With the quiet from the Wuling Very Large Rift’s closing still lingering, Arknights: Endfield 1.6 sees the time come for the Endministrator (Chloe Eves, Honkai: Star Rail) to heal their recent wounds. Placed in the care of the Feramut Proxy Si (Shoushouwong), the two travel to the latter’s painted mountain home so the healing process can play out.
One of the most delicate tightrope walks in gacha games is balancing how much patches focus on the newest purchasable character. These companies make money by getting players to invest in the world’s personalities, so it makes sense that stories will sometimes focus on those characters. However, you must account for the character’s personality type when deciding how much screen time the game gives them. This is the fundamental misstep that Arknights: Endfield 1.6 makes.
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With only a handful of brief exceptions, this patch spends nearly all of its time with Si and the Endmin alone. This is far too much Si. The latest playable character sports a painfully familiar personality type. Always desperate for the Endmin’s attention, but constantly putting on bratty, combative airs when she realizes it’s showing, Si’s routine quickly wears out its welcome as it reduces her to a two-dimensional cutout for most of the story.
Si can find a home in lots of team comps as both a main and sub DPS.
Now, there could have been a version of Arknights: Endfield 1.6 where Si fits in as a supportive, if troublesome at times, comic relief. If the narrative had let another personality accompany the duo, Perlica, Fangyi, or Arcane, Si’s unrelenting personality would’ve been much more tolerable, since it wouldn’t have to carry so much screen time. Story updates can hone in on just a couple of characters, but they need to be far less abrasive than the Fermut Proxy to make it work.
Despite Si’s oppressive personality at times diminishing the experience, the core journey she and the Endmin take to heal the Ætherside wounds the protagonist carries is poignant. As the duo is confronted with puzzles, it’s easy to see how the challenges feed back into the Endmin’s mindset and connect to their wounds and struggles after awakening without their memories, without feeling watered down. Helping heal the painting in different ways leads to impactful character exploration for the lead.
Even though the core journey works well overall, a couple of hiccups still appear. A chess analogy used to frame the Endmin’s approach to sacrifice and danger gets clunky as it draws out for a bit too long. The best side of Si’s full arrival in the game is her combat presence. Si is one of the most versatile characters thus far.
With the ability to play as both main and sub DPS on either cryo or heat teams, Si can find a home in lots of team comps. She has some unique tools in her kit, like the ability to deal fixed damage. This is damage that cannot be reduced or increased through outside effects.
Even with all of Arknights: Endfield 1.6’s ups and downs, it still brings it all together for an incredible finish.
Si is also a visual treat in combat. Her paint-based standard attacks and battle skill look gorgeous, and her combo skill and ultimate see her summon a dragon to blast her foes, crafting one of the game’s more imposing ult animations to date.
Even with all of Arknights: Endfield 1.6‘s ups and downs, it still brings it all together for an incredible finish. The final stage of the healing process delivers a well-earned payoff for the Endmin, as they get their clearest glimpse yet into who they were, and just as important, where they are going. With some massive teasers for the future, you have a phenomenal ending that is worth the sometimes trying trek to reach it.
Like every part of the story, though, even the ending has a hiccup. As the story wraps up, the Endmin must fight a major boss battle to prove they are back to health. Despite the battle being fun and featuring a solid set of moments and interesting phases to fight through, the fight is awkward conceptually.
Who you are fighting feels wrong and completely at odds with what the story has shown. If there was a time skip during which you recovered more, then it would work, but as is, it feels like an arbitrary boss battle that’s participant is chosen through a lack of options rather than real narrative purpose.
Arknights: Endfield 1.6 brings a new game mode: Yuanyuan’s Blazing Stove.
Helping to paint over the struggles in this update is the absolutely gorgeous setting it plays out in. Si’s painted mountain home is nonstop, breathtaking vistas and beautiful locations. The ink-based style of everything, from the landscapes to the enemies, makes it as strikingly different from the rest of the world as it is lovely. It has many of the same magical vibes as the dream walk that Typhoeus led the Endmin on in the last story.
The ways the game lets players interact with it also work wonderfully to deepen that sense of connection. Letting players fix mistakes in the landscape by painting moments to aid exploration is a fun way to connect to the world. Combined with some other simple puzzle-solving and the general world exploration element, this update feels fun and approachable.
Arknights: Endfield 1.6 also brings a new game mode: Yuanyuan’s Blazing Stove. When first previewed, this mode looked like a fun little food-service mini-game where the Endmin takes orders and delivers food to tables. While this is the core of the gameplay loop, and it’s fun to boot, there is another side to it: production. Before food can be served, players must grow and harvest it. You can find a new farm in the region, and stalls for livestock raising are also introduced so players can harvest meat.
Arknights: Endfield 1.6’s journey feels stuck taking one step back for every one forward it tries to make.
Whether this setup works for you will largely depend on how you handle the production side of Arknights: Endfield in general. If you love it, these added elements, especially the new farming automation introduced in this patch, will be welcome additions. If you are like me and this side of the game has worn through much of its charm, you will likely find yourself asking whether the potential two pulls’ worth of premium currency plus other resources are worth dealing with it.
This patch also brings the game to Steam. If you prefer a different launcher, you can also migrate to Valve’s storefront.
Arknights: Endfield 1.6’s journey up Si’s mountain feels like it’s stuck taking one step back for every one forward it tries to make. A gorgeous world and meaningful core story are bogged down by an overreliance on a character who can’t support their screen time, and a few questionable gameplay moments that don’t harmonize with the rest of the package. While I wouldn’t call it bad, I would say it’s the worst main update overall we’ve gotten so far.
Arknights: Endfield is available now for mobile, PC, and PlayStation 5.
