Gal*Gun: Double Peace

Developer: INTI CREATES CO., LTD. | Publisher: PQube Limited | Release Date: 2016 | Genre: Action / Adventure | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

Houdai Kudoki, the protagonist of Gal*Gun: Double Peace, is just an ordinary student until one day he catches the attention of a trainee angel named Ekoro. Although she simply means to give him a small boost in popularity, an untimely interruption by a passing demon girl causes her to blast Houdai with an extra powerful shot. Houdai finds himself suddenly being irresistible to every girl in the academy, but this turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing. Not only does the constant attention from every girl drain his energy, but he only has until sundown to find his one true love or he will end up alone forever. To make matters even more complicated, there is a demon girl running around causing mischief with two demon hunters hot on her trail. With the help of players, Houdai must escape the throngs of adoring girls, track down the love of his life and help thwart the demon girl.

Houdai only has one way to protect himself from the legions of adoring girls rushing at him to profess their love and that is by shooting them with his “Pheromone Gun.” With enough shots or a direct hit in their weak spots, the girls experience “euphoria” and crumple to the floor in poses that ticks all the fan-service boxes. Dishing out euphoria also increases a meter that can be used to activate “Doki-Doki” mode when you find yourself overwhelmed. Here, you get to pick up to three girls, depending on the level of the meter, and then give them euphoria in a more hands-on manner. Doki-Doki mode takes place on a separate screen where the camera is constantly rotating around your target(s) and you have to click or rub their sensitive areas to trigger simultaneous euphoria. It is every bit as ecchi as it sounds and, while there is no nudity in the game, you’ll probably have a hard time explaining to anyone walking in what you are doing. Luckily the game has a “mom walked in” panic button especially for these occasions, which displays an innocuous-looking J-RPG screen when pressed.

Gameplay-wise, Gal*Gun is an on-rail shooter, so you don’t have direct control over your movement. Instead, you choose your location at the start of each level and then move your cursor around to blast the girls. In addition to shooting, you can also charge your shots for greater damage or zoom in. Zooming enables you to see through certain objects and is essential for finding all the hidden items in the game. These range from student handbooks containing information about the girls to extra outfits, bonus points, and objects needed to complete side-quests. Since zooming in functions as a kind of x-ray vision, it should come as no surprise that it also enables you to see through girl’s clothes, but no further than their underwear. Some levels feature branching paths and there are also times when you go into “Warning” mode where girls come at you from all directions and you have to swap back and forth between three screens to get them all before they get to you. Of course, there are also a couple of unique boss fights and a few mini-games which usually involve freeing girls who are stuck in various undignified positions.

For an on-rail shooter that doesn’t take itself very seriously, Gal*Gun has a surprising amount of depth and replay value. For example, the story mode features plenty of visual novel style scenes between all the shooting and enables you to pick the girl you want to end up with. Initially, your choices are limited, but the more paths and endings you unlock the more options you get. We don’t want to spoil anything, but there are some surprising inclusions on the list and everyone has their own paths and endings, which include good, bad, and “true” ones. You also get to choose the personality of your character, which influences his stats such as intelligence, athleticism, style, and lewdness. In turn, these stats determine what responses are available to you during the visual novel sections. Stats can either be boosted by buying items from the shop or by carefully selecting which girls you want to use Doki-Doki mode on as their preferences can alter your stats. There is also a score attack mode where you can play specific levels for high scores, an image gallery, and information about all the girls attending the academy.

Gal*Gun was originally a Playstation exclusive, but while the anime-style visuals are not particularly impressive, the game looks nice enough on PC. Despite the fact that the game makes use of the Unreal engine, there are not a lot of visual settings to tweak from within the game, so if you are really determined to do so you’ll have to resort to ini file editing, which is less than ideal. Apart from some aliasing and clipping issues, along with low-resolution textures in places, we liked the variety in terms of girls and locations. The controls also work well enough using a mouse, but a gamepad can also be used if you prefer. A lot of the mini-games were obviously designed with the touchscreen of the Playstation Vita in mind, but we didn’t have any trouble using a mouse to play. In terms of audio we would have liked to hear a few more tunes, but the ones that are on offer sound nice and upbeat, which fits the style of the game perfectly. The voice acting is all in Japanese and sounds great, but while all the major speech has subtitles, there are some omissions during boss fights and in Doki-Doki mode. This doesn’t impact the gameplay, but it would have been nice to know what the girls are uttering while they are being poked, prodded, and rubbed by your cursor.

Even after hours of playing the game and clearing multiple routes, we still found more than enough to do in Gal*Gun: Double Peace. Completing all the side quests, which involves finding lost items for various girls, will take a long time and you can even analyze the bust size of every girl in the game if you are really a completionist. The game also features a beginner and expert difficulty level, although even the latter feels a little too easy compared to other on-rail shooters. Overall, we had a lot of fun with the game, although it is obviously not for the easily offended. For a dose of ecchi, but always humorous, on-rail shooting coupled with a surprisingly entertaining visual novel, you can go wrong with Gal*Gun: Double Peace.