GAME REVIEW | Stilted Improvement Awaits In "Gal*Gun 2"
Gal*Gun never released on either the Xbox 360 or PS3 in the West, with its follow-up Double Peace getting localized thanks to PQube. Double Peace, much like the original, was a rail-shooter that -- while offering options to make your experience easier -- still had too short a lease to really experiment with upgrades or doing side-quests & requests. Gal*Gun 2 attempts to fix this restrictiveness, but the team might have gone too far, leaving an experience that is a bit dumbed down and overlong.
The story in Gal*Gun 2 is mostly the same as the previous two games, where your protagonist gets to deal with having girls fawn over him, but this time it's not due to an accident. Instead, he was selected as Heaven's representative to fulfill their work defeating demons from causing havoc. Since they can't actually do this directly because of a treaty with the denizens of Hell, they use people like the protagonist to do their dirty work.
You do this through the use of the VR device that lets you see angels and demons and the Demon Sweeper, which is a gun that shoots beams that subdue demons to allow you to suck them up. Of course, the excuse for the other girls being rampantly in love with you is due to a side effect of the Demon Sweeper's power. While Double Peace's story was ridiculous with having to find your true love within the span of a day is not here to be found (good riddance, that kind of pressure is screwed up for many reasons), you instead have a month. This does give your character a bit more time to learn about the girls you can date, as well as complete the game. But the side effect of this is the overall experience is a bit watered down.
Gameplay is mostly unchanged from the original. You can do missions, which play like the rail shooting parts from the previous game. But now there are new mission types like Hunting, where you have to find specific items, or Defense, which have you protecting a person or object from crazed girls. You don't buy upgrades from a shop, but from being offered as quest rewards. The real problem here is that main story missions are gated by your rank and number of points you've earned, leading to you potentially having to replay some missions.
This already makes a bloated game even longer than it needs to be. The only other way to learn some things about the girls is to give them snacks in the proper types, as well as their amounts, of which the game doesn't give you much in the way of hints to fulfilling. However, that's thankfully not essential to getting their endings.
Overall, Gal*Gun 2 has a few visual improvements with some humorous segments that are fun to see. However, the efforts to make the game less restrictive go too far in the other direction, making it a bit long in the tooth. With that being said, it might still be worth a look if you can get it cheap.
FINAL GRADE:
Promotional consideration provided by PQUBE Games
Eric is a freelance writer and has a podcast called RPGrinders, and you can support their Patreon page here.
