Girls' Frontline

Making a big splash in Asia, Girls’ Frontline is one of the biggest Chinese mobile games, and its popularity has spread to Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan to make it one of the biggest giants in mobile gaming. Fans of gacha games such as Lord of Heroes, Fate/Grand Order, and Brave Frontier will be drawn into Girls’ Frontline’s cast of cutesy characters, and will stick around for the game’s addictive and entertaining gameplay.

Assemble Your Crew

The game functions through gacha game mechanics where players acquire characters (known as T-Dolls), which can then be put into their crew (known as echelons). A player’s echelon is how they interact with the game world, as echelons are used to complete missions, undertake tasks, and run simulations.

All of the T dolls in Girls’ Frontline are female androids, and are used to continue the art of war without the loss of human life. Of course, this is just a bit of an excuse to have cute female characters to collect, but fans of gacha games will be used to this sort of gameplay style.

Frontline Strategy

Girls’ Frontline uses a turn-based strategy combat system that utilizes nodes to command your echelon. Players can deploy, move and retract units across the battlefield for tactical advantage by spending ‘action points’, and the skill in these sections lies primarily in using your action points efficiently.

Once one of the player’s T-Dolls reaches an enemy, an automatic combat scene is initiated. Fans are particularly eager to point out this part of the game as one of Girls’ Frontlines best parts, and for good reason. The combat sections play out in realtime, and players need to engage offensive and defensive skills for their T-Dolls in reaction to enemy attacks. It leads to a very interactive combat system that isn’t common in turn-based strategy games, let alone the gacha genre.

A Bit of Story

While some players aren’t diving into Girl’s Frontline for the plot, there is a decent bit of narrative to be found sprinkled throughout the game’s primary mechanics, and the game has even spawned a number of manga series because of it.

The story is set in a dystopian future that is plagued by war. Rather than use humans to fight, war in this universe is undertaken by the T-Dolls, androids ranging from all walks of life. In the lore, most of humankind has been wiped out by something called the Collapse Fluid.

Girls’ Frontline is set in the year 2062, when an artificial intelligence made by Sangvis Ferri suddenly goes rogue and makes certain T-Dolls and other robots attack their human masters. Players take the role of a commander in the military company Grifon & Kryuger, who is tasked with taking out the overwhelming Ferri army.

The game follows the player and the AR team, who is made up of characters such as M4A1, ST AR-15, M4 SOPMOD II, M16A1, and RO635.

PROS

• Addictive gacha mechanics
• Incredibly popular and very beloved
• Encourages player interaction and minimises microtransactions.

CONS

• Game style isn’t for everyone
• In-game art style is a bit basic