WARNING: Gal*Gun: Double Peace is intended for mature audiences only for significant sexual content. This is not a game for kids! The imagery in this review reflects the content of the game and may be offensive to some readers.
A few years back, we reviewed Gal*Gun 2, the sequel to Gal*Gun: Double Peace. Gal*Gun: Double Peace has actually been out since 2016 in North America but by some mystery of oversight, the original game never managed to make it to a Switch port. Now it’s here from PQube though, and if you’ve not heard of Gal*Gun, let’s just get things right out of the way up front.
This is unquestionably a bishojo (or gal) game, a combination of moe and ecchi (Japanese terms) that’s unique to the Japanese market. In other words, noticeably sexual and provocative content but no actual nudity. Lots of panties, lots of butts and bouncing chest shots, but not technically adult content. Japanese games love to straddle that line and Gal*Gun manages to do so somewhat successfully, but it still might have your wife or girlfriend cringing at the screen if they walk in while you’re playing.
In Gal*Gun: Double peace you play Houdai Kudoki, a student at Sakurazaki Academy, a high school in Japan. Unfortunately for Houdai, an angel has zapped him with a gun version of cupid’s arrow amped up 32 times the normal power. Now women are flinging themselves at him and he has just 24 hours to declare his true love or be doomed to be single for the rest of his life.
Is this a ridiculous premise? Darn straight. But it’s also remarkably fun. You play from a first person perspective and you must use a pheromone shot to send high school girls into “ecstasy”, overloading their pleasure centers before they can subdue you and have their way with you. Girls have key areas that send them into a state of bliss even faster if you can shoot them right away, and they come at you from everywhere. Ignoring the incredibly over-the-top sexuality and moaning Japanese voices constantly barraging you, the challenge is decent in Gal*Gun. There are two modes of difficulty, beginner and expert and you’ll find that you can blow through beginner in about 2 hours or so, but chances are you won’t get a good ending!
Your left stick controls the targeting reticle, the R button zooms in (spotting hiding women and secrets galore as you scour the landscape) and the Y button fires your pheromone shot. There’s a charge shot as well that blows through the girls’ defenses. You can also build up points on a meter to enter Doki Doki mode, which drops you to a separate screen where the camera circles the girls and you use a hand cursor to touch them over and over, resulting in a massive group ecstasy moment where all girls onscreen are overcome simultaneously. Yeah, it’s like that.
Remarkably, you quickly become attuned to the sexuality of the game and the underlying fun factor is quite high. Targeting key areas is challenging and demon-possessed women have demons that must be destroyed as well. There are even a couple of bosses about and…well…you’ve gotta see it.
There’s a missed opportunity here as well, specifically for the Switch. Gal*Gun: Double Peace just screams (or moans?) for touch input and it’s simply not here. The Switch has a great touch screen and tapping your targets would have been significantly easier but you’re relegated to the sticks, face, and shoulder buttons (which are conveniently configurable at least). However, it should also be noted that the game runs exceptionally well on Switch with short load times, no real glitches, and excellent graphics conversion.
There are also a number of features to enhance gameplay in Gal*Gun: Double Peace. A store lets you boost stats between levels and aside from the main game, and the products there have a significant impact on gameplay. There’s also a side bit with wooing the shopkeeper, but it costs a lot of money and chances are high that you won’t bother your first time through.
Plenty of extras included along with the main game. You can try on a remarkably large number of outfits on every main character and even see them in the story in the Dressing Room and view the stats (and measurements…) of girls in the school with the Student Roster. There’s even a Score Mode for those who just want to play and aren’t concerned with the story.
Speaking of which, while it might be ultra-campy, the plot of Gal*Gun has a number of branching pathways making for unique playthroughs. There are two main paths and within those paths, you can also choose multiple areas to play through and many of those areas have multiple pathways resulting in a game that, while somewhat repetitive, has significant replay value. There are some very unique scenes that border on S&M as well…
At the end of the day, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Gal*Gun: Double Peace. It might be an older title and for $40, you might be thinking twice, but it’s a fun rail shooter with lots of unique concepts, even if you have some interactive butt pushing to take care of. As long as you’re not opposed the blatant sexuality of the gamer, Houdai’s story is fun and entertaining and if you fail, you truly feel let down, so let the pleasure fly in this bishojo shooter!
This review was based on a digital copy of Gal*Gun: Double Peace provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both. Gal*Gun: Double Peace is also available for PS4 and Steam.