After one of my friends persuaded me to give it a shot, I’ve spent the last four weeks or so playing Arknights.
Having never really done gatcha games before, bar a little bit of time on Genshin, it’s certainly been an interesting experience. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing in particular. The main story is perfectly fine, but I’ve enjoyed how esoteric some of the side stories can be - the variety of little adventures you can go on is impressive.
Would also say that, in forty odd hours of play, I’ve spent exactly £2 on the game and have not felt the least bit hectored to spend more. It does look like spending money on gatcha pulls would get you more powerful characters quicker and make the game easier, but it‘s only now that I’m starting to feel the pinch with the characters I have. It would have been nice to complete some of the timed events without having to stop due to lack of damage output on my part, but it’s only been a minor irritation so far and I get that they need to make money off the game somewhere.