Video games are built to inspire us, sharpening our gameplay skills, reflexes, and strategic thinking. Every year, a wave of exciting games hits the market and creates enough hype to stir the mobile gaming industry into frenzy. This year, we’ve had an early delight with the launch of the highly anticipated spinoff game, Arknights: Endfield, and today, we’ll be reviewing the game and seeing how our REDMAGIC 11 Pro has been handling its arrival.
While the game hasn’t been out that long, it’s already causing quite the buzz. Arknights: Endfield became available for pre-downloads on the 20th of January and had its official global launch on the 22nd of January across all compatible platforms, including PC, PlayStation 5, Android, and iOS. The game is a spinoff of Hypergryph's 2019 tower defense game Arknights and was published by GRYPHLINE. Now, let’s learn more about the game itself before we get to our review.
Say Hello to Arknights: Endfield
Arknights: Endfield is a 3D real-time strategy RPG with Gacha mechanics. Like most Gacha games, it relies on enticing players to spend in-game currencies to receive a random in-game item. This can sometimes translate to spending real-life money on the game as well. However, the game needs this mechanic and its pity system to allow players to upgrade characters and inventory accordingly.
In this game, you play as the Endministrator, or Endmin, who returns to the planet of Talos-II after a 10-year absence with a bout of amnesia. On your journey to rediscover who you are, you’re also tasked with rebuilding civilization and exploring the wildlands by leading your team of operators through various adventures. These include combat, gathering resources, developing hubs, solving puzzles, and several other tasks.
The factory building and running is a major component in this game as well, where you have to refine and process different minerals found in various regions of the world to create upgrades for weapons and gear.
Currently, the game stands at a solid 4,4 stars out of 5 rating on the Google Play Store and has over 1.1 million downloads. Most of the reviews were impressed by the stellar graphics, world-building, and combat systems. Epic Games scored the game a 4.6 rating based on its Epic Players ecosystem, where gamers appreciated the storytelling, diverse characters, and beginner-friendly system.
So, What Did We Think?
The Arknights: Endfield game follows an interesting storyline with lore-rich characters and designs that keep you entertained for hours. While there are some general issues that other reviewers have picked at, we found it a solid play with a compelling storyline and immersive gameplay, but we can get a bit more detailed than just that.
Gotcha Gacha Mechanics
Now, we know that Gacha games are known for being somewhat tedious to deal with sometimes, demanding hours of grinding, repetitive task completion, and optional purchases. However, a big draw for the mechanic is that they offer open-world exploration, engaging storylines, and diverse gameplay. Similar popular Gacha games, like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Stair Rail, and Wuthering Waves, provide in-depth lore, hours of worldbuilding, and versatile gameplay options.
For Arknights: Endfield, the Gacha mechanics seemed to be the smartest option for a fantasy world with so much going on, and proved to be essential parts of the story, with “headhunting” allowing you to get your hands on new equipment and units to finish the campaign. The system makes sense because, unlike the OG 2D Arknights game, this 3D version would probably need to rely on its Gacha mechanics to create the upgraded character and item formats and designs that players really want.
Exploring the Gameplay
The basis of the gameplay in Arknights: Endfield is a considerable departure from the OG Arknights gameplay. While the original game was primarily a tower-defense tactical RPG, Endfield is more of a real-time 3D party RPG where you move a four-operator squad in third person with time dodges, stagger building, and elemental or physical reaction triggers. We found that the animations, both in and out of combat, were seamlessly fluid, giving the graphics an immersive and life-like feel.
The Plot and Characters
The storyline in Arknights: Endfield is quite entertaining and allows you to explore different areas, facing off against varying enemies, from mythic creatures to marauders. Setting the game so far into the future also provides enough flexibility to expand the plot when coming off the original Arknights storyline. In terms of characters, you get to enjoy a balance of new and existing Arknights faces. We were also impressed by the English dubbing in the game, which got the job done effortlessly.
The Verdict
Overall, Arknights: Endfield provides effortless strategy, fun, and problem-solving entertainment that could easily keep you occupied for hours on end without getting bored. The true grit lies in the expansive storytelling and lore that hold the game together and keep you on track. We believe that the Arknights successor has definitely earned its place as a game worth waiting for. Fortunately, you don’t have to, and you can easily download Arknights: Endfield for the Play Store right now. However, choosing the right device to explore this fantasy realm is just as easy.
Arknights: Endfield Meets REDMAGIC 11 Pro
Now, naturally, you’ll be looking for the best platform to get into this game. Fortunately, Arknights: Endfield is entirely compatible with our latest flagship: the REDMAGIC 11 Pro. The Android requirements for the game demand a minimum Android 10.0 operating system with a recommended Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor. The recommended RAM and storage for Arknights: Endfield on Android are also set at 8GB and 25GB or more, respectively.
Fortunately, the 11 Pro comes stacked with the latest, record-breaking Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, backed up by our very own upgraded REDMAGIC RedCore R4 gaming chip for seamless and enhanced performance. Armed further with up to 24GB of LPDDR5T RAM and up to 1TB of UFS 4.1 Pro storage, you can be sure to experience ultra-smooth gameplay with super resolution, frame interpolation, touch response, RGB control, and 33% lower latency for a next-level experience.
In fact, we’ve already tested out Arknights: Endfield on launch day and saw how effortlessly it handled the game’s demanding graphics and compelling sequences, a fact that our followers on YouTube were inclined to agree with.
Sourced from REDMAGIC
Recently, Dame Tech also took to his YouTube channel to test out Arknights: Endfield on both the REDMAGIC 11 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Pushing both devices to their limits with this newly launched game for around 35 minutes, he found that the 11 Pro effortlessly lapped up the heat, peaking at 41°C, while the iPhone reached a much hotter 43°C.
Sourced from Dame Tech
In terms of frames per second, the 11 Pro also gave a much more stable performance with a steady 60 frames per second, while the iPhone dropped as low as 46 frames per second and quite frequently dropped its FPS to the mid-50s. To conclude his video, he noted that the 11 Pro “clearly held a more stable frame rate and therefore the best for those who prefer a stable experience.”
Moreover, when using the 11 Pro, players also get to enjoy the superior control and capabilities of our upgraded Game Space hub, where you can seamlessly switch through gaming modes, monitor performance, and adjust settings easily as you game. The device also comes fortified by our latest REDMAGIC OS 11.0 for sleek, fast, and optimized elite gaming.
So, step up your Arknights: Endfield experience with the sharper visuals, immersive gameplay, and ultra-responsive controls you’ve come to enjoy from REDMAGIC, now coupled with the latest Snapdragon processor, pioneering liquid cooling, and a massive battery that will seamlessly keep you pushing through your journey on Talos-II, or any other gaming world you choose to explore.
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