Full Metal Schoolgirl Review – IGN
Blog Andrew Joseph 25 Oct , 2025 0
First impressions are important, right? Full Metal Schoolgirl opens quickly in an anime style to the tune of a Japanese rock song and quickly pulls you into a third-person shooter action game. It immediately established its irreverent attitude and silly anti-capitalist satire in a futuristic world where robots are exploited and dubbed “work dead” — in order to take down a CEO villain, I thought to myself, “Oh my god, yes.” But halfway through my second run of this roguelike, it dawned on me that there wasn't much going on in Full Metal Schoolgirl; it was a boring and repetitive shooter with a gameplay foundation that wasn't good enough to save it from the 100 An extremely tedious and unrewarding grind in a tower.
In the intro sequence where you break into the evil Maternal Jobz Corporation, you choose to play as Ryoko or Akemi, two robot anime girls who are both functionally and aesthetically human – the one you choose ends up becoming the protagonist, and the other is captured and integrated into the story as you progress. They're seeking revenge on the company and its CEO for making their dad work himself to death, and the story's initial disdain for corporate bullshit reminded me of that in a way hi-fi dash. That's about it, though, before things devolve into annoying quips and no real plot to motivate each run; like much of Full Metal Schoolgirl, it's not built on good ideas, and its superficial execution soon wears off.
I have a high tolerance for anime tropes, and here it vacillates between charming and eye-rolling, leaning more often into the latter. That's not just because of its crude innuendos, but because of its constant shout-outs that don't exude any memorable personality in its entertaining premise. I'm also not here to stop attention from the creepy behavior of miniskirts or doctors who promote your skills – that's not necessary. The moments where its metaphors really work are at the beginning and end, as if everything in between is ignored in the process, and that's where you spend most of your time.
Each floor consists of a series of narrow corridors filled with enemy fodder and environmental hazards, as well as square office building rooms that serve as small battle arenas. The latter gives you optional challenges, like clearing a room within a time limit or not using healing to get extra money to level up. But that overall formula doesn't fundamentally change across its 100 procedurally generated floors. The views from each floor may be slightly different, but the structure remains the same. While they may throw different enemy types at you, like drones, bomb-mounted robots, turrets, and mechanized dogs, no amount of mixing and matching them can make up for the mediocre implementation.
It's easy to see how procedural generation can conflict with itself when certain doors lead to a completely empty room, or when combat challenge prompts are inconsistent with the way the encounter is set up. This haphazard level design is very basic at best, frustratingly confusing at worst, and it persisted for most of the 14 hours I spent completing the campaign. Boss battles feel like the end of a level, and while relatively refreshing after bombing the same areas over and over again, their attack patterns are very obvious and easy to overcome. Still, I'd avoid area-of-effect explosions and throw my ultimate (or so-called punishing attack) at cavernous bosses instead of mindlessly repeating the same floor of enemies, so I do wish there weren't so few of these types of fights.
Defeating a boss gives you a key that allows you to start subsequent runs on their floor, which is a godsend to avoid unnecessary repetition – however, they're one-offs. If you get sidetracked after using a key, and you don't defeat the next boss 20 floors above the next key, be prepared to start at a lower level, man. While this raises the stakes, as any worthy roguelike should, the disappointment of having to slog through the most boring parts to get back to where you left doesn't feel worth it. Although it gets easier to upgrade your stats and abilities with the materials and money you earn with each run, it still takes a lot of time to ascend large chunks of floors.
I'm excited that this is at least an anime style shooter, it's something I've been looking for ever since freedom war and Sword Art Online: Deadly Bullet (This doesn't fully exploit the premise). Often, playing Full Metal Schoolgirl feels like a chore, but I can appreciate the unintentional fun its mechanics can provide at times. With some specific guns and melee weapons at my disposal, I was able to get into a groove, shut down my brain, and mow down hordes of enemies. While most gun encounters are designed in a very counterintuitive way, an advanced electric chain gun or a chunky plasma ball launcher has just the right weight and feedback you want from a shooter. That said, the movement itself is a bit too sticky for this type of game, especially when there are annoying platforming sections. Melee attacks and jumping responses are a bit sluggish, even though running through crowds with a katana's dash attack or the aftershock of a Labrie ax can be satisfying.
It's moments like this that start to shine, albeit more frequently on the final floor. The rate at which truly challenging encounters appear, combined with the incorporation of weapons that are fun to use, allows Full Metal Schoolgirl to be completed with more difficulty than the sheer difficulty required to achieve its goals. It doesn't completely flip the script or break away from the conventions established in the beginning, but it starts to make the most of its basic parts, throwing almost everything at you at a brisk pace.
As I progressed, I naturally figured out which type of gun suited me – slow shotguns and rifles never made any sense, but powerful submachine guns that overheated quickly became my favorite. Learning to manage my energy meter for big ax combos, ducking, and hovering became even more important later in the game. Weaving your auto-attack drone (which you summon on cooldown) is key to saving a few runs. Clever use of the scarce battery supply (which is your healing item) was also a factor in how I approached combat.
The rarity of the gear you get from challenge rooms is randomized, which leads to some pointless moments where I cleared a challenge room only to encounter common-level rare items that pale in comparison to the rare and legendary gear from earlier floors. At least this makes modifiers make sense, as they can affect how your health, energy, movement, and damage output work, especially when the shields you equip have a considerable impact on your survivability.