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Arknights vs Girls Frontline?
| Just play them all and see what sticks. Arknights's community seem to be on the rise, though.
| I personally play both now, annd... uh...
Arknights tries to improve on where GFL falters, but ends up running into similar gacha downsides, just in different ways. For one thing, its possible to reach a point in GFL where pulling for girls is child's play if you save up enough mats, which I'm sure you're aware of, while in Arknights pulling any new unit requires premium currency, unless you save up a lot of free tickets.
| The main plot has inferior writing to GFL but the event stories are fun and have their own lighthearted fare, even though it makes a lot of use of cliffhangers and foreshadowing, along with assumptions of personal histories behind characters. I put this as a negative because it does that repeatedly without any guarantee that later on these questions will be answered. It was also kind of annoying how, even after filling up a character's "trust," many still had curtailed lore.
| The gameplay can be more fun than GFL's, especially if you're into tower defenses, but the replayability is roughly the same as GFL's because you'll soon find yourself using the game's autoplay system to grind maps for resources to upgrade your "towers." This is where the game can potentially be stressful and another example where it could be considered p2w- unlike GFL, you're limited by an energy system in AK and if you screw up a map one too many times, you could run out
| of energy to try again. It gets around this (kinda) by giving you (limited) testing tickets and burning only minimal energy, unless its a challenge mode in which case half of the energy you used is wasted.
And while GFL grinding can become mind numbing, keep in mind that even on fast forward autoplay, some maps can take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to finish running, so you won't be getting those mats very quickly, not counting the RNG inherent in which mat appears anyway.
| I should have mentioned this earlier in the thread, but the free tickets, like other gacha, won't allow you to pull 6 star units- which you will absolutely need eventually in the game to progress or to do somewhat well in events. And not just one, but a few. In GFL you were able to get pretty far with some 2 star girls, and thanks to the Neural Upgrade system, which MICA plans to extend to *every* doll, you now can potentially keep using them indefinitely if you really hate
| the AR Team/404 Squad/Team Defy. So far, in AK, you quickly find yourself needing to abandon your precious 3 and 2 star waifus as they literally cannot afford enough DPS, health, or healing necessary to maintain relevance. In an earlier event, at least a few pro AK players managed to complete hard mode levels with f2p gurls, but I haven't seen that replicated since- definitely not on 18 difficulty contracts, that's for damn sure.
| Ultimately, I don't keep playing both of these games for the gameplay, though I will admit AK's a little more engaging- at least until the map's over. I like that because of no energy, GFL actually fits into my lifestyle/work life a lot better since it means that I could mostly just play at my own pace, while AK really feels like i'm wasting time not using my daily energies. And god, when its like a day before the end of an event and you're scraping by... no bueno.
| But hey. Cyberpunk waifu androids eith coca cola fetishes and urban fantasy dystopic magic gem cancer donkey- er, I mean bunny girls. I appreciate that all costumes in AK are buy to own instead of gacha to own, but that's balanced by the fact that every new character is gacha. I'm at a point where I don't need to spend money on GFL anymore while AK I feel like I'll always be spending money.
So as long as both games continue having fun stories, I'll probably stick around.
| Hope that helps a little OP.
That said, I think you're kinda late to the AK hype train. As someone who started on day one, it feels more like the hype's dropping off....
| I'd like to bring up some counter arguments.
Gacha: Arknights uses both the instant pull and the timed recruitment, each with their own mats. The former GFL does not have, but it takes to gather enough mats AK too. For the latter, sure you can use Normal Peoduction, but to get the great stuff you have to use Heavy Production which uses lurid amounts of money, whereas in AK tickets are easy to come by in dailies if you use them moderately (it cannot pull the top operators though).
| Story: I'd argue that although the overall story in GFL may be more intriguing, it doesn't grab your attention in the beginning the same way AK does. Also I find myself way more invested in the operators in AK, while in GFL I would have to struggle to remember many of the dolls if I didn't have some gun knowledge already since most that I can get from many of them is their intro. It might also be AK is better at incentivizing usage of different units so you interact with them more.
| Gameplay: AK is obviously superior.
Not that GFL doesn't require strats, but there's only so many ways to arrange your formations to make them useful, while with AK even amongst the same classes there are sub categories, giving more variety.
Units ferl more integral in AK as you have to time their skills correctly and place them in optimal tiles or risk losing them, while in GFL you just kinda chuck em in and let everyone duke it out.
| Grinding: GFL is obviously better. Just throw some echelons into logistics, auto-battles, or exploration in the basecamp and you're done. For AK, you have to wait as the stage replays your successful fight again and again, which is not guaranteed success because if somehow one unit gets promoted and has a higher cost things may fall apart. Micromanaging your base with the factory, trading post, reception room, and workshop could either be annoying or just another gameplay mechanic.
| Low-rarity units: Neural Upgrades in GFL only raises their rarity up a single star, so they can only go so far. In AK, it's true that you have to end up abandoning the starters quickly and even the next rarity operators can be obsolete, a few you need to keep an eye on because they can still play integral parts because of their passives, low cost, or other specialties. For example, I don't know how the hell I could survive 2-10 without 12F and Melantha.
| Time investment: You can just pop in and out with GFL. Or rather, you have to since your units can get damaged and be out of commission, so you have to repair them and wait or use tickets to speed up the process. With AK, the things you do generally may get dragged out to a considerable amount of time, and the energy refills they give occasionally give ensures you can continue past even just completing dailies.
| Dang you two are real passionate over gacha games huh?
| Costume: it's not that they're not expensive in AK, but the game gives you a decent number of premium currency that you can get from completing stages with which you use to buy a bit more than a few costumes, while in GFL I found myself using the gems more to upgrade the various limits put onto me so I can have a smoother gaming experience, with very little to spare for costumes.
| >>678200 If they didn't take so much dang space then I'd have more besides these two in my potato phone :'(
| Wow, thanks for such abundance of info. I realized that the most important point for me would be how much f2p friendly the game is. And if I understood correctly, there is no way to acquire high-tier units without premium currency in Arknights, whereas in GFL there is heavy production with specific material proportions that allow you to pinpoint the needed unit.
So then my next question is this: how difficult is it to get high-tiers in Arknights?
| I mean, how difficult is it to grind that premium currency
| As I understand you get a guaranteed high-tiers from pulls in AK, so that must help, right?
| Anyways, personally I feel that the bottle neck is more obvious in GFL since there are various limits put onto you, but you can gather enough premiums to deal with at least some of that, while in AK the problem is usually that there're specific operators you need to easily clear stages, so it's more a matter of gacha.
| >>678207 I think AK is easier, since they give you two chances to get premiums with challenge mode.
>>678208 They guarantee five-stars, which isn't the best but more than good enough.
| Here's the thing with AK that may annoy you: there are way too many currencies. There's the premium currency which you use to buy special furniture, costumes, or convert it into gacha-specific currency, which you can get by doing dailies, buying it from the credit store which uses another currency and annihilation stages. It takes approximately one month to get a ten-headhunt roll. I personally prefer it being a separate resource from the ones my units use, but preferences I guess.
| Alright, thanks again for the advice, I downloaded AK for now, because it's too much of a hassle remembering my old GFL account, and also I want to look at cute anime boys too
| >>678218
Yeah, for real. I knew some people were very into gacha games, but damn. I honestly have nothing but respect for that.
| >>678233
You're welcome! Remember though, no matter what game you play, the most important thing is whether you enjoy what you play or are at least willing to overlook the downsides in search of the goodsides.
I've been playing both for so long (the first reviewer) that both games have pretty much fallen into routine mode for me, but fuck it, there are raifus and fluffy boys to acquire. I hope everyone benefitted from both our reviews!
| GFL's leveling takes ages and lots of ammo, haven't played AK, but it's not ideal. Someone said neural upgrade only gives one star - it gives 2 to 2-stars. Modern gfl content requires a huge variety of fully upgraded squads loaded with fully upgraded 5-star equipment which has pretty low drop rate. At this point I have most girls and cores nough for everyone, but I don't have enough time in my life or ammo to level up all who I want. Also it has all the valhalla girls in it.
| They do lots of stuff for gfl since it's Japan release like manga, mini-anime and lately character songs which is damn awesome. Makes me feel like I'm playing the right gacha game. Does take some money to develop infrastracture enough for it to feel comfortable though.
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| So I decided to get into gacha gaming recently (god save my soul), but I'm hesitant what to play. I played Girls Frontline in the past, and I dig its style, but I want to try something new, and I heard there's this new Arknights gacha that looks similar, yet I know little to nothing about it.
So, which one do you think is better? Which one has worse paywalls and/or bottlenecks?
I'm a F2P player btw