory system. Even if you were to somehow not show any interest in exploring Talos-II, the reality is the AIC is an integral part to your characters’ progression, and you can’t just ignore it.

Now in this new beta, we’ve been introduced to the new Blueprints system that the developers brought up in their last showcase two months back. Here, you’ll have access to prebuilt components that you can set down as you please to accomplish whatever resource acquisition that needs to be done without having to truly build everything yourself. You still need to connect the Blueprints to the AIC, but that’s a simple deal. Still, the reality is you’ll likely end up modifying those prints to best fit your needs and it’s a part of the game that took up a large amount of my playtime—and I loved every minute of it.

Endministrative Work

Since I got access to the game roughly two weeks before the beta would come to an end, I didn’t get as much time as I would have liked advancing the main story. I got up to the second major boss in the game and didn’t have a chance to visit Wuling, the other region in the game. You’ve got to understand that my lovely but time-consuming family got in the way of my time with this game’s beta, which also means I can’t quite go into depth with the game’s gacha systems entirely. Still, I did get to be on the receiving end of being punched: I blew all my currency and still couldn’t quite pull for Yvonne, the adorable and bubbly scientist that I had gotten in the last beta.

The one thing that I can confirm in Endfield is that pulling for one character’s banner is an absolute thing. As in, once you pull, you better have the resources to guarantee that character because the “pity” will not carry over to the next banner that comes after. This harkened me back to the days of ‘Granblue Fantasy’ and also the original Arknights game (the former in particular simply has an awful gacha system) where I have to save up beforehand the exact amount lest I end up getting skimped out. Because in the other 3D gachas that I play, it’s typical for one banner’s progress to transfer to another so even if you failed to get the character that you wanted, you could always save up and try again for the next character. That’s not an option here, which sucked.

Another interesting thing is the weapons system. Just like the gear I mentioned, you’re also going to want to have weapons for your characters. Weapons, like the characters of Endfield, are based on a rarity system and the high tier playable characters each have their own specific weapon. To get these weapons, you need to pull for characters, which in turn gives you tokens to purchase weapons outright or pull for the best available ones. In practise, I didn’t have trouble outfitting my teammates with gear that would fit them best—far as I could tell, all the story and side quest content can be cleared with the basic four and five-star characters you’ll get in plentiful amounts as you pull for new units. And that’s fine by me, but after realising how the gacha system for this game works, it does make me hesitate on making those small, itty-bitty purchases that I’ve been tempted to in similar, newer games as I have no idea how far those purchases will get me in terms of progression.

In addition, it is also a bit ironic that successfully pulling for a character early may actually put you in a precarious situation if you wanted to get their weapons. Because if you pull that unit, you’ll likely not have enough tokens to get the weapon guaranteed which means you’d be forced to keep pulling again just to get those tokens. As far as I remember, there wasn’t any other way to get this currency outside of the gacha system, so do what you will with that information. I’m fully aware it’s not possible to get every character you want—it’s not feasible! But having my pulling progress reset sure felt like a gut punch I’ve not experienced since pulling for Christmas Daiwa Scarlett.

I’m thankful I can mostly ignore an unfriendly gacha system because outside of that I had a lovely time with Endfield. In general, I am a systems-driven player and I love it when I see something that I’ve built have an effect on the game world and my progression. Connecting the zones of Talos-II is immensely satisfying as I spent hours building machines and power poles, measuring out distances to optimise the exact spots I should place my rails and conveyor belts. If something broke down or wasn’t working as I intended, I rebuilt it all until things just worked on their own. There’s also more to this system through the “Outpost” functionality with its own tower defence bits, but I think it’s best for you to check that out on your own.

Endfield is also drop-dead gorgeous. The image quality is superb all the while maintaining a near 60 frames per second presentation across both my B580-powered desktop and the iPhone 16. And despite not featuring distinct animation work for every cutscene (particularly where everyone drones on about something like a ‘Deus Ex’ actor), the model and scenery quality make up for it and it’s hard not to take a picture every single chance you get. These technical details don’t stop there either as the game looks great in motion, be it waltzing about in the overworld or in combat.

The combat itself is weighty and it feels good to strike and counter foes. Endfield is, once again, unique in the 3D gacha space in that it places all four combatants of a party out in the field and allows players to either take control of them or call on them for help through the skill system. But when you’re not relying on them for that, they do a good job on their own engaging with enemies in the overworld and pulling enmity away from the player especially when you’re being swarmed by hordes of baddies. It’s also immensely satisfying when your skills chain up into an elemental affliction that deals wide-sweeping bouts of damage and clears out areas.

And I’ve kept relatively mum on the story and that’s because I don’t really have much to say on it as of right now. I think the set pieces are quite good and the game does a good job of funneling playing from one point of the story to the next at a good pace. The case is full of nothing but sweethearts. Perlica is your second-in-command, and she tries her very best to make sure everything Endfield Industries does succeeds. The aforementioned Chen is always by your side and she’s stolen my heart (twice now). Other characters that are in the gacha pool and out also fit themselves nicely into the roles of Endfield Industries, which I am happy to see as the one thing I absolutely hate is having characters you have no idea about suddenly becoming party members of yours.

There are quite a few other mechanics that tie into the overarching gameplay loop that I’ve not covered in this preview as this piece has gotten much longer than most of my actual game reviews. Mind, I don’t plan on reviewing Arknights: Endfield because it’ll be one of the many games I’ll be jumping into headfirst as I neglect all my other work for the site. 2026 is an insane year for games because of the sheer volume of titles launching across developers of all sizes. And yet, despite knowing that, despite blowing maybe a collective eighty hours across both betas and having all that data wiped… I’m really excited to jump into Endfield again when it launches later this month—and replaying a game, much less a GaaS, is something I rarely do. ∎

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Arknights: Endfield will launch on 22 January across PC, mobile devices, and PlayStation 5 consoles as a free-to-play title with in-app purchases. You can pre-register for the game thisaway to get more updates along with any goodies that’ll help you on your long, long journey on Talos-II.