Omaru Polka Returns to Arknights as a Lapsed Player, Pulls Gacha Live on a Borrowed Account

HOLOLIVE — Omaru Polka of Hololive returned to the tower-defense mobile game Arknights on Tuesday, playing through the opening story and tutorial battles in a stream of about 79 minutes. She said she had played the mobile version only casually around its launch, logging in now and then, and that she was approaching the stream as a returning player.

She opened by explaining that the game’s autumn event was under way, with a free scout once a day, a login campaign and limited-time scouts, and called it a good moment to start. The game’s amnesiac-protagonist opening, in which her character wakes as “Doctor Polka,” drew jokes from her. She played along with the scene and said the Doctor being called by that title brought a mix of nostalgia and embarrassment.

“I’m definitely going to pull the limited gacha from here on. I’ll do it.” — Omaru Polka, near the end of the stream

In the first battles she placed operators such as Texas and Exusiai under the guidance of Amiya and the veteran instructor Doberman, and described the game as an overhead tower-defense title. When enemies kept arriving faster than she could set up, she laughed that her play looked more like “tower offense” than tower defense.

At about the half-hour mark she moved to the scouting screen. A single pull there produced a character named Red, whom chat welcomed. Later, using the event’s free scout, she opened a pull that produced a high-rarity result, followed by a run of new operators including Vigna and Matoimaru. She said she could not afford the limited banner for now but would pull it eventually. She also set up a recruitment batch and said she remembered the game being fairly light to play compared with other mobile titles she had sampled.

Chat was busiest at the opening, as viewers welcomed her back, and again at the pulls and at the sign-off. Seven paid messages came in. Polka said she was using a borrowed account and had not checked her own progress. She recalled getting stuck around chapter 3, where enemies kept slipping past her operators, and said she wanted to continue with the main story now that she had returned.