First impressions matter, right? Full Metal Schoolgirl plunges you into third-person shooter action shortly after a blazingly quick anime-inspired intro set to a J-Rock banger. Immediately establishing its irreverent attitude and goofy anti-capitalist satire in a futuristic world where robots are exploited and called “working dead” and the goal is to take down a villainous CEO, I thought, “Hell yes.” But about halfway through the second installment of this roguelike, it dawned on me that there wasn’t much to Full Metal Schoolgirl; is a monotonous and repetitive shooter whose gameplay fundamentals aren’t good enough to save it from a largely blunt and thankless grind in a 100-story tower.
During the introductory sequence where you break into the evil Maternal Jobz Corporation, you choose to play as Ryoko or Akemi, two anime cyborgs that are functionally and aesthetically human – the one you choose will become the main character, and the other will be captured and played out in the story as you progress. They want revenge on the company and its CEO for working their father to death, and the story’s initial disdain for corporate bullshit is acute in a way that reminded me of Hi-Fi rush. However, that’s all before things degenerate into annoying jokes and no real intrigue to motivate each run; Like most parts of Full Metal Schoolgirl, this album is not based on good ideas, and the shallow execution of them gets tiring quite quickly.
I have a high tolerance for anime themes, and here I walk the line between charming and eye-rolling, with more often leaning towards the latter. It’s not just the crude allusions, but also the constant barking that gives off no memorable personality in its fascinating premise. I’m not here to point out the upskirting or the creepy actions of a doctor who is upgrading your skills – it’s just unnecessary. The moments where his leads really work are at the very beginning and the very end, and everything in between seems to have been overlooked in the process, which is where you’ll spend most of your time.
Each floor consists of a series of narrow corridors filled with enemy fodder and environmental hazards, as well as square rooms of an office building that function as miniature combat arenas. The latter throws optional challenges at you, such as clearing a room within a certain time or without using healing to get extra money for upgrades. However, this general formula does not change substantially for 100 procedurally generated floors. The scenery may change slightly for each floor block, but the structure remains the same. While they can throw a variety of enemy types at you, such as drones, bomb robots, turrets, and mechanized dogs, no amount of mixing and matching can make up for the mediocre implementation.
It’s effortless to see the procedural generation clashing against each other when a certain door leads to a completely empty room or the combat challenge prompts just don’t match the way encounters are set up. This random level feels very straightforward at best, frustratingly disordered at worst, and persists for most of the 14 hours I spent completing the campaign. Boss fights act like floor block endings, and while they’re relatively refreshing after tearing through the same areas repeatedly, their attack patterns are quite telegraphic and effortless to defeat. Still, I’ll choose to avoid area explosions and throw my ultimates (or penalty attacks as they’re called) at a spongy boss rather than mindlessly repeating identical floors of enemies, so I wish these kinds of battles weren’t so few and far between.
Defeating a boss gives you a key to start another run to his floor, which is a godsend to avoid unnecessary repetitions – but they are single-use. If your run goes sideways after using the key and you don’t defeat the next boss 20 stories up by the next key, get ready to start at a much lower level, buddy. While it does raise the stakes, as any worthwhile roguelike should, the disappointment of having to go through the most monotonous parts to get back to where you left off isn’t worth it. While this becomes easier as you upgrade your stats and skills with the materials and money you earn on each run, it still takes a long time to climb the floors.
I was excited that it was at least an anime-style shooter, which is what I’ve been looking for since Freedom Wars and Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (which didn’t quite live up to the hype). Most often, playing Full Metal Schoolgirl felt like a chore, but I can appreciate the mindless fun its mechanics can offer at times. With a handful of specific weapons and melee weapons that I vibrated with, I was able to get into a rhythm, turn off my brain, and simply mow down crowds of enemies. While most weapons are quite counterintuitive in terms of the way they are designed to engage, a high-end electric chain gun or a hefty plasma ball launcher has the weight and feedback you want from the shooter. That said, the movement itself is a little too sticky for this style of game, especially when there are annoying platforming sections. And melee attacks and jumps are a tad unresponsive, even if cutting through a crowd with a katana attack or the aftershocks of a Labrys ax can be satisfying.
However, such moments began to appear more often in the final part of the floors. The pace at which truly challenging encounters occurred and the convergence of weapons that were fun to apply allowed Full Metal Schoolgirl to finish the game on a higher note than the absolute grind it took to get there. He didn’t completely flip the script and break the conventions established at the beginning, but he started making the most of his basic elements, throwing almost everything at a quick pace.
As I progressed, I naturally realized which weapons were best for me – the ponderous shotguns and carbines never made sense to apply, but the powerful submachine gun that overheated quickly became my favorite. Learning to manage your energy meter for great ax combos, dodging, and airborne has become more critical in the slow game. And turning on the drone for an auto-attack (which you summon on cooldown) was key to saving a few rounds. Taking a shrewd approach to combat with a restricted supply of batteries (which is a healing item) also influenced my approach to combat.
The rarity of the gear you’ll be rewarded with in challenge rooms is randomized, leading to moments of pointlessness where I’d clear a challenge room only to be met with regular-level rarities that pale in comparison to the occasional and legendary gear from much earlier floors. At least that makes modifiers matter, as they can affect how your health, energy, movement, and damage dealt work, especially when the shields you wear have a significant impact on your survivability.
