The first impression of Full Metal Schoolgirl is a lively anime spectacle, complete with a high-energy J-rock soundtrack. It quickly establishes a quirky, anti-capitalist vibe in a future where robots are ‘the working dead,’ all building towards a confrontation with a villainous CEO. Initially, I was fully on board, thinking, ‘This is going to be awesome!’ However, it wasn’t long before the charm wore off. This roguelike shooter soon revealed itself to be a tedious and repetitive experience, whose core gameplay isn’t strong enough to redeem the unrewarding climb up its 100-floor tower.
During the intro sequence, you choose between Ryoko or Akemi, two human-like cyborg anime girls. One becomes the protagonist, while the other is captured, fueling the narrative as you progress. Their mission: to avenge their father, who was worked to death by the nefarious Maternal Jobz Corporation. The game’s initial critique of corporate greed felt sharp, almost reminiscent of a certain rhythm-action game. But this promise quickly fizzles, giving way to predictable quips and a distinct lack of compelling plot to sustain each repeated run. Like many aspects of Full Metal Schoolgirl, its promising ideas are marred by shallow execution, and the novelty fades far too fast.
While I usually have a high tolerance for anime tropes, here they frequently lean towards the eyerolling rather than the charming. It’s not just the crude innuendos, but also the constant chatter that fails to imbue its intriguing premise with any memorable personality. Furthermore, the game’s unnecessary focus on upskirts and a creepy doctor character who handles upgrades is a misstep. The anime style truly works only at the very beginning and end, leaving the vast majority of the experience, where players spend most of their time, feeling overlooked and underdeveloped.
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Each floor consists of a series of tight corridors filled with robotic enemies and environmental hazards, interspersed with square office rooms that serve as small combat arenas. These arenas occasionally present optional challenges, such as clearing the room within a time limit or without using health packs, offering extra currency for upgrades. Yet, this fundamental structure remains unchanged across all 100 procedurally generated floors. While the visual backdrop might shift slightly between blocks of floors, the core design stubbornly persists. Even with various enemy types like drones, bomb-equipped robots, turrets, and mechanical dogs, their inconsistent deployment can’t compensate for the otherwise uninspired implementation.
The haphazard nature of the procedural generation is evident, with some doors leading to entirely empty rooms, or combat challenges poorly matching the actual encounter setup. This results in level design that oscillates between merely basic and outright frustrating, a problem that plagued the majority of my 14-hour campaign. Boss fights provide a welcome, albeit brief, respite at the end of each floor block. Their attack patterns are typically straightforward and easy to predict. Still, I much preferred these encounters, with their dodging mechanics and opportunities to unleash ‘Punishment attacks’ on tough enemies, to the monotonous repetition of identical enemy-filled floors. I truly wish such engaging battles were more frequent.
After defeating a boss, you receive a one-time-use key, allowing you to restart a subsequent run directly from their floor. This would be a game-changer for breaking the cycle of repetition if it weren’t so fleeting. If a run goes awry after using such a key, failing to secure the next boss key 20-odd floors higher means being forced to restart from a much lower level. While this undeniably ups the roguelike stakes, the sheer frustration of having to slog through the same dull early sections again to regain lost progress feels utterly unwarranted. Even with the eventual easing through stat and ability upgrades earned from each run, advancing through multiple floors still consumes a significant amount of time.
As an enthusiast of anime-style shooters, a genre I’ve been keen on since titles like Freedom Wars and Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (which, admittedly, didn’t fully realize its potential), I approached Full Metal Schoolgirl with genuine excitement. More often than not, however, the experience felt like a chore. Yet, I can acknowledge the occasional, mindless fun its mechanics manage to deliver. When armed with a few specific guns and melee weapons I enjoyed, it was possible to enter a satisfying flow, switch off my brain, and simply decimate waves of foes. Despite this, many guns felt ill-suited for the encounter designs. Only powerful options like a high-level electric chaingun or a robust plasma ball launcher offered the satisfying impact and response a shooter needs. Furthermore, character movement felt a bit too stiff, especially during frustrating platforming segments, and melee attacks and jumps were often unresponsive, even if a katana’s dash or the Labrys axe’s aftershocks could be momentarily gratifying.
A player poll was integrated into the review, asking readers about their favorite rogue-style games of the last five years, with options including Hades 2, Vampire Survivors, Balatro, Caves of Qud, Returnal, and “Other.”
It was only in the latter stages, through the final stretch of floors, that these fleeting moments of enjoyment began to emerge more consistently. The frequency of genuinely challenging encounters increased, and the availability of truly satisfying weapons improved, allowing Full Metal Schoolgirl to conclude on a somewhat higher note than its arduous beginning. While the game never truly reinvented itself or strayed from its initial conventions, it did begin to leverage its basic components more effectively, throwing nearly everything at the player at a brisk, engaging pace.
My progression naturally guided me to discover the weapon types that clicked best. Slow shotguns and rifles consistently felt impractical, whereas a potent SMG, despite its quick overheating, quickly became a go-to. Mastering the energy meter for impactful axe combos, precise dodging, and swift hoverdashing proved crucial in the later game. Integrating the auto-attack drone, deployable on a cooldown, was also vital for recovering from tricky situations. Thoughtful management of the scarce battery supply, which serves as your primary healing item, further influenced my combat strategy.
The review also featured a curated list showcasing Michael Higham’s top 10 favorite roguelike/lite games.
The random nature of gear rarity awarded from challenge rooms often led to frustratingly unproductive moments. Completing a difficult challenge only to receive common-tier items, significantly weaker than rare or legendary gear acquired much earlier, felt pointless. On the positive side, the modifiers on equipment were impactful, genuinely altering health, energy, movement, and damage output, with equipped shields playing a particularly significant role in survivability.
Verdict
Full Metal Schoolgirl quickly shows its hand, offering little new after just a few runs. While it has some decent ideas blending shooter and roguelike elements, these are unfortunately undermined by fundamental flaws. Whether it’s a misunderstanding of the genre’s core appeal or a merely derivative approach, the gameplay loop becomes monotonously repetitive with uninspired level design. Despite finding some fleeting fun in its serviceable core mechanics, which did improve slightly towards the very end, it’s simply not enough to redeem this tedious shooter. The anime charm, initially promising, quickly gives way to annoying tropes. While the final hours, with better gear and upgrades, offered a more engaging rhythm, the prolonged and dull journey to reach that point was ultimately not worth the effort.