Whenever I play a gacha game, I ask myself, “Will it be a strategy-intensive game or a numbers-intensive game?” Though I always hope that it would be the strategy, more often than not, the game ends up being more number-intensive in terms of Damage per Second or Damage per Turn that your units would deal. I know that in the modern era of gacha games, the strategy usually is just which unit meshes well together and how we can abuse the game’s mechanics to get bigger numbers on our screen. I don’t want to remember how character skill cycles work, I want to be able to have player agency on which moves I control and what attack they would deal.

Some gacha games are usually more about strategy than raw numbers, like Limbus Company, Reverse 1999, and Arknights to name a few, but more often than not you just have to be stronger than your opponent or have some kind of setup to cycle through to get that big damage. But as the year went by, Mica Team — a game development studio based in the PRC — announced and imported the sequel to their main gacha game, Girls’ Frontline, to the global market.

Girls’ Frontline 2: Exilium, released in mainland China on December 21, 2023, and later released worldwide on December 3, 2024 (by Darkwinter/Sunborn Software) or December 5, 2024 (by HaoPlay), has been an outstanding success with seemingly no major problems at launch. It’s pretty common for studios to offer a bunch of freebies right when a game is released to get both new and old players hooked. But what I didn’t expect is that they’d also be generous with the content they planned for the first month of the game. I’ll talk more about that later though.

 

 

Game Overview

The story of the world of Girls’ Frontline is too large and complex to explain to an outsider in just a few paragraphs, but what you need to know is that you play as the Commander/Shikikan of an elite team of military android soldiers known as the Tactical Dolls, or ‘T-Dolls’ for short, all based on and named after the signature weapon they wield. These include the Russian Nagant M1895 revolver and Mosin-Nagant bolt action rifle, and the Finnish Suomi KP-31, which is programmed to be incredibly racist towards the former Russian dolls. And the PKP “Pecheneg” machine gun, which is simply a “Cat”.

Do I need to have background knowledge of the stories told in Girls’ Frontline, Project Neural Cloud, or any other previously released Mica game to understand the story? No. But I will acknowledge the fact that understanding and knowing some bits and pieces of the story before starting the game will enhance your experience more.

Each T-Doll can be divided into 4 different classes: Bulwarks, the tanks; Vanguards, the burst damage; Sentinels, the DPS; and Support, the healers and buffers. There are also 7 weapon types and 5 element types that a doll can become, these include the likes of rifles, machine guns, pistols, assault rifles, blades, shotguns and submachine guns, and elements include those of Burn, Corrosion, Freeze, Hydro and Electric. And if you like math, the total number of unique T-Doll combinations that can be made is 140.

The story is told through the tried and tested method of the visual novel style, but there are a lot of pre-rendered 3D cutscenes that are shown throughout the stories and events. I can rate the story positively with the few parts that I didn’t skip and the cutscenes that I watched without context, I could still somewhat follow what the story was trying to tell. Another small thing I would also like to note is that most, if not all, of the visual novel sections of the story are voiced, and in my opinion, this helps elevate and gives other players a reason to read through or listen to the story of the game.

 

 

 

Combat

The combat is based on a top-down isometric 3D tile-based map that you can easily compare to the XCOM series but with just the anime girl coat of paint splattered on top of it and you would be right in some places and wrong in others. The basis of the game seems to be XCOM-inspired, though I would say it’s closer to the Mario and Rabbids game but I’m open to different interpretations. You will always act first in any battle, being able to position them behind different types of covers and have access to five skills that your T-Dolls can use: a normal attack, two active skills, an ultimate, and a passive skill.

When in combat, at the top of a unit’s head are the 3 main indicators you focus on, its health, shaded in blue; the stability index, represented by a full white shield and displayed to the left of the unit’s health bar; and the confectance bar, the pips above a doll’s health bar that indicate its confectance index. There is also the 4th indicator that is usually seen at the top of the enemy unit, the Phase Weakness, your T-Doll also has this but is usually hidden unless enabled in the settings, Phase Weakness indicates what ammo type and element someone or something is weak to.

 

 

When moving to a piece of cover, you are given a reduction to the damage you will take due to normal attacks. There are 4 different types, with objects that cover the entire body reducing damage taken by 35%, and as little as 20% less damage if the object is vulnerable. Think of this as hiding behind a concrete pillar versus trying to hide behind a wooden box. Vulnerable Cover can also be destroyed if either your T-Doll or the enemy continuously shoots someone behind it, and is more easily destroyed by Area of Effect (AOE) attacks. There are also special types of attacks and elevated terrain. These can ignore cover and hit for full damage.

The objective varies from map to map but is usually one or more of seven different conditions, such as eliminating all enemies or a specific target, defending and/or holding a position, reaching and evacuating a specific area, or escorting a unit to a specific part of the map without the unit dying. There are also secondary goals, such as winning in a certain number of rounds, not losing a certain number of T-Dolls, or eliminating certain enemies. Accomplishing goals will grant rewards for the campaign chapter.

 

 

 

Gameplay and Progression

The max level of your T-Dolls and Weapons are tied to your level, meaning that you can’t pump your Dolls with combat reports, level them up quickly and shred through the campaign and level up quickly. Your units will also have level caps to ascend through Starting from level 20, and need to undergo Neural Expansion every 10 levels. There are also unique level-up and ascension animations for each doll and I think it’s pretty neat that they put that much detail into something that players will see time and time again.

Weapons on the other hand can be leveled up to increase their Attack stat, you can put up to 4 attachments onto the weapons, these being the RNG artifact system of the game however set bonuses can only go up to three and so you can have an off-piece that isn’t from the same set as the others and still get the full bonus of the main set. Something I find nice about the attachment system is that you can choose what set bonus you can farm for and you will only obtain either non-set attachments or attachments with what bonus you chose.

Another thing is the limit-breaking system for getting copies of the same character or weapon, which is called Fortification/Vertebrae for T-Dolls and Calibration for weapons. For the dolls, neural fortification is the only way to upgrade skills. There are six levels of Fortification, each requiring 30 of the doll’s Neural Archives to unlock, and these Neural Archives are granted by obtaining duplicates of the doll in the gacha or through Battlelog trading, while Calibration increases the effect of the weapon’s skill. It can also be performed six times, requiring a duplicate of the same weapon type and rarity.

 

Stamina is capped at 180, and farmable stages can be played automatically once you’ve completed them with 3 stars. There are no caveats to sweeping, which makes it easy to quickly finish your dailies. Dailies are one of the two best ways to level up quickly, rewarding you with a nice 300 EXP when fully completed. The other method is the story/campaign, which gives triple-digit EXP for each campaign node cleared. 

A nice feature of the game is that it stores any overflown stamina in a submenu called the Dispatch Room. Here, it can hold anywhere from 30 to 100 extra stamina when the main stamina bar is full. The Dispatch Room feels like a passive income generator, where you can use the T-Dolls you obtain to send them on missions that take real-world time to complete (usually around 20 hours). Units sent on these missions can still be used in combat, so don’t hesitate to generate extra resources on the side. There’s also a small system where you can trade in common resources for a special currency, which can be used to roll on a special gacha with a small chance of getting a new Elite doll or some Standard weapons. However, most of the time, you’ll just get junk.

 

 

 

Extra Content

There is some other side content that’s present in the game if you want to take a break from the main combat loop, such as the Dorm Mode, where you can interact with your dolls, albeit in a limited way, being able to give gifts, pose, and read the backstory and lore of your T-Dolls. Although this is only a small part of the game, it’s become one of the main selling points, as not only do you have a free camera to move around and inspect every little nook and cranny that your dolls may or may not have, or the fact that you can make a “covenant” with your doll, which unfortunately does not mean that you are married to your android waifu, but has the added benefit of being able to show your love and flex to those who have not yet chosen a doll to vow with. Note that there are only a small handful of dolls that can do this. Some rewards are given out periodically as you increase your bond level with them, these include standard pull cards, stamina recharge currency, and a small stat boost, with dolls that can be bonded getting a +5% stat boost and extra goodies such as exclusive portraits and skins that apply to their main weapon types.

 

 

There’s also the daily PvP mode, where you can battle other commanders in a sort of Player vs. AI environment, where your opponent is not fighting your squad live, but rather has set up their defending squad to be able to fight anything that can be thrown at them. This content is split between two different modes: “Combat Exercise” is the casual mode where only your offensive victories count, and “Military Simulation” is the ranked mode where both offensive and defensive victories count. Both systems reward the player with a steady amount of Collapse Pieces, the game’s Gacha currency, and in Military Simulation, a title and banner when you reach the top 80% and an additional exclusive frame when you reach the top 50%.

Another major side content of the game is the Platoon system, which is the de facto clan/guild system of the game, similar to other games like Clash of Clans. Once you’ve joined a platoon, either by being accepted into a private group or by simply joining a public team, you’ll be tasked with completing 2 simple tasks each day, one of which is supplies, where you can earn the exclusive platoon currency “reputation” to purchase exclusive items such as Papasha, an elite doll, Svarog, her signature weapon, standard and limited pull cards, and the upgrades for both the elite doll and the weapon. The other task you need to complete is the Daily Patrol, which is a fight against standard enemies of a level scaled to the Commander’s level, which gives you both a steady supply of collapse pieces and a reputation every day. Finally, and usually, the main reason you would join a platoon in the first place, is the “Gunsmoke Frontline”, a small clan event that runs for a full week every 2 weeks. Gunsmoke Frontline are daily battles that are entered by spending Battle Participation Opportunities (2 opportunities earned per day, 1 more to be purchased per day by spending 50 Collapse Pieces). The maps are Outpost Battle (regular battle with enemies matched to the player’s Commander level) and Decisive Battle (boss battle, unlocked at Commander level 60). Scores from each opportunity will be added to the player’s and platoon’s weekly total to earn additional rewards. Once a puppet is used in a battle, it can’t be used again until the next daily reset. Higher-level platoons will receive more stat bonuses for their puppets in this mode.

 

 

 

Gacha and Monetization

This game adopts the Hoyoverse gacha system, with characters split into 4-star and 5-star categories: Standard and Elite T-Dolls, respectively. Weapons are divided into three categories: Blue, Purple, and Gold, now referred to as Retired, Standard, and Elite. Each pull costs 150 Collapse Pieces (CP), or 1500 CP for a ten-pull. While Hoyoverse didn’t invent the 50/50 system, they did popularize it, and GFL2 simply copied it as well. The game has a 0.6% chance for an Elite pull. Every 10-pull guarantees at least a Standard Weapon/T-Doll or higher. The hard pity is set at 80 pulls, but the soft pity begins at 58 pulls. If you lose the 50/50 and get the non-rate-up Elite, your next Elite in that banner will be the rate-up. Pity seems to carry over between the same banner types and consecutive ones.

The weapon banner, on the other hand, has a 75/25 chance, and if you’re unlucky, you’ll be treated similarly to the character banner — your next Elite weapon will be guaranteed to be the rate-up weapon. The soft pity starts at 50 pulls, and the hard pity is at 70 pulls.

There’s some math involved if you want to pay your way to guarantee a character starting from 0 pity. In the worst-case scenario, you would need to pull 160 times if you hit hard pity twice, which would cost about 24,000 CP, or close to $400. For a guaranteed weapon, you’d need 21,000 CP, which would cost around $350.

 

 

The game also offers other forms of monetization. There’s a 30-day subscription that rewards you with 80 CP daily for just $5, and a $2 subscription that gives you rewinds during combat. Honestly, if you find yourself needing to use the rewind function more than three times in combat, that’s a major skill issue on your part. Commit to your decisions and accept the consequences — don’t try to avoid them.

The battle pass, called Voyage Logs, is priced at $10, and while it offers good value, it does feel a bit scummy. One of the rewards in the paid tier is a Battle Pass-exclusive Elite-tier weapon. If it were a Standard-tier weapon, there wouldn’t be much to criticize, but making it Elite-tier edges the battle pass dangerously close to the pay-to-win category.

Another monetization tactic is the premium cosmetics offered by Mica Team. Some skins are available for a very limited time, meaning that once they’re gone, they might not return. Unit skins cost between $12 and $20, but these do not include the T-Doll itself. Weapon skins, priced at $6 each, typically include both gun skins and attachment skins. Unit skins can change various aspects of a character within gameplay and the dorm system. These changes might include new outfits, an updated ultimate cutscene, and occasionally even visual effects in battle. Higher-tier skins often unlock additional interactions within the dorm system, adding more value for collectors and fans.

 

 

Conclusion

Girls’ Frontline 2: Exilium brings a mix of strategy and gacha elements that feel both familiar and fresh. It’s a game that can hook you with its tactical gameplay and expansive customization options, while still leaning heavily on the usual gacha monetization tactics. The launch freebies and the well-thought-out first-month content are a nice touch, but the game doesn’t stray far from the paywalls that most of us are used to by now.

Sure, the strategy is there, but it’s hard to ignore how much the numbers game still dominates. Between the soft and hard pity systems, exclusive Battle Pass weapons, and premium cosmetics, it’s clear that GFL2 is geared toward squeezing as much as it can from its player base. That said, the attention to detail, voice acting, and tactical depth give it a charm that makes it worth a try. Whether it can keep players invested long-term will depend on how Mica Team balances its updates and monetization with meaningful gameplay and player rewards.

Girls’ Frontline 2 is available on PC, Android and IOS devices today.