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Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium

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Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium (Video Game)
Reignite the dark flame and renew the light of hope!

Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium is a Turn-Based Tactics Gacha Game developed by MICA Team. It is the sequel to their previous game, Girls' Frontline.

Ten years ago, the Commander bade farewell to their past in Griffin & Kryuger and chose Self-Imposed Exile in the contaminated zones. Working as a bounty hunter, their only company are the Mobile Command Vehicle Elmo and a few stray Tactical Dolls they encounter in this decade-long journey. Life is meager but relatively stable, which is all the Commander wants.

Yet the world continues to turn. Old powers disappear, and in their place rose a new one. The geopolitical situation has stabilized following the period of chaos after World War III, and in this new world there is little need for large Private Military Contractors. Griffin & Kryuger was judged to be too powerful and influential to exist, and so it was forcibly restructured, scattering many of its members into the winds. A large number of independent Bounty Hunters flourished in their wake — many of which were former PMC employees. Rossartrism continues to expand its influence; in 2064, the Union of Rossartrist Nations Coaltion (URNC) was established, and eventually grew into a humongous political body which controls half of the world. The New Soviet Union signed a pact of cooperation with URNC in 2066, thus signaling the start of merging of both super-states, resulting in Project Lazarus: a plan to purify and revitalize swathes of Europe still contaminated by Collapse Radiation. Away from the expanding secure zones, criminals and other renegades band together to survive, scavenging technology from abandoned Sangvis Ferri factories and other places, while ELID creatures mutate into stronger, more menacing forms with each passing day.

The year is now 2074. After accepting a delivery mission, the Commander awakens to the sound of Elmo being raided by the Varjager gang. Their objective is none other than the package being delivered: a strange black box that happens to contain an equally mysterious girl inside. What was supposed to be a simple task took turn for the worse, and the Commander, who once escaped the vortex of conspiracy, found themself engulfed within an even larger maelstrom...

Girls' Frontline 2 represents a Genre Shift towards a more conventional turn-based strategy with a few twists of its own. Tactical Dolls are no longer classed by their weapons, but rather by their roles (Vanguard, Sentinel, Bulwark, and Supporter). There is no accuracy/evasion mechanic, instead replaced by a Stability gauge which provides massive damage reduction until it is depleted. Dolls also accrue Confectance Index during battle, a resource used to cast certain skills, which are obtained by performing specific actions. Weapons are fully customizable with attachments and are no longer tied to one specific character. Outside of battles, players can also interact with the T-Dolls in the Elmo's dormitory, send them out for logistical missions, and develop their relationship further.

The game was launched in China on 21st December 2023 and globally on 3rd December 2024. Visit the official English version website here.

This game provides examples of:

  • Absurdly High Level Cap: Downplayed. While most endgame content at least expects a full team of Dolls at level 60, anything past that, like upgrading a Doll's Neural Helix or minmaxing a weapon's Calibration Rank and attachments, is overkill for almost everything except for climbing the leaderboards in the recurring Gunsmoke Frontline event.
  • Action Prologue: The intro cutscene/tutorial starts In Medias Res with Groza's squad fighting their way out from ODE-01 while being pursued by Darture and her forces. The scene is later revisited chronologically in Chapter 4.
  • An Interior Designer Is You: The Crew Deck update introduces a huge recreational space for the Commander and their Dolls to relax in. Though you can't rearrange the layout like in previous games, it's still possible to change the fixtures and styling through purchases in the Furniture Store.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Achieving the highest ranks in Military Simulation awards exclusive portrait frame, badge, and title for that season. Every other reward can be gotten simply by participating in the mode, regardless of winning or losing.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • There are no misses in Exilium. Since everything is an Always Accurate Attack, this removes the frustration of missing an important shot due to bad RNG, instead shifting the focus towards positioning and ability usage.
    • There is no need to reload weapons like in XCOM; you only have to worry about skill cooldowns and Confectance Index costs when it comes to ability usage.
    • There is no Fog of War like in the XCOM series, and cloaked enemies are still visible to the player at all times note ; cloaked enemies are simply untargetable until a T-Doll gets close enough to reveal them, and you can still hit them with area attacks.
    • Enemies within a doll's line of sight will be highlighted by a curved line ala Valkyria Chronicles. White lines indicate enemies protected by cover, while yellow lines show enemies that are exposed. This also applies when moving a doll to a new position, making it easy to tell at a glance which enemies can be targeted after repositioning.
    • The game will preview expected damage before an attack is made. It even takes possible Support Action and counterattacks into account. Sadly, this does not take crit chance into account.
    • Bosses can act multiple times per turn, but they will clearly display their action order on the top of the screen, making it easy to plan around them.
    • An update allows the player to determine the action order of their team in autoplay. While it doesn't fully remove the autoplay AI's stupidity, a good setup can mitigate some of its more egregious tendencies like having Qiongjiu use her ultimate at the very end of the turn.
  • Arbitrary Gun Power: Weapon damage is dependent on its rarity and level. An Elite level 60 handgun will always do more damage than a Retired-grade sniper rifle at level 1.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Most stages only allow up to four T-Dolls, with five being the absolute limit as of this writing.
  • Arbitrary Option Limit: "Frontline Survivors" is a twin-stick version of Vampire Survivors, including the mechanic of level ups giving randomly selected options to choose from, in this case, a selection of five instead of three.
  • The Artifact:
    • Some storytelling conventions in Girls' Frontline inspired by Kantai Collection are either de-emphasized or don't make a return in this game:
      • The biggest one is every T-Doll having their own name rather than being named after signature weapon. While this made sense in Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud due to its more fantastic cyberspace setting, this carried over to Girls Frontline 2, sometimes confusing newcomer players who were expecting the old names to stick around. This also applies to the T-Doll's characterizations, having less Moe Anthropomorphism personal quirks related to their firearms going from the first game to the second (e.g. Centaureissi's poor eyesight referencing the G36's optics).
      • Certain groups of characters returning from Girls' Frontline who wield similar firearms still maintain a sisterly relationship in this game, such as Daiyan and Jiangyu (Type 95 and Type 97), Klukai and Belka (HK416 and G28), and Leva and Lenna (UMP45 and UMP9). The convention was dropped wholesale for characters introduced in Girls' Frontline 2 without explanation, so characters like the G36K-wielding Andoris have no relation to the G36-wielding Centauressi.
    • The game's roster is disproportionately skewed towards assault rifle-wielding damage dealers, owing to the fact that much of it is comprised of returning plot-relevant characters from Girls' Frontline. In that game, a T-Doll's role in a formation is strictly based on their weapon, with assault rifles, rifles, and machine guns being the dedicated damage dealers. Girls' Frontline's plot-relevant T-Dolls also tended to wield assault rifles, resulting in the skewed roster.
  • Artificial Stupidity:
    • The game's autoplay has a hard time using skills to full effectiveness and doesn't take enemy abilities or placement into account. Even when provided with grossly overleveled T-Dolls, it still can't reliably clear later story stages.
    • Enemy snipers would often prioritize using their overwatch (PMC/Varjager) or self-buff (Paradeus) skills over just shooting your T-Dolls, even if the latter would be far more advantageous.
  • Art Shift: Where the original game was entirely 2D artwork and effects, Exilium jumps straight into full 3D visuals and gameplay with a massive Animation Bump to match. This also applies to 2D character art; whereas Girls' Frontline employs multiple artists with their own distinctive styles, character artworks in this game are much more unified.
  • Bag of Spilling:
    • The Commander loses the majority of their resources on the Elmo when the Varjagers blow it up in the prologue. Fortunately, they still retain their past connections, which will help them rebuild.
    • Due to the "Mephisto" agreement when they left Griffin & Kryuger, the Commander was banned from contacting any of their previous T-Dolls since various politicians were afraid of them becoming too powerful. Only Groza was exempt from this, and fortunately the Commander can still take in T-Dolls who were never part of Griffin & Kryuger, such as Krolik, Nemesis and Colphne. The Commander can get around the agreement via chance encounters, but can't keep their previous T-Dolls around for long.
  • Base on Wheels: The Commander and their entourage operates from the Mobile Command Vehicle "Elmo", the exact same one they received in the latter parts of Girls' Frontline. The Elmo is large enough to house a fully-featured bridge, a sizable training area, a helipad, and dormitory for dozens of personnel. After the restoration of the Crew Deck, the Elmo is also furnished with an indoor pool, complete with holographic wallpaper that can display any environment and time of day.
  • Benevolent Architecture: Whether out in the ruins of a war-torn city, inside a makeshift settlement, or atop Purification Towers, there's always enough chest-height walls for your Dolls to take cover in.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: Not that Girls' Frontline is ever averse to describing grievous injuries, but the Thriller Wonderland event involves gallons of blood being spilled and many limbs being severed, fitting with its Amusement Park of Doom theming. Then again, most of the event was seen through drug-induced hallucinations.
  • Bloodless Carnage: Human characters give off sparks instead of spurting blood when shot, if they don't just keel over. The one exception is Dmitry, after he was shot in the back by Bluesphere, but even then it's only small hints of blood around a pitch-black bullet hole.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Ammo management is completely non-existent during battles. Especially egregious since some T-Dolls are shown reloading their weapons, but never in actual gameplay.
  • Boring, but Practical: The Phase Strike attachment set grants 15% bonus damage against enemies afflicted by Phase debuffs. Since so many team compositions have at least one Doll who can apply Phase debuffs, this practically translates to a permanent damage boost for minimal cost. It's usually the second best-in-slot attachment set for most Dolls, and so newbies are often encourged to farm this set first, as they can swap it between Dolls until they get the optimal attachments for each character.​
  • Break Meter: The Stability Index mechanic reduces all incoming damage by 60% until it's depleted, upon which the unit is exposed. Certain attacks and skills are better at breaking Stability than dealing damage.
  • Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": For reasons never officially explained, the Mana Meter mechanic used by T-Dolls was renamed from the Chinese version's "Collapse Index"Plot explanation to "Confectance Index" in the English version. "Confectance" seems to be a made-up word, as trying to find a proper definition of it online often results in only finding pages pertaining to GF2.
  • Critical Hit: There are Critical Chance and Critical Damage stats that can be built up and specialized into. However, unlike with most gachas, Crit stats in Girls' Frontline 2 are seen as less appealing than building pure Attack stats, which tend to offer more reliable damage and due to some characters having their utility scale off their Attack stat (for example, Suomi's shields scale off her Attack). note 
  • Cool Train: Great Wall Trains carrying mobile Purification Towers cordon off whole regions to be cleansed from radiation, whether the locals who settled there consent or not. Some maps feature them as part of the background scenery.
  • Combination Attack: Some T-Dolls and enemies can perform a Support Action attack if certain conditions are met. Multiple Support Actions can trigger in succession, allowing for ludicrous damage potential with the correct setup.
  • Continuity Nod: In "Escape From Cyborg", Vector recalls the last time she was trapped in a video gamenote , and even remembers how one of the players froze to death at the start of the game. Mechty, being said player, feigns ignorance about the whole event.
  • Crossover:
    • Project Neural Convergence, a collaboration with Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud. The event features the return of several Neural Cloud characters and a simplified version of Neural Cloud autobattler game mode.
  • Crosshair Aware: Particularly dangerous attacks have their area of effects marked by conspicuous warning signs.
  • Denial of Diagonal Attack: Certain skills requires the player to select one of the four cardinal directions where it will be cast on. Most have a generous area of effect, at the very least, so an enemy that sits exactly one diagonal tile away can still be hit.
    • A particularly egregious character-specific example is Krolik, whose melee attacks are limited to targets that are exactly one tile away from her, preventing her from attacking targets diagonally. The only other T-Doll that uses Blades besides her, Ullrid, does not have this restriction, and can freely use her melee attacks on any target that is within a 3x3 around her, including diagonals.
  • Democracy Is Flawed: The Doll Community operates as a direct democracy where each member gets to vote in matters pertaining the whole community. Sojourners of Glass Island presents the group with a hard choice: with many of their numbers shutting down from lack of maintenance, they must choose to either scavenge a power plant teeming with ELIDs and malfunctioning yet dangerous Dolls, or push further towards the Red Zone in the hopes of finding supplies, despite not having enough protective gear to survive. Many of the Dolls refuse to vote because they feel both options are equally hopeless, and when Ullrid tries to convince them to go to the power plant, she's instead accused of swaying voters by abusing her position as the de-facto leader.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • In the 10 years between the two games, Sangvis Ferri has been completely suppressed and is no longer considered a threat to to humanity, with no word on what happened their elite units. As a result, the blueprints for Sangvis Ferri robots have been made public domain, which makes them popular fodder for organizations on a tight budget. Even the ex-G&K dolls who fought against Sangvis Ferri in their heyday don't consider them anything more than minor nuisances.
    • Griffin & Kryuger itself still exists, though only as a shadow of its former greatness. Due to forced downsizing and restructuring by the NSU government, G&K is now split into several companies who operate loosely with each other, with Helian's branch being so puny they can only accept small-time jobs like fixing machines and finding lost cats. Out of all the T-Dolls in the first game, only four are confirmed to have remained in G&K.
  • Driving Question:
    • Who, or what is Helena, and why are so many people are after her?
    • For Deep Oblivion and Corposant, what is the true nature of Girard Group's "Eden Project"?
  • Elaborate Equals Effective: Elite weapons are distinguished from their Standard counterparts by having extra greebles and doodads, indicating their superior stats. This is especially pronounced when comparing to low-rarity weapons, which only differs in that they have much lower detail.
  • Evolving Weapon: Every weapon in the game can be "Calibrated", which upgrades the stats of the perk that weapon confers to its wielder. The Calibration Rank of a weapon is raised by obtaining duplicates of it.
  • False Utopia: The URNC presents this with their plan to purify the contaminated areas of Europe and expand the Green Zones, which causes causes countless people to flock to their banner for chance of living free from the fear of Collapse Radiation. However, all is not well, since the URNC essentially runs the Green Zones like a Police State, keeping the residents under close surveillance and effectively using them as cheap labor for the elites living in the White Zones. This is a large reason why the Commander decided to leave G&K despite having a free ticket to a White Zone.
  • Fantastic Measurement System: Vebyran, a unit that measures the intensity of Collapse radiation in a given area. White Zones, which are completely free of any Collapse radiation, essentially have 0 Vebryans. Green Zones, which are perfectly habitable by humans, have an upper limit of 1 Vebryan. Contaminated Yellow and Red Zones range from 1 to 10000 Vebryans, with Black Zones exceeding that.
  • The Farmer and the Viper: In First Counterattack, the then-nascent Doll Community saved a bounty hunter named Charlotte. She repaid the Doll Community by selling their position to other bounty hunters, who attacked the community in an attempt to capture and sell the owner-less dolls, almost destroying the community.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • The Commander is contractually forbidden from contacting their former Dolls, as explored by Suomi's storyline in The Sojourners of the Glass Island. That does not stop the player from potentially obtaining and deploying multiple ex-G&K Dolls in combat with no apparent consequences.
    • In story parts (usually some events) where The Commander are not in charge in the action, you're taking in the command regardless.
    • You're always using your roster regardless of characters present in the story. At worst, story-important characters take one or two deployment slots for a particular stage.
  • Genre Roulette: The recurring minigames that accompany each major event range from Rhythm Game, Roguelite twin-stick shooter, restaurant management, and even Light Gun Game.
  • Genre Shift: From Strategy RPG with Turn-Based Strategy, Real Time Combat to full-on Turn-Based Tactics.
    • The Boundary Push mode is a real-time Dungeon Crawler that switches into standard turn-based tactics for combat encounters.
  • Geo Effects:
    • The ground can be set on fire, frozen, flooded with turbid water or electrified, which inflicts respective status effects when a unit ends their turn on the affected tile. Some skills may also trigger elemental reaction if cast on an affected tile.
    • Conveyor belts and elevators transport units to different locations at the end of the turn.
    • Attacks made from high ground have extended range and ignores half cover.
  • Girls Love Stuffed Animals: The Elmo's dormitory seemingly comes with a large teddy bear as standard. Many of the T-Dolls have dorm animations where they cuddle or play with the plush.
  • Gun Accessories: All weapons can equip various attachments which boost their stats. Some attachments also confer Set Bonus when equipped together. Even swords have their own set of attachments, though the only ones that appear visually are blade tips.
  • Gun Porn: Oh, yes. All guns are exquisitely rendered in 3D and can be freely admired in the Armory screen. Certain animations also includes first-person sequences to better show them off.
  • Inconsistent Dub:
    • The Pathforger board minigame has buffs and buildings that benefit "open tiles", an incredibly ambiguous description depending on your definition of "open", which in fact refers to Wilderness Tiles. The translation was eventually fixed in future iterations of the event to simply read "Wilderness Tiles" instead.
    • Weekly Boss Fight reward tiers are named differently dependent on which part of the menus is being read. The middle tier is referred to as either "Great" or "Fine", and for a few months, one menu would place "Outstanding" just above "Excellent" as the highest tier, while another insisted it was the other way around.
  • Hollywood Hacking: Like in the previous game, stages representing hacking play exactly the same as any other stage that takes place in the real world, only they're set in featureless spaces filled with polygonal objects. The story will say your Dolls are invading another computer system, but they do so by taking cover behind conspicuously-placed walls of data and throwing bullets at hostile software.
  • Infinity -1 Sword:
    • For Elite (gold border in the list) dolls, either the purple rarity gun they're associated with or a gold rarity battle pass weapon, depending on effects.
    • For the rest, whatever is weaker of the two.
    • Battle pass gold weapons are mentioned as despite their looks, they do not provide imprint bonuses or super synergized effects to the seemingly related non-elite doll
  • Infinity +1 Sword:
    • Typically for Elite dolls it's the gold version of their associated weapon (usually obtained in their own gacha). On top of an imprint bonus, the weapon effects usually mesh well with the associated doll. Exceptions do exist however but they're rare.
    • For the rest, it's the more effective of battle pass gun or associated purple rarity gun.
  • Jiggle Physics: Many of the bustier T-Dolls will bounce all over the place to the slightest motions. This is especially pronounced with the Frontline Assault minigame, where half of the appeal is just seeing T-Dolls shake their assets every time they shoot.
  • Limit Break: T-Dolls have a Confectance Index gauge which can be spent to cast powerful abilities. The specific mechanic of gaining CI differs for each Doll, but it generally involves battlefield actions such as killing enemies or using certain skills.
  • Loophole Abuse:
    • Despite being under contract not to make contact with their former Dolls, the Commander still finds creative ways around it. For example, if the Commander "accidentally" reencounters their former dolls such as with Groza, that technically doesn't violate the contract. This is the reasoning they use to recruit the Doll Commune in The Sojourners of the Glass Island.
    • In game, the PVP only tracks whether you win or lose when you are attacking another player's team. If your team loses on the defense, it is not counted against you. Because of this, many players will put one underleveled T-Doll as their defense team, so that they can all effectively trade easy wins without any downside.
  • Mecha-Mooks: Varjagers employ Sangvis Ferri Prowlers (christened Svejk) and Goliaths alongside their human grunts. Aegis droids appear under the control of various PMCs, now with variants to fulfill different roles such as sniping and area bombardment. URNC troops (specifically ex-New Soviet units) also include upgraded Cyclops in their ranks.
  • Mega City: ODE-01 is a humongous, sprawling metropolis that extends deeper underground than it does upward. Even the purification wall that rings the city is as tall as its skyscrapers. It's implied that the other Odessa satellite cities are also similarly expansive.
  • Noodle Incident: There are repeated references to something that happened in Frankfurt ten years before, around the time when the first game ended, which led to the Commander's self-exile and an agreement forbidding them to make contact with ex-Griffin T-Dolls. It's not revealed in full until the final Girls' Frontline event, Convolutional Kernel, which came out almost a year after Girls' Frontline 2 released.
  • Optional Stealth:
    • Some enemy squads start the fight unaware of your T-Dolls' presence until they walk within a designated area. If the objective isn't to annihilate all enemies, it's possible to complete the stage while bypassing these enemies.
    • Boundary Push has a more elaborate stealth mechanic based on vision cones and line of sight. With some finesse, your T-Dolls can sneak past enemies and nab loot right under their noses. Going in guns blazing is also a valid option, but since health and stability damage carry over between encounters, it's often more prudent to avoid fighting altogether.
  • Play Every Day: Besides the typical daily logins, Dispatch missions take 20 hours to complete, so players are encouraged to claim them every day.
  • Rainbow Speak: Starting with Corposant story event, some plot-important terms are highlighted with a different color. In particular, all mentions of "Eden Project" are rendered in red text, whether in the narration or spoken by characters.
  • Romance Sidequest: The Covenant system, a variation of the Oath mechanic in Girls' Frontline and Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud. Get a T-Doll's affection high enough and you have the option to form a Covenant with her. This provides stat boosts that scale with the affection level, and the T-Doll will display a special holographic ring over the back of her left hand.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: During the Zucchero Cafe event, with the reveal that Paradeus is still active, the Commander decides that they cannot sit on the sidelines anymore and effectively tears up the "Mephisto" agreement, directly recruiting both Monsoon Squad and the Zucchero Cafe dolls to continue their crusade against Paradeus. By the end of Aphelion, the Elmo now serves as the semi-permanent base for HIDE 404. Subsequent events then state that Kalina was able to use her position to "loosen" the agreement, officially allowing the Commander to start recruiting their old dolls again.
  • Skill Scores and Perks: Every Doll has access to two upgrade systems via the Refitting Room:
    • Foritification gives enhancements to a Doll's skills, usually increasing their damage, healing, and/or utility. Skills are leveled up by obtaining a Doll's Neural Archives, which themselves are obtained when players receive duplicates of a Doll they already own.
    • The Neural Helix mostly gives small stat boosts across the board, with their upgrade materials obtainable through Neural Analysis supply missions. After certain upgrade milestones, players can optionally unlock up to six Doll-specific passives called Fixed Keys, although they can only equip three at a time. Fixed Keys are only unlockable with Basic Info Cores, a Rare Candy that's sparsely given out via events. Lastly. completing the entire Neural Helix gives that Doll considerable attack and defense boosts as well as a Common Key, a passive that can be equipped by any Doll.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: Downplayed. Weapon ranges are tied to the T-Doll using it, and though Vepley has the lowest at 5 tiles for her basic attack, the lack of accuracy mechanics means a shotgun is equally effective whether at point-blank or maximum range.
  • Shout-Out: Many of the minigames in featured in limited-time events are essentially remakes of popular games with a Girls' Frontline coat of paint.
    • The Frontline Assault mode is a rather shameless homage to the main gameplay of Goddess of Victory: NIKKE, with a busty, scantily clad T-Doll crouched behind cover in a way that shows off their backside whenever they shoot.
    • Frontline Survivors is a twin-stick version of Vampire Survivors, similar to the minigame that was featured in the Girls' Frontline x Call of Duty: Mobile collaboration.
    • Pathforger is Girls' Frontline 2's variation of the Luffberry Chess mode featured in Girls Frontline, itself patterned after 100% Orange Juice!. More recent versions of the game mode involve property development mechanic, making it closer to Monopoly.
      • If the player draws in a Clash dice roll against Robella, she has this to say about it:
    • The "game" that Vector and Mechty play in "Escape From Cyborg" has mechanics that are rather clear analogues of a Souls-like RPG. In addition, there are loot extraction mechanics similar to the event's namesake, Escape from Tarkov.
    • One of Faye's interactions in the Refitting Room has her do the Axe Gang dance from Kung Fu Hustle
  • Take Cover!: Much like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, taking cover is a vital part of keeping your T-Dolls alive. Cover is divided into several types:
    • Full cover provides the most damage reduction, but blocks line-of-sight.
    • Half cover is less protective and is ignored when attacking from elevated position.
    • Thin cover does not take a full tile, allows melee attacks to pass through, and can be vaulted over.
    • Barbed wire is the opposite: it blocks movement and melee attacks, but provides no protection against bullets.
  • Take That!: Escape from Cyborg, Vector's character event, can be seen as one against generative AI. To speed up the creation of Mechty's training module (which is a video game in all but name), Harpsy used an AI tool to help her generate assets quickly. The end result is a mess: the setting is bog-standard post-apocalyptic environment, it uses the appearances of H.I.D.E. 404 members as stand-ins for NPCs (leading to some wildly out-of-character moments, particularly for NPCs based off Klukai and Belka), and the writing reads more like an incredibly cliched fantasy story than anything. This is before the AI model itself gains awareness and starts stealing Mechty and Vector's memories to learn more about the real world, which could be an allegory of how data-hungry training AI models are. The story also draws distinction between generative AI and Dolls, with the former being considered as less sophisticated.
  • They Call Him "Sword": Averted for the most part. Most of the T-Dolls, even former G&K models, now go by personal names rather than be named after their weapons, even though they use the same weapons they used in the first game. It is played straight for a few, who still have names based on whatever weapon they usually carry.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Based on one of Makiatto's Memoirs, Earl Griffin allowed this for the various G&K T-Dolls as part of the "Mephisto" agreement. In exchange for the Commander being banned from contacting them, the T-Dolls were given human rights and the freedom to choose their own paths (when normally Dolls are seen only as tools by humanity). For instance, Springfield was allowed to open Zucchero Café, Makiatto was allowed to become a freelance mercenary with her own apartment, and so forth. This was after they had been used more-or-less as sacrificial pawns in the various conflicts in the first game.
  • Time Rewind Mechanic: You can rewind battles on a per-action basis, all the way to the first turn, though it's limited to three rewinds per stage attempt.
  • Unorthodox Reload:
    • Sharkry has two robotic sub-arms that hold magazines for her. When she reloads, she uses the arms to insert a fresh magazine into the rifle.
    • In the second half of Aphelion, Klukai kneels down, balancing the rifle's barrel on her leg so she can swap the magazine one-handed. Justified as the lack of adequate repairs and a nasty crash severed her right arm.
  • Video Game Perversity Potential: It did not take long for players to take full advantage of the Dorm and the freely-adjustable camera within by having their T-Dolls wear skimpy clothing while resting in there, then using the camera to peep at them voyeuristically.
  • Violation of Common Sense:
    • The Deichgraf weekly boss can summon armor packages on either side of its arena. It will then fire a missile barrage towards the package to recover its own Stability. The player has the option to place their T-Dolls on the missile's path to prevent it from claiming the package, potentially causing heavy damage (if not killing her outright), but also preventing the fight from going on longer. The player can also lure other mooks into said path and have them take the hit instead.
    • Some enemy area attacks actually divides their damage among all of the units caught in the blast. In other words, you want your forces to huddle together in order to better tank an artillery barrage.
  • Visible Invisibility: Cloaked enemies are still visible to the player at all times; they just can't be targeted directly until a T-Doll gets close enough to reveal them. The only exception is the Creepy Doll (a.k.a. Lambertia), who is limited to being stealthed inside a smokescreen.
  • Wall of Weapons: The Weapon Gallery found in the dispatch room allows the display of your obtained weapons.
  • Weapon Specialization: Downplayed compared to the first Girls' Frontline. T-Dolls can now equip weapons other than their Imprinted one so long as they're of the same weapon type. Sabrina, for example, can also use Vepley's Vepr-12 in lieu of her SPAS-12. Matching T-Dolls with their signature weapons is still encouraged, since the weapons have effects that greatly synergize with the corresponding T-Doll's fighting style, and this also activates Imprint Bonus which provide a minor buff under certain conditions.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The Neural Survey stages have several short stories showing where some of the ex-G&K Dolls ended up after the events of the first game.
    • The Watcher: SV-98 and SVD end up being guards for an intercontinental train. However, after the train is stranded in the wilderness due to a Varjager attack, SV-98 and SVD are tasked to head to a nearby outpost to summon help. However, with their battery power running low, SVD gives her battery to SV-98, with SV-98 promising to recover her when she finds help. The story ends with SV-98 heading for the outpost with no guarantee she succeeds or SVD is rescued.
    • The Wanderer: AS-VAL and 9A-91 end up being bodyguards for the CEO of a construction company. However, their client, Miss Terysha, becomes afflicted with Collapse Radiation poisoning. She soon becomes delirious and insists on returning to her home which is deep in the contaminated Yellow Zone. AS-VAL and 9A-91 reluctantly take her there in hopes she will come back to her senses. They find the ruins of the home, where Miss Terysha reminisces how she left behind her fellow orphans and adoptive brother for the Green Zone and now they are all dead. It's then implied that Miss Terysha dies from her radiation poisoning shortly afterwards.
    • Temporary Stand-In: P90 meets a young amateur actress named Lefiya who she is a big fan of. Through a series of circumstances, P90 ends up standing in for Lefiya during an important performance and ends up being a big hit. Lefiya is seemingly unable to match P90's acting skill and guilts P90 into continuing to be her stand in, eventually growing jealous of her talent which culminates in her asking her father to dispose of P90. P90 takes out the hitmen sent after her and breaks off her friendship Lefiya, who realizes too late how much P90's friendship meant to her.
    • The Final Command: A team of bounty hunters are tasked to recover a Doll that is eventually revealed to be G41, who has gone rogue waiting for her new owner Sister Della to return to her. The bounty hunters attempt to ambush G41, only to be completely wiped out and killed by her.
  • Won the War, Lost the Peace: Prior to the first game, the Neo Soviet Union won World War 3 against NATO (if only barely), causing the alliance to splinter. However, unbeknownst to them, this was all according to the plan of the Rossartrists, who used the postwar chaos to build up their power and reorganize NATO's remnants into the URNC which even the NSU eventually joins by the time of Exilium.

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