The One Squad RPG Everyone Needs to Study
The theme of '25 heading into '26 has been the absorption of squad RPG into 4X. Remember, on mobile, those who win the auction win the market, and 4X's endless spend depth and social dynamics grow LTV, outbidding squad RPG. The move to 3D in games like Genshin Impact or Solo Leveling is a counter-cyclical thesis to this. What if RPG just said, "fuck it, we can't win on mobile"? Put the game on HD, and then anything mobile is icing on the cake. Arknights Endfield is in this vein but also solves some of the more fundamental problems squad RPGs have had in sustaining the long run.
The original Arknights is the most important squad RPG, perhaps bar none. Unlike other titles, Arknights maintains a linear revenue curve since its launch in '19, crossing the billion-dollar revenue mark. It never suffered the six-month hangover that Lilith talked about in their famous Chinese post. Studying that is essential if we're going to reverse the squad RPG's decline.
Arknights has started pulling months where it outgrosses Genshin, and by the middle of '26, I expect it to beat it every single month.
Unlike other squad RPGs, Arknights isn't just a power-scaling game. It implements tower defense, in which characters defeat waves of enemies, allowing for more intricate puzzles than simply selecting the right squad. Placement and timing - and the squad itself - are part of the puzzle design. The breadth is vast, enabling far more horizontal meta-collection.
While the game also has a strong narrative apparatus, its standout feature is a base-building system reminiscent of Fallout Shelter. It's not only a character sink; it's also a place for additional puzzles. Configuring the base and determining the optimal resource chain is essential for long-term progression. And while other games like The Walking Dead: RtS played with base-building, Arknights found the right blend.
The rise of 3D has been an attempt to solve the RPG problem by amortizing costs and expanding the audience across more platforms. And this is the same thing we see in Endfield: the game is on mobile and HD, seemingly finding success across both platforms. But it's not enough, and we still see declines in many of these 3D RPGs, like Solo Leveling and Zenless Zone Zero.
The most important element they've carried forward is the base-building. The factory feels far more sophisticated - and harder to execute - in 3D than in 2D, which is why we see fewer 3D simulation games that take a character perspective rather than a godlike one. The tutorials are laborious, but they've made some nice concessions, such as zip lines for quick movement.
It should build a solid long-run economy loop that grows over time while maintaining a more reasonable budget, without an open-world design. So far, the numbers have been good, especially coming off pre-registration highs, with DAU starting to level off across mobile and HD platforms.