If you are an anime fan, then you probably have heard of a very popular web browser based game called
Kantai Collection (fleet collection) short for
Kancolle host on DMM, and if you didn't, well it's basically personification of World War 2 era warships into anime girls and are called ship girl, the players are task with collect, care, train and organize them into fleets to battle abyssal enemies (who are evil ship girls).
Kantai Collections have garnered a very large cult followers both within Japan and spread to it's big neighbor China! it also spawned a whole genera of "collection" based games.
With the success of
Kantai collection it is no surprising that other will want to imitate the success of
Kantai collection, and
Girls Frontline or
Girl's Frontline is one of them
(both names have being used so I decide to put them both down here is the Chinese name
少女前線), a Chinese company made free to play app game that is also a "collection" based game,
While there already have numbers of other game that try to imitate
Kantai collection (namely
Zhan Jian shao Nv aka
Warship girls) from China who also use world war 2 era ships.
Girls Frontline instead use small arms and personify them into anime girls, and they become gun girls the game call them "T-dolls", These "T-dolls" represent small arms from world war 2 era all the way to modern one, and the categories of guns available including handguns, SMG, assault rifle, bolt action rifle/sniper rifle, LMG/HMG.
A game like this is definitively relying on arts, after all bishojo is the central selling point of the game and the game does deliver high quality art works of gun girls, Both the Chibi styled in game model and splash arts are great! Not only that the environmental background arts although simple but doesn't feel cheap. it's also varied with terrain differences.
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| Spectre M |
The game base mechanic is very similar to that of
Kantai Collection, you collect, care, train and organize (instead of fleet, it's called echelon) them to battle against monstrous enemies (who are also anime gun girls but just evil ones again! :p).Even though the base mechanic is similar what makes a is unique about this game is it's battle system, when you are on a mission it use a turn based system in the over world map where you can direct which direction your gun girls echelon is going, instead of some what of random directional system many other "collection" base game, when it comes to battle you can also change your battle formation in real time. while the combat itself is still automated. Depend upon the map the enemies also doesn't just ideily sit in their spot waiting for players to attack, instead they would also move to attack the players. The game also features an auto battle system, when you select a mission that you already completed, you can sent in one of your echelon to redo the mission, and they will auto complete after the timer is ended.
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| Turn based strategy world map. |
The draw back of the game, I feel is lacking of background content, what made
Kancolle and to an extend
Zhan Jain Shao Nv seccussful is because of it's rich history, they might not have much of a lore to speak of but the content of their choice is full of history of it's own. While the idea of turning weapons into anime girls aren't new, but lure of those game was and still is its many references of history and historical events associated with these World War 2 warships, not only that each of the warship girls are given unique personalities that feel fitting to the historical warships they represents,when it comes to warships, they are truly one of their kind, there is only one Akagi of World War 2 with that one story! one Yamato, one Prince of Wales etc, this bring something spiritual to these warships, and they felt alive. The openness of the lore also contribute to imagination for players to develop their own unique personal relationships with each of the Warship girls also added more role playing element, they aren't just simple waifu collection.
But with
Girls Frontline it doesn't feel like that, as guns themselves do not have that much of legendary exploit to speak of, they are just guns that mass produced, As a result gun girls are cute, but they really don't have too much lore to speak of, the developer tried to alleviate this with story of their own. If that's what they are going for, they need some seriously good writer on their team, as the success of the game is definitely depend upon how good the writers are development team.
