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Arknights Perish in Frost is a solid substitute for the game's main story, elevating certain parts but dropping the ball on some. This season was produced fully in house by Yostar Pictures, an experimental decision and it shows as the quality of the drawings, cinematography and animation has clearly improved compared to season 1, though despite the improvement, Yostar Pictures is a young studio that couldn't maintain the high quality for all episodes, and one episode in particular suffered severely for it. The pacing was a bit too fast and could've used 2 more episodes for more breathing room, but at times the faster pacing ... also cut some weak content from the game, and the rearranging of events helped the story flow better than the disorienting pacing and perspective shifts the game has at times. While season 1 lacked blood at some key moments, season 2 was more than willing to show some brutality, even surpassing the game at some points.

Through the impressively expressive character drawings, immersive atmosphere and tension filled scenes, they manage to draw you in and get you invested in characters you barely know or only just met, ally and foe alike. You get to understand both sides of the conflict and their flaws. How those in control weaponize fear and anger to make people fight and kill each other when they would otherwise share mutual interests.
This isn't a story where systematic problems are easily solved by the protagonists, this is a story that doesn't fear stating reality, the reality that conflict won't just disappear if today's problems and issues are solved, but that's not to confuse the story with being overly cynical or depressing, there is always someone fighting for a better world, slowly, but surely making change, carrying the torch for those who've lost their lives for a better tomorrow they'll never see.

The voice acting is absolutely top tier with Ayahi Takagaki playing Frostnova especially giving a heartbreaking performance, headphones recommended!
The art style is strikingly good, the atmosphere, the multiple layers of rain to give it that realistic depth, the subtle rain drops slowly running down a window, the way things are framed like it's live action, how visually dark it's willing to get without compromising the amount of fore/background detail, the music being spine-chilling and the realistic sound effects rather than bass boosted sound effects that feel inescapable nowadays. Yostar Pictures has done a fantastic job in all these, though my biggest complaint here would be that we don't see many civilians that inhabit what should be a very populated city.

Since the start of Studio Yostar Pictures they've worked on both these seasons like it was 1 season split in 2 cours. They've done a solid job so far, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. Now that they've hopefully had some breathing room I'm looking forward to the next season with high expectations.