Game Title: Gal Gun 2
Developer: Inti Creates
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Retail | Digital Download
Battery Life: 2.5 – 3.25 hours
Download: 3.3 GB

When the more fanservicy games from the PlayStation Vita’s library began to release for the Nintendo Switch, I had some pretty low expectations on what level of fanservice would actually be released on Nintendo’s new handheld-console hybrid. Sure, we got Fate/Extella and a Senran Kagura game only in Japan, but I didn’t expect anything over-the-top to leave Japan or be released in English.

Boy, was I wrong. Not only was Gal Gun 2, a sequel to one of the more questionable PS Vita fanservice games, announced for the Switch but it was announced for localization and even has English subtitles in its Japanese release. If people are wanting fanservice games on the Switch, Inti Creates is certainly baring everything they can on the newest handheld on the block.

Clearly taking advantage of not waiting an extra month when an English Translation is already available, I’ve imported, played, and finished the game. Here is my review of Gal Gun 2 for the Nintendo Switch!

Story

You are a normal guy attending school when a strange app on your phone causes an angel appears before you. She recruits you into Heaven’s special Demon Eradication Program and grants you a speicla VR Helmet and Pheremone gun that not only can eliminate demons, but also makes you the most irresistable man alive. As you live out your school life, you must defend yourself from love-struck students and teachers as well as finding and eliminating the demons possessing them.

As far as chronological placement, Gal Gun 2 takes place some time after Gal Gun: Double Peace. The 2 heroines and antagonist of that game return here and have a fairly significant presence in the plotline of this game.

This game comes with the normal, lewd, awkwardness the series is known for. As interesting as it sounds above, the premise can be simplified that girls and women are all over you and to repel them, you shoot them with Pheremones until they collapse in fits of ecstacy. The game takes no measures to hide the fanservice involved, regularly having you not only shooting girls in the butt, chest, and lap, but later on purifying them by removing their clothes and inspecting every inch of their near-naked bodies.

As far as how the story is, a lot of it is very similar to Double Peace. The real shine of the story isn’t in the quarrels between you and the demon Kurona, but in the individual Story Arcs for the side characters, Nanako and Chiru. Those dive a lot further into the lore of the series and make an interesting read outside of the constant shooting.

Gameplay

In terms of gameplay, Gal Gun 2 is a first-person rail shooter with Dating Simulation elements thrown into the mix. Across the game, you’ll be thrown in FPS sequences as well as having the option to give gifts to the girls to raise their Affection level towards special scenes and endings.

As far as differences between this game and the previous 3 games of the series (Gal Gun, Double Peace, and Gal Gun VR) is the story being far less linear than before. Not only do you have a new Score Attack Mode you can play outside of the story but Instead of just hitting a story path option the game gives you, you’ve got a Mission-based system with a limited number of days before the game ends and you must meet your Demon-Killing Quota.

Getting Kills is in a point-system and you must complete Missions to get those points. Although you can only perform 2 missions per day, there are 3 different types of missions with Attack Missions, Defend Missions, and Search Missions. There are also Main Missions that progress the Story and Side Missions, which reward you with Gifts as well as working towards Point-unlocks for Main Missions.

Speaking of, every girl in the game can be romanced, in a way. As you finish Side Missions, you earn the phone numbers for the girls and teachers, allowing you to “Redezvous” with them in various locations like the Park, Classroom, Pool, or even your Bedroom. This allows you to give them snacks as gifts so they’ll like you enough to not only go home with you, but start flirting and allow you to stare at certain parts of their bodies without immediately being weirded out and leaving whilst calling you a creepy pervert.

In this mode, the Fanservice really goes into overdrive. You can have them do any pose, be it confessing their love for you, or knocking you to the ground and grinding you under their shoes. It also lets you go into Doki Doki Mode, a special Shooting Mode that lets you shoot all over their bodies to exorcise demons in order to knock most of their clothes off their bodies.

While this aspect is more for random fanservice, not unlike the Dressing Room from games like Valkyrie Drive or Senran Kagura, the Gifting system is a big part of the game. There are 2 “Main Character” girls that the MC knows and giving them snacks and raising their Affection Level will unlock their Story Arcs, and the Quest Chain needed for their Endings to the game. So, if you want to get an ending outside of the Normal and Risu Endings, you’ll need to use the Gift System earlier rather than later as the Character Endings have very long Quest Chains.

Now let’s get into how gameplay actually works, which isn’t all that different from Double Peace, aside from the addition of the Demon Vacuum weapon from Gal Gun VR. The game is a Rail Shooting game, putting you in set positions with the ability to move your sights and move through various standing heights as hordes of girls run towards you and assault you with melee attacks as well as projectiles.

For those unfamiliar with the series, there are 2 types of enemies: Normal Girls and Possessed Girls. Normal Girls you just shoot at until they go down (or hit weak points on their body for quick incapacitations). Possessed Girls have Demons attached to their bodies, which you must first shoot off before you can incapacitate the girl, herself. These demons can also recover and possess others around if you don’t take care of them quickly.

Combat is done with the Pheremone Gun, which shoots like any other gun in an FPS game, but the Demon Vacuum from Gal Gun VR makes a return here, mixing things up. You can shoot girls, but you can also use the Vacuum to not only catch Demons like the Ghostbusters do, but once upgraded, you can defeat girls not by overloading them with Pheremones, but by literally sucking the clothes right off of them, incapacitating them in embarassment.

Despite all of the fanservice, the game is a relatively strategic shooting game. You have enemies that attack closely and those further away that require using your scope, and you’ve got a lot of tricky situations like getting surrounded and using a mix of shooting and vacuuming to claim victory, which is more apparent in the Defense Missions than the Shooting Missions.

Without dragging this out too long, let’s talk about the level of content and length of the game. Double Peace was a notoriously-short game, only clocking in at around 4 hours per Story Run. In this regard, Gal Gun 2 has a lot more to it with all of the side missions and different character arcs without needing to completely replay the game to see more than one Ending.

I’d played the game for around 8 hours by the time I unlocked the Normal Ending, which unlocked when I had a good 10 days remaining. It took all 10 of those days to unlock RIsu’s Ending and one of Nanako’s Endings, which got me between 11 and 12 hours. So, for all intents and purposes, without skipping days for the sake of seeing Endings, a full Story Run should take you around 10-12 hours.

After you do that, there isn’t much in terms of post-game content outside of replaying the game via New Game Plus for the other Endings and using the “Game Cleared” costumes with the girls in Rendezvous events.

With all of this, I’m conflicted. While you clearly have a lot more content in Gal Gun 2 than any of the previous games, you’re looking at 12 hours for a fully-priced $59.99 game with very little post-game to work with.

Controls

This aspect of the game has its ups and downs, but is one of the games I cannot recommend Motion Controls enough in. There are options for controlling your aim with motion either all the time or just when zoomed in, and it greatly increases the ease of skill in the later missions.

The control scheme is pretty simple. By default, you can move the camera/aim with the Left Analog Stick and the RIght Stick doesn’t really do anything. The L and R triggers are used for peeking around corners and cover that you’re using. ZL uses the Demon Vacuum/Sweeper attack and ZR is used for slow/steady aim. Then the face buttons come in. A is used for shooting, X is used for Zooming In and Y is used for Zooming out. B doesn’t really do anything in combat.

To make this feel more like an fps, I like moving the Slow Aim to ZL, Sweeper to L, and Shooting to ZR, but remember that virtually all controls in the game can be customized, so you’re free to make a scheme to your own liking.

Now, there is something I don’t like about the controls, and that heavily pushes me to encourage the use of Motion Controls. The Analog Controls for the game feel incredibly tight and clunky. I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of Input Delay, but when using the Analog Aiming, it feels much slower and more “tank” like. Motion, on the other hand, feels much faster and more responsive.

Presentation

Graphically, the game looks really nice. Double Peace looked good on the Vita, but this game looks much smoother to the point where I don’t think I ever saw a single jagged edge when playing the game. It really looks good, especially when you zoom in or have the special Rendezvous scenes with the girls and see how much attention to detail Inti Creates put into this new game.

But, like the Vita version of Double Peace, there are some small frame-rate issues. The game stays at a steady 30 fps in all areas, but two. In Your Room and the Cave environment, the fps tends to drop a little under 30. Not by a lot, but it’s pretty noticeable in the Cave area when you have a bunch of enemies and the aiming suddenly moves alot slower. Unlike other games that use slowdown, the frames just flat out drop and it can make aiming difficult.

Battery Life

I didn’t expect a ton of Battery Life to come out of this game. but here are my times, from 100% to 0%

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 34 minutes
Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 39 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 11 minutes
Low Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 15 minutes

Not exactly all that high, but you can still get quite a bit done in that amount of time.