This dystopian anime action RPG has the potential to be another Genshin Impact

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By Tyler Colp
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Arknights: Endfield is an action RPG spin-off of a popular mobile strategy game.

Before Genshin Impact exploded in popularity, developer MiHoYo was largely seen as a mobile game studio. Now, Genshin is one of the biggest action RPGs around, competing directly with games only available on PC or consoles. Gryphline, the Chinese developer of popular mobile strategy game Arknights, is about to attempt the same transformation with a spin-off RPG called Arknights: Endfield.

The original Arknights launched on mobile in China in 2019 and then went global in 2020. It's a gacha game where you create a team of anime operators to fight enemies in stages built like a tower defense game. Among the many, many gacha games out there, Arknights is known for its dense, dystopian cyberpunk story, and relatively generous grind when it comes to accruing new powerful units.

Endfield is a spin-off that translates the original's puzzle-like strategy into an action RPG set on a planet called Talos-II, which may or may not exist in the same universe. Combat plays like Genshin where you have a team of four characters who launch elemental attacks. Unlike Genshin, however, you control one at a time while the others continue fighting alongside you.

Outside of combat, Endfield has a management sim where you build a factory to produce resources for your team. If it's like the base system in Arknights, you will probably use those resources on upgrading characters and potentially rolling for them on gacha banners—although Gryphline hasn't explicitly said if Endfield will work like that.

A PC technical test for Endfield will begin on January 10. You can sign up for it on the website by completing a survey starting today.

Your PC won't need to be cutting edge to play it, both the minimum and recommended requirements are pretty modest (recommended in bold):

  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit or higher
  • CPU: Intel Core i5 9400F / Intel Core i5 10600K
  • RAM: 16GB or higher
  • GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060 / Nvidia RTX 2060 Super
  • Storage: 40GB

Gryphline just held a technical test for PC last month, but hasn't said anything about when the game will eventually be released.

Tyler Colp
Associate Editor

Tyler has covered games, games culture, and hardware for over a decade before joining PC Gamer as Associate Editor. He's done in-depth reporting on communities and games as well as criticism for sites like Polygon, Wired, and Waypoint. He's interested in the weird and the fascinating when it comes to games, spending time probing for stories and talking to the people involved. Tyler loves sinking into games like Final Fantasy 14, Overwatch, and Dark Souls to see what makes them tick and pluck out the parts worth talking about. His goal is to talk about games the way they are: broken, beautiful, and bizarre.

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