Playing Arknights in 2019 and now means having two completely different experiences. By now, threads and talkpoints are kind of taking their time being developed, in a never ending, as the cool kids say, yapping. They, them characters, do yap, in this game. If you're not willing to read, the game's main motif of interest is not for you.
Who knows what the future will hold, with gacha games being a commodity not in short supply and ending as soon as the interest wanes, but thematically we're kind of passing the baton to the new generation, thanks to events like The Rides to Lake Silberneherze but especially thanks to Lone Trail. Terra is a hellish place, but the writing does the place justice by offering different perspectives of what life means, what hope is, what different societies do with a never ending source of pain, Oripathy, which we, as a pharmaceutical company and defense contractor, do kind of offer solace from. 2024 might be an awkward moment to start playing this game, but its different events and a multitude of stories, characters and themes all intersecting and weaving their way towards the future have left a mark. Sometimes the writing's goofy, but when it hits, it hits, hard.
I have a hole School Idol Festival left; unwilling to let go, I was looking for other things to keep me busy, occupied, up at night when the sweet release of sleep from consciousness would not come, especially during hard times like the pandemic. Arknights is not a rhythm game, it's a tower defense game, awkward to play, not always clear in its intent and definitely not balanced. There are operators who are better than others and the odds are mostly stacked against newcomers.
I just hope this hole won't be left vacant, again. I wish I could be younger again and never instruct my neurons to hold information such as Texas mommy and Bagpipe lemmy, but here we are. It's my brainrot and I do, as I please, anything I want with it.
Also it's kinda fucked how Gummy, balanced and good in everything Defender operator, was replaced by Myrtle, a DP printing machine, in the beginners' case, this is a scenario where if anything is too broken, the designers have the moral obligation to break anything else to balance it out and cater content to a demographic, in this case redirecting the newcomers towards a certain frowned upon gameplay loop. Please just don't bother with the meta, there's a world of hurt there and the grind necessary to even glance the thing isn't worth it in my opinion.
Who knows what the future will hold, with gacha games being a commodity not in short supply and ending as soon as the interest wanes, but thematically we're kind of passing the baton to the new generation, thanks to events like The Rides to Lake Silberneherze but especially thanks to Lone Trail. Terra is a hellish place, but the writing does the place justice by offering different perspectives of what life means, what hope is, what different societies do with a never ending source of pain, Oripathy, which we, as a pharmaceutical company and defense contractor, do kind of offer solace from. 2024 might be an awkward moment to start playing this game, but its different events and a multitude of stories, characters and themes all intersecting and weaving their way towards the future have left a mark. Sometimes the writing's goofy, but when it hits, it hits, hard.
I have a hole School Idol Festival left; unwilling to let go, I was looking for other things to keep me busy, occupied, up at night when the sweet release of sleep from consciousness would not come, especially during hard times like the pandemic. Arknights is not a rhythm game, it's a tower defense game, awkward to play, not always clear in its intent and definitely not balanced. There are operators who are better than others and the odds are mostly stacked against newcomers.
I just hope this hole won't be left vacant, again. I wish I could be younger again and never instruct my neurons to hold information such as Texas mommy and Bagpipe lemmy, but here we are. It's my brainrot and I do, as I please, anything I want with it.
Also it's kinda fucked how Gummy, balanced and good in everything Defender operator, was replaced by Myrtle, a DP printing machine, in the beginners' case, this is a scenario where if anything is too broken, the designers have the moral obligation to break anything else to balance it out and cater content to a demographic, in this case redirecting the newcomers towards a certain frowned upon gameplay loop. Please just don't bother with the meta, there's a world of hurt there and the grind necessary to even glance the thing isn't worth it in my opinion.
Brownie points for being the least predatory, least grindy, least fanservicey gacha I've played. Has competent writing, respects the player's time and is fundamentally an actual video game that requires you to think and play strategically. There's still a decent amount of grinding and microtransactions since a free mobile game kinda needs these things to stay afloat but it's yet to get egregious or feel forced.
They also put a pretty anthro tiger lady in the game and literally named her wife so yeah I like this actually.
They also put a pretty anthro tiger lady in the game and literally named her wife so yeah I like this actually.
While a lot of people seem to have dismissed this game here for the sole reason of it being a gacha, I honestly think this is one of if not the best gacha game available right now. If gacha games aren’t your thing I don’t know if this will change it but if they are, this is the one.
This game is filled with passion, from the music, the art, and the story. (Obligatory mention of that they make character/event songs and a lot of them are really fucking good). The story and lore run fucking deep and if you can get past the verbosity at times (ahem Kal’tsit) it will not disappoint. Theres a bunch of artists who work on this game but the majority of the art is really good, and theres also a lot of great voice acting, including EN/KR/CN voices which are being added in waves, if you prefer that to JP voice acting. The character art also isn’t overly sexualized like most gachas. They release a lot of skins that you can easily get. Each are made by in universe clothing lines and most of them look amazing.
As for gameplay, it’s fun. The tower defense format allows for a ton of gameplay variety and theres a shit ton of stages. It also is hard, even with the best units in the game you still have to think. Theres a steady stream of content and also an auto replay for after you beat a stage which makes farming convenient. Integrated strategies is awesome and I am glad they are continuing to do it. My only complaint here is annihilation. That mode sucks, but at least it has good rewards. Theres a base which gives you a steady stream of resources for little effort. The upgrade item drop rates are pretty good and the events give a lot of stuff. Also lower rarity operators are very useful and you don’t need the meta 6 stars to be good at the game (though it helps).
Most notably this game has really good gacha currency, and a good gacha system. Gacha also isnt the only way to acquire units. The gacha flat rate is 2% for 6 stars but at 50 pulls or more it starts to increase to where you’re basically guaranteed to get a 6 star from 50-60 pulls. Unfortunately for the limited banners theres a 300 pull hard pity where you can buy any 6 star rate up on the banner, but this is hard to get. The limiteds don't come back often and when they do they have extremely low gacha rates so you basically have to save up for the 300 pulls which sucks. This is slightly offset by the fact they give a lot of gacha pulls during the limited banners and they only come 4 times a year. Theres also multiple other ways to get 6 stars. You can buy them with a currency you get from duplicates (which is easy to get, for anyone), and also get them from recruitment, a gacha-esque system where you do singles with much lower rates but can choose the tags of who you will get, some tags guaranteeing 5 or 6 stars. I think the best part about the whole system is that the game focuses on a steady stream of gacha currency rather than giving it mostly through clearing the story like a lot of other games. As an f2p player or a light spender with consistent play you can reasonably get most of the operators you want, barring past limiteds. You don’t need to whale to get who you want in this game.
So yeah its a good game if you like gachas. If you think it looks cool give it a try, its probably the highest quality and one of the most generous gachas out there. Been playing for almost a year and still love it.
This game is filled with passion, from the music, the art, and the story. (Obligatory mention of that they make character/event songs and a lot of them are really fucking good). The story and lore run fucking deep and if you can get past the verbosity at times (ahem Kal’tsit) it will not disappoint. Theres a bunch of artists who work on this game but the majority of the art is really good, and theres also a lot of great voice acting, including EN/KR/CN voices which are being added in waves, if you prefer that to JP voice acting. The character art also isn’t overly sexualized like most gachas. They release a lot of skins that you can easily get. Each are made by in universe clothing lines and most of them look amazing.
As for gameplay, it’s fun. The tower defense format allows for a ton of gameplay variety and theres a shit ton of stages. It also is hard, even with the best units in the game you still have to think. Theres a steady stream of content and also an auto replay for after you beat a stage which makes farming convenient. Integrated strategies is awesome and I am glad they are continuing to do it. My only complaint here is annihilation. That mode sucks, but at least it has good rewards. Theres a base which gives you a steady stream of resources for little effort. The upgrade item drop rates are pretty good and the events give a lot of stuff. Also lower rarity operators are very useful and you don’t need the meta 6 stars to be good at the game (though it helps).
Most notably this game has really good gacha currency, and a good gacha system. Gacha also isnt the only way to acquire units. The gacha flat rate is 2% for 6 stars but at 50 pulls or more it starts to increase to where you’re basically guaranteed to get a 6 star from 50-60 pulls. Unfortunately for the limited banners theres a 300 pull hard pity where you can buy any 6 star rate up on the banner, but this is hard to get. The limiteds don't come back often and when they do they have extremely low gacha rates so you basically have to save up for the 300 pulls which sucks. This is slightly offset by the fact they give a lot of gacha pulls during the limited banners and they only come 4 times a year. Theres also multiple other ways to get 6 stars. You can buy them with a currency you get from duplicates (which is easy to get, for anyone), and also get them from recruitment, a gacha-esque system where you do singles with much lower rates but can choose the tags of who you will get, some tags guaranteeing 5 or 6 stars. I think the best part about the whole system is that the game focuses on a steady stream of gacha currency rather than giving it mostly through clearing the story like a lot of other games. As an f2p player or a light spender with consistent play you can reasonably get most of the operators you want, barring past limiteds. You don’t need to whale to get who you want in this game.
So yeah its a good game if you like gachas. If you think it looks cool give it a try, its probably the highest quality and one of the most generous gachas out there. Been playing for almost a year and still love it.
World hard and cold utage tiddy soft and warm
TD game that puts its peers to shame. Isn't afraid to innovate and step outside the box by adding RTS and puzzle elements into the game. Has repeatable game modes, Diverse music and a surprisingly fleshed out world building. Don't let the gacha tag fool you. This thing is more closer to a real game than a typical gacha game.
BONELESS MONKYLESS BLOONSTOWER DEFENCE
Not just a great gacha game, but a great game period. Doesn’t feel scummy in terms of drop rates or energy refreshes, and is one of the most generous F2P games I’ve ever played. Watch out for those limited banners though — they’ll get you.
Story is fun (if wordy) and there’s an absurd amount of content to play, including base building/management, tons of story maps to play through, challenge maps for resources, etc.
The gameplay is a defense tower type deal, but honestly it requires a lot of unit management and strategizing. The best part is you don’t need the best / most expensive units to clear maps, you can run most levels with a low star crew as long as you properly strategize. What this means is that being a F2P player is completely viable way to play.
Even better is that Arknights is actually fun to play and satisfying to tinker with your squad compositions. It’s not just a vehicle for pulling cute operators — what a concept!
Definitely one of the bigger gaming surprises for me this year. Not only am I playing a mobile gacha game, but I’m putting a ton of time into it, and I’m enjoying it thoroughly.
Story is fun (if wordy) and there’s an absurd amount of content to play, including base building/management, tons of story maps to play through, challenge maps for resources, etc.
The gameplay is a defense tower type deal, but honestly it requires a lot of unit management and strategizing. The best part is you don’t need the best / most expensive units to clear maps, you can run most levels with a low star crew as long as you properly strategize. What this means is that being a F2P player is completely viable way to play.
Even better is that Arknights is actually fun to play and satisfying to tinker with your squad compositions. It’s not just a vehicle for pulling cute operators — what a concept!
Definitely one of the bigger gaming surprises for me this year. Not only am I playing a mobile gacha game, but I’m putting a ton of time into it, and I’m enjoying it thoroughly.
Hab mich das erste mal getraut ein Handy-Gacha zu probieren weil ich ein Fanart mochte.
Habs son bisschen gespielt, hab son bisschen gegrindet, hatte auch echt Spaß dabei, hab son paar gute Pulls gehabt, hatte nie das Verlangen echtes Geld auszugeben und weil ich unendlich sparen müsste bis ich mir endlich einen dieser 10-Pulls holen könnte, hab ich das interesse verloren.
Fantastisches Genre was ihr da habt, guys!
Ansonsten, fun kleines Tower Defense Game. Gute Artworks. Finds unfair, dass all die besten Character Designer der Industrie nun dafür arbeiten PNGs in Kisten ziehen zu dürfen.
Habs son bisschen gespielt, hab son bisschen gegrindet, hatte auch echt Spaß dabei, hab son paar gute Pulls gehabt, hatte nie das Verlangen echtes Geld auszugeben und weil ich unendlich sparen müsste bis ich mir endlich einen dieser 10-Pulls holen könnte, hab ich das interesse verloren.
Fantastisches Genre was ihr da habt, guys!
Ansonsten, fun kleines Tower Defense Game. Gute Artworks. Finds unfair, dass all die besten Character Designer der Industrie nun dafür arbeiten PNGs in Kisten ziehen zu dürfen.
good story, fun, nice gacha and no generic fanservice >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the rest
Can't give it 5 stars because all gachas are predatory and evil but I can't help loving this one. Love the worldbuilding and I still get a sense of how amazing it all is without even reading a lot of the story. I play not considering meta or the best levelling practices (i max individual operators up all the way before moving on to another) but I never feel too punished for that. Levels can be very challenging and make you feel satisfied after "solving" them. Sometimes they drop new types of game modes like IS which are very fun and a welcome change of pace as well.
Probably the best gacha game out there, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the game itself isn't being hard on the player for not having enough units: a lot of newer players tend to invest in 5 or 6 stars operators despite not having enough resources to make them grow, while most 4 stars in half the resources do the same job. The difficulty of the game lies in solving the tower defense sections and applying different strategies, some stages can be solved with your usual team, but sometimes one has to be creative and try different classes.
Secondly, the game is a blast to play. Its UI is crisp, clear, the player has a lot of content to get through and nothing is paywalled: you get to it when you get to it. With the best pity rate and recurring events you can easily get the operators you want for your team. Not only that, but the lore bits and writing are top notch, with some tone deaf examples here and there of overexposing. There are websites where one can read the story bits, and I recommend it for a simple reason: sometimes our brains have a symptom called mucho texto, and Arknights can be guilty of causing it at times.
I vividly remember falling asleep while I was "playing" Arknights. But the music is great, the gameplay is getting more and more polished with the years, the characters are loveable and the story is getting somewhere soonish. I simply cannot play too much of it or it'll cut time I have for other games and God forbid I play Arknights and FFXIV together.
Firstly, the game itself isn't being hard on the player for not having enough units: a lot of newer players tend to invest in 5 or 6 stars operators despite not having enough resources to make them grow, while most 4 stars in half the resources do the same job. The difficulty of the game lies in solving the tower defense sections and applying different strategies, some stages can be solved with your usual team, but sometimes one has to be creative and try different classes.
Secondly, the game is a blast to play. Its UI is crisp, clear, the player has a lot of content to get through and nothing is paywalled: you get to it when you get to it. With the best pity rate and recurring events you can easily get the operators you want for your team. Not only that, but the lore bits and writing are top notch, with some tone deaf examples here and there of overexposing. There are websites where one can read the story bits, and I recommend it for a simple reason: sometimes our brains have a symptom called mucho texto, and Arknights can be guilty of causing it at times.
I vividly remember falling asleep while I was "playing" Arknights. But the music is great, the gameplay is getting more and more polished with the years, the characters are loveable and the story is getting somewhere soonish. I simply cannot play too much of it or it'll cut time I have for other games and God forbid I play Arknights and FFXIV together.
Gameplay: Good
Story: Can't Say (Didn't finish)
Controls: Good
Graphics: Great (Cute)
Length: Can't Say (Didn't finish)
Developers: OK
Retired due to lack of interest and gacha burnout.
Story: Can't Say (Didn't finish)
Controls: Good
Graphics: Great (Cute)
Length: Can't Say (Didn't finish)
Developers: OK
Retired due to lack of interest and gacha burnout.
im biased cause i like tower defense games
It's a tower defense so it gets points for existing in a incredibly niche genre, but it's also gacha which might be the source of all evil in the universe.
Arknights is a game I've been playing on and off for almost 3 years now. Over that time period, it's become my favorite tower defense game for its unique mechanics and excellent writing. It's not a perfect game, but it's my favorite.
But before I go into detail on why I feel that way, let's address the elephant in the room. Arknights is a gacha game. That means there is microtransactions and gambling. It also means that there is a daily grind and limited time events to prey on your FOMO. While I believe that Arknights is rather fair and somewhat friendly to non-paying players in comparison to other gacha games, the reality is that the business model is unethical and predatory. I don't really intend to defend it and I understand if others find these aspects to be deal breakers for them.
Now for the gameplay. Arknights has the usual tower defense mechanics but has a bigger emphasis on activately deploying and managing towers. Enemies attack your towers on the way to the exit, and you can only have a limited amount of towers out at once. This encourages careful teambuilding along as well as careful positioning. Each tower has special abilities and stats, with a wide-variety of kits for you to use alongside light RPG elements for raising each tower. All of this blends together to create a unique tower defense game that captures what I want, nearly perfectly.
The towers themselves are quite interesting and widely varied. There are your usual towers: DPS, CC, healers, buffers and debuffers. But there are also many unique towers: lane holders, pushers and pullers, reposition towers, duelists, ambushers. And of course, even the more generic roles come in many unique flavors. This along with the many custom enemies and bosses and unique maps give Arknights strategic depth and diverse tactics to play with.
The writing is also excellent. Although the main story starts off dry and somewhat rambly, the writing has greatly improved as time went on and the recent stories have been gripping. From the tale of knighthood being eroded by capitalism, to the Abyssal Hunters dealing with the aftermath of slaying a Lovecraftian god, to the story of lost brothers, cursed by the Witch King and reunited by music. Arknights' world feels fleshed out with complex characters and moving stories.
With all that said, Arknights does have many things worthy of criticism. I had previously mentioned the predatory monetization and the grind. The grind in paticular is missing many quality of life features, leading you to run the same map over and over again for resources. And the recently added gamemode is a poorly balanced and repititive grind for some of the endgame upgrades. The game is also time-gated on resource gathering like many mobile games. Although it has a pretty fun roguelite-mode if you just want to play, so at least the stamina doesn't stop you from having fun.
As for the gacha, the game provides a pretty decent stream of currency to pull for more towers. You won't get everything you want, but you can get a decent amount even as a non-spender. The more egrigious point is the lack of a true pity or spark system. You're not really guarenteed to get any unit, unless it's a limited banner which does have a spark. But the spark is extremely high and you probably need to save up for maybe 5-6 months if you're a non-spender. Of course, all of this is part of the predatory monetization that makes these games so profitable at our expense.
With all being said, I still can't help but love what is here. A unique and high quality tower defense, with great writing and strategic depth. It just fits perfectly with what I want and nothing else is really offering it for me.
But before I go into detail on why I feel that way, let's address the elephant in the room. Arknights is a gacha game. That means there is microtransactions and gambling. It also means that there is a daily grind and limited time events to prey on your FOMO. While I believe that Arknights is rather fair and somewhat friendly to non-paying players in comparison to other gacha games, the reality is that the business model is unethical and predatory. I don't really intend to defend it and I understand if others find these aspects to be deal breakers for them.
Now for the gameplay. Arknights has the usual tower defense mechanics but has a bigger emphasis on activately deploying and managing towers. Enemies attack your towers on the way to the exit, and you can only have a limited amount of towers out at once. This encourages careful teambuilding along as well as careful positioning. Each tower has special abilities and stats, with a wide-variety of kits for you to use alongside light RPG elements for raising each tower. All of this blends together to create a unique tower defense game that captures what I want, nearly perfectly.
The towers themselves are quite interesting and widely varied. There are your usual towers: DPS, CC, healers, buffers and debuffers. But there are also many unique towers: lane holders, pushers and pullers, reposition towers, duelists, ambushers. And of course, even the more generic roles come in many unique flavors. This along with the many custom enemies and bosses and unique maps give Arknights strategic depth and diverse tactics to play with.
The writing is also excellent. Although the main story starts off dry and somewhat rambly, the writing has greatly improved as time went on and the recent stories have been gripping. From the tale of knighthood being eroded by capitalism, to the Abyssal Hunters dealing with the aftermath of slaying a Lovecraftian god, to the story of lost brothers, cursed by the Witch King and reunited by music. Arknights' world feels fleshed out with complex characters and moving stories.
With all that said, Arknights does have many things worthy of criticism. I had previously mentioned the predatory monetization and the grind. The grind in paticular is missing many quality of life features, leading you to run the same map over and over again for resources. And the recently added gamemode is a poorly balanced and repititive grind for some of the endgame upgrades. The game is also time-gated on resource gathering like many mobile games. Although it has a pretty fun roguelite-mode if you just want to play, so at least the stamina doesn't stop you from having fun.
As for the gacha, the game provides a pretty decent stream of currency to pull for more towers. You won't get everything you want, but you can get a decent amount even as a non-spender. The more egrigious point is the lack of a true pity or spark system. You're not really guarenteed to get any unit, unless it's a limited banner which does have a spark. But the spark is extremely high and you probably need to save up for maybe 5-6 months if you're a non-spender. Of course, all of this is part of the predatory monetization that makes these games so profitable at our expense.
With all being said, I still can't help but love what is here. A unique and high quality tower defense, with great writing and strategic depth. It just fits perfectly with what I want and nothing else is really offering it for me.
Whilst every Medium of Media can reasonably tell almost any story, I gotta say that Hypergryph have some goddamn balls going with Gacha as the basis for their cyberpunk fantasy AIDS allegory. Because yes, this game which is about the sociopolitical fallout of a Magical disease and the treatment of the infected is told through the medium of spending $2 on hoping your waifu or husbando pops out of a duffel bag shaped slot machine.
And you know what, I thnk it actually works.
It's bolstered by a core strength of an incredibly strong aesthetic. The presentation in AK is absolutely phenomenal. Whilst there's a few weird character designs, most of them sell the techno-fantasy streetwear look really well, whilst also having enough variation to keep things fresh and interesting.
And fortunately the story is also actually pretty good - at least once you get past the first few pretty dry and boring chapters - but after that, it picks up massively, with each chapter effectively forming a small self contained story about the struggle and dilemmas of the fucked-up world the game takes place in. It's unusually mature and prepared to go to dark places a lot of the time, and frankly maybe less than half of the tales in AK get a happy ending - but it works. And the AIDS allegory stuff is honestly handled very well, focusing on both systemic discrimination and personal prejudices and treating it all with some surprising nuance. Blaze and Greythroat's relatioship in Chapters 5 and 6 is a standout in this regard.
It also, frankly, works well with the Gacha format, which basically demands an absolutely metronomic stream of content, which typically consists of story events which come basically every 3 weeks. And they're mostly pretty great. They do a great job of expanding the world, providing shorter, more focused vignettes, and diversifying the tone - going from full doomer (Darknight's Memoir, which is focused on a recurring antagonist's life as a mercenary) all the way to outright comedic stuff (Ceobe's Fungimist, which is literally about a sctterbrained character hallucinating on mushrooms). It really helps diversify the game, and the long form content structure of AK also ties in well with the 'endless struggle' motif, and that the problems that the player faction faces are systemic and are in there for the long haul. Whilst I'm far from fond of the Gacha mechanics itself, they're easily some of the better ones of the genre, all story content can easily be cleared with freebies, and the game definetly benefits from being a live service - honestly one of the very few I can think of.
Oh I guess there's also gameplay. It's fun - a unit based tower defense game that is frankly way too easy an awful lot of the time - but Harder content, in the form of the contingency contracts and the recent roguelike mode (which was actually better than most modern roguelikes somehow), can be great fun to try and work out strategies for - the only real shame in this is that the super-hard content is usually time limited, and often can also be brute forced by a few incredibly broken characters (Silverash, Eyjafjalla) that would have been nerfed a year ago if this game was in a genre that could get away with that. Avoid using those two if you try out the game for sure.
The overall package really just works better than it has any right to. It's basically the only world in this sort of game that i've ever been able to take seriously, and the story is actually worth paying attention to - whilst AK is also able to serve as an idle, comfort food sort of game at the same time.
So whilst I realise that I cash in every piece of clout I have reccomending this, I actually do. Especially if you can stomach the first few mediocre chapters of gameplay. And obviously dont touch this with a barge pole if you have any tendancies towards gambling or addiction - but if you can weather the urge to dump 100 pulls on the thicc gundam snek or alternative waifu of your choice, I would give it a go.
And you know what, I thnk it actually works.
It's bolstered by a core strength of an incredibly strong aesthetic. The presentation in AK is absolutely phenomenal. Whilst there's a few weird character designs, most of them sell the techno-fantasy streetwear look really well, whilst also having enough variation to keep things fresh and interesting.
And fortunately the story is also actually pretty good - at least once you get past the first few pretty dry and boring chapters - but after that, it picks up massively, with each chapter effectively forming a small self contained story about the struggle and dilemmas of the fucked-up world the game takes place in. It's unusually mature and prepared to go to dark places a lot of the time, and frankly maybe less than half of the tales in AK get a happy ending - but it works. And the AIDS allegory stuff is honestly handled very well, focusing on both systemic discrimination and personal prejudices and treating it all with some surprising nuance. Blaze and Greythroat's relatioship in Chapters 5 and 6 is a standout in this regard.
It also, frankly, works well with the Gacha format, which basically demands an absolutely metronomic stream of content, which typically consists of story events which come basically every 3 weeks. And they're mostly pretty great. They do a great job of expanding the world, providing shorter, more focused vignettes, and diversifying the tone - going from full doomer (Darknight's Memoir, which is focused on a recurring antagonist's life as a mercenary) all the way to outright comedic stuff (Ceobe's Fungimist, which is literally about a sctterbrained character hallucinating on mushrooms). It really helps diversify the game, and the long form content structure of AK also ties in well with the 'endless struggle' motif, and that the problems that the player faction faces are systemic and are in there for the long haul. Whilst I'm far from fond of the Gacha mechanics itself, they're easily some of the better ones of the genre, all story content can easily be cleared with freebies, and the game definetly benefits from being a live service - honestly one of the very few I can think of.
Oh I guess there's also gameplay. It's fun - a unit based tower defense game that is frankly way too easy an awful lot of the time - but Harder content, in the form of the contingency contracts and the recent roguelike mode (which was actually better than most modern roguelikes somehow), can be great fun to try and work out strategies for - the only real shame in this is that the super-hard content is usually time limited, and often can also be brute forced by a few incredibly broken characters (Silverash, Eyjafjalla) that would have been nerfed a year ago if this game was in a genre that could get away with that. Avoid using those two if you try out the game for sure.
The overall package really just works better than it has any right to. It's basically the only world in this sort of game that i've ever been able to take seriously, and the story is actually worth paying attention to - whilst AK is also able to serve as an idle, comfort food sort of game at the same time.
So whilst I realise that I cash in every piece of clout I have reccomending this, I actually do. Especially if you can stomach the first few mediocre chapters of gameplay. And obviously dont touch this with a barge pole if you have any tendancies towards gambling or addiction - but if you can weather the urge to dump 100 pulls on the thicc gundam snek or alternative waifu of your choice, I would give it a go.
This game has some absolutely phenomenal writing - easily some of my favorite I've seen yet. It's worldbuilding might honestly be the most rich I've experienced yet, which is really impressive.
But what really fascinated me was its themes and the myriad of perspectives it uses to portray these with. It's got nothing but love for idealists - even while displaying it in a dying world, it's seen as utterly commendable holding onto it despite the hardships you undoubtedly face as a result. But it knows this isn't always as easy as it seems, and there's plenty of characters that very realistically struggle to keep that faith alive for an extended period of time and still manage to shake off those worries for the sake of a better future.
A lot of it has been very relevant to me lately, and incredibly comforting as a result. Ch'en and Muelsyse are especially characters I'll think fondly of for a long time due to how much their character arcs mean to me - but the main trio of the Doctor, Amiya and Kal'tsit are also some of the most profoundly fascinating characters I've seen in a long time. It's got such a great cast.
It's not without it's flaws however; and I'm not even gonna talk about the gacha aspect because that's a given - I think the stamina system in this game might genuinely be the worst I've ever seen. You get like 3 refill items a week; which wouldn't be too bad on it's own, but considering the amount of grinding you have to do to make sure your operators can keep up with the gradually increasing difficulty of the story, it's really rough. You've gotta grind LMD, exp tickets, general materials AND promotion chips; all while being able to do like 10 maps a day if you don't get any automatic stamina refills due to level-ups. It grinds the game's pace to a halt, and as a result I ended up using alternative methods to experience the story at the pace I wanted to do so while playing the game itself on the side - otherwise I would've probably read it at about 1/10th of the pace I did now.
I didn't regret it one bit considering how fantastic it ended up being, but yeah - be prepared for a slog if you wanna experience it naturally.
A very well worthwhile slog if you're up for it - but one I personally much rather sped up to get to the things that really interested me; its utterly incredible writing.
But what really fascinated me was its themes and the myriad of perspectives it uses to portray these with. It's got nothing but love for idealists - even while displaying it in a dying world, it's seen as utterly commendable holding onto it despite the hardships you undoubtedly face as a result. But it knows this isn't always as easy as it seems, and there's plenty of characters that very realistically struggle to keep that faith alive for an extended period of time and still manage to shake off those worries for the sake of a better future.
A lot of it has been very relevant to me lately, and incredibly comforting as a result. Ch'en and Muelsyse are especially characters I'll think fondly of for a long time due to how much their character arcs mean to me - but the main trio of the Doctor, Amiya and Kal'tsit are also some of the most profoundly fascinating characters I've seen in a long time. It's got such a great cast.
It's not without it's flaws however; and I'm not even gonna talk about the gacha aspect because that's a given - I think the stamina system in this game might genuinely be the worst I've ever seen. You get like 3 refill items a week; which wouldn't be too bad on it's own, but considering the amount of grinding you have to do to make sure your operators can keep up with the gradually increasing difficulty of the story, it's really rough. You've gotta grind LMD, exp tickets, general materials AND promotion chips; all while being able to do like 10 maps a day if you don't get any automatic stamina refills due to level-ups. It grinds the game's pace to a halt, and as a result I ended up using alternative methods to experience the story at the pace I wanted to do so while playing the game itself on the side - otherwise I would've probably read it at about 1/10th of the pace I did now.
I didn't regret it one bit considering how fantastic it ended up being, but yeah - be prepared for a slog if you wanna experience it naturally.
A very well worthwhile slog if you're up for it - but one I personally much rather sped up to get to the things that really interested me; its utterly incredible writing.
the paragraph long monologues on the human condition are good, actually
Kuvâ-yi Milliye'den gelip atlarıma el koymaya çalıştılar ikisini de vurup dağa kaçtım yakalandığımda idam edilmeden önce beni atlarımla birlikte gömmelerini istedim
Come for the catgirls, stay for the war crimes.
Why did this game have to be a gacha game it deserves so much better
"Arknights" is a standout mobile game that seamlessly combines strategy and tower defense elements.
tl;dr, like tower defense? you must play it
long :
dare i say this is the best gacha i PLAYED yet,hard accentuation on the playing part because unlike other gacha games theres ACTUAL GAMEPLAY involved here. braindead your way with a surtr and thorns setup, or have fun and deploy specialist shoving your enemies into a hole, the true gameplay of arknights is in the endgame where you have dozens of operators leveled opening the possibility to clear stages in multitude of ways, and this is the part where i have the most fun where i access past cleared stages and try to clear them again with funny comps or challenge myself using low star ops. if you like tower defenses this is a massive reccomendation from me, i have yet to see a tower defense game as revolutionary as this even outside of gachas, with the map introducing enemies with multiple paths and a class sinergy between operator and enemy types, different terrain effects and limitations
but of course, by the nature of gacha we need to talk about monetization, comparitively speaking yostar is plentiful in term of rewards and as a f2p player for over 2 years i have obtained most of the 6* and only missing summer chen from the limited pool ones (from my last banner i played) and this is the only reason why i removed half a star from 5 , lol.
story wise, its ok. just watch the anime
tl;dr, like tower defense? you must play it
long :
dare i say this is the best gacha i PLAYED yet,hard accentuation on the playing part because unlike other gacha games theres ACTUAL GAMEPLAY involved here. braindead your way with a surtr and thorns setup, or have fun and deploy specialist shoving your enemies into a hole, the true gameplay of arknights is in the endgame where you have dozens of operators leveled opening the possibility to clear stages in multitude of ways, and this is the part where i have the most fun where i access past cleared stages and try to clear them again with funny comps or challenge myself using low star ops. if you like tower defenses this is a massive reccomendation from me, i have yet to see a tower defense game as revolutionary as this even outside of gachas, with the map introducing enemies with multiple paths and a class sinergy between operator and enemy types, different terrain effects and limitations
but of course, by the nature of gacha we need to talk about monetization, comparitively speaking yostar is plentiful in term of rewards and as a f2p player for over 2 years i have obtained most of the 6* and only missing summer chen from the limited pool ones (from my last banner i played) and this is the only reason why i removed half a star from 5 , lol.
story wise, its ok. just watch the anime
It is weird to say that one of the wokest games out there right now is a gacha-based mobile game, but seriously the Arknights team is working on another level compared to like almost every other writing team out there. It's a crapsack world, but there's always a shining beacon out there of a better world.
It helps its also the finest tower defense game to ever grace us.
It helps its also the finest tower defense game to ever grace us.
I like the character writing. Character designs are also less fanservice-y.
isso é literalmente o único gacha bom que existe e você não pode me provar o contrário
The extreme and miserable level of grinding the game forces you to do just to raise ONE operator knocks it an entire star grade down. This game suffers from artificial longevity.
Blaze goes BRRRRRR BRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Arknights is probably the best gacha game I've played purely in terms of production value and player retention. It has avoided many of the pitfalls that other games fell into over the years, and I've been pretty into it ever since the global server came out.
I find Arknights pretty hard to review because the game is always being updated and changed, and to really review it I need to generalize a lot. Bear with that.
What I love about Arknights more than anything is the character designs. Due to the game's world, Terra, being wildly diverse and taking a lot from our world, many playable characters and NPCs have tons of awesome designs that scratch every type of itch someone may have. You like streetwear? Done. You like knights? Done. You like officer worker mercenaries? Done. A design will eventually catch someone's eye.
The storyline. Note, I actually kind of hate the game's main story, where Arknights really shines is in it's side events that flesh out side characters and the world as a whole. These things are long. Like REALLY long. It's insane how much story they cram into some of these, it's even more insane that they're all written so well. Of course, some miss the mark or have their issues, but I've been satisfied with them generally, there are very few event stories I genuinely regret reading. This extends to character writing and world building, since characters come from all walks of life, tons of tropes and character personalities are there. The variety is very nice, and most characters have some complexity to them.
Third, the gameplay. Arknights is very unique, it's a tower defense gacha. The characters you roll are essentially towers that you place, letting their AI do the rest with you activating skills or placing down other units. The game does have a small powercreep issue, and many of the lower rarity characters lose their niche pretty easily. Thoguh I'd say Arknights is better than most gachas, broken units don't seem to shatter the game too much overall. (There are a few exceptions to this.)
Lastly the music. MMmmmm. That's some good shit. Go to Youtube right now and listen to some of it. The variety continues here, music matching where in Terra an event or battle is taking place, or maybe it's just gonna be some sick ass electronic music, who cares it's all fire.
Now, some criticism. The challenge content in this game is getting a little ridiculous. I understand challenge is in the name, but I generally don't like how Arknights handles difficulty longterm. Just stacking more HP or damage onto enemies without much else. There also have been some seriously scummy practices done by the devs, which is expected from gachas, but Arknights used to carry itself much better, now we get limited time units all the time, and a lot of harder content essentially demands the most OP units or a video walkthrough just to find any success. Lastly I mentioned this before but I do not like the main story. Mostly a personal thing but I find it annoying because I always love the side events so much.
Overall, Arknights is probably one of the most important games to me. It's art style and storytelling is unreal to me, and I do think it has wider appeal outside of gacha losers like me. I got many of my friends to try the game and they all liked it a lot.
I don't recommend gachas easily, but please try Arknights. It's free, do not spend any fucking money on it.
I find Arknights pretty hard to review because the game is always being updated and changed, and to really review it I need to generalize a lot. Bear with that.
What I love about Arknights more than anything is the character designs. Due to the game's world, Terra, being wildly diverse and taking a lot from our world, many playable characters and NPCs have tons of awesome designs that scratch every type of itch someone may have. You like streetwear? Done. You like knights? Done. You like officer worker mercenaries? Done. A design will eventually catch someone's eye.
The storyline. Note, I actually kind of hate the game's main story, where Arknights really shines is in it's side events that flesh out side characters and the world as a whole. These things are long. Like REALLY long. It's insane how much story they cram into some of these, it's even more insane that they're all written so well. Of course, some miss the mark or have their issues, but I've been satisfied with them generally, there are very few event stories I genuinely regret reading. This extends to character writing and world building, since characters come from all walks of life, tons of tropes and character personalities are there. The variety is very nice, and most characters have some complexity to them.
Third, the gameplay. Arknights is very unique, it's a tower defense gacha. The characters you roll are essentially towers that you place, letting their AI do the rest with you activating skills or placing down other units. The game does have a small powercreep issue, and many of the lower rarity characters lose their niche pretty easily. Thoguh I'd say Arknights is better than most gachas, broken units don't seem to shatter the game too much overall. (There are a few exceptions to this.)
Lastly the music. MMmmmm. That's some good shit. Go to Youtube right now and listen to some of it. The variety continues here, music matching where in Terra an event or battle is taking place, or maybe it's just gonna be some sick ass electronic music, who cares it's all fire.
Now, some criticism. The challenge content in this game is getting a little ridiculous. I understand challenge is in the name, but I generally don't like how Arknights handles difficulty longterm. Just stacking more HP or damage onto enemies without much else. There also have been some seriously scummy practices done by the devs, which is expected from gachas, but Arknights used to carry itself much better, now we get limited time units all the time, and a lot of harder content essentially demands the most OP units or a video walkthrough just to find any success. Lastly I mentioned this before but I do not like the main story. Mostly a personal thing but I find it annoying because I always love the side events so much.
Overall, Arknights is probably one of the most important games to me. It's art style and storytelling is unreal to me, and I do think it has wider appeal outside of gacha losers like me. I got many of my friends to try the game and they all liked it a lot.
I don't recommend gachas easily, but please try Arknights. It's free, do not spend any fucking money on it.
An excellent Gacha game, the best I've ever played, but still a gacha game. I need to quit before they suck more money and time from me. A millions stories, characters, excellent plot, good drop rates, there's very little to complain about, but I found myself not enjoying it anymore, so I must overcome my FOMO and quit.
The stamina system is horrid and it felt like I just logged in every day, left it on autoplay for 20 minutes (or an hour whenever Anhilation refreshed) and do that for days because grinding is extremely long. I have the image of 1-6 burned into my brain.
I lost interest in the story by Chapter 5 and the game as a whole by then (well, more like I liked where the story went but because of grinding, events, and how the presentation was done, I either forgot what happened because I returned from one week of grinding or the character statics just didn't feel interesting, and I like Visual Novels).
I can guarantee this is just me not being the target audience for a game like this, gacha games rely upon social interaction between its players and the interactions I have had is how much they want to drill certain operators even though the game is almost anti-horny in its designs, which is something I like.
I really liked the concept and raw gameplay even if I didn't care much for the plot, but this game has like 1.5-2 stars removed because it's a gacha game and the problems it faces because of that.
I lost interest in the story by Chapter 5 and the game as a whole by then (well, more like I liked where the story went but because of grinding, events, and how the presentation was done, I either forgot what happened because I returned from one week of grinding or the character statics just didn't feel interesting, and I like Visual Novels).
I can guarantee this is just me not being the target audience for a game like this, gacha games rely upon social interaction between its players and the interactions I have had is how much they want to drill certain operators even though the game is almost anti-horny in its designs, which is something I like.
I really liked the concept and raw gameplay even if I didn't care much for the plot, but this game has like 1.5-2 stars removed because it's a gacha game and the problems it faces because of that.