First impressions matter, proper? Full Steel Schoolgirl throws you into its third-person shooter motion shortly after a blazing quick anime-inspired opening to the tune of a J-rock banger. It instantly establishes its irreverent angle and goofy anti-capitalist satire in a futuristic world the place robots are exploited and known as “the working lifeless” – and with the aim of taking down a CEO villain, I believed to myself, “Hell yeah.” However about midway via a second run of this roguelike, it dawned on me that there simply wasn’t a lot to Full Steel Schoolgirl; it’s a uninteresting and repetitive shooter whose gameplay foundations aren’t fairly ok to reserve it from the largely tedious, unrewarding grind up its 100-floor tower.
Through the intro sequence the place you break into the evil Maternal Jobz Company, you select to play as Ryoko or Akemi, two cyborg anime women who’re functionally and aesthetically human – the one you choose winds up being the lead character and the opposite will get captured and performs into the story as you progress. They’re searching for revenge on the corporate and its CEO for working their dad to dying, and the story’s preliminary disdain for company bullshit is sharp in a means that jogged my memory of Hello-Fi Rush. Nevertheless, that is so far as it goes earlier than issues devolve into annoying quips and no actual intrigue to inspire every run; like most elements of Full Steel Schoolgirl, it does not construct on its good concepts and its shallow execution on them wears skinny slightly shortly.
I’ve a excessive tolerance for anime tropes, and right here, it teeters between charming and eyerolling, and extra continuously leans towards the latter. It is not only for its crass innuendos, but additionally in its incessant yapping that does not exude any memorable character into its attention-grabbing premise. I am not right here to handwave the eye drawn to upskirts or the creepy actions of the physician who upgrades your expertise, both – it is simply pointless. The moments its tropes actually do work are on the very starting and the very finish, and it is as if all the things in between was neglected within the course of, which is the place you will spend most of your time.
Every flooring is made up of a sequence of slender hallways crammed with enemy fodder alongside environmental hazards, in addition to sq. workplace constructing rooms that operate as small fight arenas. The latter throws non-compulsory challenges at you want clearing the room inside a time restrict or with out utilizing heals for more money for upgrades. However this total method doesn’t basically change throughout its 100 procedurally generated flooring. The surroundings could change barely for every block of flooring, but the construction stays the identical. Whereas they could throw completely different enemy varieties at you want drones, bomb-strapped robots, turrets, and mechanized canines, no quantity of blending and matching them could make up for mediocre implementation.
It is simple to see how the procedural era clashes with itself when sure doorways result in a very empty room or the fight problem prompts simply do not align with the way in which encounters are arrange. This haphazard stage design feels very primary at greatest and frustratingly messy at worst, and it persists via the massive majority of the 14 hours I put into ending the marketing campaign. Boss fights act as endcaps to blocks of flooring, and whereas they’re comparatively refreshing after blasting via the identical areas time and again, their assault patterns are fairly telegraphed and easy to beat. Nonetheless, I will take dodging area-of-effect explosions and dumping my ultimates (or Punishment assaults, because it’s known as) right into a spongy boss over thoughtlessly repeating an identical flooring of enemies, so I do want these sorts of battles weren’t so few and much between.
Defeating a boss grants you a key to start out a subsequent run at their flooring, which is a godsend to chop via the pointless repetition – however, they’re one-time-use. If a run goes sideways after utilizing the important thing and you do not defeat the following boss 20-something flooring up for the following key, prepare to start out at a a lot decrease stage, buddy. Whereas this raises the stakes, as any roguelike price its salt ought to do, the frustration of getting to trudge via probably the most boring elements to make it again to the place you left off doesn’t really feel price it. Regardless that it will get simpler on account of upgrading your stats and skills from the supplies and cash you earn from every run, ascending chunks of flooring nonetheless takes loads of time.
I used to be excited that that is an anime-style shooter no less than, which is one thing I have been searching for since Freedom Wars and Sword Artwork On-line: Deadly Bullet (which did not fairly capitalize on the premise). As a rule, enjoying via Full Steel Schoolgirl felt like a chore, however I can admire the senseless enjoyable its mechanics typically supply. With a handful of particular weapons and melee weapons I vibed with, I used to be in a position to get right into a groove, flip my mind off, and simply mow down mobs of enemies. Though most weapons are fairly counterintuitive for the way in which encounters are designed, a high-level electrical chaingun or chunky plasma ball launcher carry the correct of weight and suggestions you need from a shooter. That mentioned, motion itself is somewhat too sticky for this fashion of sport, particularly when there are annoying platforming sections. And melee assaults and jumps are a tad unresponsive, even when reducing via a crowd with a katana’s sprint assault or the Labrys axe’s aftershocks may be satisfying.
It is moments like these that began to shine although extra continuously within the last chunk of flooring. The speed at which genuinely difficult encounters introduced themselves, and the confluence of weapons that have been enjoyable to make use of confirmed up, let Full Steel Schoolgirl end on a better notice than absolutely the slog it took to get there. It did not precisely flip the script or break free from the conventions established firstly, nevertheless it started to profit from its primary items by throwing nearly all the things at you at a brisk tempo.
As I progressed, I naturally found out which sorts of weapons labored for me – gradual shotguns and rifles by no means made sense to make use of, however a powerful SMG that’d overheat shortly turned a favourite. Studying to handle my power meter for large axe combos, dodging, and hoverdashing turned extra essential within the late sport. And weaving in your auto-attack drone (which you summon on a cooldown) was key to salvaging a couple of runs. Being good with the scarce battery provide (which is your therapeutic merchandise) factored into how I approached fight as properly.
Rarity of substances you are rewarded with from problem rooms is random, which results in moments of pointlessness the place I might clear a problem room solely to be met with widespread stage rarity objects that pale compared to uncommon and legendary gear from a lot earlier flooring. At the very least this makes the modifiers significant as they’ll have an effect on how your well being, power, motion, and injury output works, particularly when the shields you equip have a large affect in your survivability.