Arknights: Reflecting on Three Years and Counting

With Arknights celebrating its upcoming third anniversary of release in China, I thought to think Deep thoughts about being quite invested in the game so far…

THE BEGINNING

I saw the hype for the game probably on Reddit. The idea of a tower defense game but Anime Characters was appealing. Presumably, similarly to other men-likers of the game, SilverAsh drew me in to keep an eye out for its global release. It was honestly harder for me to find information on the game back then. The popularity of Chinese-made games seemed hit or miss, prior to Genshin Impact‘s explosive debut.

THE FIRST STEP

I may be a tower defense enthusiast, but everyone has to start somewhere when trying out a new game. Names like 25thNight, Eckogen, KyoStinV, should be very familiar to those struggling with completing the stages. LMD and EXP cards were in short supply. I didn’t know what 1-7 really meant. Why does SilverAsh need all this sugar, and why does he have these as his regular, not high Trust, voice lines? I Understand…

I don’t have many screenshots of my time in the game at launch. I began spending on the so-called “monthly card” thing, getting tasty 200 extra Orundum a day and Sanity Potions. I never 100% Grani and the Knight’s Treasure’s initial run, but I did at least get 100 Grindstone thinking it would be enough for a while. (It was not.)

THE CURRENT STAGE

I’ve gotten plenty of the “meta” Operators now, a number of them also max levelled. SilverAsh has since hit Potential 6 after a number of Top Operator tags in Recruitment which are totally not fake, and also spooking me in a variety of other gacha banners. I’m currently trying to save up for future Operators, as gacha hurts a lot and I can afford Not having ALL the latest Operators too.

I buy a number of skins I really like, carefully rationing my currency and farming up 200 of a featured material instead. I’ve spent quite a lot on merchandise, currently awaiting the arrival of the second anniversary set, and eventually, my Doctor nendoroid.

Arknights JP will be having a stream which should more than likely be confirming the arrival of Near Light, while datamines for CN’s third anniversary have been collated and speculated over. The roughly 6 months gap to save and plan up is extremely fortuitous at least.

THE FUTURE

To me, Hypergryph is striving really hard to branch beyond “just” Arknights. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the fandom probably know about all the jokes about them being a music company, the game being the “bonus”. They’ve had the Ambience Synesthesia concert with another coming soon, an in-person event planned a la Granblue Fantasy Fest, Endfield, Ex Astris, clothing line collabs, anime…

As a random games journo on the street, the base game’s still lagging behind in a number of places. Quality of life updates come in piecemeal, the arguably low gacha currency gain week on week, the “pity” rate not the greatest, just to name a few; is the company stretching too thin with two upcoming games that are “early in development”?

I’m more or less taking a break from the game outside of farming, back to playing Guild Wars 2 instead. I’ve read the latest story chapter, just needing to finish the challenge stages. I’m definitely in for the long haul for Arknights, merely doing my waiting on the global side.

Where do we go from here? Only Hypergryph knows.