Frankly, I don't care about the story from the game. It can not exist for all I care, but the anime exists to sell you the game (despite it being free) rather than animate it, so endless exposition is a must. I'd much rather just have the anime take an original path with a fresh story that doesn't require infodumps and give me more of the world building and characters, I don't care about the gacha attached to it so please stop trying to sell it to me.
Would be a low 9 or high 8 but unfortunately the CEASELESS infodumps drag it so much down I give it a 7 and it still feels too high.
The world that the anime paints is nice, in sense that it's not nice; the world is a total dystopian shithole wrecked by cataclysms so badly that humanity (with animal ears?) gave up on living in one place and created massive nomadic cities, on top of that, the cataclysms deposit a mineral that can cause an incurable deadly infectious disease with 100% mortality rate, AND it's a source of energy. Do the math on what makes this world spin and how the mineral is procured by the more morally creative factions.
Protagonists are part of a Big Pharma™ trying to cure the disease, but it doesn't seem like they'll succeed anytime soon because they're being led by an amnesiac. Everyone reveres this amnesiac as the best thing since sliced bread, but that's because it's the player character from the gacha. No personality to speak of and the reason they all love xim is because AAFHSDGHSDFHDSGHF [DATA EXPUNGED] + amnesia whoops! Easily the weakest part of the anime. Stop circlejerking around this character, please.
Aside from the cardboard cutout main character, the characters are rather well written, I chalk this up to them actually having a thought-out backstory from the gacha, unlike most anime characters. The gacha is really a double-edged blade here, isn't it?
You don't see much of the antagonist, but the little you can see is fairly shitty - not much of motivation uncovered here other than sheer butthurt at nothing in particular. Weak.
The best part of the anime is actually when it expands on the scenes from the game (without directly following them) and the player character is not present. The battle in Chernobog against the antagonist was pretty good, but then the second antagonist appears in the Lungmen arc and ruins everything by being incredibly boring and contrived.
Overall, not a bad watch, but I could also think of many other anime that are just straight up better. If you have nothing better to do, give this one a try.
I'm hoping the studio will do its own anime original story set in the Arknights world, as it's the greatest strength of the anime.
