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Arknights Endfield Preview
- Sparks
- Jan 12
- 10 min read
"Whenfield" No More
Back in 2022, Hypergryph first teased the follow-up to their successful tower defense game Arknights. The wait has been a long one, but the kitchen sure is cooking up a succulent meal with Arknights Endfield. It should be noted that the experiences described here are based on the second closed beta test which ran from November 29th to December 29th 2025 ahead of its official release on January 22nd of 2026, and as such, all materials discussed are subject to change. Endfield is an anime styled 3D action RPG with base-building and management elements set in the sci-fi-magic universe of Arknights. Sounds like a strange combination but in practice it turns out to be a perfect pace breaker to keep the game engaging for hours on end. Let’s dive in with three “Gs” to discuss: Graphics, Gameplay, and Gacha.
Publisher: GRYPHLINE Developer: Hypergryph Platform: Played on PC Availability: Release date — January 22, 2026 for PC, PS5, and mobile devices. |
Graphics
P-R-E-S-E-N-T-A-T-I-O-N is the name of the game and Endfield has it in spades. While the UI could use some small tweaks in some places, the game is a joy to navigate, look at, and listen to. Playing the PC version on maximum settings, I can say that Arknights Endfield runs beautifully well — not a stutter in all of my 60+ hours participating in the Beta Test. I’m still using a previous gen AMD card, so this can be done without needing current high-end hardware. While optimization and fidelity are important to note, it’s all of the little details that caught my attention. Character idle animations, water effects on their clothing, walking animations, menu transitions — each is a pleasure to behold. The developers have heavily modified the Unity engine to achieve this look and performance, and praise should be given where it’s due, as Endfield has more polished performance in its Beta Test than most games on release in the past few years.
Putting those great visuals to use, most of Arknights Endfield’s story is told through cutscenes. The Beta Test rounded off in the earlier steps of chapter 2, but has continually impressed throughout. A bit early to judge in totality, but there certainly were moments that tugged on my heart strings and had me on the edge of my seat. As far as it compares to its competition in the space, Endfield’s got hands. Here’s hoping they deliver the proper knock-out on release.
Endfield has a number of styles for the cutscenes: a big portion is rendered in-game, some are pre-rendered more action packed to highlight bigger story moments, and then there’s a more simplistic mission briefing style where characters discuss a plan of action over some tactical graphics. The characters animate with little micro-expressions and the stellar voice acting helps immerse you into the world. Much like the first game, the English dub in particular deserves praise. Characters often have accents, reflecting the region they are from that brings them to life more. Some even substitute their native language in conversation and battle. Technically Endfield is a sequel to Arknights but its story takes place roughly 150 years later. Endfield takes its time easing you into the world and some of the more complicated aspects but playing the first game is not a necessity. You will miss out on certain details and returning characters’ backstory, but surely there’s a lore summary to catch you up somewhere. Not to mention there’s also an anime to get you to grips with its world.
Arknights Endfield is beautiful, with vibrant colors and unique designs throughout the experience.
Gameplay
As the meat in our meal, the gameplay makes up perhaps the most fulfilling aspect of Endfield. For the bulk of your time in Endfield you will be exploring a 3D world with a team of 4 characters in what is a semi-open world sandbox structure. This team you construct can target various elements, be physical status crowd control focused, or even do a mix of both. Team building is very fluid in Endfield as the synergy between characters relies on their Combo and Battle skills more than their personal elemental affinity. You control one character in battle and spend SP to use Battle skills while the rest of your team fights alongside you. During the fights, you can trigger your team’s skills as well.
Where it gets interesting is the Combo skill, which each character has a specific trigger for. Once said condition is aligned, the character’s portrait will light up and you reactively use their Combo skill. Building chains of these between your characters is essential to a fluid experience in combat. The developers aimed to recreate the feeling of a card battler and it certainly does feel like that at times. Aside from these combos you also have access to each character’s Ultimate once you have used their Battle and Combo skills enough. Getting multiple procs of these is key. Besides that, there are also active dodge and interruption systems, taking some cues from FromSoftware titles and many other action games on the market.
There are currently 6 classes for your operators: Guards, Casters, Strikers, Vanguards, Bulwarks, and Supporters. Guards and Casters will do some damage but their main role is to apply various status conditions, be they physical such as Lift or Knock-Down, or elemental such as Combustion or Corrosion. Strikers are designed to take advantage of these and will be the main damage dealers in a party. The next 3 are designed to be more supportive in role. Vanguards help you generate more SP to use more skills and deal some damage while they’re at it. Bulwarks are your classic tanks, specializing in interruptions, parries and shields for your team while sometimes offering a little bit of healing too. Last but not least are Supporters. They are closer to your traditional healers, with their main role being to help with status conditions through healing and application thereof, as well as buff your operators with Amplification statuses.
Arts focused teams will often bring a Caster and Physical teams will probably need a Guard, but other than that you are free to find your preferred mix and match. In my experience it’s a playstyle preference more than anything. Do you go all-in on parries and interruptions, relying only on your dodges and a limited consumable item to keep yourself alive, or do you fancy the safety of a good healer on your team? Arknights Endfield is certainly open to player expression and I look forward to the possibilities.
Do you go all-in on parries and interruptions, relying only on your dodges and a limited consumable item to keep yourself alive, or do you fancy the safety of a good healer on your team?
Another thing that feels souls-like is the exploration. Endfield doesn’t employ a huge sprawling open world, rather opting for smaller, more condensed and deliberate areas. As you progress through an area, you find bridges, ladders or ziplines to create shortcuts. You will want these as Endfield has recurring resources that respawn daily across its world. The ziplines specifically can be constructed to quickly get across areas of the map or even sequence break your way into places you’re not supposed to be in yet. Additionally, you need to draw powerlines to these ziplines from your base of operations. In fact, you also need to draw power to solve puzzles and various other situations throughout your adventures. Here’s where the factory and base camps come in.
As you progress the story you establish a main factory in each region you come across, as well as several sub-factories and camps. If you’ve played a game like Factorio or Satsifactory, this will all feel familiar and get you excited because the developers specifically took inspiration from those games for this aspect of the gameplay. If not, worry not! There is an extensive blueprint system that can be shared among players so if you just want to quickly set up production lines for the materials you need, the community will have you optimized in a jiffy. For those who really want to dig in the optimization, however, you will have a field day and quite the extended gameplay hours in this aspect. Your factory and camps will eventually level up as you produce and sell the materials, giving you more options.
You will also construct combat facilities, literal towers to attack or defend places. There is a tower defense sub-mission in these camps but you can place them anywhere you can draw power to so people tend to place them in high combat areas to speed along some of the farming you’ll be doing in the endgame. You’ll be revisiting the world and thinking about how to make shortcuts in it actively, so adjustments like this and crafting ziplines to speed up package delivery missions are commonplace.
There's a lot of freedom in how you are able to engage with the game.
The social aspect ties into exploration and your factory management. As mentioned before, players can make blueprints to share for factory templates to help one another out in the construction and optimization departments, but structures of other players will also show up in your world. Ziplines, stashes and combat facilities will help you along in your journey, similar to Death Stranding. Whether you repair them to keep them around or not is up to you. More hilariously are the little message boards you can put down — again, very souls-like. Who hasn’t had the classic “big chest ahead” or “jump here” experience right at a treasure chest or cliffside? These are very fun and very much as you know them — preset phrases and words you can combine to create a message somewhere in the world. Get creative!
There is also an Animal Crossing-esque stock market minigame where you can buy a certain number of Elastic Goods which vary by price daily. Buy low, sell high; simple enough, right? Well, you’ll want friends to sell them to since you can often buy at a minimum in your base and sell at the max premium in theirs. Satisfying to see number go up.
Endfield is dense with even more gameplay aspects, I simply can’t mention all of it or this preview would be even more of a novel than it already is and I haven’t even touched on the endgame offerings. Suffice it to say that there is always something you can do in Endfield. When we put all of these systems together, your daily loop is going to be (in no particular order): Check on your factories and associated camps for resources produced and sold, deliver packages through a convoluted and self-constructed set of zipline towers, fight enemies in a team of 4 distinct operators, and finally play the stock market with your friends by selling turnip- I mean uh, Elastic Goods.
Gacha
And with that, we go to the third and final “G”. Endfield’s gacha aspect might be enough to ward away some players (if the prospect of managing a base and factories didn’t already) but alas, the monetization method of choice is having you randomly roll on characters with currency you earn in-game or just straight up buy with real money.
Let me say that, in my experience, the game has enough to offer to players without having you spend a dime, as I have in the Beta Test. Endfield will be completely free to play but certain aspects of it may be monetized to enhance or speed up the experience. In what way? Well, that’s the hard part. Let’s break it down in a way everyone can understand.
Endfield has a character banner you can pull on to get more characters and power up your already obtained ones with multiple copies. You will get the highest rarity, a 6-star operator, guaranteed every 80 pulls that you do. However, it might not be the one you want or one that is featured. As of writing, the featured fancy character on the banner is guaranteed at 120 pulls. In comparison to its competition, this is a fairer way to do it — but only for the one copy. Additionally, where the competition has you spend your premium hard-earned currency on characters and weapons, Endfield gives you the currency for weapon banners on each character pull you do. Higher rarity means more currency obtained, so, your rolls funnel into each other. Theoretically good, right?
While the gear system is very interesting and adds an additional layer of strategy and build variety, characters do have signature weapons that are tailor-made for their kits.
Sadly, that’s where my praise ends as this system is quite possibly my only real negative with Endfield . Not to get into the nitty-gritty of it, but there are annoying hypotheticals with this system. If you pull your desired 6-star early, you are left with little currency to pull on the weapon banner. Pulling them late, leaves you with… honestly not quite enough in my opinion. While the gear system is very interesting and adds an additional layer of strategy and build variety, characters do have signature weapons that are tailor-made for their kits. The way to get these is only from the gacha. You can obtain a number of good alternative weapons through gameplay only and these will serve you well, surely. But it always feels better to play Guts with the Dragonslayer right? What’s Cloud without his Buster Sword? Thankfully, this was a common point of criticism across the experience, so there’s hope a rework of this is inbound for the full release.
One big sticking point for me personally is that the game employs a limited character system unlike its predecessor. It feels like they’re leaning more towards a FOMO experience which is detrimental to the long-term experience and new player experience down the line. It sucks to tell a friend who likes a certain character that they’re not available for them, right now. “Tough luck, wait for a rerun” isn’t exactly engaging prospects if you started later than your friends.
Verdict Arknights Endfield is a dense package of experiences, polished up in stunning graphics, backed by an amazing soundtrack and stellar voice acting. Your gameplay loop feels very satisfying, using action segments to break up your exploration and menu management, keeping you engaged for hours on end. With some more polish and a rework of its gacha system, it has the potential to be a truly unique experience — not just in the gacha space, but as a game on its own. Here’s hoping the developers deliver and that we see it pop up at the Game Awards for 2026. |
Image Credits: Gryphline
Disclosure: We received access to the Beta via publisher code.
Arknights Endfield will be available for free on PC, PS5, and mobile devices come January 22, 2026.
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