It is not every day that I review mobile games, being a PC gamer myself, and it is even rarer that I would highly praise a mobile game, but GIRLS’ FRONTLINE 2: EXILIUM (GF2E) has exceeded my expectations in every aspect of the game.
GF2E is a tactics strategy game akin to XCOM, Fire Emblem, or Into the Breach and is being developed by MICA Team from China. It is the sequel to Girls’ Frontline, and you play as the same character, the “Commander”, with recurring characters from the previous game but the gameplay is vastly different. GF2E was released recently on December 3rd and has been well received by fans of the first game and newcomers.
I have to preface this review by mentioning that I have not played the predecessor, the first Girl’s Frontline and went into this game blind. Still, I was utterly surprised at the depth of the gameplay and story, but I will talk about it more later.
The story itself takes place 10 years after the end of the first game where you, the “Commander”, is no longer part of “Griffin”, the Private Military Company that uses Tactical Dolls, and has decided to become a bounty hunter within those 10 years. The Tactical Dolls are the “gacha” characters that you will pulling as well as the characters you control in its tactics strategy gameplay.
The gameplay is typical of most gacha games, where there is a campaign mode which is the main story mode, that the players can complete from one stage to the other. Also typical of modern gacha games, there is a commander level that unlocks more game modes as you gain more levels.
At the start of the game, after going through the tutorial and unlocking the “Recruitment”, the gacha mechanic of the game, most modes are locked behind the commander level. Hence, players will have to go through most of the campaign mode before being able to play the other modes. Recruitment follows the modern gacha system set by HoYoverse where you pull for characters with most of the pulls being weapons for the characters and a pity system of 80 pulls with a 50% chance being a banner character or otherwise.
What I Like About The Game
It is not without merit that I say GF2E is a AAA game due to the graphics alone, as that is not the only thing the game has to offer. The gameplay, animations, story and characters are top notch for a mobile game. Just opening the game, you will be greeted with a well-made introduction video that had me awed, and even the tutorial and campaign mode has a lot of cut scenes that are beautifully rendered, leaving me speechless. The game even goes beyond that by providing a unique animation cutscenes for the leveling up of each Tactical Dolls. The amount of work that has been done for the animation alone is worth checking out the game.
Of course, the thing I like the most about the game is the gameplay of GF2E which is reminiscent of XCOM. You are given four Tactical Dolls to deploy on a small tactical map and strategize on how to move about the 4×4 grid map to complete objectives. There are covers that the Tactical Dolls can get behind, each with their own system. Some provide 50% defense, some block fire-sight, some provide vertical advantages, and some covers can be destroyed. There are also covers that block range attacks, but is vulnerable to melee attacks, and vice versa, which extends the tactical aspect of the game. Each map, each Tactical Doll, and each game mode provides even more depth which I greatly appreciate.
The third thing I like about GF2E are the character designs which move away from the absurdity that can be found in most Japanese-inspired mobile games (*cough* Nikke *cough*) and move towards the simplicity of human design. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of eye candy designs like “Summer Skins” or revealing skins, and the release of Tactical Dolls up to date have been mostly females to appeal to the male gamer demographic, but their their designs are more preferable to my preferences. Even the design of the weapons are simple and elegant, with real weapons as the base with some ganache added to their design to tell them apart. What really pushes it over the top is that each weapon can be seen in the animation of the game, be it the Tactical Doll’s skill animation or the level up animation.
The final aspect of the game that I applaud would be the story of GF2E, which albeit simple, is mature and has depth to it. Since the game picks up 10 years after the first game, new players can dive right into GF2E’s story without worries. The dialogue, script writing, and voice acting is above par compared to other mobile games and avoids the clichés of the protagonist’s harem, and instead deals more with the commander being respected as a reliable and wise person. The banter between characters does not feel out of place and “makes sense” so to speak, which does not take you out of the story like most other mobile gacha games do.
It is also worth mentioning that the game gives out a lot of initial rewards for starting out with each reward being unlocked as you play the game even more. The gacha system itself is pitiful with a 0.6% rate for SSR characters, but there is a pity of 80 pulls where you have a 50% chance to get the banner character and a 100% chance to get the banner character in the next pity pull if you did not get the banner character in the previous pity pull.
What I Don’t Like About The Game
As usual with mobile gacha games, Weapon Attachment farming is a nightmare. Farming the Weapon Attachment and trying to get the perfect stats for said attachment takes multiple tries and calibrating said attachment to get stat boosts also takes multiple tries. That being said, the system is a lot more forgiving as you only need to reroll the stat boost of each Weapon Attachment to get the maximum value you can, instead of rolling for 5 different stats like other games. This is the only farming that has proven so far to be difficult, as the character and weapon materials have been easy to obtain thus far.
Next thing I think the game could use more of is male Tactical Dolls. So far, even for the Chinese server (the original), there are only female Tactical Dolls. I understand that the game appeals more to the male demographic, but most modern games like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, and Wuthering Waves have moved away from just providing eye candies for its male playerbase and caters to female crowds as well. I, for one, would like to see a variety of Tactical Dolls since, as their name implies, the dolls could be molded into any form, even for the furry lovers out there.
The difficulty is not something to be complained about, but I believe could be improved, as most of the story mode can be easily breezed through with the auto mode. Still, I have not explored the hard mode yet, but in the regular mode, every map or stage can just be powered through by leveling your characters to the maximum upgrade there is. Even with maps that are full of blockades and traversers, it’s still easy enough for the AI in auto mode to power through and complete the objectives. I hope that my opinion of this will change when I delve into the harder modes and content.
Conclusion
I have said it and I will say it again, GIRLS’ FRONTLINE 2: EXILIUM is a masterpiece AAA mobile game that anyone who loves a good gacha games should try out. For those who love tactical games with a solid storyline, the game will also be coming out on Steam for those who prefer to play it on a PC like I do. All in all, I give the game a 9 out of 10 pies.
