First impressions are essential, proper? Full Metallic Schoolgirl opens with an anime-style opening set to a J-rock banger, then instantly dives into third-person capturing motion. The movie rapidly established its irreverent perspective and goofy anti-capitalist satire in a futuristic world the place robots are exploited and known as “the working useless.” And with the purpose of taking down the CEO villain, I believed, “Oh, yeah.” However about midway by my second run of this roguelike, I noticed that Full Metallic Schoolgirl did not make a lot sense. It is a boring and repetitive shooter, and the basics of gameplay aren’t laid out effectively sufficient that climbing a 100-story tower is usually a tedious and unrewarding activity.
Within the intro sequence the place you infiltrate the evil mom Jobs Company, you select to play as Ryoko or Akemi, two cyborg anime women who’re each functionally and aesthetically human. The one you select will turn into the principle character, whereas the opposite shall be captured and be part of the story because it progresses. They’re making an attempt to get revenge on the corporate and its CEO who made their fathers work themselves to dying, and the story’s preliminary disdain for company crap is sharp in a method, reminding me: hifi rush. Nevertheless, that is till issues devolve into annoying banter and there is not any actual plot motivating every run. Like most components of Full Metallic Faculty Lady, this one is not constructed on nice concepts, and their shallow execution wears skinny moderately rapidly.
I am very tolerant of anime tropes, and right here I vacillate between charming and spectacular, leaning extra towards the latter. It is not solely in its vulgar innuendos, but additionally in its fixed screams that its fascinating premise oozes no memorable character. I am not right here to attract consideration to upskirts or creepy acts of docs bettering your abilities. It is merely pointless. The moments the place that metaphor actually works are firstly and finish, as if every thing in between is ignored within the course of, and you find yourself spending most of your time there.
Every ground consists of a sequence of slender hallways full of enemy fodder together with environmental hazards, and sq. workplace constructing rooms that function small battlegrounds. The latter throws non-compulsory challenges at you, resembling clearing a room inside a time restrict or clearing a room with out utilizing heals to earn more money for upgrades. Nevertheless, this general components stays primarily the identical throughout the 100 procedurally generated flooring. The surroundings modifications barely from ground to ground, however the construction stays the identical. It would throw you several types of enemies: drones, bomb-laden robots, turrets, mechanized canines, and so on., however no quantity of mixtures of them could make up for the mediocre implementation.
It is simple to see how procedural era can battle with itself if sure doorways result in fully empty rooms, or if the fight problem prompts do not fairly match how the encounter is about up. This haphazard stage design felt very fundamental at greatest and frustratingly cluttered at worst, and it continued all through the higher a part of the 14 hours I spent finishing the marketing campaign. Boss fights function an finish cap to the ground blocks, and are comparatively refreshing after blasting the identical space again and again, however the assault patterns are very electrical and straightforward to beat. Nonetheless, I will be dodging area-of-effect explosions, thoughtlessly repeating the identical ground of enemies, and tossing ultimates (or punishing assaults as they’re known as) on spongy bosses, so I hope this sort of battle does not turn into too uncommon.
Defeating a boss gives you a key to begin the following run on that ground. This can be a godsend to keep away from pointless repetition, however is for one-time use solely. In case your run goes sideways after utilizing a key and also you fail to defeat the following boss, which is about 20 flooring as much as the following key, be ready to begin at a a lot decrease stage. This raises the stakes, as any worthwhile roguelike ought to, however the disappointment of getting to trudge by essentially the most boring components to get again to the place you left off does not really feel prefer it’s price it. It is now simpler to improve your stats and talents from the supplies and cash you earn with every run, however climbing up chunks of the ground nonetheless takes time.
I used to be excited to see that this was not less than an anime-style shooter. That is what I have been on the lookout for since Freedom Wars and Sword Artwork On-line Deadly Bullet (which did not absolutely make the most of its premise). Full Metallic Faculty Lady usually felt like a chore to play, however you’ll be able to admire the reckless enjoyable its mechanics typically present. A number of particular weapons and melee weapons allowed me to get into the environment, get within the temper, flip my head off, and simply mow down hordes of enemies. Most weapons are fairly counterintuitive in how they’re designed for encounters, however high-level electrical chainguns and chunky plasma ball launchers present the proper of weight and suggestions you need from shooters. That stated, the motion itself is somewhat too sticky for this fashion of sport, particularly when there are some annoying platforming sections. And whereas slicing by crowds with Katana’s sprint assault or Labrys’s ax aftershocks is satisfying, melee assaults and jumps are a bit gradual to answer.
Moments like this began to shine, however extra usually on the finish of the ground. A excessive frequency of actually difficult encounters and a gentle stream of weapons which might be enjoyable to make use of permit Full Metallic Schoolgirl to complete on the next observe than absolutely the battle it took to get there. Whereas they did not fully flip the script or break free from established conventions within the first place, they began to benefit from the basics by throwing virtually every thing at a quick tempo.
As I progressed, I naturally discovered which sort of gun was proper for me. Gradual shotguns and rifles have been fully pointless to make use of, however highly effective SMGs that overheated rapidly turned my favourite. Studying learn how to handle your vitality meter for large ax combos, dodges, and hover dashes turned extra essential within the later phases of the sport. And incorporating auto-attack drones (which you summon on cooldown) was the important thing to saving a number of runs. Utilizing your scarce batteries (restoration objects) correctly has additionally been factored into the way you method fight.
As a result of the rarity of the tools rewarded from problem rooms is random, there are pointless moments when finishing a problem room solely yields objects of common rarity that pale compared to the uncommon and legendary tools from flooring a lot earlier. No less than this makes the modifiers significant, as they will have an effect on well being, vitality, motion, and injury output habits, particularly if the defend you’ve got geared up has a huge impact on survivability.