Some of the best premises are out there. Maybe a guy pretends to be sheriff and enforces his own style of law or someone creates an amusement park based off the ability to do anything. For games, the why is less important than the adventure it brings. It doesn’t really matter why Mario is jumping around or Kirby enjoys sucking things up, as much as their adventures are fun. For Gal*Gun 2 it’s the novelty of shooting girls without harm being brought to them. With the original being interesting, if at times questionable, is the sequel better or more of the same?
Gal*Gun 2 starts with a premise you’d expect from a bad horror movie or another questionable source. Basically, a mysterious application appears on your phone, one that can not be removed, along with a mysterious package including a special headset and gun. The headset allows you to see an angel named Risu and other demons terrorizing students. Since angels and demons have a deal to not attack one another, you need to fight them to save the school and ultimately remove the headset. Where the story and really the game in general start to go off the rails, is by doing just that, taking a rail shooter off the normal path.
Like a lot of games, players progress in Gal*Gun 2’s story by interacting with other characters. These interactions will unlock additional scenes, alter the path you’re on and change the experience. The downside is most of the interactions are pretty boring and there is only so much you can do before you enter a mission.
As I alluded to before, gameplay is similar to a rail shooter, without the rail part. You stand around, girls appear from various directions, you shoot them to stop their advance or as they’re leaving and then pick a new spot to stand until the level ends. If there is one issue, it’s that the stakes are pretty low.
Most of the time a decent shot will make encounters a joke and there simply isn’t enough difficulty to add excitement. The average stage is just, look at incoming threats, give them the once over to find the weak spot and then shoot them and repeat. At most demons might appear and need to be taken care of first but this is a fairly mindless experience that exists more for the novelty than excitement.
Where Gal*Gun 2 is amusing and an on the nose VR experience might make it more appealing, it’s hard to find a reason to play besides the underline concept. This likely won’t come as a surprise, the first game was like this too, it comes down to if your desire to play something like this. Because, if you don’t care for the novelty, there is absolutely nothing of note here.
[Editor’s Note: Gal*Gun 2 was reviewed on PS4 platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]