I’ve been playing it on and off for a bit over 1 year now, and it kinda got me by surprise. I ignored it at first because, I mean, a tower defense that’s also a gacha? People raved about the game, but I was like “meh”. Tower defense was never really my jam, and my gacha needs were already met in Another Eden. Well, after a while I got bored with Another Eden (it’s another game I play at uneven intervals depending on my mood), so I decided to finally check it and, what do you know, it really is an enjoyable game.
So, ok, first we have to deal with a few misconceptions that might arise from “it’s a gacha tower defense game”, starting with the gacha: while rolling new characters might bring more powerful units to your party, the game is playable with the standard low-level guaranteed ones that are provided. KyoStinV on YouTube got famous by showing how to beat the stages with the most basic units possible just by adapting your strategy. Also, the game is somewhat generous with the currency required to roll new characters, and that’s how I’ve been playing: I use the units that I have and fit the role that I need, roll new characters when I have enough of the currency for it (attained for free while playing), and then decide if I want to incorporate the new characters or not. I still haven’t spent a dime on the game, which honestly makes me feel a bit guilty because I played it a lot and the devs should at least get 1 or 2 bucks from me (funny enough, the same goes for Another Eden).
Anyway.
The “tower defense” is also a bit deceptive: while it does play like a typical tower defense, it expects the player to be more reactive to what’s going on. I’m not sure if this is where the genre has been going for a while — again, tower defense was never my jam — but it was surprising. What I mean is: yes, you are positioning units in a grid while they auto-attack waves of enemies. Who you position and where you put them matters, as expected, and every unit (except the most basic ones) has a special attack that, most of the time, needs to be manually activated once it’s charged. That’s fine and all, but here’s where the game subverts things a bit: it also expects you to be recalling, changing, and repositioning units during the battle. Not always, of course, but rarely you will put units down and just wait for the map to be over, especially if it’s a stage you never played before. There are even units who are super cheap to position and have a very short “redeployment” time, meaning the game expects you to be moving them around the field as needed.
In the end, the gameplay is almost like a real-time strategy game trying to convince you it’s a tower defense. It’s pretty cool, actually, and once this concept clicked in my head, I started enjoying the experience way more than just dealing with it as a “traditional” tower defense. I still have some gripes with though, like requiring to play a stage at least once to learn which enemy units will spawn and where they will spawn, as this is important information for a proper strategy, but you have no way of knowing beforehand (and the game barely signals this once the stages and enemies start to get more gimmicky).
Now, one thing that really got me by surprise — considering it’s a gacha — is the artwork for the units. Usually, these types of game will have very lewd depictions, especially of female characters, but that doesn’t happen here. The world of Arknights is one of almost constant struggle and war, and the art for the characters reflect that pretty well. One can see they are battered and experienced soldiers with plenty of experience with the realities of warfare. While some characters do have alternative visuals that go more on the lewd side of things, they usually still make sense thematically, like girls in a bikini enjoying a sunny beach while on vacation, for example. In my humble opinion, the original art for each character just nails the feeling of “mercenaries and whatnot”, while also being well-designed. I mean, just look at this:
While it’s not the ideal clothing for fighting battles, they all nail the style and identity of each character.
Regarding the story, though, things are way more confusing. It starts right away by just throwing terminologies and talking about stuff as if you, the player, know what they are saying. That could a way of introducing the narrative, which makes sense in a meta way, but even after a long while I was still confused by what was going on. The writing, at least at the start, isn’t that stellar either. However, things get a bit more interesting later — even with the game going too much for the melodramatic, in my opinion — and some of the side content jumps massively in quality, or at least the ones I played so far.
Another surprisingly good aspect is the music, especially the ones from the menus. They are some mix of electronic and chill music that’s very good to listen to on loop, which is what you want when navigating menus.
It matches the overall atmosphere so nicely. I don’t know, the whole game oozes style and personality and, at least for me, everything translates very well into some sort of melancholy about the state of the Arknights’ world. Despite it still not completely being my cup of tea (I would love if it was a JRPG instead), it’s a game I still enjoy very much every once in a while.