Gal*Gun 2 review - A perverted shooter which struggles to find the fun

Gal*Gun 2 is a game in which you shoot schoolgirls full of your "pheromone shot" until they collapse on the floor in ecstasy to prevent them from kissing you.

If you're already put off by that opening line, then you don't need to read any further. This is a strange, perverse game built for a very specific audience in mind, and outsiders will not feel welcome at all.

But even those sticking around might not find much to enjoy here, as Gal*Gun 2 is riddled with issues that even its weird charm can't mask forever.

Notice me, senpai

Gal*Gun 2 isn't an entirely new game, instead taking a lot of its inspiration from last year's Gal*Gun VR but with a few changes here and there to suit traditional consoles.

It plays like a gallery shooter, with you moving a reticule around the screen with the left thumbstick and shooting at approaching girls with a tap of the A button. Hit them in the right spot and you can one-shot-"kill" them with an "ecstasy shot", which is exactly what it sounds like.

New to this game is a Demon Sweeper, which is used to vacuum up the demons which occasionally possess some of the enemies in order to score bonus points. It can also be powered up to suck the clothes off girls too, naturally.

Once you clear a screen of girls, you move onto the next screen, and repeat the process. Occasionally levels will have different objectives – sometimes you'll need to defend girls from waves of demons, or you'll need to find hidden objects throughout a level in a time limit.

Get me going

But the main problem is that none of this is that fun. For starters, levels are far too long, regularly stretching into the ten-minute mark, which is way too much for a fairly simple shooter.

It also retains huge chunks of its VR trappings – there's no dynamic movement on screen like in previous games, so you instead stand in one spot until you clear a screen, and then choose which location to teleport to next.

You do now have a full 360-degree view of the world, but this makes things harder to follow, especially since you don't have the same audio cues when playing on a TV or without headphones.

It makes every encounter feel strangely stilted, and when you have to contend with all that throughout the weirdly long levels, actual gameplay can be a bit of a slog.

I want candy

Where Gal*Gun 2 excels is in its visual novel elements, which have been streamlined for a smoother experience – you don't need to level up your pervert skill to ask gross questions anymore, for example.

Instead, you throw candy you earn from missions at your chosen girl until you trigger a cutscene, eventually leading to a side mission which will progress your relationship with her.

The writing here isn't groundbreaking – and its mostly a bunch of perverted moments held together with the loosest of plot threads – but it's weirdly charming in its own way and provides enough of a motivation to keep slogging through the rest of the game to read more of it.

Fans of the series will be disappointed to hear that Doki Doki Mode, in which you rub girls in the right spots to please them, has now been relegated to specific levels unlocked along these relationship paths, but hey, at least they're still in there.

And there's boss battles for certain paths too, but aside from some minor changes in attack patterns, these all follow basically the same formula, leading to boring, repetitive fights.

Sorry, Mum

As a package, Gal*Gun 2 leaves a lot to be desired. It can be a struggle getting through the actual gameplay, and its transition from VR to traditional media hasn't really been pulled off that well.

Yet there's something about its ridiculous plot and daft writing that keeps you coming back to see it through to the end and manages to elevate the whole thing beyond just being a mediocre shooter.

There's parts of the game that you'll love, and parts that you'll rapidly grow to detest. The question is how much you're willing to put up with to get to the good stuff.