GIRLS' FRONTLINE 2: EXILIUM

GIRLS' FRONTLINE 2: EXILIUM is a role-playing game that blends strategy elements. Players will delve deeper into the contaminated post-apocalyptic zone, encountering tactical girls with diverse personalities and becoming commanders to lead them to survival in this world. However, as the story progresses, players and the girls will be drawn into a larger conspiracy. Players must command the girls to use their weapons, skillfully utilizing different cover and terrain in each level to defeat various enemies, earn victory and rich rewards, and thus nurture the girls and their weapons. Through battles, daily activities, and adventures, players will build deep emotional bonds with the girls, gifting them rings, forging eternal contracts, and unlocking their unique profiles, stories, and voice lines, eventually winning their affections.

Gameplay:

The gameplay of Girls' Frontline 2 revolves around turn-based tactical battles which take place on grid levels, similar to games such as XCOM, Disgaea, and Shadowrun. The player commands a squad of units in order to fulfil mission objectives on a tactical map, which include destroying enemy units, capturing strategic points, surviving waves of enemy attacks, or evacuating all units to an extraction point.These playable units, which are combat androids called T-Dolls, are obtained by the player via a gacha system in standard and seasonal event banners using in-game currencies.

T-Dolls are categorised into four different classes, namely:

Sentinel: Primary damage dealing units with high DPS

Bulwark: Tanking units with high survivability and defensive abilities

Support: Units with healing and buffing abilities

Vanguard: Units with high mobility that act in a sub-DPS capacity

In addition to a standard attack and a passive skill, T-Dolls have active skills that often consume "confectance index", a resource akin to ability points in standard role-playing games. These skills provide unique offensive or defensive capabilities depending on the T-Doll and have cooldown periods. Each T-Doll boasts an ultimate skill in their kit, which typically costs confectance as well. Confectance index replenishes over time or can be restored using certain active skills.

All units, both player-controlled and enemy-controlled, have a "stability index" which gradually decreases as they receive attacks from other units; when this is reduced to zero, "stability break" occurs, which reduces the effect of battlefield cover. The combat map offers locations with varying cover which reduces the amount of damage a unit receives, and the player is able to mitigate the effect of enemy cover with positional flanking, area-of-effect attacks, melee attacks, and elevated tiles which negate the efficacy of cover, or by reducing the enemy unit's stability index to zero.

Other forms of environmental effectors on the map include hazard tiles which apply damage or negative status effects to units, and interactable levers that alter elevators, conveyor belts or turrets on the battlefield. Beginning from the Chiral Redundancy major update onwards, a mechanism was introduced where tile effects generated by special unit skills that belong to different elemental types can be stacked together, for instance using an active attack to apply fire status to an existing ice tile, allowing the player to create additional status effects that apply to units occupying the tiles.

Features:

Next-Gen 3D Graphics: Experience a visual masterpiece with high-fidelity anime-style rendering. Every T-Doll is brought to life with meticulous detail, dynamic lighting, and fluid animations that set a new standard for mobile RPGs.

Deep Tactical Strategy: Master a refined turn-based combat system. Utilize the environment, seek cover, and exploit high-ground advantages to outsmart dangerous entities and rival factions in complex tactical maps.

Unrivaled Weapon Customization: Dive into a modular firearm system. Swap barrels, optics, stocks, and suppressors to fine-tune your weaponry. Each modification impacts your squad’s performance, allowing for endless tactical configurations.

Immersive Narrative: Immerse yourself in a mature, post-apocalyptic sci-fi story. Explore the mysteries of the Contaminated Zones and forge deep bonds with your squad of elite T-Dolls through interactive dialogue and shared history.

Interactive Dormitory: Between missions, relax with your team in fully realized 3D environments. Interact with your Dolls, customize their outfits, and enjoy high-quality social animations that strengthen your command connection.

Strategies:

After poking around most of the characters and actually playing manually, I came to understand a lot about why the tierlist is the way it is and why some characters are significantly more powerful than others. Most gold units are relatively the same in power except the god tier units have a lot of elemental unit support. I want to share what I have discovered about the general strategy of this game.

There is 2 ways to deal damage, you either focus on single target (mostly for bossing) or you focus on aoe (for general content). The reason why most players focus on single target instead is that the general mobs are easy enough to just use single target units to clear them instead, resources for units are expensive.

Control Effects (Frigid, Paralyze) suck as they generally dont affect bosses. The main point of elemental skills instead is long lasting debuffs to proc "phase strike" which gives 15% extra damage.

V1 Soumi is actually god-like. You basically turn Soumi from a shielder to a shielder AND healer. Her weapon is also insane by providing much more shield value. The only problem with Suomi is that she only has one other teammate with Freeze, Lotta. Amazing team for general mobs but for bosses please only bring Soumi (remember control effects dont stun bosses)

DPS (aka Sentinel) is always most important. Preferably 3 sentinels and 1 support if possible. This will help maximize your damage especially if you have aligning elements. The more of the same element units on your team, the more you can unlock secondary more effective debuffs. The best ratio is generally 2 units per element.

Always be in cover it pretty much makes you invincible as long as you have enough stability points. So what does that mean? It means you want a support that either provides shields or increases your stability for your allies. Healers are not that good because when you lose HP its usually too late (no stability left). you really dont want to lose HP as thats a sign youre losing bad.

How strong your units are means nothing if you dont have the right team comp which really depends on the level which is: Lots of mobs, a boss, or need to reach certain locations. For example, Lotta without Suomi is like peanut butter sandwich without the jam. It just doesn't work.

Counter Attacks and Support Attacks are OP, use units like those. Enough units with these skills will make your team attack without you having to do anything.

Use support units from other players. A good Qiongjiu that i didnt have takes me a long way.

Tololo is underrated. Insane double action with sniping capabilities in all of her skills. Passive self buffing. Largest movement spread. Just drop Mosin Nagant and use her instead. She's that good. The ONLY reason she drops off in CN is she doesnt have much elemental unit supports since shes hydro. Queen dps alongside Qiongjiu.

Player Comments:

it has auto battle, and gear RNG but late game its just RNG to use less materials as you can always get perfect gear if you have enough materials. also lots of fan service with the dorms and etc. f2p friendly, the events are the same 7 or 8 mini games always, meta can be viewed from the CN server but the release order makes no sense for global. dailies are decently short and can be automated.

I've been waiting for a game to get me hook daily since Illusion Connect and finally I found it! This is what all mobile gacha games should have been. There's so much generosity in the pulls with all the information described. Graphics are amazing with the dormitory system for all the characters. Gameplay is like Xcom but simplified and more fun. This seems like a love project from Mica and not a game. Thank you so much for this diamond! Keep up the good work!

Amazing animation during gameplay, and the skill for character is engaging making you choose a more tactical play and even if you let it auto play it still feel satisfying to watch. The character designs are wonderful and fluid have their own charms and since it have irl related gun designs it appeals to me. I am able to play with my old phone and since it is turn based with no time limit(I think) it gives me time to find out the best way to attack and still have the safest exit strategy.

I'm giving it a premature 5/5 because of the amount of misinformation out there. Here are some facts: 1. You can play on both PC and mobile - on the same account. It's your mistake if you download the wrong PC client. Make sure you get the correct one (HaoPlay). 2. Game has incredibly good performance and graphics. It's one of the best stylized anime 3D games out there (in that regard). 3. Game has plenty generous rewards & gacha 4. Xcom-like, fun, strategic gameplay. 5. Continuation of GFL1.

Final Verdict:

In short, GIRLS FRONTLINE 2: EXILIUM is a perfect continuation, not only inheriting the quintessence of the previous version but also bringing many valuable innovations. This is definitely a great choice for those who love strategy games combined with anime style.