During the opening minutes of my time with Full Metal Schoolgirl, I was pleasantly surprised. The wacky premise of android schoolgirls attacking a company building staffed solely by robots is ridiculous in a way that only low-budget Japanese games tend to be. Choosing to play as a gyaru wielding dual chainsaws and a gatling gun while tearing robots into a mess of ruined parts and oil is as chaotic as it is preposterous. But then it dawned on me that the game is a roguelite. Not just a roguelite, but one that makes some bizarre choices that make it harder to recommend in some ways than most.
The gist is simple; you pick one of two girls (the one you don’t pick gets captured and brainwashed) and then take them through 100 floors to beat the CEO at the top. If you die, you find yourself back on the ground floor. This is all well and good for a roguelite, but the main campaign in Full Metal Schoolgirl probably takes about seven hours if you get through it without dying (and good luck with that.) Mercifully, you’ll find elevators in the lobby that can return you to higher floors, but these are of limited-use. If you use the only key you have at your highest floor and then die, you’ll have to start at a much lower floor.
On top of this, the developers threw in some more odd choices. You can only save the game properly if you’re in the pre-raid menu. You can quit while in the building (if you’re not currently in a combat room) which creates a save you can use to resume from the start of whatever floor you were on, but this file is deleted upon loading. It can often take over an hour before you get another opportunity to save, so if the game crashes, you’ll likely lose all of your progress. Thankfully, Full Metal Schoolgirl seems very stable on PC (despite its grievous lack of resolution options with no 1440p), so this never happened to me.
You fight a boss on certain floors and when you beat them for the first time, the game kicks you back to the pre-raid menu and gives you an elevator key. So let’s say you’ve made it to the 55th floor and beaten the boss. You then have to re-enter the building, take the elevator, and then return to the 55th floor without any of the gear or healing items you amassed on the previous floors, which can put you at a massive disadvantage. You’re given a bit of free gear right away, but many of Full Metal Schoolgirl‘s weapons are borderline useless and you only get a single healing item upon starting, so it’s not out of the question that you’ll die and have to redo hours of legwork to get back to where you are.
The game should just let you save and upgrade at certain intervals instead of doing it like this, as there’s really no benefit to forcing you to return without all of your hard-earned gear. The last elevator takes you to the 86th floor, and it’s quite difficult, especially when you’re low on healing items (which you will be by default on your first go at it). All of the above only makes it feel like progressing Full Metal Schoolgirl is a giant pain much of the time. Although the game is mostly easy for the first 30 floors, it becomes trickier due to the presence of stronger enemies and some threatening traps (with a surprising amount of platforming to boot).
The two playable characters, Ryoko and Akemi, start out with different weapons (the aforementioned chainsaws and gatling gun for the former, a rifle and swords for the latter), but who you pick doesn’t really matter. They have different dialogue with the duo’s associate, Professor Hakase (yes, “hakase” is a Japanese word meaning “professor”), but other than that, they’re interchangeable. The pre-raid menu allows you to use money and parts on permanent upgrades for your character, which includes more health, additional revives, as well as a host of other improvements.
The characters each start runs with their default loadouts, but you’re rewarded with chests for clearing each room you enter. These rooms have either weapons, shields, drones, mods, or healing items in them. Most of what you’ll find isn’t going to be particularly useful, however. There are four gun types; gatling guns, rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers. Aside from the gatling guns, the other weapons have such low ammo amounts and take so long to reload that they tend to pale in comparison, save for some of the shotguns (the best variety is totally broken) and a couple of the grenade launchers.
Characters actually have a decent kit here. You can dodge (including a perfect dodge that grants you higher damage), double jump, run, and block (which you’ll need for the game’s murderous turrets. The blue laser ones can absolutely shred you). You have an energy gauge that depletes from using melee weapons, blocking, running, and dodging, but as long as you’re careful it usually won’t run out. This does mean that Full Metal Schoolgirl doesn’t play like a hack-and-slash, though. But considering how hard it can be to aim melee strikes, this is for the best.
Rooms are typically swarming with enemies, so going in with a weapon that only fires a few times before a multi-second reload is usually a bad idea. It’s a shame that the heroines in Full Metal Schoolgirl weren’t given better guns, but the shooting when you do happen to have a decent one is actually quite fun. Enemy robots mostly have individual damage zones all over, so they’ll get blown to pieces based on where you shoot them. Gameplay reminds me of a cross between Yakuza: Dead Souls and Binary Domain. If that sounds awful to you, then you might want to tread carefully.
There are also three types of melee weapons; chainsaws, swords, and axes. Axes are the absolute best since their damage is so much higher and you’ll usually just be hitting enemies a single time and then moving out of the way any way. The melee combat doesn’t feel all that great and it can be hard to hit your target at times, but it’s serviceable. The game’s combat feels unique despite any stiffness or jank, though, and I do find it a certain level of addicting.
Upon entering rooms, you’ll randomly be given a challenge that you have to accept from your character’s viewers (she livestreams). These are usually pretty simple and easy, but you have a choice between the standard option and a tougher one that offers double the money. This usually shortens the timer or means that healing will cause you to fail. Not completing the challenge will only net you a fraction of the reward pool. You’ll accrue both money and parts from playing, but dying will see you lose a certain percentage of the parts, which means fewer upgrades for you.
As stated previously, Full Metal Schoolgirl can get quite challenging. In the latter half of the game, enemy damage skyrockets and your heals will often only repair a single hit’s worth of health. The game is also very fond of throwing charging obstacles at you as you move down a hallway (think the boulders from Raiders of the Lost Ark), sometimes without enough time to react. It can be brutal, especially since dying can mean redoing hours of playtime.
The final boss encounter is three fights and the final floors after using the elevator (if you have a key) take about an hour. The third fight in this is highly difficult, so it’s possible that you’ll spend hours attempting this section, which was another poor choice. Once you win, though, you unlock the best thing about Full Metal Schoolgirl, which is an endless mode that lets you play a fully randomized game that swaps between the building’s areas using any character. This can occasionally be problematic since some areas are much harder, with tougher enemies and traps, and you won’t have much health due to the low HP bonuses on starting shields. Still, I mostly enjoy this mode. It’s a tough sell to get there with how awkward and stilted the main story mode’s progression is, but it’s the game at its best. Beating the game even opens up new upgrades, so there’s reason to keep playing (as well as an unlockable for getting to the 100th floor).
I liked Full Metal Schoolgirl overall, but its large consequences for dying during the campaign, the uselessness of many of its weapons, and general jank will deter a lot of potential players. But if lady androids demolishing hundreds of robots sounds great to you, it’s still worth a look.
I liked Full Metal Schoolgirl overall, but its large consequences for dying during the campaign, the uselessness of many of its weapons, and general jank will deter a lot of potential players. But if lady androids demolishing hundreds of robots sounds great to you, it’s still worth a look.
During the opening minutes of my time with Full Metal Schoolgirl, I was pleasantly surprised. The wacky premise of android schoolgirls attacking a company building staffed solely by robots is ridiculous in a way that only low-budget Japanese games tend to be. Choosing to play as a gyaru wielding dual chainsaws and a gatling gun while tearing robots into a mess of ruined parts and oil is as chaotic as it is preposterous. But then it dawned on me that the game is a roguelite. Not just a roguelite, but one that makes some bizarre choices that make it harder to recommend in some ways than most.
The gist is simple; you pick one of two girls (the one you don’t pick gets captured and brainwashed) and then take them through 100 floors to beat the CEO at the top. If you die, you find yourself back on the ground floor. This is all well and good for a roguelite, but the main campaign in Full Metal Schoolgirl probably takes about seven hours if you get through it without dying (and good luck with that.) Mercifully, you’ll find elevators in the lobby that can return you to higher floors, but these are of limited-use. If you use the only key you have at your highest floor and then die, you’ll have to start at a much lower floor.
On top of this, the developers threw in some more odd choices. You can only save the game properly if you’re in the pre-raid menu. You can quit while in the building (if you’re not currently in a combat room) which creates a save you can use to resume from the start of whatever floor you were on, but this file is deleted upon loading. It can often take over an hour before you get another opportunity to save, so if the game crashes, you’ll likely lose all of your progress. Thankfully, Full Metal Schoolgirl seems very stable on PC (despite its grievous lack of resolution options with no 1440p), so this never happened to me.
You fight a boss on certain floors and when you beat them for the first time, the game kicks you back to the pre-raid menu and gives you an elevator key. So let’s say you’ve made it to the 55th floor and beaten the boss. You then have to re-enter the building, take the elevator, and then return to the 55th floor without any of the gear or healing items you amassed on the previous floors, which can put you at a massive disadvantage. You’re given a bit of free gear right away, but many of Full Metal Schoolgirl‘s weapons are borderline useless and you only get a single healing item upon starting, so it’s not out of the question that you’ll die and have to redo hours of legwork to get back to where you are.
The game should just let you save and upgrade at certain intervals instead of doing it like this, as there’s really no benefit to forcing you to return without all of your hard-earned gear. The last elevator takes you to the 86th floor, and it’s quite difficult, especially when you’re low on healing items (which you will be by default on your first go at it). All of the above only makes it feel like progressing Full Metal Schoolgirl is a giant pain much of the time. Although the game is mostly easy for the first 30 floors, it becomes trickier due to the presence of stronger enemies and some threatening traps (with a surprising amount of platforming to boot).
The two playable characters, Ryoko and Akemi, start out with different weapons (the aforementioned chainsaws and gatling gun for the former, a rifle and swords for the latter), but who you pick doesn’t really matter. They have different dialogue with the duo’s associate, Professor Hakase (yes, “hakase” is a Japanese word meaning “professor”), but other than that, they’re interchangeable. The pre-raid menu allows you to use money and parts on permanent upgrades for your character, which includes more health, additional revives, as well as a host of other improvements.
The characters each start runs with their default loadouts, but you’re rewarded with chests for clearing each room you enter. These rooms have either weapons, shields, drones, mods, or healing items in them. Most of what you’ll find isn’t going to be particularly useful, however. There are four gun types; gatling guns, rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers. Aside from the gatling guns, the other weapons have such low ammo amounts and take so long to reload that they tend to pale in comparison, save for some of the shotguns (the best variety is totally broken) and a couple of the grenade launchers.
Characters actually have a decent kit here. You can dodge (including a perfect dodge that grants you higher damage), double jump, run, and block (which you’ll need for the game’s murderous turrets. The blue laser ones can absolutely shred you). You have an energy gauge that depletes from using melee weapons, blocking, running, and dodging, but as long as you’re careful it usually won’t run out. This does mean that Full Metal Schoolgirl doesn’t play like a hack-and-slash, though. But considering how hard it can be to aim melee strikes, this is for the best.
Rooms are typically swarming with enemies, so going in with a weapon that only fires a few times before a multi-second reload is usually a bad idea. It’s a shame that the heroines in Full Metal Schoolgirl weren’t given better guns, but the shooting when you do happen to have a decent one is actually quite fun. Enemy robots mostly have individual damage zones all over, so they’ll get blown to pieces based on where you shoot them. Gameplay reminds me of a cross between Yakuza: Dead Souls and Binary Domain. If that sounds awful to you, then you might want to tread carefully.
There are also three types of melee weapons; chainsaws, swords, and axes. Axes are the absolute best since their damage is so much higher and you’ll usually just be hitting enemies a single time and then moving out of the way any way. The melee combat doesn’t feel all that great and it can be hard to hit your target at times, but it’s serviceable. The game’s combat feels unique despite any stiffness or jank, though, and I do find it a certain level of addicting.
Upon entering rooms, you’ll randomly be given a challenge that you have to accept from your character’s viewers (she livestreams). These are usually pretty simple and easy, but you have a choice between the standard option and a tougher one that offers double the money. This usually shortens the timer or means that healing will cause you to fail. Not completing the challenge will only net you a fraction of the reward pool. You’ll accrue both money and parts from playing, but dying will see you lose a certain percentage of the parts, which means fewer upgrades for you.
As stated previously, Full Metal Schoolgirl can get quite challenging. In the latter half of the game, enemy damage skyrockets and your heals will often only repair a single hit’s worth of health. The game is also very fond of throwing charging obstacles at you as you move down a hallway (think the boulders from Raiders of the Lost Ark), sometimes without enough time to react. It can be brutal, especially since dying can mean redoing hours of playtime.
The final boss encounter is three fights and the final floors after using the elevator (if you have a key) take about an hour. The third fight in this is highly difficult, so it’s possible that you’ll spend hours attempting this section, which was another poor choice. Once you win, though, you unlock the best thing about Full Metal Schoolgirl, which is an endless mode that lets you play a fully randomized game that swaps between the building’s areas using any character. This can occasionally be problematic since some areas are much harder, with tougher enemies and traps, and you won’t have much health due to the low HP bonuses on starting shields. Still, I mostly enjoy this mode. It’s a tough sell to get there with how awkward and stilted the main story mode’s progression is, but it’s the game at its best. Beating the game even opens up new upgrades, so there’s reason to keep playing (as well as an unlockable for getting to the 100th floor).
I liked Full Metal Schoolgirl overall, but its large consequences for dying during the campaign, the uselessness of many of its weapons, and general jank will deter a lot of potential players. But if lady androids demolishing hundreds of robots sounds great to you, it’s still worth a look.
by Andrew Farrell
