Arknights

Arknights is a tactical tower defense with gacha, set on Terra, a world where a mineral called Originium powers every piece of technology and spreads an incurable plague while it does. You run Rhodes Island, a pharmaceutical outfit that treats the infection and keeps getting dragged into the conflicts it leaves behind.

Fights play out on a grid: you place Operators who block, shoot, heal or strip armor, deployment cost refills on its own, and skills fire when you tell them to. Reflexes count for little. What decides an operation is reading the map and picking the order of placement, and a failed mission gets solved by rebuilding the squad, not by replaying it faster.

The main campaign is long and text-heavy, and it runs through Episode 15. Around it sit a base that produces materials unattended while the game is closed, a permanent roguelike called Integrated Strategies with seven themes as of 2026, the survival mode Reclamation Algorithm, and Contingency Contract, a recurring season that adds opt-in difficulty modifiers in exchange for better rewards.

There is no fee and no box price. The hard currency is Originite Prime, converted into Orundum at 1:180; a Headhunting pull costs 600 Orundum or one permit, and a ten-pull costs 6,000. Pity is tiered: a 5★ or better guaranteed within the first ten pulls on any banner, rising odds from pull 50, and a guaranteed 6★ at 99.

The counter carries across standard banners and resets on limited ones, which in return raise the 6★ rate-up to 70% and let you trade in for an Operator at 300 pulls. The subscription is the Monthly Card at USD 4.99; everything else is cosmetics, Operator skins and dorm furniture. No 6★ is required to clear the campaign, and failed attempts refund the stamina they cost.

Service is active on global under Yostar and in China under Hypergryph. The Chinese server runs about six months ahead, so most content is known well before it reaches global. Events land every two or three weeks, plus reruns. Since August 2026 there is an official PC client with cross-save from mobile, ending years of emulators. Revenue is well off its peak, and the game still leads its category.

It works for anyone who enjoys a puzzle solved cold: pause, look at the map, rebuild the squad, try a different placement. Sessions are short and the story rewards reading. It is almost entirely a single-player game, with occasional co-op modes, so nobody comes here for guilds or a steady group. The grind for upgrade materials is real, and taking a favorite Operator to top form takes months of farming, no matter how the gacha treated you.