Arknights

Full Disclosure, Immediately

I have never played Arknights. Not one stage. I do not know if the tower defense is good, and by every account I have heard from people whose taste I trust, it is very good — tight, demanding, generous with its systems, carried by art direction that most premium studios could not afford to attempt.

None of that is relevant. This is not a review. It is a verdict, and I am comfortable with the difference.

The Evidence Is Elsewhere On This Site

Scroll down. There is a game on this list with a four-digit hour count and a score of −58, and the review under it is not a takedown — it is a confession. I wrote, in public, that the writing was better than it had any commercial reason to be, that I could see the hook clearly, and that seeing it had never once stopped me from biting.

I know exactly what this is, because I know exactly what the last one did to me.

That is the whole case. I am not qualified to tell you whether Arknights is a good game. I am extremely qualified to tell you what happens to my evenings if I find out.

About The Number

Minus one hundred billion is not a measurement. Nothing on this scale below −100 is. It is the only honest way to record a game whose actual quality I have deliberately refused to gather evidence about, and it should be read as exactly what it is: not a claim about the game, a claim about me.

Zero hours. It sucks. Both of those are true, and only one of them is about Arknights.