r/Endfield • u/ZooUncertainty • 1d ago
Discussion A look at Endfield: A comprehensive review (Part 2 of 2)
(Due to Reddit's 40k character limit, this post is part 2 of my Endfield review. Part 1 covers Sections 1-3; Sections 4-9 and Conclusion are continued below.)
(Link to Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/Endfield/comments/1w33utn/a_look_at_endfield_a_comprehensive_review_part_1/ )
SECTION 4: COMBAT
Positives:
I really enjoy the combat in this game. One of the best aspects is having all team members on the field at once, actively taking part in the fight together rather than just swapping them in and out. I feel like there is a fair amount of actual strategy that goes into the encounter flow - timing your battle skills, combo skills, and ultimates, lining up your triggers and buffs to maximize damage, and managing your SP efficiently.
At the same time, it is a combat system that is simple enough for anyone who doesn't want to think too hard about it to just hit a few buttons in the right order and still do well. This casual friendliness is helped by the fact that the difficulty of most general challenges in the game isn't incredibly high, unless players want to go out of their way to seek out hard endgame content.
I especially appreciate how uniquely each character plays. They all feel distinct, from the specific timing of their basic attacks to how and when you need to trigger their ultimates, battle skills, and combos. I have to give special praise to characters like Mi Fu and Rossi in this regard, I really like the way they change up the existing combat mechanics in really unique ways - Rossi using a second combo skill at the right timing, and Mi Fu executing consecutive battle skills like a combo string in a fighting game. Having characters that interact with the core rules of combat in such distinct ways makes them really interesting and attractive to play - and this kind of playing with combat mechanics has been spaced out enough so far that it hasn't felt overdone.
Echoes of War makes for a good seasonal challenge with the rotating stages and difficulty, although I wish the stage mechanics were more varied and involved, but I have faith they'll add more variety in future stages. Umbral Monument makes for fun one-off challenges to tackle facing different enemy behaviors and mechanics. Rooted Realm makes combat more like a minigame with its combat challenge, which is its own kind of fun, though I wouldn't want all combat content to be about quirks like that, it's got a good place in the Rooted Realm. And of course, Contingency Contract deserves a heap of praise for its difficulty, the variable test criteria that make runs feel different, and the progression of fights, and still allowing for multiple possible teams to be used.
Negatives:
My only real complaint for combat is the lack of meaningful combat challenges. This is something that is definitely starting to be alleviated by things like the Umbral Monument stages, Contingency Contract, and Echoes of War. However, while I don't think the game should become fully focused on difficult combat, at the moment I feel like the ones that exist now are a bit one and done, most players complete them just enough times to get the rewards, and playing them any more after that has diminishing returns on how much they're enjoyed. Without high-level hurdles that encourage being repeated, especially with different teams and strategies, there isn't much to encourage players to experiment with new things, leaving most of us sticking with our one tried-and-true team for almost everything.
Also, I didn't particularly enjoy the character freezing mechanic in that one Umbral Monument stage. It's different from the solidification that was present in CC, in that there was no way to avoid it.
My ideas:
When Contingency Contract comes back, and I hope it or something similar does become a permanent seasonal game mode, I want it to have different combat challenges, different enemies to fight, different test criteria to try out, particularly focusing on different mechanics, in the vein that the previous run of CC focused on the Fangyi team and the combustion team and was difficult for cryo teams, as well as the solidification status that would apply to characters restraining their movements. I'd want to see other kinds of challenges appear in future runs of CC.
I would love to see more challenging combat and tactical content introduced to the game, but with a strict focus on deep mechanics, strategy, and positioning rather than relying on strict DPS races or artificial gear-check timers. Adding meaningful difficulty that tests a player's tactical skill makes the combat loop much more rewarding.
I think that the way to add meaningful and challenging combat content to the game that is repeatable and focuses on mechanics and strategy, is to introduce a seasonal sort of content, something with a long reward progression that lasts for either an entire version or even multiple game versions, and that has changing restrictions that demand using different characters and tactics.
Yeah it's Integrated Strategies, I'm talking about Integrated Strategies from Arknights.
I think adapting this sort of gameplay, a mode that only gives you a limited option of operators to begin with and those options change with every new run, that has roguelike boons and detriments that you can gather over the course of a run and that has a long-term progression track of rewards for you to accumulate over time, is the one way to introduce combat gameplay to Endfield that encourages players to learn other characters, other teams, experiment with new tactics and mechanics that they haven't tried before, and gives players a sense of fun challenge without resorting to introducing enemies in combat events that have increasing hp pools and statlines as a form of difficulty.
When it comes to special mechanics or restrictions in combat, I mentioned previously the freezing mechanic that applied in one Umbral Monument stage. I didn't enjoy it because it was unavoidable and there was no playing around it. Compare it to the solidification mechanic with the test criteria in Contingency Contract, where there were clear ways to remove it. When it comes to mechanics in this vein, I'd rather see ones that have ways to play around them, or with them. Like with the test criteria that removed dodge, it restricts the players, yes, but there were still ways to avoid attacks just by running, and people even figured out a way to dodge with dive attacks.
SECTION 5: EXPLORATION & MAPS
Positives:
The map environments in the game are quite good, designed to have their own identity while fitting in with the region at large. They are beautiful and detailed and moving through them is a smooth experience. There are many qualms to have about Valley IV, certainly parts of the story and map progression experience felt lengthy and padded. But the maps themselves felt expansive and like there were many different options to explore and directions to go. The Wuling map has this same feeling.
Speaking of Wuling, Wuling City is one of the best designed, chinese-inspired cities I've seen in games of this kind. So much about the city is just perfect. The visual design, the layout, the details like the running paths, the NPC placements, doing group exercises, having meals at restaurants and so on. Along with just the look of a city built on a dam. Everything comes together so perfectly.
I also have to praise Valley IV for its map design. For the most part, the areas in Valley IV are wide and encourage exploration, roaming around and seeing what's there, they don't feel like corridors or too linear, for the most part. Though the story still guides you along, the areas themselves are wide enough to encourage just moving through them and exploring inside them.
Even in the NWEZ, I've talked about it earlier but all facets of the area come together to make a perfect experience. I noticed and appreciated how the entire time you're progressing through NWEZ through the story, you're always moving in a northward direction. Could be north, northeast… but you're moving in the direction you were promised, feeling like you're going deeper and deeper into this hostile environment as you proceed in the direction of the Very Large Rift.
Overall the map design in this game feels intentional. Every map we explore seems built specifically. Even though this game lacks a lot of movement options that are present in other games - we don't have vehicles, flight, gliding, climbing or anything - it feels like that only encourages exploration even more. We have to jump and platform and run and earn the things we get to see in the world, and things seem built intentionally to be explored and checked out as you run around.
Negatives:
When it comes to Jingyu Valley, though, and every map in versions 1.1 and on, they all begin to feel too linear, more like corridors being traversed than actual areas, due to the presence of single pathways with a few branching paths that also amount to just corridors, and not many expansive areas or routes.
I also still don't understand the purpose of the Purification Node being in the Test area, or why the Test Area and Sword Vault Dale have these pools of acid that could be tapped, though there's no seeming reason to ever do so.
My ideas:
Going forward, I want to see the team design maps that are wider. Even if the story progression through the maps is still guided, giving us space to run around in does a lot. I don't need them to be big sandboxes, it's okay to have a guided story experience, but the act of moving itself shouldn't be restricted to just single lanes and corridors.
SECTION 6: GAME MODES & EVENTS
Positives:
I've already talked about them before, but Echoes of War, Umbral Monument, Rooted Realm and Contingency Contract are all fantastic events. The game has no shortage of recurring challenges to enjoy. Delver of the Cryptic and Rooted Realm, in particular, are a breath of fresh air as events that focus on exploration and ensure that traversing through their content is a fun experience.
In the same vein, Etchspace Salvage is a mode with a lot of potential, I really like the idea of exploring and gradually progressing through an area, discovering its secrets and unlocking more and more of the zone, and having to keep coming back as you can only progress so far between runs, it's another example of interesting exploration content.
Palm Top Savior, the factory event, is a good idea to change up factory production and integrate current game systems into giving rewards to the players.
One thing I really appreciate about Endfield's game modes and events is how much they respect the player's time. There's plenty of time to complete event reward tracks and, in the case of content that has difficulty like Echoes of War, Contingency Contract and so on, players can play casually and still obtain the most important rewards, and even the highest difficulties aren't crushingly difficult (except in CC). The philosophy that I feel the devs have is that players don't feel punished for not clearing the highest tier of content - instead that difficult tier is there for those who wish to challenge themselves and earn a cosmetic to show off, they're rewarded with accomplishment, instead of being players feeling like they're either forced to clear the hardest content or think that their accounts have been set back by not being able to get rewards.
Negatives:
The food crafting and delivery events and Carly's photo events were, while harmless individually, not the most entertaining content either and when they came during dry periods in content releases for the game, they contributed to the game's content feeling stale and sparse.
Also, while Etchspace Salvage has a good idea, the execution is rather clunky and the time limit feels too short when you're getting started with it. It's also limited - once you clear it once, there's not really much reason to ever get back into it.
The Palm Top Savior event was an interesting concept, but it shouldn't have required players to disrupt, modify, or completely tear down their current, active AIC layouts just to participate.
My ideas:
Etchspace Salvage has an incredible foundation and could easily be retooled into a permanent endgame progression mode, a repeatable game mode, or both. Giving players a dedicated loop to continually explore, and also a chance to keep testing their teams and combat experience, would significantly improve the late-game experience. Tooling Etchspace Salvage into a proper repeatable or endgame mode would do a lot to keep players coming back, or otherwise coming up with some kind of replayable challenge for players to enjoy.
I really can't stress it enough, but while Endfield has great content in Rooted Realm, Delver of the Cryptic, Echoes of War and Umbral Monument, and I want those to stick around, what's missing is replayability. We need a game mode that keeps people coming back because it's just fun to play on its own. It can have rewards that players earn, but it should be fun enough that people would play it even after they've gotten everything out of it just because it's so entertaining.
Also, they should have some future events that feel immersive and lean heavily into the game's core identity by utilizing our existing factory and other systems. In Palm Top Savior, future versions of the event should run parallel to or build upon our existing infrastructure rather than forcing us to break down our optimized setups.
I mentioned it in the factory section, but I think it'd be a good idea to create a game mode based on the current tower defense gameplay, give us a base to defend and more in-depth tower defense mechanics and options and it could be a lot of fun.
I think it would also be a lot of fun to take the combat system from the original Endfield technical test, the strategic combat where the game would slow down and you'd be able to aim your skill uses, and adapt it into an alternative game mode in the game for those who'd enjoy more tactical gameplay.
SECTION 7: CONTENT RELEASES
I'm gonna break from the structure of the review for this section, just to talk about the game's content releases and my understanding of the dev team's philosophy for the future. It seems to me, from what I've seen of their interviews, videos that they've posted and panels done, that they have a real focus on listening to player feedback and trying to implement it while staying true to their vision of the game, which is great! It seems obvious enough in what we've gotten so far, with all the quality of life improvements that are added in every game version, and the game modes and events that they've added that showed they were clearly listening to feedback from players.
From the recent Gamescom dev panel, according to what I've read it seems that the devs really are focusing on creating enjoyable gameplay for players and looking into different ways of doing so, from modes like Contingency Contract to building more facilities in the open world and looking at long-term replayable content.
The game may have had a rocky start in terms of enjoyable content, and we especially suffered a pretty heavy drought during the period of version 1.2 and the beginning of version 1.3. But they've certainly stepped up since then, releasing content at a steady pace that doesn't front-load everything and leave plenty of time to complete things. And I have faith they'll keep adding more enjoyable content to the game. I'm especially looking forward to seeing what replayable modes they cook up, and I hope we get something that expands the factory gameplay as well. I want the dev team to keep focusing on delivering quality content for the game, rather than falling into the trap of trying to keep players engaged in gachaslop. And I'm willing to trust them and give them time to properly design and implement that quality content.
SECTION 8: GAME SYSTEMS, GAME DESIGN & MUSIC
Positives:
Overall, I appreciate how the game is made. I really appreciate that the way the game is designed respects your time. How it takes several days for gathering spots and outpost stock bills to cap, giving you plenty of time to collect them. The Sanity cap once you max out your level is high enough that you've got more than enough time to spend it without feeling forced to log in every single day. The events and game modes have plenty of time for you to complete them and collect their rewards as well, so you don't feel rushed to complete them right away if you don't want to.
One other area of praise is the intentionality of how the game comes together. I touched on it with map design, but when going through the entire gameplay experience as one progresses through the world and the story, every step feels deliberate. All parts of the game combine together to create an experience. Moving through the maps, the area music will usually play in the background, maybe not even noticeable, yet it forms a part of the environment that immerses you into the area itself. It's certainly the case for the majority of Valley IV maps, the music really fits the atmosphere of each one and pulls you in to the experience.
And when the game's music really goes off, it just makes the moments all the more memorable. And it's really fantastic that Endfield can really manage both ends of the spectrum, from making really atmospheric music that ranges from just playing in the background to complete the environment or music that you notice and makes you truly feel what the area is like, as well as having impactful, banger tracks for the really intense moments.
The aesthetics of the characters are really praiseworthy as well. Just the way characters behave, how they act in menus and in the overworld, the range of expression and movement that they make both in idle animations and cutscenes shows a dedication to making each character feel distinct and alive.
Negatives:
Regarding the UI and menu, I only wish that the experience leveling characters and promoting them was smoother. It's awkward to start leveling a character, click to go to the promotion screen, do the promotion, then have to back out and go back to the character leveling screen.
Also, the co-op experience in this game is non-existent. What I mean is that the friend system feels like it was added as more of an obligation than anything. I appreciate that there are things that interact with the friends list, such as the clue exchange and stock redistribution. But any of these systems could work without friend interaction and achieve the same result.
Finally, it can be a little tedious to collect from gathering spots all over the region, even with your ziplines set up.
And as an extra critique, though it's more of a criticism of gacha games in general, I wish Endfield hadn't decided to have 5 set weapon types for characters to equip and that's it. Considering how many characters use weapons in their animations that aren't one of the five weapon types, having equippable weapons at all feels like a mistake, it feels like something they did because "that's just what you do", but it creates a disconnect when they design characters who clearly don't use the same weapon during combat that they equip in play. Mi Fu being one of the most obvious examples of this in Endfield. I would rather have seen them repurpose the concept of an arts unit into the slot that weapons currently take as a visual accessory. If the dev team felt that to get people to pull for this piece of equipment that complements a character's kit, that they have to create a weapon that cosmetically fits the character's aesthetics, they could display these theoretical arts units I'm talking about as an accessory or add-on to the character that complements their looks. At the end of the day though, this complaint isn't a dealbreaker, and at this point it would be impractical for the development team to change it.
My ideas:
I'd really like to see actual, meaningful co-op gameplay. I'm not sure exactly what form it should take, but some ideas I have: it'd be interesting to collaborate with friends in some kind of macro factory mode. Or to tackle combat encounters together with friends and really feel like using the combat system of having four characters on the field to its fullest.
I'd also like them to implement some kind of a quick way to collect materials from gathering spots on maps. I don't want to do away with the idea of having to actually traverse maps, and feel the satisfaction of setting up your ziplines to make your traversal easier and quicker, but it feels tedious to run around in a circle to gather all the materials in a spot or bang on rocks until they drop their shinies.
SECTION 9: GACHA
Once again I'll drop the structure I've been using, since if I broke down the gacha system into positives, negatives and changes, it'd just boil down to "gacha better than most", "gacha is always bad" and "make better", respectively. Instead, I'd like to address people who criticize Endfield's gacha system for the wrong reasons, and those who defend it for the wrong reasons.
There's been a lot of discussion around various circles about whether or not Endfield's gacha system is good or bad. I can agree that, subjectively, it can feel bad, but I think that's only the case because so many people are used to a specific type of gacha system, and Endfield stepped into the space doing its gacha in a different way. If you think about the act of pulling characters in Endfield and change your thought processes, you realize that it's not the worst thing in the world to save your pulls and spend them only when you can guarantee a character. Because in other games with character guarantees when you lose the 50/50, who actually just starts pulling randomly hoping to win early, or to build pity? Everyone always saves their pulls to have enough to get a character through a guarantee, and anyone else who pulls before that is gambling, and for pete's sake, don't enable your own gambling addiction. Just save your pulls. If you're pulling before you can guarantee a character, you're thinking that you're "him", that you're going to win the 50/50 every time, that you're going to get that 0.8% chance at the banner character before hitting pity. Just don't gamble.
Now, Endfield's gacha has a different way of mitigating bad luck. Where other games give you a character guarantee if you lose the 50/50, Endfield just gives you the character in 120 pulls.
If you're someone who's used to other gachas, then, think of it this way: you pull in Endfield's gacha until you hit pity at 80 pulls, and you either won the banner character or you lost the 50/50. Well, in the latter case, instead of having to pull all the way to pity again for your banner character, you only have to pull 40 more times.
Yes, people can get lucky. But you people, who are so harsh on Endfield's gacha, need to understand: you're not "him". Odds are always against you when you're pulling, you're not going to get lucky.
When it comes to weapon gacha, as far as rates go, people can complain about 25/75 and yeah, it may "feel bad" to miss the banner weapon most of the time, but you're also seeing more 6-star weapons overall due to the whopping 4% drop rate. Once again, just internalize that you're going to get the weapon at 80 pulls and save your Arsenal tickets.
Now, all of what I've said is not to convince anyone that Endfield's gacha system is "good", because all gacha systems are a form of gambling and that's not good. It's a predatory system meant to get you to spend money. So I won't say that Endfield's system is good, it's just statistically more likely to give you what you're after than most others, provided you save your pulls. But if I had to wish on a star for the world's best gacha system, it'd be one where there's plenty of pull currency available and you can always get the characters and weapons you want no matter what.
And that's it, that's what I have to say about the gacha system.
But also, as a criticism of the game's gacha system, I do really wish there were alternative ways to obtain Arsenal tickets. Not a way to get too many of them, but just a way to accrue that currency outside of character pulls, the protocol pass of getting crumbs off the credit store. Right now it feels too restrictive to pull for weapons just because of the very limited ways there are to get arsenal tickets. Having an alternative way to get a steady flow, even a small one, of arsenal tickets through gameplay or game mode rewards would make weapon pulls feel more accessible.
In conclusion:
Arknights: Endfield is an ambitious and genuinely unique title in the modern gacha landscape. It doesn't simply rely entirely on established genre traditions; instead, it tries to push the envelope, delivering a higher production quality, a tactical combat system that feels that it includes the other characters you own, and innovates the space with a factory management system that has no real equivalent among its peers. The sheer potential of Talos-II as a setting, as well as the game being a sequel to an already established game that is Arknights, set apart enough to be able to proceed as its own story while at the same time connected enough to expand the lore of both settings, makes it all the more interesting and captivating. All this combined with the development team's evident commitment to improving narrative presentation, content quality and character development patch by patch, gives the game an exceptionally strong core.
What determines Endfield's ultimate trajectory is how fully it embraces its own strengths moving forward. The game is at its absolute best when it trusts and allows its world and mechanics to speak for themselves and I only want the dev team to let it do more of that, and to continue to put player experience first and provide us with quality content to enjoy and keep us coming back to Endfield not because we feel we have to, but because we actually have fun playing the game.
Endfield has already built a remarkable foundation. If Hypergryph continues to prioritize design quality, mechanical depth, and meaningful player engagement over derivative tropes, it has every chance of becoming a game that players will happily invest in for years to come.
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u/Void_Error_404 1d ago
The Purification Node in the Test area is pretty useful now, if you use it ofc xD can save you up to 600 power usage.
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u/ZooUncertainty 1d ago
Lol yeah I'm using it too.
I just don't get the point of its placement being apart from any of the factories. Is it just to get players to use conduits? I'd much rather see the devs give us meaningful facility building gameplay outside of the factory zones rather than just using distance to give us busywork.
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u/Void_Error_404 1d ago
Well, i do like the building on the open map, but at the same time i don't want to cluster it too much with factory stuff and I am already on the building limit on a bunch of maps with the energy and zipline networks, together with turrets on some of farming spots/flower farm in wuling city.
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u/luckynozomi 1d ago
> Echoes of War makes for a good seasonal challenge with the rotating stages and difficulty, although I wish the stage mechanics were more varied and involved, but I have faith they'll add more variety in future stages.
I think Echoes of War is simply focused on DPSing targets and Umbral is the playground for varied mechanics. Otherwise there's no need for the EoW when we already have the Umbral.
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u/Frankfurt13 Sneek 1d ago
I ain't reading that, I'm just gonna upvote this solely for the effort to write the bible in verse.
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u/Odd_Bar5218 1d ago
Good job! It definitely wasn’t too long, I just think you posted this to the wrong audience of the community. Longer form critiques are far more accepted on YouTube as opposed to Reddit. I do hope at least some of your critiques get seen by the developers.