Nightmare Fuel / Girls' Frontline

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

See that arm in the lower right? That's yours. A little more pressure is all she needs to cave your chest in with her foot. That is the sort of strength discrepancy you're dealing with.

As one of the earlier examples of a Mobile Phone Game with a high emphasis on story-based elements, Girls' Frontline puts out all the stops into giving the impression that there's nowhere to go but down in warfare.

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Story Mode

• The story gets increasingly dark as you progress further. At the intro, M4A1 and the AR squad are being pursued by the Sangvis Ferri. Other T-doll teams stay behind to buy time for M4A1 to get to safety, and they are slowly overwhelmed. And that's just the very beginning of the tutorial.
• The Parapluie, a Sangvis Ferri creation designed to directly subvert Griffon dolls' AI. ST AR-15 is infected with it, causing things to really go to hell. The Arctic event implies that they are carried by inactive equipment lying around in the field.
• The Elder Brain itself arrives in search of M4A1 in the end of Zone 07. It uses something even worse than the umbrella virus to stun every single doll in the area except for M4A1, and then Mind Rapes M4.
• The entirety of chapter 10. This is where the military appears for the first time. Their extreme firepower and general indifference and cruelty makes this chapter one of the darkest parts of the entire story, and chapter 10 marks a major turning point of the story.
  • The sheer firepower of the military that was implied until now is finally shown in the true might of the elite KCCO infantry forces. Their squad combat capability stats range between 650k~970k, while even fully leveled up and trained player squads are somewhere around 40k. They can tear through huge amounts of Sangvis Ferri dolls and mechs without a scratch. They are so strong that one can only wonder what it would be like if they had to fight something like this, until...
  • ...the military finally betrays the G&K, and attacks the AR team. The Carcano sisters are seemingly killed off, RO635 is killed by a headshot from the back, and M4 SOPMOD II goes missing. Sangvis Ferri retreats but not before releasing a stronger parapluie virus, causing vast majority of Griffon dolls and Military dolls nearby to go rampant from the parapluie virus, randomly attacking everything in sight. The situation is so bad that Helian orders an emergency retreat and evacuation to all Griffin Commanders and their non-infected T-Dolls.
  • The soundtrack is by far one of the darkest themes in the entire game, and along with the KCCO's one-sided massacre of the Sangvis Ferri, almost verges upon nightmare fuel itself.
• At the third part of the Continuum Turbulence event, you finally get to see the effect of the Collapse Fluid up close. This is the first time you'll have to fight against the ELID Infectees, flesh-and-blood KCCO military personnel who are turned into zombies after M4A1 detonates the Collapse Fluid during the Singularity event. It's also implied that they're technically still alive, only with their skin silicified and their higher brain functions eroded, until they are left as nothing more than shambling husks.
• The sheer magnitude of how badly Griffin is outclassed by KCCO in Polarized Light - your forces last only ten minutes against them in a fight so brutal that Curb-Stomp Battle does not even begin to describe how badly things go. Hell, this isn't just the story over exaggerating KCCO, later maps have 300k CE death squads!
• The Reveal of what, exactly, is hidden within the Sub Base from the Butterfly Incident - the Stars and Pikes, a NSU Super Weapon. They're essentially Shoggoths, and are so powerful that nuking them is the best plan that can be used. If KCCO get's their hands on them, there's nothing stopping the NSU from ruling the world.
• The sheer insanity of Paradeus and its aims are insane - in his quest to bring back his sister and create a being who can interface with the Precursor ruins, William is willing to cause Collapse Fluid disasters and committing horrific experiments as easily as breathing. There's also the implication that he friend his own mother in Nemrhan. And the rest of his organization is fully onboard with this, because Utopia Justifies the Means.

Characters

• M4 SOPMOD II is a Tactical Doll that has an interest in collecting Sangvis Ferri parts and takes sadistic glee in reducing SF Dolls to scrap. She is also able to graft those same parts to her body with seemingly no compatibility issues, and (in the Healing Chapter anime) can make a miniature version of herself and a Transforming Mecha that can tank shots from a Jupiter Cannon. Consider yourself lucky that she has a sense of empathy, doesn't have an interest in biology, and is firmly on your side, as well as Anti-Rain's. If those traits were absent and/or she went haywire, she would've been a terrifying adversary that could replace damaged limbs whenever needed, build deadly devices from spare parts on the fly, and apply that same bloodlust and desire for additional parts on G&K Dolls and even humans.

Gameplay

• The 'Banzai Run' or 'Hell Run' tactic in the Arctic event. For context, the "Operation Hypothermia" / "Arctic Warfare" event has 'red envelopes' that can be uncovered by fighting Jupiter cannons. Charging headlong into a fully-powered one will tear apart even a fully upgraded squad in mere seconds, so the recommended tactic is to first shut off the power by capturing the node it's on (which is done by capturing the nodes surrounding it), or just bring out a fully upgraded Taunt Fairy and let the Drone unit soak up the rocket barrage while you tear through them effortlessly.
• Shattered Connexion is your standard event with your usual dark narrative with interesting lore- WAIT IS THAT A MOTHERFUCKING TRAIN WITH A RAILGUN!? The sheer sight of these things caused many player's jaws to drop in fear, and as shown in gameplay, they are not complete slouches. At least you get a railgun train of your own to make up for it until it gets destroyed during the events of Polarizing Light, but yours only has the railgun section and is significantly weaker than KCCO's ones.