Review – Gal*Gun: Double Peace

Angels and demons playing love and hate in your life got you down? You are not alone. In Gal*Gun Double Peace, have 24 hours to find true love before love is lost forever. Has this simple, yet controversial game delivered on its concept, or is it a resounding boring game? I am here to help you make an informed decision.

Gal*Gun: Double Peace

Developer: Inti Creates
Publisher: NA/EU – PQube; JP – Alchemist
Composers: Ryo Kawakami, Ippo Yamada, Luna Umegaki, Tsutomu Kurihara, & Hiroaki Sano
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, & Microsoft Windows (just announced this week)
Release dates: Playstation 4 & Playstation Vita – JP: August 6, 2015, EU: July 22, 2016, & NA: August 2, 2016; Microsoft Windows (steam) – WW: September 27, 2016
Genres: Rail shooter, Bishōjo game
Mode: Single player

Reviewed for Playstation 4 and Playstation Vita, differences will be emphasized in gameplay section of review

*This review may possibly be NSFW, proceed with caution. This is your only warning.

 

Intro/Story:

*Stop right there demon scum!*

You are Houdai Kudoki, a male student who is depicted as an unpopular and loser student. One day you reunite with some childhood friends. You reminisce but the time is cut short. Shortly later, you encounter  Ekoro, a student cupid angel in the process of an exam, who accidently shot you with an overload of 32 times the amount of a love arrow while trying to stop the demon. It is explained that now all the girls will fall in love with you. However, you 24 hours to find true love or else you will be hated and forever alone. You now go on a mission of love!

My take: The story is a funny one and delivered in a good way. This is also a good intro to the story. Controversy surrounds this because this takes place in high school, which all of the students are not 18. It gets a bit lewder as the game progresses. If the story is not taken seriously and the gamer remembers the game is all in good fun, they will love it. Personally, this is very mild to me, and since the review is subjective, I will give my subjective thoughts.

Intro/story score:  9/10 (Great)

Gameplay:

*As stated this review will cover both the Ps Vita and PS4 versions. This will be the section to tell the difference. *

Gal*Gun does well to give you instructions in all of the mechanics and tutorials for everything. I won’t focus on this. The game does a good job on it. I will explain how the game feels and plays on both PS Vita and PS4.

You go to locations in the school and you use your pheromone shot on the ladies. This satiates their love/lust after you. There are one shot moves in which you target a certain lady’s body part and they go down in one hit. This varies from the face, chest, privates, or legs.  Otherwise, it takes a few shots to take down a lady.

The school has a various of locations within it. You also have options as to which location to visit, and which path to choose as you play. You have somewhat freedom. In gameplay, it is treated like a light gun game, however, you cannot use a light gun. You are also restricted in movements. It is movement “on rails”. You are basically aiming and shooting. Occasionally you will do a Doki Doki shot on the ladies.

In Doki Doki mode, you raise the pleasure meters of the lady (or ladies) by touching certain spots. On the vita, this is all touch screen, you can rub or touch directly on the ladies. It makes Doki Doki mode very easy. On the PS4 you use the touch pad on the controller or the stick and buttons. It can be easy either way. Once you fill their pleasure meters….

… oh my. They reach extasy and give silly pleasure poses. It is very function and fits very well in the game as to what your main purpose is. You are trying to find true love, but you have to increase your powers in order to achieve it. This helps maximize those powers.

Another aspect of the gameplay is you are thrown into the minigame sections of the game. In these sections of the game, you are required to do something for your chosen lady (or ladies) to raise their affinity and save them from certain trouble.

 

In this particular case, your chosen lady is stuck in a window. You have to touch, push, pull, rub, and so forth to get her out the window. These mini games are varied as well. On the PS4 you can use the stick and buttons (to a certain point, then you have to use the touchpad), while on the vita its all touchscreen. I love how they utilized all the vita functions to fit what the game requires.

In this case, your chosen lady is possessed and you find out she has a thing for BDSM. You have to do what she says until the opportunity arrives to break the spell on her. What you do is basically rub, kiss, touch, and do other things of this nature. As the previous example, on the PS4 you can use the stick and buttons (up to a certain point, then use the touchpad), while its all touchscreen on the vita.

In this final example (I do not want to spoil everything in these fun minigames), the two ladies have to do a special ritual dance (which consists of poses from various of animes) and you have to help them in the ritual. What you do to help them is raise their energy level by touch certain areas. PS4 is the stick, buttons, and touchpad, and the vita is all touch screen.

To cover the difference between the vita and PS4. Visuals are more or less the same. PS4 has some improvements over the vita in that area, but they are remotely the same thing. The vita controls much easier since everything can be done via touch screen. PS4 you have a few different options, but the touchpad makes things a bit hard at times (especially at some minigames). However, I think a major difference is the load times. and frame rate.

*if playing on vita, get acquainted with this loading screen*

The loading on the PS4 is very minimal, 5-7 seconds at most. On the Vita, it can take 10-15 seconds at times. The difference is minimal, but it is there. You notice the limitations of the Vita and PS4 during gameplay a bit more. On PS4 you have the smooth 60 fps, with no frame drops. On Ps Vita, you have 30 fps with frame dropping depending on how many ladies appear on the screen (which can be quite a bit). It isn’t a deal breaker by any means, but it is there and obvious. If this isn’t an issue for you, you will have no issues playing it. Otherwise, the game is the same on both devices.

Gameplay score – 8/10 for both platforms. Each one has their own limitations (PS4 is control issues, Vita is visuals and how it runs at times)

Visual/Audio:

Visuals come in two different aspects in the game.

You get these images like above where you get fully voiced dialogue (Japanese voices) with English subs as the story is being delivered. Images are not animated, but you get the dialogue delivery.

You also get this type of visual which has fully animated characters on the screens which move around, speak, change emotions, and so forth. The story is also told in these visuals as in the background that is the actual level where it takes place. It is fully rendered and not a cardstock image.

Finally, you get the gameplay visuals. You will notice the story visuals and gameplay visuals are one in the same. Everything looks nice and is fully rendered. No matter what platform you play on, this is all the same either device. It is a very welcome change and you can tell that Intl Creates took their time with this. Personally, I think this looks great, but it could look better in some of the character visuals. Regardless, it is wonderful.

Visual score: 9/10 (great)

Audio Wise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naB-clVEti8

Audiowise, I do have some gripes with. The voices are on point and wonderful. They do the sounds at the right moments during gameplay, and you can feel the emotions behind the voices. That being said, my gripes lie with the music. I always look at music first to see if its good. This game feels like it has 6 songs at most (I could be wrong, but it’s how I feel). The song posted above is the same song on EVERY level. Not during, battles, but just the same song of every level (up until the last chapter). The battle theme is different, final chapter has a different song, then main menu and shops have different songs. IT is lacking hard. I hope you love the song posted above, it will be burned into your brain as you play it.

You would think that throughout the game, you would get different songs based on different locations and whatnot. That is not the case here and it sucks that the music and audio are easily the weakest points of the game. The voices do well, but if the music pulls you out with the little variety there is to it, it doesn’t really work well.

Audio score: 7/10 (so-so, good voice acting and delivery, bad repetitive music).

Replay Value:

The replay value is high here. You have multiple paths. You get multiple endings in the multiple paths. You have tons of costumes to unlock. In addition to unlocking you have student/teacher files to unlock, and other things as well. Simply put, the game has a bunch to unlock and a bunch to do.

Replay Value score: 10/10 (rare; a lot to do and a lot to unlock. Game will have you coming back)

Fun Factor:

Is the game fun? This is always the million dollar question. Yes, I had a ton of fun with this game. I did not take the game seriously at all and had a ton of fun. It is very rare that games can grab you like this and get you addicted. It is simple gameplay attached to a very simple process as to how it plays out. It wraps together with everything else in the game and delivers on the fun. I can see people getting bored quickly on the game because it can get repetitive. However, nothing truly felt boring to me in the game (except for the music). I had my fun with the game and probably invested nearly 30-40 hours into the game. It is just a silly fun game, and I like it like that.

Fun Factor score 9.5/10 (great; true fun to be had but can be repetitive depending on your preferences).

Overall/Closing thoughts:

Gal*Gun: Double Peace is a silly fun game that is not meant to take seriously. I understand this game had controversy and some backlash before it came out to the states. However, if you do not take it seriously and just have fun, the game delivers on the funniness. I enjoyed my time with it, and it does have its issues. However, Gal*Gun: Double Peace is probably one of the most fun times I had in a video game this year. It is just silly mindless fun and I took it for that. It was great, and I do recommend eventually picking it up if possible. I can see this become a very rare physical title in the near future.

In the wave of super serious games with their messages attached to it, I am glad a game like Gal*Gun: Double Peace can release stateside. It is a breakaway from all of that and just simple fun. It is truly an unappreciated gem in a very flooded market of super serious games.

Until next time, Mgs2master2 out

Gal*Gun: Double Peace score breakdown
Intro/story score: 9/10 (Great)
Gameplay score – 8/10
Visual score: 9/10
Audio score: 7/10
Replay Value score: 10/10
Fun Factor score 9.5/10

Overall Score: 8.75/10

A fun game that is made just to have fun.