Where do you begin with Gal*Gun? Gal*Gun 2 is the fourth game in the series, with the original being a last-gen Japanese only title, Gal*Gun: Double Peace on PS4, Vita and Steam, and Gal*Gun VR on Steam (we need that one on PSVR). For the latest iteration, developer Inti Creates, has dropped the PS Vita version and opted for a PS4 and Switch simultaneous release instead – a decision which won’t impress a lot of fans of the last major game who wished to continue their adventure on their PS Vita. I guess the question is, can you see why the game has been out-right banned in Germany? Spoiler – I’m surprised other regions didn’t have an issue with it!
In terms of the game itself, the developers have made a few rather annoying design choices in this latest release which hopefully can be rectified soon, yet they have also pushed things even further in terms of both the mechanics of the game and the morality of the protagonist. From here on I am issuing a warning, this review may not be safe for viewing whilst in work due to the images and subjects I’m going to cover – I won’t spoil the story, but things will most likely get questionably/legally/culturally wrong.
That being said, the game is meant as harmless fun so don’t take any of it seriously, but it does get pretty twisted.
This is Nanako – she is our friend. There is a story behind this image, but I’m going to leave it here completely out of context.
Gal*Gun 2 has a story that is better than Double Peace in my opinion, even though the core goal is pretty much the same. You are the protagonist who we never see as we play the whole game in the first person. One day, during a boring day at school, you discover an app on your ‘Pony’ phone which you can’t delete – how strange! Later on that day, when nobody was about, your phone begins to glow and instantly summons a giant box when you pick it up. Within the box lies a VR headset (which looks just like a PSVR headset) and a gun which is likened to a hair drier.
As soon as you put on the ‘goggles’ and grab the gun, an angel called Risu appears and explains that she is from the AR Co. (Angel Ring Company) in Heaven, and you’re a ‘winner’ of sorts. She has been sent to Earth to find yourself to don the headset and weapon in order to deliver euphoria to the schoolgirls by shooting them with your “Pheromone Shot” weapon. The demon-possessed girls are attracted to you due to the lynx-effect coming from your new heavenly equipment which causes all young girls to go crazy for you. They will instantly run towards you trying to get their senpai to notice them whilst knocking you over and trying to kiss you.
If you aim and hit their sweet spot, then you can land an “Ecstasy Shot” which will instantly knock them off their feet and make them fall and unable to move – otherwise you can just shoot them over and over until they get overloaded with ‘happiness’ and also fall to the ground. A new mechanic in this game is the ability to also suck in smaller chibi-like demons once you have removed them from the schoolgirls (which I’ll talk about later) and you can also strip the girls of their clothes which does the same thing and works kind of like Akiba’S Trip.
The game has a few different modes to play through, different endings, an NG+ mode, simple dates, a quite long story, and some friendship/relationship building moments. There seems to be a lot to do but you are once again given a timer which I’ll touch on below. The missions are all similar, with a few exceptions, and some things are a bit tedious and annoying with the game, but overall, it’s a fun little game which I’m sure will cause a few ‘concerned’ articles over the next few weeks – especially considering this title is available with no censor on the switch.
The Demon Buster gun serves as both the Pheromone shooter and the demon sucker.
To begin with, the controls are pretty poor – and I understand why now. I had a sneaky suspicion the game is supposed to be a PSVR or PC VR game from the first moment I started playing. The movement is slow and hard to be precise with the controller – even though Double Peace was great, there is a button to rotate by 90-degree angles, and the guy wears a PSVR headset in the game. After doing research for the review, I saw the PC game, Gal*Gun VR, which came out last year – a game I had no idea existed. Within that game you have the same locations as Gal*Gun 2, the same weapons, the same characters and it even looks like the same missions – only according to reviews, it’s just a bunch of missions with no story.
Basically, the developers have taken the Gal*Gun VR game/engine and added a story and a few extras then repackaged it as Gal*Gun 2 – but they have taken out the VR mode. Hopefully they add the VR back into the game as I imagine it will play great within VR – I’m not saying it’s ‘bad’ playing it with a controller, but it doesn’t feel great. One thing that is good is you can zoom in with two levels using Triangle and Square and once you’re zoomed in at least once, you can move the controller physically to fine-aim (with the motion controls) – that’s perfect as it makes it so much better to aim. The question is, why can’t we have that as an option when you’re not zoomed in? The game is built around motion controls – if you’re going to strip out the VR, at least leave in the motion controls!
Get a Lovestrike and everyone falls before you, literally.
So, disregarding the aiming above, everything else is fine – it’s technically a static/on-rails shooter, if you’ve not played the original, where your character stands still and must fend off these horny schoolgirls as they try and sexually harass you (pretty much what’s happening, not going to lie). Once you have dealt with the waves of girls, you are shown a ‘ghost’ of your character, shoot that and you will warp to the next waypoint. Within Gal*Gun 2, there are times where you have multiple ‘ghosts’ to pick from, thus making the levels different each time should you opt for another path.
As I mentioned in the story brief, you will encounter two types of schoolgirls by default, the horny girls and the possessed by chibi-demon girls. The chibi-possessed ones have little demons grasping onto their body, shoot these off the girls and then either shoot the demons until they vanish or suck them in with your weapon to earn more bonus points. Once the demons have been removed, the girls are just your standard horny schoolgirls who are out for some sugar! As you slowly move the aiming reticule over the girl’s body, some Japanese writing will appear once your over their ‘weak spot’ – fire at that and you have your “Ecstacy Shot” which will take them down in one hit.
Once you have upgraded your weapon, you can hold down the suck action and after a few seconds, it will create an immense force which will rip the clothes off any girls who get caught in the path of the suction, leaving them in only their underwear and giving you an instant knock-down. This is super effective as you can undress a whole screen of girls by building up enough suction. Another new feature is the Lovestrike attack – zoom into any girls eyes and your heart meter will rise – shoot her whilst it’s full and all the girls on the screen will instantly receive a large amount of euphoria and fall over.
So yeah, I’m happy with the overall attacks as these feel a lot more fleshed out and advanced over Double Peace, I’m just not too hot on the VR-based controls in a non-VR game which should be VR.
This scene is familiar if you played Double Peace – however, this section is a case of finding items to open the door whilst these two girls struggle.
In terms of mission diversity and modes, the game has its main story mode, score mode and rendezvous.
Main Story:
This is the main part of the game, surprisingly, where you will work with Riku and your friends in order to defeat the demon-possessed girls and the main demon-girl herself. You are on a timer of 20 days and you can usually do one or two missions a day depending on the type of mission you decide to participate in. Everything is controlled via your ‘Pony’ phone whilst you are in class and the missions come in three formats, Main, Sub and Free. Main missions will progress the story and are usually just your standard ‘shoot the horny girls’ levels. Free missions are the same, only they don’t progress the story but they do progress time and give you rewards for completing them. Sub-missions are the interesting ones as they are triggered by talking to your friends between missions and completing objectives – these missions are sometimes ‘boss’ battles or the standard levels as above.
The ‘boss battles’ mix things up with you having to fend off a powerful demon without getting hit too many times. Upon completion, you will be taken to a mode which was in the first game (doki doki) where the girl is laying down and you must shoot her in order to release the demons within. It’s a little different, but you basically have to keep looking for the moving sweet spot, shooting it to clear out the demons, suck them up, then repeat until the girl’s clothes rip off and all the demons are released. It’s an unusual mode, but a little different to the usual levels. There are also a few ‘protection’ missions where you have to protect certain people from onslaughts of chibi-demons and missions where you have to find items within a set time and also fend off against chibi-demons.
So, all of the levels are kind of similar, but I never grew tired of them or bored as they are set in various locations with different pathways and different girls to attack.
Our rendezvous with a fellow classmate was quite ‘interesting’ in the girl’s showers.
Score Mode:
This one is picked from the title screen before you even load a game. It’s nice and simple – pick a level and see how many points you can gain as you play through it. Nothing more to it to be honest.
Rendevous:
Okay, so these are strange, Once you have taken out the girls with your weapon, or when you learn the phone numbers of girls as you progress through the story, you can ask the girls to meet up with you. You can invite them to places such as the showers, classroom, gym, pool, or even the roof. Once you have wooed the girl enough, you can invite them back to your bedroom as well. I say it’s strange because I don’t get the intention – I invited a girl to the showers with me and I just lay on the floor and blew her skirt around with my suction gun, it didn’t really do anything but it’s a thing. I imagine you can talk to the girls and build your relationships with them as you can give them treats like chocolates, but I’m not sure what the end goal is here as I’ve not reached that point yet.
Another thing you can do, which is pretty cool, is you can pick how the girls are dressed in your game. You can’t individually dress people (apart from named special characters) but you can pick what the 1st year girls uniform, gym clothes and swimsuits are – as well as doing the same for the 2nd year, 3rd year and the teachers. You unlock more costumes as you go along and I imagine there will be some DLC as well at some point. Speaking of DLC – I’ve not seen any yet, but I don’t think we will get any “breast increase/reduction” DLC this time around as I’ve not seen any mention of it on the Japanese store.
The game throws in some really nice manga style drawings during some cutscenes.
In terms of graphics, you are looking at a very similar look and feel to the original Double Peace game – nice soft and smooth edges, everything looks anime/cartoony and kawaii. Clearly, some people may not like the fact that the game is based in a school and the girls are clearly teenagers (I’m not sure on the ages, but in Japan they have a year 1-3 at ages 13, 14, 15 and 16, 17, 18 – so it’s one of those groups) but as I said initially, the game is meant to be fun and it’s coming from a different culture to what we have over here. All I can say is that they have done a good job on the models they have produced for the game.
The music and sound effects are just as enjoyable as Double Peace, with a bubbly Japanese soundtrack along with a lot of questionable Japanese shrieks and moans as you deliver your high dose of pleasure to the girls.
One other thing I would like to bring up is the actual writing, again, a lot of people will see it as being very questionable and inappropriate, but I found it hilarious and really well done. Just small things like talking to your neighbour through your window and them asking about a present to get for their grandparents. Your options are “give them a free massage coupon”, “Cold, hard cash always works”, or “I’d love a ‘slave for a day’ coupon” – picking the last one gets quite a humorous response from our neighbour who thinks we are a perv!
My Playlist of the title song and the first hour of gameplay:
Official Trailer:
Final Conclusion:
Gal*Gun 2 isn’t for everyone, but if you liked Double Peace than you are bound to love the latest title. The only issue I had was with the controls which I eventually managed to get used too, but the game is clearly taken from the Gal*Gun VR version on Steam so I would love them to re-implement the VR support for PSVR. If you are easily offended or think Japanese games which feature young girls in their underwear is demeaning or ‘wrong’, then don’t pick up this game as it’s not for you and you’re not it’s target audience.
It’s Japanese school-boy humour at it’s best, complete with innuendo, anime girls, massages, and upskirts. If you want a game you can pick up and play every now and again, have a laugh playing it and experience some crazy dialogue options and events, then pick this game up today!
Developer: Inti Creates / Publisher: PQube
Release date: 13/04/18 (EU) / 24/04/18 (US)
Platforms: PS4, Switch
Platform Reviewed on: Ps4 Pro
A copy of the game was kindly provided for review purposes
Gal*Gun 2
The Good:
- More Gal*Gun - which is never a bad thing
- Very funny writing and perfect schoolboy humour
- Decent length story with multiple endings and other modes
- Customisation of the year groups, meetings with girls who you can woo and strip, and relationship building
- Instantly suck off everyone's clothes - why not!
The Bad:
- The controls feel like they are based on the VR Game on Steam
- No VR mode even though you wear a PSVR in-game
- Some levels can get monotonous if you don't enjoy the gameplay
- Not a lot of diversity in the gameplay, so like above, if you don't enjoy one level then you probably wont like the game
- The subject matter may put some people off
