Girls' Frontline II: Exilium - Everything we know in 2021

New GFL2 gameplay footage was revealed on May 1st! You can watch it in the video above. 

This is a developing story, as the GFL2 playtest only began earlier today. Translations and explanations of the changes will come in a few days!

For a quick text summary of the new changes, check out this doc.

Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium Discord

The October 16th live stream revealed a lot more about Girls' Frontline II than most players were expecting. Almost 30 minutes of gameplay was shown in addition to a plethora of new CGs that reveal more about the game setting, giving players their first real look at GFL 2: Exilium's game mechanics since the initial teaser five months ago. 

06/29 update: Added the new GFL2 PV from 6th Anniversary.

05/01 update: Added the new GFL2 gameplay video released by TapTap.

10/18 update: Fixed the issue with some GIFs not autoplaying for certain readers. Try tapping anywhere on the page if the videos do not play. 

10/16 update: Added the "Will GFL2 Run on PC" section. 

Added 3 new animated CGs and another 3 CGs not shown in the stream. 

Despite all the previous talk about how Girls' Frontline II has "evolved beyond XCOM" in previous streams, this sure looks familiar!

GFL2 is a turn-based strategy game with your forces deployed on a 2D grid: 

You can order your Dolls to move then attack an enemy. In this demo, three Dolls are deployed: 

• Groza (OTs-14)
• UMP9
• "Nemesis"

If combat cutscenes are enabled, you'll see something like this. (Players can disable the zoomed-in combat if they want their camera to remain stationary in strategy view.)

Normally, your Doll would end their turn after this. 

Groza has a passive that allows her to move again after killing an enemy, so she can be ordered once more as she killed her initial target. 

The 3D models are quite detailed - you can see this view when selecting your units. 

As GFL2 is a 3D game, there may be some situations where the terrain occludes the enemy. In this case, the engine will still render the enemy silhouette through any obstacles. 

During this gameplay showcase, the developers commented on the fact that the 3D look of these T-Dolls are not fixed to one model only - they can have their looks altered/upgraded.

Controls

The camera angle is almost fully controllable by the player: 

• 360-degree rotation and free panning is possible 
• Camera pitch can be set to 35, 45, and 75 degrees, with 75 degrees being almost a top-down strategic view

Unit Type & Effectiveness

The red, green, and blue icons you see next to the units' health bars reflect their type which determines how they perform against enemies. Certain types are more effective against others - and you'll be able to see if you are effective if the targeting preview shows an arrow next to the enemy's type icon. 

Battle Result Preview & Accuracy

Before attacking an enemy, you can preview your predicted hit rate and predicted damage. 

These values will vary from enemy to enemy and even depend on where you position yourself relative to your target. For example, against two otherwise identical enemies where the only difference is the amount of cover they are behind: 

Improving Hit Rate via Repositioning

Even against the same target, it is possible to improve your own hit rate by repositioning. 

Reina only has a base hit rate of 50% against both of the enemies here. By issuing a move command before attacking, her hit rate improves to 88% and 100% respectively. 

High ground is also a type of cover: by moving onto high ground, you gain accuracy when attacking and enemies have a harder time attacking you. (This is a little different from how it works in Reverse Collapse/Bakery Girl, where high ground can reduce your evasion.)

Morale

There is also a "morale" system (士气, the number displayed at the bottom left).

By defeating enemies, your Dolls' morale will increase, improving their attributes and combat capability. After each attack, enemy morale is reduced by an amount equal to your own morale. If enemy morale reaches zero as a result, they are mentally broken and a stun effect is applied.  

In this example, Groza with 3 morale attacks an enemy infantry with 3 morale, reducing their morale to zero and causing the resulting effects to be applied.

When enemies are stunned, every attack type will become effective against them, including normally disadvantageous types!

Chip Damage

In GFL2, missing a shot does not necessarily mean the enemy gets away scot-free. Failing the accuracy check still causes chip damage to be dealt to the target.

In this example, UMP9 evades a shot, but takes 16 chip damage anyway. 

Chip damage is usually a very small percent of the actual predicted damage. This damage, while small, can still finish off enemies who are near-death - so no matter how lucky an enemy unit gets with their evasion checks, enough sustained attacks will eventually bring it down. 

Reinforcement Indicator

Enemy reinforcements may arrive each turn. The locations at which they will appear next turn are highlighted by red holograms. 

Boss Encounter

The large red square indicates a boss. A cutscene accompanies their spawning and they take up multiple tiles. 

Bosses will have much more morale/shield than mook units - in this case, the newly spawned boss has a shield value of 24 - requiring an extremely large number of attacks to break (and therefore cause shield break and a stun). 

Special Skills

Dolls have both active and passive skills. Active skill cooldowns can be viewed when you select the unit. 

Passive skills, like Groza's ability to move again after killing an enemy, may sometimes also have a cooldown.

Active skills can range from buffs to devastating AoE attacks. The below clip demonstrates Groza's AoE grenade skill: 

Groza's second active skill (her "Ultimate") is an even stronger AoE hit: 

• Preview Video - 0:00
• Start Screen - 1:44
• Pre-battle Deployment - 2:07
• Camera Angle settings - 3:01
• Groza changed her alias to "Lightning" since she is no longer contracted to Griffin. - 3:07
• UMP9 changed her alias to "Reina" since she is no longer contracted to Griffin/Squad 404 - 3:47
• Target Selection UI - 5:27
• "Weapons free!" - 5:29
• "Morale System" (By defeating enemies, your Dolls' morale will increase, improving their attributes and combat capability. After each round of combat, enemy morale is reduced by an amount equal to your own morale. If enemy morale reaches zero as a result, they are mentally broken and a stun effect is applied.) - 5:44
• Enemy Morale System (Same as Dolls', except it's for the enemies) - 6:51
• "Grazing Damage" (All misses in GFL2 will count as grazing damage) - 7:47
• Enemy Reinforcements Indicators (Red Squares) - 7:54
• Enemy Boss Encountered! - 9:38
• Dolls' Active Skill 1 - 10:27
• High Ground (Units on the high ground will gain additional accuracy and critical rate) - 11:03
• GFL2 IS A PC GAME CONFIRMED??? - 12:42
• Enemy Skill - 13:06
• Dolls' Active Skill 2 (Ultimate) - 15:57
• Cinematic finish - 18:31
• Base CG(?) - 18:53
• The handsome dude at the alienware laptop is GF2's producer - 19:57
• GFL2 CGs/wallpapers - 22:08

There wasn't an official answer on this, but the developers accidentally tabbed out of GFL2 gameplay during the stream, exposing what appears to be a native Windows application running Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium. 

Assuming this is not a red herring put there intentionally to trick us, GFL2 being available on PC is looking more and more likely now.