I Think I Found the Genshin Killer—and It Builds Factories on the Moon

The Moment I Realized I Might Be Playing the Genshin Killer

I didn’t go to Gamescom 2025 looking for a messiah. I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into Genshin Impact, I still log into Honkai: Star Rail when the itch hits, and I’m knee-deep in Zenless Zone Zero’s combat lab just for the rhythm of perfect dodges. I’m not easily swayed by flashy demos and louder-than-life booths. And as someone who played the original Arknights tower defense on my phone during late-night commutes, I had a complicated relationship with Hypergryph: respect for their systems-first design, skepticism about gacha hooks. So when I sat down for a 30-minute PC session with Arknights: Endfield, my guard was up. My wallet was zipped. My expectations were armored.

Then, within the first five minutes, that jaded voice in my head shut up. I literally caught myself thinking – and yeah, I’m quoting it in French because that’s how I first blurted it out to a friend after the session – “J’ai trouvé le Genshin Impact killer !” Translation: “I found the Genshin Impact killer!” Hyperbole? Maybe. Premature? Sure. But there’s a reason those words hit my tongue without permission: Endfield is the first free-to-play action RPG since Genshin that doesn’t feel like a glorified reskin. It feels like a bold hybrid with a spine.

My Thesis: Endfield Works Because It Dares To Build, Not Copy

So here’s my take, raw and un-sanitized: Arknights: Endfield could be the first real threat to HoYoverse’s dominance because it refuses to pick a lane. It’s a sci-fi action RPG built on a semi-open lunar frontier, Talos-II, where you’re not just slaying monsters and hoovering up chests-you’re also laying down extractors, powering micro-factories, and, slowly but surely, terraforming your foothold. It’s combat and construction. Moment-to-moment reflexes and long-tail planning. And for the 30 minutes I played on PC, those gears meshed instead of grinding.

That makes sense if you know Hypergryph. The original Arknights was a tower defense playground that rewarded system mastery. Endfield is a spin-off that drags that DNA into full 3D action, published internationally by Gryphline, and it shows. You roam a hostile moon, stalked by freakish Aggeloi and warped weather under a gas giant’s glare. You fight in real time with a four-character squad. You set up industry. And yes, it’s free-to-play with gacha. The cocktail is familiar. The flavor profile is not.

Combat That Respects Reflexes—and My Fighting Game Brain

I measure action RPGs with a fighting game yardstick. Do inputs feel crisp? Do cancels exist, and are they intentional, not accidental jank? Does the dodge window tell me something about the designers? Endfield had me nodding more than frowning.

Here’s a slice of my demo: I opened with a mid-range operator to tag a roaming pack—think a “Caster”-style archetype slinging charged bursts that build team meter. As the Aggeloi lunged, I swapped to a frontline bruiser. The swap wasn’t just a face change; it carried an “intro skill” that staggered the lead target—an intentional i-frame-laced entry that felt like a safe jump. A beat later, the boss wind-up telegraphed a slam. The dodge didn’t eat my input—there was a clean, readable invulnerability window. Actually executing a perfect dodge triggered a short-time dilation, just enough to let me buffer the bruiser’s special, then immediately baton-pass to a support who dropped a shield pulse as an “outro” effect. The ultimate that followed didn’t simply nuke the field; it reconfigured space, corralled stragglers, and made my next swap safer.

This is the important part: swaps are not a tax in Endfield; they’re the core verb. In Genshin, swaps feel great because reactions are fireworks, but the skill floor is low. In ZZZ, the swap-parry cadence owns the stage. Endfield stitches those insights into a different rhythm: intro/outro effects that matter, deliberate stagger and control tools, and a combat pace that is just a notch more technical than the “mash, dodge, nuke” loop. It still welcomes you if you just want to vibe, but if you’ve got that FGC itch—the one that makes you lab timings for fun—there’s meat to chew.

It helped that mouse and keyboard felt natural. Default binds put dodge on a comfortable key, swap on quick access, and the camera wasn’t a boss fight in disguise. Hit-stop feedback gave a little crunch without smearing animations. Cooldowns communicated clearly. And when I ate a hit, it felt like my fault, not the UI’s. That’s an x-factor I don’t hand out lightly.

The Factory Hook: Satisfactory on a Story-Driven Moon

Then Endfield pulled the rug: instead of funneling me from fight to fight, the demo nudged me to establish a tiny industrial loop. It wasn’t Factorio levels of madness, but it was more than a throwaway mini-game. I dropped a basic extractor on a mineral vein, placed a processor module a short sprint away, and connected them through a clean interface that actually explained throughput. Power management wasn’t a spreadsheet—yet—but the UI hinted at bottlenecks and efficiency bonuses. When the line spun up, a little trickle of components fed a fabrication bench at a nearby outpost, letting me craft field gear that changed how I tackled the next encounter.

This is the killer idea: your progress isn’t just measured in artifacts or relics you strap to your characters; it’s in the infrastructure you seed across Talos-II. Clearing a hazardous zone matters because it means a generator can hum there without getting gnawed to pieces. Exploring a hillside isn’t just for a chest; maybe it’s the only flat spot to slot a processing array that boosts efficiency thanks to an environmental perk. You’re not just the hero—you’re the foreman of a human foothold on a broken moon.

And before someone says “base-building will slow the game to a crawl,” let me be clear: in 30 minutes, I never felt stuck doing chores. The loop was bite-sized and opt-in but obviously scalable. It scratched the same part of my brain that Satisfactory tickles—flow, alignment, elegance—without drowning me in menus. If Hypergryph keeps this feeling into mid and late game, Endfield might actually solve the biggest pain point of live-service ARPGs: the daily grind. Give me systems that grow while I sleep because I invested smartly, not a to-do list that treats me like an employee.

Style and Substance: Talos-II Looks and Feels Cohesive

Let’s talk vibes, because Endfield has them. Talos-II is icy and sun-scorched in the same breath, an inhospitable moon orbiting a gas giant where the skybox bullies you into humility. The art direction flexes an anime sheen without dissolving into sugar. Characters pop with bold silhouettes—familiar if you know Arknights’ flair for striking designs—but they sit believably in the world. The opening sequence I played doubled as a tutorial and a flex reel: grand staging without unskippable fluff, camera work that guided my eye instead of treating me like a drone. Performance on the demo rig was smooth—my session held steady, and the only hitch I noticed was a single texture pop on a far ridge as the weather shifted.

The enemies—Aggeloi, twisted guardians of this moon’s bad attitude—aren’t just palette-swapped punching bags. The few archetypes I fought forced different responses: a heavy that demanded stagger management, a skittering pack that tried to punish greedy combos, and a ranged pest that made me commit to gap-closing or lean on my caster’s zoning tools. That variety matters in a game that wants you to swap intentionally; if everything dies to the same dodge-cancel combo, who cares about team roles?

The Gacha Shadow: Where This Could All Go Sideways

Now the ugly part. Endfield is free-to-play with microtransactions and a gacha system. That sentence comes with landmines. I’ve watched otherwise brilliant designs contort themselves into stamina prisons and “content” that is just a treadmill for a banner schedule. If Endfield locks essential utility behind dupes, if it demands whale-tier spending to maintain your factory throughput, or if the best industrial modules sit in loot boxes, then I don’t care how good the combat feels—my recommendation evaporates.

Hypergryph has history here. The original Arknights could be generous if you were patient, but its highest-tier units were still behind the gacha veil, and event pacing sometimes pushed players toward their wallets. Endfield’s challenge is nastier: it’s not just characters; it’s characters plus infrastructure. The second you graft power progression onto production systems, you’re playing with player trust. I don’t mind cosmetics, convenience boosts, or even a gentle push toward collection. But if you tie synergy-critical modules or build limits to banner luck, that’s not design—that’s a trap.

Why I Trust (Cautiously) Hypergryph More Than Most

I’m not giving them a free pass. But I’ll say this: Hypergryph, as a studio, tends to privilege mechanics and worldbuilding in a way that feels authored. The Endfield demo didn’t scream “monetize me!” every ten seconds. It taught me systems, then let me use them. The four-operator squad I played with felt complete—no gaping holes that screamed “you’ll need a five-star from the banner to fix this.” The factory pieces I deployed were basic, but the game didn’t wink and nudge me toward a premium module. That’s not proof of purity, but it’s a good smell test.

And frankly, the mixing of construction and combat is so core here that kneecapping it with paywalls would be suicidal. If Endfield launches with a clear pity system, a reasonable path to earn pulls through play, and a separation between power and swag—think paid skins, building cosmetics, maybe time-saving blueprints for people with less time and more money—I can live with that. More importantly, I’ll recommend it.

Counterpoints: The Demo High Could Fade—Here’s What I Need

I’ve been burned by demos before. Thirty minutes is a curated tasting menu, and anyone can make a good first level. What happens at hour 30 is the test. Maybe the combat runs out of surprises. Maybe the factory layer never evolves past “drop extractor, press button.” Maybe the story fumbles what Arknights fans cherish: a morally messy sci-fi world that respects your intelligence. And yes, the release date is still undetermined, which means we’re all guessing.

• Transparent monetization: pity rates, free paths to core operators, and no power-locked production modules.
• System growth: deeper factory complexity over time without spreadsheet hell—logistics that matter, not busywork.
• Endgame with identity: fights that leverage swaps, staggers, and environmental control rather than bloated HP sponges.
• Cross-platform respect: mobile, PC, and PS5 parity where it matters, with sensible control schemes and no “phone-first” compromises on PC.
• Community hooks: co-op or asynchronous systems that tie industry to social play without turning resource sharing into a second job.

If Hypergryph nails even three of those, Endfield won’t just be “another Genshin competitor.” It’ll be its own gravitational body.

Bigger Picture: If Endfield Lands, The Genre Has To Evolve

Genshin changed the market by making open-world ARPGs a lifestyle. HoYoverse doubled down with games tailored to different appetites: turn-based planners, stylish urban brawlers. The rest of the industry chased surface-level trends—cute characters, banner calendars, stamina bars—without asking the more interesting question: what if the world itself was a system worth mastering? Endfield answers that directly. It says the frontier is not just a backdrop; it’s a machine. You don’t just visit Talos-II; you produce on it, reshape it, depend on it.

If that philosophy resonates, don’t be surprised when competitors start grafting construction loops onto their live-service worlds. Ubisoft will try to gamify pipelines. Square Enix will flirt with crafting economies that actually persist. Smaller teams will build niche but brilliant hybrids that we’ll all sleep on until a YouTuber shames us into trying them. That’s the optimistic timeline—and it starts with one game proving the loop can be elegant, digestible, and rewarding.

Where This Leaves Me as a Player

I’m not selling my Genshin account. I still love clambering around Teyvat, and HoYoverse’s production values are a drug. But after my time with Endfield, I feel something I haven’t felt from a non-HoYoverse ARPG in years: impatience. I want more. I want to see if my tiny extractor-to-processor chain can grow into a web that makes my combat choices smarter. I want to test how deep the intro/outro combat tech goes when the training wheels come off. I want to map Talos-II not just for chests, but for flat ground and wind exposure.

And yes, I want to see whether Hypergryph respects me. Don’t tell me to grind daily checklists for five pulls a month. Don’t timegate my factories behind paywalled blueprints. Don’t shove me into banners with FOMO-flavored writing. If you do, I’ll drop Endfield as fast as I fell for it. But if you don’t—if you launch with restraint and design integrity—you won’t just siphon players from Genshin. You’ll create a new habit loop that stands on its own legs.

Arknights: Endfield is headed to mobile, PC, and PlayStation 5, with the release date still under wraps. That’s the boring line. The real story is this: I sat down cynical and stood up buzzing. I don’t hand out that reaction easily. For now, the Genshin killer lives as a feeling, not a spreadsheet. But feelings move communities, and this one has momentum.

So consider this my line in the lunar dust: if Endfield launches with the combat snap I felt, the industrial groove I tasted, and a monetization model that doesn’t spit in my face, then “I found the Genshin killer” won’t be clickbait. It’ll be a mission statement. And if they fumble? I’ll be here to call it out—louder than I’m praising it now. Either way, I’ve got Talos-II circled on my map, and for the first time in a long while, I’m excited to build something that fights back.