Thankful – Arknights Review

Not a great game reviewer but after reading the negative reviews, would like to defend the game a bit. I gave the game 5 stars because it kept my peon brain busy and I somehow found myself stressfully engaging in levels that require more strategy. Obviously the game is nowhere near perfect, but it’s a playable game that is also in its early release stage, which means there’s room to improve. I find the slow sanity(stamina) recharge and the obsessive use of LMDs to be very frustrating, but maybe that’s a good sign stemming from my desire to play the game more. I love the character and costume designs and would love to see more outfits being introduced in the future. I cannot say the same for the in game sprite work, but it is negligible and makes the characters cute in their own way. There’s no real argument to be made about the gacha, the rates are low and I’ll most likely never pull what I want but that doesn’t mean good units are inaccessible. Gacha systems have always been a way for companies to make a profit and appeal to certain fan base, and games like Fate Grand Order have way lower rates than Arknights and (FGO) statistically ended up being the most profitable mobile game this year. This game literally introduces a recruit system that allows you to obtain characters including those that are 5 stars and higher, just by matching a bunch of tags. For those that are confused about how recruitment works I recommend using the Arknights guide from the gamepress website as they actually tell you which tags to match to improve your chance of obtaining rare units. The game also gives new players a free 6 star unit and a ton of other free units that will get introduced through special events or just by completing the story. I think a pretty big flaw the game has is that it isn’t really beginner friendly, and this only really applies to those that aren’t used to playing gacha games. There is a lot of grinding for basically everything. I can’t even name all the upgrade materials, base materials, currency, etc that exists in this game. I find myself having to upgrade 3 things just to upgrade 1, and that at times can be very frustrating once you’ve ran out of sanity. This sort of system often scares players away, and a lot of other games have done that to me as well. However, this is really only a mobile game, and although some people (including me) do play seriously sometimes, the grinding is really braindead since the game allows you to auto battle which is hands free and allows you to be occupied with other matters in your life without making time to focus solely on this game. If I were to make a suggestion, I would recommend including just a bit more daily bonus rewards and allow sanity to recharge faster or become more obtainable. Some good points about the game would be gameplay and even though it is a simple tower defense game there are still strategies involved. Yes, the game forces you to use certain units but I can’t imagine that being a bad thing since it makes common units viable and usable. Leveling your units is important to an extent, but I found that often times it’s more about strategy and unit placement than having overpowered units or 6 star units. I am also very impressed with the voice actors they managed to bring on to voice the characters for the game, and is excited to see more characters be introduced. There are probably a few more points in the game I can talk about but I think I made my point in the game being imperfect but still playable enough to keep myself entertained. Going back to what I said about the game being able to improve, the same idea can also be applied to the game worsening. If the day comes where the game becomes bad and I end up uninstalling I would still give this game 5 stars. Although I would be incredibly disappointed to see a game like this go down the drain, it has already given me enjoyment and I am thankful to the creators of the game for giving me at least a few weeks of entertainment. I doubt it will ever happen as it seems that the dev team does listen to complaints and suggestions from the players. For my final words in this review I would like those that play and review this game to be a bit more open minded. I believe it is completely fair to find the game boring and not to your liking, but I think the amount of effort that these devs put into the game is at least worth noticing. I also see a lot of complaints regarding refunds and transactions made in the game not working properly and hope that Yostar could be more reactive to fixing these problems and addressing customer issues if they haven’t done so already.
Review by K-Jesus on Arknights.