Gal*Gun 2 (Nintendo Switch) Review

This is basically a 12-year-old's sexual fantasy, with a whole school of young girls being madly in love with the protagonist; a boy who has the ability to... excite those naughty lasses with the use of a weird magic gun (a hairdryer, really), and, of course, take a sneak peek or two at their panties while at it - but, no! This brand of titles can't just be pure guilty pleasures; they must also have a plot attached to it all, as if that will make playing this in public any easier: "Yes, dear sir! I'm not ogling at those shrieking, orgasmic girls, whose genitals I shoot with my gun; I'm saving them from chibi demons that cause all that!"

Oh, fan-service games, you and your bizarre need to explain things! As is the case with this kind of titles, however, few will really care about the whole heaven-vs-hell business and whatnot. The player can interact with a trio of characters every now and then, but it's your stereotypical, sometimes cute, sometimes funny, but mostly boring, anime deal. It's also possible to give snacks to the girls to make them, well, trust you more, adding a slight date sim vibe to it all, but, in the end, this is nothing more than a poor man's version of an on-rails shooter.

The action goes as follows: the protagonist is stuck on a certain spot, from where he can only move his gun around and shoot the girls that appear from all over the place, screeching to a halt upon seeing him, shouting their love and passion in the form of damaging Japanese characters, or pushing him to the ground when they are close. In order to "survive," one must shoot these cute foes in their... sensitive zones, and hope that it will stop them in one shot. In case that doesn't work, your basic strategy will be to spam the shoot button.

...and that's the thing with Gal*Gun 2's gameplay; it is lacklustre at best, and requires little to no strategy other than taking care of the girls in the "right order," which means shooting the ones that are more likely to hurt you first. This oversimplified mechanics make everything feel repetitive and unexciting after a while, and a title where cute schoolgirls worship you should never feel that. Some would make the argument that the fun in this game lies on the naughtiness, which would be a valid argument if this was indeed the case, but no, Gal*Gun 2, "Japan's craziest shooter" is definitely not as wacky or even NSFW as it thinks it is... or how much it should be.

Girls shout, you get to peek at their underwear, and you can turn their legs to jelly via a pheromone-spitting pistol - but that's just it. The dialogue is mildly saucy, the "story" cares more about being one that makes sense (although it doesn't) instead of one that titillates, and the Unreal Engine-powered visuals, while pretty good and crispy clean, are, in all honesty, unremarkable, when this could benefit from a more striking, and even risky, art style - oh, and why, in Amaterasu's name, are there so many Lolitas running around instead of the much juicer MIL... err, teachers?!

Gal*Gun 2 is not fun as a shooter, a date sim, or a piece of fan-service. No matter the type of level chosen (as there are a couple of them), the gameplay always boils down to aiming and shooting, and feels the same from start to finish; the romance feels much less exciting than sorting out the inventory in a RPG; and, finally, the sexiness, well, is not really as sexy. Finally, this doesn't even have the decency to be a complete product, as the alternative costumes that you can dress the girls up with aren't in-game unlockables, but DLC.