Long time players, ignore how insane so many of my stats and all that are, I haven't had the braincells to play due to covid and traveling almost an entire month prior to getting it. This year has been.. really bad.

Arknights, at its core, is a mobile game that focuses on strategy and tower defense. You strategically place characters (referred to as Operators) down on a top-down, tile style map, keeping their unique classes, skills and talents in mind to protect your base or whatever counts as your "tower" for the specific stage/storyline.

You gain new Operators through a gacha/lottery system called Headhunting, or through a tag system called Recruitment.

Headhunting offers you a chance at the Rate Up high rarity Operators as well as a pool of lower rarity characters. The pool varies by banner.

Older Operators have actually been moved to a separate Headhunting system called Kernel Headhunting to give newer players a better chance at obtaining the older Operators from a smaller pool of options. It also occasionally gives players the option to choose which Operators are on Rate Up.

Recruitment allows players to narrow down what Operators they can get by selecting up to three tags that are randomly generated for each recruitment. Increasing the Recruitment time helps increase the likelihood of an Operator with the chosen tags being Recruited, but not always. The pool of possible operators a player can receive through recruitment is much smaller than that of the regular or Kernel Headhunting.

You can also get characters for free through events, main story chapters and from purchasing them from the shop using currency you naturally build up by completing daily missions and stages.

I actually consider Arknights to be one of the most F2P friendly live service gacha games I have ever encountered (This is coming from someone with luck so bad their life has been described as an unfortunate Looney Tunes skit by multiple completely unrelated people). In-game currency is also easy to obtain even if you don't have the high rarity "meta" Operators. This is not a game that requires the high rarity characters to play and enjoy. If it was, I wouldn't still be playing after 4 years. I've had to purchase almost all the "meta" characters from the shop just to have the chance at even getting them because they refuse to come home through the gacha system.... but I have officially gotten all the characters I've actively wanted, even if I do have to wait for a rerun.

The Operator classes include: - Vanguard - Guard - Specialist - Defender - Sniper - Caster - Supporter - Medic

Most of these are pretty self explanatory, but the Arknights Terra Wiki explains them all in really organized simple terms and has clear descriptions of the subclasses!

Unlike another popular gacha game currently out there on the market, cough G*nshin cough, Arknights does not forever lock limited events behind their original run duration (except for special collab events like the Monster Hunter one). Every limited event gets a rerun (roughly taking place between 1-2 years after it's original runtime) and then is later archived and made available forever, whether the player completed it or not. It is also possible to collect materials from stages from the late stages of the main story even if you haven't unlocked them yet thanks to events rewards and shops. Because of this, it's incredibly friendly to new and old players alike.

Over the years it has expanded its game modes and content to include rogue-likes, multi-player modes, and most recently a game mode that requires base construction, exploration, and high level resource gathering and management. Each new limited event and game mode introduces new game mechanics and gimmicks that keep the game play refreshing and challenging. It also allows every single playable character's unique kits a chance to shine.

The other game modes require you to get through the tutorial of the game, which is pretty long and dialogue heavy, but the story is worth it in my opinion and I don't think it should be skipped. I'll pass on explaining those for now since they're relatively easy to look up, but if you're interested in learning more about them, look up: Contingency Contract, Integrated Strategies, Stationary Security Service, Trials for Navigator, or Reclamation Algorithm. The Arknights Terra Wiki is also a good resource for explanations on these game modes.

There's also a base you can build within the main game mode to help passively collect currency and character building materials. It's one of the few ways you're able to interact with other players in the early game. You can decorate the dormitories with different furniture sets, which is pretty cute. It just recently came out of Beta on the CN server, so global should get it in a year or so.

Also the UI is beautiful and I love it and it's easy to understand as long as you DO NOT skip tutorials. Don't do that. For the love of god, you need to pay attention to the tutorials for this game.

Arknights Story:

I'm gonna be so real, I think I used up all my brain power on the game play explanation, so this may sound lackluster ><

Basically:

You play as an amnesiac scientist known as Doctor. The story begins with a rescue operation to retrieve your comatose body from a medical containment unit called a Sarcophagus. It has kept your body stable as well as healed you after an event unknown to you left you gravely injured. The rescue team consisting of Operators once under your command as well as a little Cautus (rabbit) girl named Amiya, pulls you out of the Sarcophagus in the middle of a civil war in the town of Chernobog in the country known as Ursus (you can think of it as an alternative universe USSR populated by a race of bear people also called Ursus).

Amiya quickly fills you in that you are the head researcher of a pharmaceutical company called Rhodes Island that researches and treats an illness known as Oripathy. Oripathy is caused by exposure to a mysterious mineral known as Originium. This mineral is used to fuel most of the machines and magic that exists in this world.

In order to continue research on this terrible and little understood, yet wide-spread disease, the Doctor must face rebels, high ranking officials, corrupt governments, ancient beings, gods, and aquatic hiveminds.

The story is much more complex than that, but saying much more spoils quite a bit, so I hate to say much more. I just know that if world building is something you're really interested in and seeing real world connections and inspirations in a story, Arknights is a rich well of that. Many of the characters are based on real life people, events, and mythology/folklore. There are complex governments systems, well thought out civilizations, and unexpected connections between characters and story lines. Despite it's large cast of playable characters, Arknights tries to give each one a meaningful connection to the story, even if it takes years to get to them. The NPCs are memorable and lovable and often become playable if they have an important place in the story or are well received by fans.

There are a lot of really good story summary videos on youtube, but of course now that I'm looking for them, I'm struggling to find them, so I don't have any to personally recommend.

All the characters also have profiles with extra info and cutscenes that tie into the main story, side story, or just give insight to how they tie into the world of Arknights.

My only complaint I have with the story is that certain cultures that are often victim of misrepresentation in games do unfortunately suffer a similar fate in Arknights. Arknights has a large cast, and there IS better representation in the character line up than in other games I will not name, but they aren't perfect and can't really be overlooked when compared to the existing characters that do represent their cultural inspirations well. Sargon is the region impacted the most and despite many of my favorite characters originating from this region due to their story and personalities, it's good to take the designs and story with a grain of salt.

Conclusion:

Arknights isn't a game for everyone, even though I do believe the recent additions allow it to be for everyone if given enough time and effort.

If you're interested in the story and characters but don't want to bother with playing the game, the Arknights Terra Wiki, the Arknights Story Reader (and it's connected github site), Cutscene recordings from the main story and events on Youtube shared by fans, and the Arknights Anime all offer a lot of great info on the story, lore, and characters. I don't think this is a game you actually HAVE to play to properly enjoy the story if you don't want to. There's just A LOT of stuff going on, so it's a lot to keep up with.

As far as the DragonBedo thread-fic, it is being reformatted and edited. Previously, the outcome was decided by Twitter polls and the story was linear based on what people chose. But I have been considering turning it into a choose your own adventure game using a text oriented game engine called Twine.

However, doing that means I would be writing every single route and choice possible. In the game, every single choice would have a result and then more choices and more results. In my head I already have at least 8 separate endings I would like to do. I have done some of my research for the characters and have started a VERY bare bones outline, but not much else. Unfortunately a game like that would take a very long time to write, code, and play test.

So, the full version will take a while to complete and I've temporarily set it aside until I have fully completed my zine work and managed to scrounge together a merch catalogue worth of items to sell at a local con (hopefully in spring or summer of next year). So I won't even begin work on the game until next summer. Ideally, I would release it in installments as each individual route was completed. That way people could still play the game as I continue to work on it. The full version would then include extra routes or secrets the individual routes did not have. Gotta up that replay value.

I'd be willing to post what I have of the linear version of the story so far to AO3 for people to enjoy until I can start work on the game. I did write the next part of what would have been posted to Twitter had it not turned into even more of an AI scraping cesspool. I just need to get it AO3 ready. After it's posted to AO3, I'll make a post about it on my non-art-only blog so it's easy to find! Or you can just keep an eye on my AO3 to see when it's posted? That may be more reliable, actually. I constantly forget to make Tumblr posts for my fics...