Vortex Gaming

The Tokyo Game Show 2024 offered an opportunity to demo Arknights: Endfield. This demo, held at the Gryphon booth, lasted approximately 30 minutes and allowed players to experience the tutorial, exploration, boss battles, and industrial system.

Endfield is a 3D real-time strategy RPG where a team of four characters explores and battles, uncovering secrets on the planet Talos-II based on the Arknights IP. The game has been showcased at technical tests, ChinaJoy, and Gamescom. This demo was conducted with Japanese voice acting and English subtitles, but unfortunately, Korean was not available.

In terms of combat, the lack of a dodge mechanic sets it apart from many recent subculture action games. Since it's impossible to visually react and quickly dodge right before being hit, you need to properly identify and counter the enemy's attack patterns or move preemptively.

Thanks to this strategic approach, Endfield feels more strategic than action-oriented. Each character has one skill with a cooldown, and HP recovery isn't unlimited. Instead of blindly trusting your skills and jumping into battle, you need to assess the elements at your disposal.

Since control skills that push back or knock back enemies are the only way to counter strong attacks, you need to know the types of skills your allies have to experience proper gameplay. In fact, due to the on-site environment, I didn't properly read the 'control skill' text in the tutorial, which led to me failing in subsequent battles by just using all sorts of skills.

Moreover, being accustomed to action games with dodging, I found myself instinctively pressing the space or shift key right before an enemy attack. Especially during the boss battle, a fellow reporter filming the video asked why I kept jumping, as I was making a lot of control mistakes. However, I think this issue will disappear as I become more familiar with the game.

The flow of combat, where you switch between characters, is also quite different from recent subculture games. Instead of the entire party just being somewhere and switching to the controlled character, the other characters follow the controlled character around. As a result, you have to pay attention to the movements of the other characters while dodging enemy attacks.

If you focus only on the controlled character without much thought, you might find that the other characters' HP has been depleted. I was controlling character A, but when I switched to character B, B's HP was a mess. I realized that it wasn't enough for just the controlled character to move out of the attack range; all characters had to move out of the range.

It definitely seemed like the game's direction was more focused on strategy. Although you directly control the character and perform actions, you need to check what skills the character has, how the enemy's attacks proceed, and when and how to use the skills.

It's like the controls themselves need to be very deliberate. There's no element of maximizing attacks and quickly dodging right before being hit, with additional attacks or special skills automatically activating in time with the dodge.

You have to use each skill manually at the right time, and in the case of boss battles, it was difficult to attack recklessly before accurately identifying the enemy's attack cycle or method. Therefore, you need to focus on checking all the tutorials and skill descriptions that we might otherwise skim over to properly enjoy Endfield's combat.

Instead, perhaps to emphasize the strategic aspect, the game provides ample time during combat. When you press a skill, time stops, and you can specify the range or target, which allows you to assess the situation more calmly.

The visuals, including the characters, backgrounds, and cutscenes, were all satisfactory. The four characters available were visually appealing enough for anyone to pick and enjoy, and the backgrounds felt decent. The best part was the cutscenes, especially the cutscenes that followed the boss battles, which were impactful in their own right.

Arknights: Endfield is a game with a distinct identity. Although gameplay has been widely revealed through technical tests and other game show builds, the strategic aspect felt more pronounced than what you see. I think this aspect will be even more strongly felt when you directly check the characters, look at the skills, and build a deck.

Personally, this was the game that left me with the strongest feeling of regret after playing it at this year's TGS. Not in the sense that it wasn't fun, or conversely, that it was so fun that I wanted to play more, but rather the regret of 'Ah, I finally know how to do it, but it's over.' On the other hand, I also felt that if Korean had been supported in this demo, I could have fully grasped how to play even in the hectic on-site environment.

Ultimately, I'm saying that I want to play the game again soon. There may be preferences in terms of gameplay style or pace, but if it suits your taste, it's definitely a game you can enjoy with high immersion.

웹진 인벤김수진 기자
2024-09-30