Summary: With the announcement of an anime for this game, I want to share some of my general thoughts about Arknights and why it's one of my most favorite games.

Background

My personal experience with Arknights has been terrifyingly applicable to global and US events. Although I first installed the game onto my phone in January of 2020 after seeing a clip of some gameplay on YouTube, I didn't start playing the game until I returned home from college due to the pandemic. Imagine my surprise, then, when the story turned out to be a dystopian world ravaged by a disease.

On Terra, human(ish, more on that in a second) society relies on Originium to power everything, as a replacement to pretty much every power source. Originium even enables magic-like abilities, ranging from shooting fireballs to manipulating time or gravity. This miraculous resource also has its own negative impacts on the world. Exposure to certain forms of Originium causes Oripathy, an incurable, terminal disease. The Infected are treated as second-class citizens, with their standing in society ranging from tolerated as a class of poverty to actively hunted and persecuted.

In response to the persecution, the Reunion movement fights for the rights of the Infected. In practice, however, it doesn't amount to much more than a terrorist organization preying on the hatred of the oppressed Infected to violently exact vengeance on their oppressors.

On top of all of this, there are various animal/mythological-themed races that are basically human with a few extra features. There are Felines (cats), Liberi (birds), Sankta (angels), and many more. Although less prevalent compared to the discrimination against the Infected, there is also some level of racism apparent, especially towards the Sarkaz (demons). There are also political maneuverings by Terran national counterparts to our world such as Ursus (Russia), Victoria (Britain), and Yen/Lungmen (China/Hong Kong).

These divisions in society are worsened by the Catastrophes, storms that ravage settlements and almost guarantee death. To avoid these storms, humans have put entire cities on moving plates, living in these so-called "nomadic cities" and planning routes based on the intelligence gathered by "Catastrophe messengers." While most of the developed world lives on these nomadic cities, some more isolated or poorer parts of the world live in traditional settlements, praying that a Catastrophe doesn't force them to uproot their entire population in a forced migration.

In this world, filled with despair, greed, and prejudice, you play as the "Doctor," a key member of Rhodes Island, a pharmaceutical company that focuses on treatment for Oripathy. Don't let the "pharmaceutical company" label fool you, however. Because of the violence so prevalent in the world, Rhodes Island sends out its operators on missions to stabilize regions and provide aid to the Infected. While Rhodes participates in more activities, the gameplay and story mainly revolves around fighting.

Gameplay

Now before I get more in-depth about what I love most about the game, let's talk about the part that I think holds the game back from being more popular: the gameplay. Now don't get me wrong, I personally enjoy the gameplay. It's a tower-defense game that has enough mechanics to allow for a wide variety of strategies on most stages and some truly mind-bending end-game content (let's just say that the in-game "sanity" resource that replaces other games' "energy" is often too apt a name).

The in-game tutorial is split through the first few chapters, so as to not overwhelm the player. This does, however, mean that the beginning of the game is very, very easy, which means that if you're looking for engaging tower defense gameplay, you probably won't get it until the end of chapter 1 (the game starts at chapter 0).¹

Gacha

On top of that, Arknights is also a gacha game. If you're not aware of what a gacha game is, it's a genre of game where one of the core mechanics is the accumulation of in-game resources to spend on random chances to acquire characters or other items that would be normally impossible or difficult to get. Gacha games often (rightfully) come under fire because some people end up spending a lot of actual money to try to get the things they want due to the random chances. This is sometimes attributed to predatory game design, gating difficult content behind rare items/characters, or getting players addicted to a close cousin of gambling. To me Arknights doesn't have these types of issues. It's a pretty free-to-play friendly game, with even common operators being solid options to clear all but the toughest of content. It's also not a competitive game with no PvP elements, and you can even "borrow" units from your friends list to clear difficult content. There are also plenty of guides from the community online featuring "low-rarity" clears of difficult stages.

Now if we're to be completely honest, the success of gacha games is often tied to anime fans' obsession with "waifus," completely disconnecting the value of the gacha targets from their strength in-game. I'm happy to report to my fellow cultured anime fans that the waifus/husbandos in this game are great. On top of that, it's easy to plan who you want to save for because the Chinese server is about 6 months ahead of the global servers. Having a roadmap for hyped or limited operators makes this game very free-to-play friendly, at least on the global server. In fact, I found so much value in the game from a free-to-play perspective that I have actually ended up spending money on this game, just because I want to support this type of game in the industry.

The part of gacha games that Arknights is not immune to, is the grind. Acquiring operators may very well be reasonable, but acquiring the resources to upgrade them is time-consuming and repetitive. Arknights does make some efforts to ease this process by creating an "auto-deploy" feature, which lets the game play a level by itself if you've already beaten it. Fairly low item drop rates for high-tier items does make the process quite time-consuming for new players however, and the sanity costs for each level also prevent players from blitzing through the process. This can drive away a lot of players, so I want to give forewarning to people thinking of picking up this game. When you reach a mid-game level, when you can beat the high-yield farming levels that show up in events, the process does become somewhat faster.

Storytelling and Themes

This is perhaps my favorite part of the game. I already summarized the background story in the Background section, but the way that Arknights delivers the story to the player keeps me hooked on not just the story, but the world of Terra itself. The player approaches the game's world as a complete newcomer, and the massive gap of knowledge is filled in piece by piece by various sources, while never completely satisfying your desire to completely understand the world.

The main storyline focuses on the Doctor (you) and Amiya, which is straightforward enough, with some interesting twists. Your main conflict is against the Reunion movement, which nominally fights for the Infected, just as you do. By all rights, you should be on the same team. But the game tries to get the player to understand the nuances in the philosophy and how conflict should be resolved without resorting to slaughtering the oppressing class. To me, the starkly divided societies of Terra parallel the US's deep divisions, and can provide some insight into the nuances of the discussion.

Although game events vary in size, they usually tell a side story that may or may not include the cast that typically appears in the main story. These side stories are, to me, the more interesting pieces of storytelling. They often show how each region of Terra tries to survive in this dystopian world that seems capable of collapsing at any moment. These mostly self-contained stories spend more time developing individual characters and their backstories, and so tell more personal stories, while also developing regions of the world that are not detailed in the main story. These stories also augment the main story by providing context; one of my favorite stories covers the trauma of Ursus students caught in the conflict of the first two chapters.

Each playable character also has a character profile and several voice lines that are slowly revealed as your "trust" level increases with each one. These character profiles enrich the world even further, as operators come from all over Terra to Rhodes Island for their own reasons, and are dealing with their own problems. There are also exciting revelations hinting at future story points or mysterious pasts hiding in these profiles and voice lines: a princess hiding in exile among a street gang, an ancient deity living a carefree life while searching for fragments of its former self, and an heir to the "demon lord" with the power to influence other Sarkaz.

All of these elements weave a tapestry of Terra that is still full of holes and question marks, leaving room for theories and speculation, but one that ultimately shows the hope shining through the despair of dystopia. Many people are still able to find acceptance and healing, there is still enough prosperity for leisure activities likes tourism and concerts, and there are still those willing to confront the forces tearing the system apart, while also confronting the status quo that birthed those forces as well.

Before I close this section, I want to admit that the format may not be for everyone. The main story and side event stories are told through a visual novel-like format. There are no animated cutscenes to tell the story visually, outside of some static images, and there is no voice acting either. This basically amounts to reading with some pictures, so if that's a deal-breaker for you, you probably won't be able to appreciate the story. This is only worsened by the fact that the story is originally written in Chinese and translated to other languages. The complex topics and verbose writing basically guarantee unclear translations fairly regularly (though less so recently).

If this sounds somewhat interesting to you, but you don't want to invest too much time into the game, then I would recommend this short comic I found recently that provides a brief insight into one of the factions you encounter in the game, that also paints a picture of how the Infected are treated in the Arknights universe.

Community and Music

Another aspect of this game that I love is not actually part of the game at all; it's the community. This is not a competitive game, so players like to share strategies, guides, and show off their impressive clears. Newer players or players who are short on time can use guides that often use low-rarity operators to clear even some of the most difficult content. There are videos of people clearing a stage using only one tile on the level, or with the minimum number of operators, or with only one operator active at a time, etc. It's astonishing to see what people are capable of and how they share their ideas with the wider community. In my personal opinion, they also have some of the best fan art and fan-made comics out of any community I've seen, perhaps because the fragmented storytelling leaves room for fans to produce their own stories.

The CEO of Hypergryph, the studio that makes Arknights, is apparently a big music connoisseur and it shows in the music in the game. There's a pretty big range of music, and some of it really stands out to me. I'd encourage you to explore it yourself if you're curious, but some of the ones I've been listening to recently are "Towards Her Light" and "Radiant".

Anime

And now we get to the excuse I used to write about this game. An anime for Arknights was recently announced and I am both elated and apprehensive. For anyone familiar with the anime scene, most anime that are adapted from games usually don't turn out very good. While there have been a few exceptions (I actually found Princess Connect! Re:Dive to be pretty enjoyable), for the most part, adaptations end up very bland or just glorified advertisements for the game.

In the case of Arknights, I am still hopeful that they can make something great. The anime is being produced by Yostar Pictures, the animation arm of Yostar, the publisher for Arknights. They do an excellent job with the promotional videos (I sincerely hope they don't handle the ads for North America, because I have heard that they are terrible), and they even released a 10-minute animation last year set in the Arknights universe: "Holy Knight Light" that follows one of the best factions in the game in a short, comedic side story. I am happy to say that I an highly recommend this short animation. If the anime is filled with short side stories like this, with a bit more lore drops, that would be the dream for someone like me, who is already invested in the main story and is more interested in the world of Arknights. I do hope that they handle translations a bit better though.

The other way that the anime could go is if they adapt the main story. This seems to be the more likely option, as it would be safer to tell a self-contained story that would make more sense in a complicated and unfamiliar world. If they do go this route, I hope that they can properly manage the pacing of the show. With adaptations, I think there is a tendency to be "too faithful" to the original. What I mean is that they strictly follow exact same format of the source material when an alternative approach is more appropriate. In the case of Arknights, a lot of the story is told through dialogue, which is necessary because there is no animated movement and having a large chunk of text not associated with a character would actually be like reading a book. This has the effect of having some characters describe things explicitly or giving long-winded explanations when a graphic would be more succinct. My hope is that the anime can trim roughly 70% of the dialogue into illustrations/animation and leave in only the necessary dialogue. A second issue with this approach of adapting the main story is that there isn't a clear stopping point for a 1-cour anime, or at least not one that I would be satisfied with. The problem is that the beginning of the story isn't as appealing to me as where the story is right now. I want to give the anime a chance to ramp up the story to the interesting parts, but it may be restricted to what amounts to a prologue. Still, I've heard that the first season Re:Zero only adapted the prologue, and it was a very good anime in itself. Hopefully, Arknights can replicate some of that quality.

Conclusion

Well, that's about it. Arknights is a great tower-defense game with a world that has a lot of potential, so I'm excited to see what the anime will bring to the table. I ended up writing way more than I expected, so I apologize for the length of this post, but I hope that convinces you about my sincere love for this game. I'm still not sure what I want to write about on this blog, but if you have feedback about this site, I'd be happy to hear it!