Hello, Limbus player and new Arknights player migrating here for a time.
Spent the better half of the last 2 months, grinding Endfield, reached level 60 2 weeks ago, and just about to finish up Wulings story.
Before going into the negatives, I gotta hand the flowers where they belong. This game has got sauce for sure.
Obviously, cinematography, I'm not one to care too much for Sakuga, busting-a-nut, breaking-a-bank, sacrificing-an-animator levels of animation in general if the story isn't great, but it is nevertheless beautiful, even a dumbass like me can recognize how good the cutscense of this game is.
The pacing is not bad in general, I never once felt like the story was lagging behind or advancing too fast most of the time.
The voice acting is great, varied nationality, accent and characters speaking their own languages in EN is very unique, and highly IMMERSIVE (iykyk). This is my favorite part of the game story experience so far.
Now the bad.
Valley IV, yeah, pretty bad all things considered. Aside from our trio, I can barely remember anything remarkable about the side characters in Valley IV, I'm talking about the playable, money-making characters
Ardelia, Wolfguard, Aveywenna, played almost no significant role in the story whatsoever despite being playable, the majority of the screen time was given to NPCs that are for some reason more developed and interesting , does more for the overall plot of the story and has more character interaction than those 3, it is kind off ridiculous how much attention was shifted away from the playable cast, I can remember nothing about Ardelia, Wolfguard has one companion story that makes his NPC friend more interesting than him, Aveywenna was ditched in the gutters with only horny posting and insert "500 rabbit babies" joke to the sub reddit. Meanwhile, the old bear guy from the power plant had more screen time, was given the mentor role for the AIC quest, and had decent lines for the 2 young idiots that was going to replace him, the shady fella from Valley Pass had a more interesting past and complicated relationship with the refugees and Avywenna was just there for no relevant reason, she could be taken out of that quest entirely and nothing would have changed.
The only 2 exceptions (kind off) were Laevatain and Rossi, Laevatains companion quest was pretty good by itself, though i struggle to really love it when I know that Hypergriph will probably treat her the same way Surtr was back in the OG series (Zero main story relevance, zero context for her superpower bullshit, 7 years of no extra story content), and Rossi had a decent quest, it did it's job and the underground base section was actually pretty cute.
The main story of Valley IV is just....nothing. We wake up, experience a very cool intro, then proceed to chase Nephariths ass around, being stopped by the average Australian homeless population, all the while experiencing some immersion breaking tutorials that lasted just a little too long for my liking, rinse and repeat until Wuling, everything else just slides through my head because of how much of a nothing burger the entire arc was, a travesty for a name that has some of the greatest story in gacha games.
Now Wuling, admittedly, it was so much better than before....
The main cast now has the center focus, a lot more character interactions, a lot more relevance to the main storyline, and with a good amount more personality than just doing spin tricks on the Endmins Endihistrator.
Personal favorite would be the Qingbo Sotckade arc, with the whole divided by hate and grudge of the past for old wounds versus a fresh, cooperative future where putting aside differences and respect one another is treated somewhat well, peace and mutual benefit is great and all but bad blood, misunderstandings and a freak accident on top, it skews everyone's perception and hate for past sins don't wash easily, not too hard to imagine why the two can't get along well. Good world building for the two factions.
I won't spoil anything about TangTangs story but I very much appreciate how she coped and ultimately resolved her feelings at the end of the arc, it feels realistic and relatable as someone who had to let go of relationships despite not wanting to, very cool hypergriph.
That's the point I'm in right now, I'm just about to head into 1.2, so things might be looking up, but my feelings for the story have not changed as of writing this.
Now, the point of the post.
Arknights Endfield just doesn't have a solid identity yet. It is just about Endmin saving people, solving problems, being the second coming, and getting the adoration of everyone around him. There's little reason to care about the people here and their struggles cause the story lacks emotional weight, real consequences, and any major threat. This all feels too safe.
Compared to its predecessor, where the Doctor is immediately forced into an extremely hostile world with complicated politics, discrimination, sudden unfair deaths, and heavy losses for both the protagonist and antagonist, the vibe and setting of OG Arknights conveys exactly what type of story it wants to tell.
Overall, i would say, the story isn't doing anything very interesting right now, it has good story beats, good character moments and some interesting tidbits of lore and future implications but nothing that really pushes the story to any discernable direction.