Arknights: Endfield: Review – Bigger, Bolder, Yet Uneven

Arknights: Endfield is the spin-off game of Arknights, made by the developers Hypergryph and published by Gryphline. It was announced back in 2022 March, the game was finally released on 22 January 2026, for mobile devices. Today, I will be reviewing Arknights: Endfield and sharing my review with you in this article, and see if this new gacha game is worth your time or not.

Before that, if you are just starting the game, you can use redeem codes to claim and acquire useful freebies. You can also check out our Beginner’s, Team Building, Reroll, Currency Farming, Gacha System, and Best Facility Blueprint Codes Guides for a better understanding of how everything works in a simple manner.

In this Arknights: Endfield Review, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on gameplay, visuals, optimisation, monetization, and all the content the game has to offer. So stick around to find out if this popular game Arknights spin-off is worth the time. I played the game on my Samsung m53 5g, and my playtime so far is 36 hours at the time of writing this.

The gameplay in Arknights: Endfield: What if Devil May Cry and Arknights had a baby

Let’s start with the gameplay, compared to the main game of Arknights, which is a tower defense game primarily, where you put operators in specific parts of the map to defend your points and prevent enemies from entering. Now, Endfield is a bit more complex compared to its Predecessor.

Compared to traditional 3D gacha games, this game has your team being present with you all the time, which is similar to another game, Aether Gazer. Here, the gameplay is not only real-time but also combo-action-heavy, with a lot of your focus on preserving SP(Sanity Point needed for using skills), breaking the enemy’s stagger threshold, and relying on your active duty team members to do combo attacks to defeat enemies.

Even then, the biggest difference is that all the operators don’t feel lackluster or have no purpose at all. They have a specific role on your team, even if they are at the bottom of the barrel in tier lists. The game make sures you have all the classes and roles fully covered.

Now, is the combat flawless? I will say it is a bit slow if you expect it to be flashy or fast combat. Certain people will find that a negative, while I find it necessary to build your passives up and fill the required SP to make combat flow fast and fluid.

You can’t expect it go full guns blazing and coming on top. But the biggest contradiction in the whole gameplay is that this game’s focus is not fighting enemies but rather factory simulation to build up the infrastructure to automate everything.

If not fighting, then what are we doing? Factory Building!

The factory building, making deliveries, and connecting outposts is where all of your time outside combat is going to be, which is like 80% of the game, and endgame is. Sure, some people can do Monumental Tower to get their combat urge clicked, but if you are an action game fan, then this is not the Ideal game for you.

You will be building structures, going on zipline trips across the regions for delivery, and doing a lot of brainstorming on making the best and most optimal factory possible. Although all of this can be bypassed by using our Top Notch Facility Blueprint Codes, which are great. But it will remove the fun part of feeling like doing something by yourself.

Under the hood, there is a big economic stock market that depends on us, with how much material and products we deliver and meet the required demands. The good thing is, we can automate pretty much everything, aside from character growth materials.

The Visuals and the optimisation: Best one yet

This game has not only the markings of the best visual clarity on a mobile game, but I think in my sole opinion, the best optimization of a 3D gacha game with a seamless world when you compare every game out there. And the level of scope this game is offering with its factory building, even my old Samsung M53 ran it on high settings at smooth 60fps.

When you look at the Character models, the level of quality is unmatched, every fibre, every wet water droplet being struck from the rain, and every texture oozes with details that I think will be a hard bar to pass for any game that will be releasing post Endfield era. We are truly looking at the best here. That is all I have to say on both. They are best in both, and we need more of it in other games.

The UI is sleek, and the controls are smooth

The ui in the game is great and very intuitive, very well made, and minimal in design. Is it cluttery, no? Does it make you confuse with things? No. The game’s UI is one of the most unique ones out there; it’s interactive, clear, concise, and smooth. Scaling is a very important factor, and the texts on ui are easy to read. In the grand scheme of gacha games, where every game feels and seems so similar, the UI and all interactions in this game are top-notch, and nothing currently feels cheap or mimetic.

The game’s factory building and menu layering on top of each other may seem overwhelming at first, but when you get the hang of it quickly, and none of the buttons feel unresponsive or laggy, they go away as they came. The controls are simple and very easy to manage when fighting or managing the factories. You will never feel if something is not right or out of place, but a lack of swimming will certainly make you question the game’s limitations. The feedback when fighting has been a solid experience.

The Monetisation

If there were a movie name to summarise the section, it would be The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Because from here, the negative state of the game starts. How is the monetisation? It’s ugly in short, why? In simple words, everything that comes free always has a price. This is the price; the game’s pull economy is bad and very convoluted if you remove the honeymoon phase rewards.

How? Let me give you an example: The gacha banners are not only confusing, but they also require a lot of resources. The side rewards you get from pulling them are very limited due to being time-gated, no pity carry over in certain scenarios, and a hard guarantee at 120 pity.

Currency and battlepass

The game is using a 2nd Primary currency, Origeometry, that can help you unlock the Battle Pass’s 2nd Tier. It should have been free, as the Battle pass has 3 tiers compared with a bogged-down free tier to the traditionally systematic, 2-tier battle passes in other games.

Even the original Arknights never had any battlepass system. You can use the Origeometry on that game to get 99% of the game’s premium outfits, save for some. Here, it’s being used as a crutch to nickel and dime you into thinking it has the same value, while it does not. Call it nitpicking, but you should not make a problem and then sell a solution to the said problem.

You do not need the premium currency to pull on weapons; that’s a good thing and very free-to-play friendly. How is it bad then? Here’s how: the currency you need to pull weapons is Arsenal Tokens. It is 99% being obtained from pulling character banners. You can’t do a single pull on a weapon banner. Guess what, if you are one issue away from a guarantee, good luck getting enough currency by pulling characters before the weapon banner rotates out.

When Endfield was revealed in 2022, it had the atmosphere and lore snippets of the main Arknights game. Here, we are again put into the shoes of an amnesiac MC who was a big thing before. In the story, everything, even making a single rope, is dependent on our Endministrator’s shoulder. At least the OSTs and music are good, Arknights level.

The outpost’s side character had more character development than the characters in the main story. As we are the proper support necessary there, but in the main story, that is an excuse for progression. You will think, ” Wow, we are building a civilisation and making great strides as an industry leader.

In reality, we are like air that is necessary for survival. You will see so many advanced facilities and so many technologies, but not a single character in the entirety of the main story is put in simple terms, competent enough to clear their simple problems. They are one blink away from collapse. Whenever we meet a new character, we are the solutions to their simple problems, like they don’t even hide it anymore.

The world-building is there, but it’s weak

The world-building is there, but the main story is not landing for me, sadly. Even when we are at the end of the current story of the Wuling region, the primary Antagonists and enemies feel generic. They have no depth or character to them; they are bad for the sake of it. The story has no stakes and is the opposite of a serious world.

Coming from Arknight’s story is a huge downgrade. They somehow made some characters that should be an emotional reunion a cheap one-way romance. If you are an original Arknight fan, you will be sad to see that many of them have been watered down in the story department.

You will always find it like, “Man, it could have been handled so much better.” This is exactly how I feel with Gilberta. So many operators feel like a wasted potential for an awesome character story, yet we never get introduced or even mention our Amnesia to them.

Final Verdict

Arknights Endfield is a huge step in 3D gacha Mobile gaming. In which it shows that a lot more can be done with a few requirements. But when it comes to its original predecessor, Arknights, it leaves a lot to be desired. It is a game that is not for everyone, but certainly ticks all the marks for me to play.

The game has a good chunk of content, but a lot of it is not good. The game has a promising foundation that will only go up from here. However, the massive amount of handholding and tutorials will make a lot of people go away. This is not the game for action game lovers. I will recommend this game to strategy and factory-building fans.

That’s all from us for the Arknights Endfield! Did you find my Arknights Endfield review helpful? Do let us know in the comments!

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