The Girls Frontline series is back with the free-to-play strategy RPG Girls Frontline 2: Exilium, which recently launched on PC and mobile. It introduces a new cast of characters and fully 3D maps while building on the groundwork laid by its predecessor.
If you’re not familiar with the franchise, this is a sequel to the 2018 free-to-play mobile game Girls Frontline. It introduced a war-torn future world in which much of humanity has died, and they now rely on androids called Tactical Dolls, also known as T-Dolls or Dolls, to fight their battles for them. Players took on the role of a commander in charge of Doll combat teams, known as echelons. The first title spawned a manga and multiple anime series, and now the sequel follows in their footsteps.
Girls Frontline 2: Exilium picks up 10 years later and features significant gameplay evolution. You still play as the same commander from the first game, but your team has been disbanded and you are now a bounty hunter. You’ll need to recruit new Dolls to form a squad and lead them in turn-based combat as you try to uncover the truth behind a growing conspiracy.
Combat has gotten a big overhaul. The original featured a 2D map that you would move echelons across to engage enemies, at which point you’d enter combat that was based on where characters were placed within a formation. Girls Frontline 2: Exilium is fully 3D with tactical combat, and you take direct control of each character to move them across the map and execute commands.
Dolls are anime-style personifications of a wide variety of real-world weapons and come equipped with those weapons, including handguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, and shotguns. Each weapon has been created in 3D, is viewable from any angle, and can be displayed in your personal weapon gallery. You’ll also be able to apply different skins to your weapons, giving you some customization options for your collection.
Characters are grouped into classes that define their combat role. Bulwarks are your classic tanks, acting as frontline fighters who can provide defensive buffs to your team. Sentinels are your primary offensive characters, focused on dishing out as much damage as possible. Vanguards can help provide damage too, but their biggest advantage is their high mobility, which allows them to set up flanking maneuvers on enemies. And finally, Supports provide healing or buff their teammates.
Each character is weak to one element and one ammo type, so you need to be careful how you build each of your combat teams. You don’t want them all to be weak to the same attacks. Enemies have these weaknesses too, so you’re incentivized to build a team capable of capitalizing on a wide range of weaknesses to turn combat in your favor.
Unlike its predecessor, Girls Frontline 2 allows you to move characters freely around the battlefield during combat and find objects to take cover behind. When a character is behind cover, damage against them will be dramatically reduced. But hitting them with attacks they’re weak against will drain their Stability stat, and once that reaches zero, their defense will be broken and they’ll no longer get the benefits of being behind cover.
That means you need to be strategic about how you use each of your characters. Since enemies are weak to an element and an ammo type, it’s possible for one character with the right combination of attributes to hit both weaknesses with one attack. That drains Stability even faster, which quickly breaks enemies’ defenses and leaves them susceptible to devastating follow-up attacks.
Outside of combat, you can also spend down time with your squad members in the Refitting Room or Dormitory. Both offer full 3D interactivity and show off the game’s non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) anime art style. You’ll need to recruit new characters to expand your squad, and Girls Frontline 2 is celebrating release by providing in-game rewards that can help.
You can get a rundown of all the goodies on offer in the image above, including codes you can redeem and rewards from multiple events. If you want to jump in, you can download Girls Frontline 2: Exilium now on PC, iOS, or Android. To stay up to date on the latest info, you can visit the official website or join the community on Twitter, YouTube, or Discord.