Sometimes you come across a game while scrolling through the eShop that promises a life-changing experience. Sometimes it doesn’t quite pan out the way you’d hoped, but you still manage to get a few laughs along the way. That’s exactly what happened when I tried *Full Metal Schoolgirl*, the second game released in October 2025 from former WWE developer—and occasional Earth Defense Force contributor—Yuke’s.

While this game bursts with energy and boasts a dynamite sense of humor, the actual gameplay feels deeply undercooked and fails to stand out in an already oversaturated genre.

### When Even the Work Bots Are Sick of the Boss’s Crap

It’s a shame because the premise is perfect for our moment. The world of *Full Metal Schoolgirl* is dominated by corporate ownership, which has solved a labor crisis by creating cyborgs — a nearly fully inorganic workforce that happily pushes papers, taps away at computers, and tackles other tasks without rest.

Unsurprisingly, this has led to widespread abuse. That’s where our two colorful cyborg protagonists step in. Tired of the exploitation, these “Machine Girls” have decided that enough is enough. Their mission? Take down the evil CEO of Meternal Jobz by climbing a 100-floor skyscraper, dismantling the company’s entire management structure, and eventually facing off with the man himself.

While the game might appear to be low-rent anime-flavored cheesecake at a glance, it’s actually a chaotic workplace satire at heart. The humor is surprisingly sharp — I especially appreciated the English dub, which lets you hear the enemies’ sad, office-culture-filtered whimpers as you take them down.

The theme song is absolutely unhinged, and nearly every aspect of the localization hits the mark. The world-building and flavor are a riot, and I cannot praise the translation team enough for bringing this quirky world to life.

### Railroaded Roguelike

*Full Metal Schoolgirl* is a roguelike because, in today’s gaming landscape, everything seems to be a roguelike—like it’s some unspoken rule. I exaggerate, but with a world that now includes *Ninja Gaiden 4*, a bit more variety would be welcome. While that’s not the game’s fault, what *is* its fault is a relentlessly generic and uninspired progression structure.

If you’re coming from a polished roguelike like *Hades*, you’ll wonder if you somehow fell into a time machine. Between runs, you collect resources to upgrade your stats, boosting your chances of surviving boss encounters and advancing levels. That’s basically all there is to it.

Sure, you unlock a few new abilities along the way, but they barely affect core gameplay and feel more like tutorialized gatekeeping than meaningful additions.

### Simplistic Action Mechanics

Adding to the disappointment, the combat mechanics are painfully simple and rarely change. You have a handful of basic physical attack combos and standard weapons that behave exactly as expected.

Most other elements are passive modifiers—tiny tweaks to stamina regeneration or slight adjustments to maximum HP. Weapons appear between rooms but never add or subtract from the overall experience beyond numerical stat changes.

This is the bare minimum of what a roguelike should be in textbook terms, a standard that’s been eclipsed long ago as the genre has evolved to embrace new ideas, mashups, and complexity.

### Brainless Battling

What *Full Metal Schoolgirl* most reminds me of are user-made roguelike maps or islands on Fortnite. You start in a lobby where you pick from an array of floating weapons, then you battle unchanging, generic enemies using your very basic mechanics, all to grind your stats higher and muscle your way ever so slightly closer to the end.

Unlike Fortnite’s paid battle passes that encourage grinding to unlock wild cosmetics like Scooby-Doo or walking cheeseburgers, here you’re grinding simply because it’s the only option on the menu.

### Final Thoughts

I went into *Full Metal Schoolgirl* with high hopes. My initial pitch to myself was simple: “Hello, I want to play this because it looks insane.” It promised some fun, silly indulgence—and when it started, the potential for a cathartic, satirical takedown of our looming apocalyptic labor reality had me hooked.

Then came the dreaded Loop. Several hours of grinding and bland, chicken-coded combat later, I was left wanting more.

*Full Metal Schoolgirl* is available from October 23, 2025, on PC, Nintendo Switch 2, and PlayStation 5. A Switch 2 code was provided by the publisher for this review.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146472/full-metal-schoolgirl-review-score