Gal*Gun: Double Peace is a rail shooter for the Vita, PS4 and PC. If you have more than one of those systems and this game interest you, then opt for anything other than the Vita version. This is because while playable, the Vita version has optimization issues. The load times are long, it takes something like two minutes to even boot up the game, and then each level takes another minute or so. While the stages are short, being only around five minutes long each, it’s unacceptable. The worst thing is that there is an equally long load time before event scenes.
The story is ridiculous which matches the concept of the game. Taking place in Japan, there was a rumor that a few years ago, a male student suddenly gained popularity and all the female students fell in love with him. He eventually said yes to one of them and found his true love, and an angel was said to have been sighted. Naturally, this urban legend ends up happening to the main character, Houdai. However, the angel screws up and he gets an enhanced version of this, 32 times more powerful in fact, and so must find his true love by the end of today or never experience love again.
Therefore, the game spans over one day and has Houdai walking to school and then going through the school to find that person. All the while, all these female students (and not a male student to be seen anywhere) runs up to him to claim him for herself. To wade through these obstacles, Houdai has access to a pheromone shot, and shooting the female students will give them euphoria. This renders them harmless, since if they manage to get close to Houdai, they’ll actually damage his HP.
The controls are easy but will take quite a bit of time to get used to. The left stick moves the reticule and the square button will shoot. The left shoulder button will slow the movement of the reticule while the right will activate Doki Doki Mode. In Doki-Doki Mode, it is a mini-game where you use the touchscreen to make the girls pretty much explode with pleasure and subdue every other girl on the screen in the process.
Unfortunately, the shooting mechanics is clunky. It doesn’t help that the Vita suffers from framerate drops that makes it even harder to aim fast and accurately. It is recommended to go straight into the options menu upon starting and lower the sensitivity of the aiming, it’ll help a lot. You’ll still have fun but you will be struggling in certain sections. Zooming in allows you to see through certain objects and get a head start on shooting a girl, or even one that you would have missed otherwise.
The rail shooter nature means that it won’t necessary wait until you shoot all girls before moving on. If you wait for girls to come closer, they may never come. Or you only get a one or two second chance to shoot something before moving on. Since you take on the role of Houdai sneaking through the school, the camera pans in such a way that it feels like you are looking left and right before moving on, peeking around corners and crawling on the floor. It works well to put you into his perspective.
While the story mode is short, it features multiple routes such that are each around two hours long, so it will expand into a roughly 10 hour game. There are multiple love interests that you can pick, and within each chapter, you can select a different stage to help stave off the repetitiveness. Getting the true ending takes some effort since it requires both a minimum rank for your performance, as well as selecting all the correct responses to max out the love interest’s affection. Going through a character’s route is as simple as literally picking that route at the beginning of the game. While there are the predetermined heroines, there is a route that allows you to effectively choose the girl that you want your true love to be, which is an interesting take.
There is a simple affection system during the story (and it resets each time you play), which is based on dialogue selection. In certain stages, you can also pick alternate paths. It literally pauses and allows you to choose between left or right. Unfortunately, the localization is not ideal. There are a lot of scenes where the characters will speak (particularly in mini-games) but there will be no subtitles. The same can be said for the weak points of girls, since each girl has one of four weak points (head, bust, waist or legs) and hovering over them will supposedly show you which one. You end up having to rely on the color coding because it’s left in Japanese. As you play the game and get familiar, you’ll know what each of these prompts will mean.
There are some really annoying and cheap levels. The minigames where you are shooting tiny targets that are constantly moving is frustrating, especially if you are aiming for perfect scores. This wouldn’t be so bad if you can either retry them straight away (the other levels allow you to do this) or if it saves right before, but no, if you want another shot, you have to do the level right before it. The minigames outstay their welcome, and maxing the last one out for a true ending is ridiculous and very poor game design.
Overall, despite its flaws, Gal*Gun: Double Peace is a fun game that you don’t have to take seriously. The concept is so crazy that it works. Sure the Vita version doesn’t run the best and it is annoying load times, and the clunky shooting mechanics can feel messy at first. However, once you get used to it after a few rounds, it is a really enjoyable experience.
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