Review: Full Metal Schoolgirl (Switch 2)
I’m not sure why Yuke’s—the developers of Full Metal Schoolgirl—felt the need to set the game in 2089. A powerful mega-corporation forces its employees to work unreasonable hours so its executives can acquire even more power in an already corrupt world? You think that’s 65 years off, do you, Yuke’s?
Maybe, because the employees at Meternal Jobz are cyborgs. And they apparently care enough about their positions to protect the company from a teenage “machine girl” hell bent on revenge after the death of her father. I’m not sure if the “working dead” are programmed for this loyalty or if they just really don’t want to lose their dress-down Fridays and office vending machines.
Full Metal Schoolgirl starts with you selecting your…full metal schoolgirl. Ryoko Arahabaki is the one with the dead dad. Akemi Minamiazabu is her buddy, and her dad has only gone missing. The two decide to infiltrate the Meternal Jobz corporate tower to cause chaos and get some answers, but you can only pick one girl; the other disappears at the start.
Armed with a gun and a sword, you break into the first floor of the 100-story building and start your rampage. The working dead put up little resistance early on, allowing you to shoot and slash your way up the building. Breaking from tradition, the gun is actually the more useful weapon in Full Metal Schoolgirl, as the game often allows you to clear out the opposition before you reach them.
You also have a drone that hovers near you and can be used to fire upon the enemy. It has a cooldown period, though, so you’ll want to save it for trickier moments.
Chests along the way allow you to switch to more powerful or radically different weapons. They’re not that important in the initial run, however. What matters here is that you can’t survive. A laser turret takes you out, and you die…kind of. Rather than ending up in a dumpster below the building, your cyborg body is somehow whisked away to the lab of your creator: Professor Hakase. She was at one time an engineer at Meternal Jobz, and has turned herself into a cyborg. She fixes you up, and takes the materials you’ve acquired in exchange for power-ups, including a shield that can block the attacks of laser turrets.
That, then, is your gameplay loop. Each time you enter the building, the floors change. The available weapons change. You progress as far up as you can go, you die, you level up, and you begin again.
Of course, this being a roguelike, climbing floors is as difficult as climbing the corporate ladder. When you die, most of the materials you’ve acquired are taken away. You can eventually buy power-ups that mitigate this (acquire more materials as you progress, lose fewer when you’re defeated), but the bulk of your resources come from online donations. Your progress is being streamed, and your followers will wire you money if you keep them entertained. That, you get to keep.
This is especially important in the game’s challenge rooms, where your viewers will increase their donations if you perform tasks such as clearing out the enemies within a set time limit or without recharging your battery (life). If you’re up for it, you can offer to increase their challenges for even greater rewards, but you risk getting nothing if you can’t pull them off.
No matter how you choose to progress, it’s important to do so with style. And believe me, Full Metal Schoolgirl has plenty of style. Most of it comes from the enemies—broad, robotic caricatures of your standard corporate employees. They dress, behave, and speak as you’d expect the working dead to dress, behave, and speak, and that satire is often very, very funny. This is one of those rare cases where I’ll recommend the English voice audio so you don’t miss the jokes (although the Japanese is pretty funny based on delivery alone). The visual gags are great, too, like the cyborg couple making out in the “privacy” of the stairwell between levels.
I didn’t see that it’s directly addressed, but I’m sure inner-office romances are against the Meternal Jobz corporate policy.
The machine girls provide plenty of flair, too. Their stylish outfits (with plenty of DLC options) stand in contrast to the cyborgs they’re eliminating, and they get their share of slick moves to pull off as they make their way upwards.
Sadly, though, not even our machine girls can escape the fatigue of corporate life. 100 floors is a lot, and the building is not set up in a way that rewards your successes. When you’re finally powerful and skilled enough to take out a boss, you’ll get an elevator key to directly access the floor just above the boss you defeated. That’s great, except it can only be used once. If (by which I mean “when”) you die ahead of or against the next boss, you have to start from scratch.
You’re better equipped to beat the boss each time you beat it, sure, but victory is never guaranteed. They require not only to learn their attack patterns and discover their weaknesses, but also to be equipped with the right weapon. That will often come from the chests you find on your way up, so whether you get what you need is a crapshoot. Thankfully, the ability to start with better weapons is a purchasable upgrade, and you can select from an array of weapons on the ground floor.
Not the greatest idea for building security.
Still, all the upgrades in the world can’t save you from doing the same thing over and over and over. The combat mechanics never really progress, the scenery doesn’t change much, and the common enemies become increasingly annoying. Platforming obstacles are also introduced to add to your consternation. This all eventually beats down the game’s upbeat presentation and goofy charm. If that’s part of the satire on corporate life, it maybe hits a little too close to home.
That said, I’m still going to recommend Full Metal Schoolgirl to action gamers. Like many of the roguelikes I’ve come to enjoy, it’s fun to pick up and play for a bit just to see how far you can get. You never know when you’re going to acquire the right weapon upgrades or get lucky against a troublesome boss to find yourself higher than you’ve been before. That can make the accessible combat rewarding. It likely won’t happen enough to keep you going for prolonged periods, but maybe that’s for the best. Don’t you have your own job to get to?
