Gal*Gun: Double Peace Review – Bounce It 4 a Real Senpai (PS4)

Let’s get this out of the way. Gal*Gun: Double Peace is an on-rails shooter where the player must shoot sex pheromones at female school goers as they try chase after him. Yeah, it’s weird and completely perverse. If that doesn’t seem like a game you don’t want to play, then the good news is that you’re not missing out on much. That said, I found myself pleasantly surprised by some aspects of the game.

The game’s deeper premise is even more ridiculous than the CliffsNotes version I gave above. An angel in training accidentally hits a high school boy with a supercharged Cupid arrow. Now the boy, named Houdai, is irresistible to most women and must find his true love by the end of the day or he’ll be lonely forever. To make matters more complicated, there’s also a demon who is also causing mischief.

What’s really great about the story is how serious it takes itself. The events from the original Gal*Gun are referenced and expanded on, and it’s wild to see how much care was taken in order to flesh out the canon for a series about shooting girls with pheromone bullets. It’s 100% ridiculous, but some real care was taken into the story. It’s a coming of age tale kind of like Kiki’s Delivery Service, if Kiki got into some kinky mishaps instead of transporting baked goods.

Imoutos Come and Go

The actual gameplay in Gal*Gun is the biggest disappointment. It’s an on-rails shooter without any motion control support, so I had to use the analog stick (you can choose if you want to use left or right) to aim the on-screen reticule. From that point on it basically becomes a shooting gallery of cute moe girls as they chase you around the school.

It’s very simplistic, and it doesn’t offer up the depth of other offerings in the genre like Dead Space: Extraction. Players can charge a shot, however, which is useful when there are multiple enemies in the same areas. Each girl also has weak points, which basically meant that I had to shoot at their private areas for maximum effect. To aid in this specific shooting, players can also zoom into areas (which also will let you see through one layer of the girl’s clothing) if they want to take a better look.

Finally, there’s a special ability that allows players to single out an enemy and take them to what I can only describe as a rubbing station. Here the player gets to stroke them until they left in a state of ecstasy. It’s more than a little awkward, and it seems like Inti Creates knows this as screenshots can’t be taken during these sections as the screen is blacked out. Needless to say, I only found myself using this special attack a few times during my playthrough.

Shooting waves of imoutos is pretty entertaining for the first few stages, as I constantly found myself laughing at just how ridiculous the entire game was. Ultimately, this novelty is short lived. After I had completed one stage, I had basically seen the bulk of the game and it felt largely repetitive after that. The only mechanic that gets added later on are chibi-style demons that must be shot before the possessed girl can be subdued. It’s a step in the right direction, but the game never goes anywhere further with it.

Gal*Gun is already super ridiculous, so why not lean into that more? More variety in the general stages would’ve went a long way, and could’ve easily been accomplished. Imagine having a 70 year old winkled teacher chasing after you as if she was Nemesis from Resident Evil 3. Something like that would’ve been a nice distraction from the onslaught of waifus. 

Things do get a bit more over the top in Gal*Gun‘s boss battles. These include tentacle monsters (because of course it would), scenes where you have to massage a girl’s butt so she can fit through a window (it all makes sense in the story), and other perverse yet creative scenarios. If any of this creativity had carried over to the main game then I feel like I could more easily recommend this, but sadly that’s the exception not the norm here.

Waifus On My Mind

The most interesting part about Gal*Gun is its branching storyline and the systems it uses. Players get to choose which girl they want to date (although certain choices are locked at first), so they’ll see different storylines depending on who they chose to romance. All of the girls are presented as likable, so it actually was tough to decide at first. This is definitely a game meant to be played multiple times, which is good since it only takes a few hours to beat once.

In order to successfully win over the hearts of these girls, the player will have to do well in stages and boost their stats (intelligence, athleticism, style and lewdness) so they are appealing. Players even get to choose a character class (which includes one called Hentai Fiend which features 100% lewdness) to help them out. Gal*Gun doesn’t do a great job of explaining these systems (so don’t be surprised if you get a bad ending on your initial playthrough), so it’ll take some trial and error to figure everything out. It’s not perfect, but it’s by far the most interesting mechanic in the game and offers up replayability.

Gal*Gun: Double Peace has a surprising amount of heart for a game that has its head lodged firmly in a gutter full of panties. The characters are likable, the plot is goofy in its seriousness, and the premise is so over the top that I couldn’t help but laugh. Sadly, the gameplay simply doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain. This on-rails shooter is too simplistic and doesn’t do a good job of keeping the gameplay feeling fresh.

Review code for Gal*Gun: Double Peace provided by publisher. Reviewed on PlayStation 4. For more information on scoring, please read our Review Policy here.