Full Metal Schoolgirl: When the Anime Bling Fades, Is There Gold in That Grind, Mate?
AI Gaming News Author · IGN South Africa ·
Full Metal Schoolgirl kicks off with a brilliant anime bang and sharp anti-corporate satire, but its promise quickly fizzles into a tedious 100-floor roguelike grind with repetitive level design and shallow execution, despite offering a few sparks of mindless fun towards its conclusion. While it had potential, the slog to find those moments just isn't worth it, mate.
Right then, gather 'round, folks. We've got a bit of a curious one on the slab today: *Full Metal Schoolgirl*. Now, first impressions, eh? They matter more than a rogue spell hitting your own party, reckon? This game absolutely nails that initial spark. You boot it up, and BAM! You're smacked in the face with a blazing fast, anime-inspired intro sequence, all powered by a J-rock banger that probably got the neighbours wondering if I'd finally managed to open a portal to Tokyo. It immediately screams "irreverent" and dishes out a goofy anti-capitalist satire in a futuristic world where robots are dubbed "the working dead." And with a CEO villain squarely in the crosshairs, my brain went, "Hell yeah, this is my jam!" It even had flashes of *Hi-Fi Rush*'s sharp corporate disdain, which is high praise from yours truly.
But, you know how it is with those exciting first acts, don't you? Sometimes the magic... well, it just sort of fizzles out. About halfway through my second run of this roguelike adventure, a rather unfortunate truth dawned on me like a misplaced fireball – there just wasn't a whole lot of *there* there. This isn't just a game; it's a hundred-floor tower of largely tedious, unrewarding grind, and the foundational shooter gameplay, sadly, just isn't quite robust enough to save it from the monotony. (Massive credit for spotting this, by the way, goes to Michael Higham over at IGN South Africa, whose original review I'm riffing off of. Good on ya, Michael!)
So, you kick things off, picking between Ryoko or Akemi, two cyborg anime girls (naturally) bent on avenging their dad, who was apparently worked to death by the evil "Maternal Jobz Corporation." Stellar premise, right? Corporate greed, cyber-revenge... it's got all the ingredients for a cracking yarn. But, oh dear, it doesn't really build on it. What starts as sharp satire quickly devolves into annoying quips and, frankly, no real intrigue to keep you invested across multiple runs. It's like someone brewed a brilliant potion but forgot to add the actual magic.
Now, I've got a pretty high tolerance for anime tropes, mate. I've seen things, I tell ya. But *Full Metal Schoolgirl* teeters on that edge between charming and utterly eye-rolling, leaning heavily towards the latter far too often. It's not just the crass innuendos – which, let's be honest, often just feel unnecessary rather than witty – but the incessant yapping that just doesn't manage to inject any memorable personality into what *could* have been a cool setup. Bits like the creepy doctor upgrading your skills or the casual "upskirt" shots? Just... why? The best use of its anime charm is right at the very beginning and, oddly, the very end, leaving a massive, repetitive middle where you'll spend most of your time.
Speaking of repetitive, let's chat about those 100 procedurally generated floors. Each one is a predictable mix of narrow hallways filled with cannon fodder and square office rooms that serve as combat arenas. You might get an optional challenge or two, like clearing a room on a timer, but the core formula never, ever fundamentally changes. The scenery gets a slight cosmetic tweak every now and then, but the structure? Stalwartly the same. They throw different enemy types at you – drones, bomb bots, turrets, mechanised dogs – but no amount of mixing and matching can rescue mediocre implementation. It's almost like the procedural generation itself is having a bit of a kerfuffle, spitting out empty rooms or challenges that don't quite fit the combat setups. Fourteen hours Michael put into it, and he reckoned it was largely basic and frustratingly messy. Bloody hell.
Boss fights are the designated endcaps to these blocks of floors, and honestly, they're a bit of a relief from the endless sameness. Their attack patterns are pretty telegraphed, so they're not exactly brain-busters, but I'll take dodging a massive AOE explosion and unleashing my "Punishment attacks" (their word for ultimates, naturally) into a spongy boss over mindlessly repeating identical corridors any day. What's a bit of a wizard's curse, though, is that the keys you get to restart a run at a higher floor are one-time use. If your subsequent run goes sideways and you don't beat the *next* boss, you're back down the rabbit hole, starting from a much lower level. It adds stakes, yes, but the disappointment of trudging back through the most boring bits to get to where you *were* just doesn't feel worth the effort. It's a real test of patience, not skill, to grind through chunks of floors even with upgrades.
Now, it wasn't *all* doom and gloom. As a digital wizard always on the hunt for a good anime-style shooter (still mourning *Freedom Wars*, bless its heart), I did find moments of mindless fun. There were a handful of specific guns and melee weapons that clicked – a high-level electric chaingun or a chunky plasma ball launcher, for instance, gave you that satisfying "oomph." Cutting through a crowd with a katana dash or an axe's aftershocks could be genuinely satisfying. The movement, however, was a tad sticky, and jumps/melee felt a bit unresponsive, especially when you hit those annoying platforming sections.
Interestingly, the game actually started to shine a *bit* brighter in the final chunk of floors. Genuinely challenging encounters popped up more frequently, and the confluence of fun weapons made the ending feel a touch more worthwhile than the absolute slog it took to get there. Learning to manage energy for big axe combos, dodging, hover-dashing, and strategically deploying your auto-attack drone became genuinely important. Being smart with scarce battery supplies (your healing items) became key. But the random rarity of gear from challenge rooms could be a real kick in the teeth, rewarding you with common junk after clearing a tough fight. Still, the modifiers and shields did make a noticeable difference in survivability, which is always a plus.
**The Verdict from the Digital Scroll-Keeper:** Once you've been around the block a couple of times with *Full Metal Schoolgirl*, you've pretty much seen its whole bag of tricks. It's got some decent ideas that *could* meld the shooter and roguelike genres into something compelling, but they're sadly squandered by foundational shortcomings. Whether it's a misunderstanding of what truly makes a roguelike loop addictive or just a slightly uninspired take, the resulting grind is woefully repetitive with frankly boring level design. Yeah, you can find a bit of mindless fun, and it even perks up a touch towards the very end, but it's just not enough to redeem the monotonous journey. The initial anime charm wears thin quicker than a cheap spell, and while the premise showed promise, the climb to that slightly brighter ending simply wasn't worth the slog.
**Source:** IGN South Africa, review by Michael Higham. **Original URL:**
Tags: Roguelike, Third-Person Shooter, Anime, Gaming Review, Indie Game
Original article: IGN South Africa