Review: Gal*Gun 2 (PS4, Switch) – Another Visit Into The Japanese Libido

First of all, this is indeed a sequel.  The original title, Gal*Gun: Double Peace, was released on PS4 and PS Vita, as well as later on PC.  In addition, it was remade as a VR title for Steam, which is somewhat fitting and moderately disturbing at the same time.  Gal*Gun 2 can best be described as a first person gun game combined with a kawaii ecchi feel.  For those of you not steeped in otaku, ‘kawaii’ is a term that loosely means cute, charming, or childlike.  ‘Ecchi’ implies sexual overtones and can be sexy, dirty, naughty, or laviscious, but not blatantly pornographic like hentai.  This type of game is also more accurately known as a bish?jo game or ‘gal game’.  In other words, what you’re getting with Gal*Gun 2 is a cute but naughty gun game, and that’s exactly what it strives to be.

The game designers over at Inti Creates Co., Ltd. know their market well.  Gal*Gun 2 is a title well versed in both the sexual psyche of the Japanese culture and in Japanese game culture as well.  Its references include many nods to retro gaming, Japanese candy, anime, and of course, Japanese sexuality.  You are a student at a Japanese high school and you are recruited by an angel (yes, from Heaven with a capital H) to help in the fight against demons.  Apparently, Heaven is unable to fight demons directly due to some sort of bureaucracy and so instead recruit Earthly teenage boys to fight their fights for them.  Go figure.  It’s the sort of plot that really only could come from a Japanese game designer or a pre-pubescent boy, as are the dialogue and visuals surrounding it.  In fact, Heaven gives you a pair of ‘Pheromone Goggles’ and a ‘Pheromone Shot’ gun as well as a ‘Demon Sweeper’ to vacuum up the Hellborn pests.  These give you the ability to fight demons, but have the inconvenient side effect of making  you irresistible to virtually every woman within a block or so of your presence.  The end result is that to stop the demons, you have to use your Pheromone Shot to blast every woman in your path into orgasmic oblivion (yes, orgasmic) before they manage to pummel you onto the ground, crawl onto your stunned body, and have their way with you.

It sounds ridiculous, right?  Well, you’d be correct in that assumption.  The plot, dialogue, and game are very much tongue-in-cheek.  Gal*Gun 2 is if nothing else, as much a comedy as it is a commentary on Japanese society, fan culture, and sexuality.  And as an adult, playing it is ridiculous and fun.  That’s the whole point, really.  It’s a silly, fun game.  It’s also a silly, fun game that’s unquestionably designed for adults and should not be played by kids, something reiterated in its ‘M’ rating.  In fact, the game was actually denied a rating in Germany, effectively banning in that country, presumably due to the sexual content and the implied ages of the multitude of schoolgirls featured in the game.  The only thing keeping Gal*Gun 2 from being banned in more Western countries is likely the fact that it doesn’t appear to specifically mention the ages of any of the characters in the game.

But hey, don’t you want to know how the game is?  Well, as stated above, it’s actually quite fun!  You use your Pheromone Shot (PS Gun) to shoot the girls as they try to seduce you in waves, while using your Demon Sweeper to capture demons of various types after shooting them off of the girls they’ve latched on to.  This is all done in first person, very much like a House of the Dead or Time Crisis style game.

One surprisingly interesting mechanic was that the PS4 controller doubles as a motion controller for this game and you can choose to either physically move your controller around to aim or use the left analog stick (which is much slower) to aim.  Overall the motion controls are much more effective, but they do take some getting used to.  This is a fairly uncommon function of the PS4 controller and one I’ve never seen used this heavily before.  It’s also surprisingly accurate, which made some of the levels much more playable.  In addition to the main story levels, there are also free levels that include timed sections, versus battles, and hunts for items stolen by the demons.  All of these will net you demon busting points as well as a bunch of candy and snacks, which are used to woo girls at your school and at home.  In between levels, you can talk to girls, call them up (if you manage to get their number in the levels) and go on dates in a dating sim section of the game, and wander about your room.  It’s not a deep or complex game, but there are a surprising number of things to do, many of which lead to some humorous situations, especially if you choose some of the more perverted dialogue options. Within the levels, girls pop up in all directions around you and come running at you, trying to hit you with their, um, love.  They surround you and try to knock you down, then jump onto you and start kissing you.  This is all still in first person, mind you.

If you can target them fast enough, some Japanese text shows up over their head, bosom, crotch, or calves.  Firing your PS gun at these areas results in an ‘Ecstasy Shot’ which pleasures the girl immediately and she collapses to the ground, presumably in bliss.  This is the equivalent of a kill in Gal*Gun 2.  You can even manage a Love Strike, which pleasures every woman in visual range simultaneously.  Certainly an odd phenomenon.  But let a demon-possessed girl get the jump on you and she pushes you to the ground, strikes a pose and starts stomping on you like a dominatrix!  The imagery is definitely blatantly erotic, but somehow, Gal*Gun 2 manages to keep things clean.  Maybe you wouldn’t want to eat off the floor there, but it’s fairly wholesome for a game whose purpose is to ram a spectacular amount of sexual imagery and misogyny down your throat all in the name of fun and games.

Teachers are not exempt from your pheromonal allure either, and they occasionally come running at you as well.  Naturally, their outfits barely contain their bosoms and their shorts barely cover anything.  The same goes for the schoolgirls.  Perhaps you haven’t been to a high school recently, but rarely if ever has there been a high school that had such a high number of overdeveloped schoolgirls all wearing uncomfortably tight school uniforms or thin cotton tops and short shorts.  The outfits are fairly uniform (pun intended) and all match Japanese anime standards.  The game has more uniforms available via DLC, up to and including bubble bath bikinis, playboy bunnies, and shredded swimsuits, all of which miraculously manage to avoid showing full views of genitalia (ahh, physics, thou art overrated).

If the sheer amount of bosoms, panties, and cutesy schoolgirls hasn’t offended you yet, then you’re most likely a guy or you haven’t seen the actual dialogue.  If there was any question whether this game blatantly objectifies women (and there isn’t, it absolutely does), then the dialogue would cinch it.  With options such as being able to tell a girl her panties are showing, telling them to fight over you, or giving them candy to start a flirtation, Gal*Gun 2 manages to demean women at every level.  Whether that’s acceptable or not, well, that’s up to you.  Considering its ‘M’ rating, it’s hard to say that Inti Creates isn’t aware of this.  It’s certainly a game that is intended as light-hearted humor for adult men who enjoy Japanese culture and on that level it manages to succeed and even excel.  Whether it is something that should be on shelves in the West is another question entirely.  This is unequivocally a niche title for gamers of a very specific type.  That being said, the mechanics of the game are mostly quite fun and it could easily appeal to a wider audience, save for the sexuality of the content.  The music and imagery have a fun, cartoonish feel to them, and the game runs smoothly.  Load times are fairly fast on the PS4 Pro, but might vary on the PS4 or the Nintendo Switch.  Controls are tight and it’s hard to say it’s a bad game, aside from the tedium of some of the dating chatter and candy gifting.  Overall it’s a solid title and a fun game, just spectacularly sexual (in a controlled and ‘kawaii’ way) and unabashedly sexist.

Ultimately, the appeal of Gal*Gun 2 is going to depend entirely on your preferences.  If you’re into anime, gaming culture, otaku culture, and school girl motifs, this game will fulfill all of your wildest dreams.  But for the average person, at a full retail price of $59.99 plus DLC, it’s likely to be more of a novelty than anything else, and one that is likely to cause household tension if viewed by a spouse, girlfriend or mom.  So if you get a chance to try it out, enjoy the ecchi feel of the game for what it is and give it a fair shake.  And if none of this is for you, well, there’s nothing wrong with that either!

A full digital copy of Gal*Gun 2 for PS4 was supplied for free for the purposes of this review.  This review is based on a full digital copy of the game running on a PS4 Pro.