Full Metal Schoolgirl review: The mean streets of production
Sometimes, while scrolling through the eShop, you come across a game that promises a life-changing experience. Sometimes it lives up to the hype, and sometimes it doesn’t—but at least you get a few laughs along the way. That was my experience with **Full Metal Schoolgirl**, the second game released in October 2025 from Yuke’s, the former WWE developer also known for occasional work on Earth Defense Force.
While the game bursts with energy and sports a dynamite sense of humor, the actual gameplay feels deeply undercooked and fails to stand out in an oversaturated genre.
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### When Even the Work Bots Are Sick of the Boss’s Crap
It’s a shame, because the premise of Full Metal Schoolgirl couldn’t be more timely. The game’s world is dominated by corporate ownership, which has solved a labor crisis with cyborgs—an almost fully inorganic workforce that dutifully pushes papers, taps away at computers, and handles all manner of tasks without complaint. However, this has led to widespread abuse.
Enter a pair of colorful cyborg ladies, far more vibrant than their legions of co-workers, who have finally had enough. It’s time for revenge.
To take down the evil CEO of Meternal Jobz, these “Machine Girls” must climb a 100-floor skyscraper, dismantle the company’s entire management hierarchy, and ultimately confront the man at the top.
At first glance, Full Metal Schoolgirl looks like low-rent, anime-flavored cheesecake, but it’s actually a chaotic workplace satire dressed in that aesthetic. The humor shines through surprisingly well—I personally preferred the dub to soak in all the sad, office-culture-filtered whining from the enemies I fought.
The theme song is absolutely unhinged, and every aspect of the localization is on fire. The game’s world-building is a riot, and I can’t praise the translation team enough for their work.
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### A Promise Unfulfilled
I was ready for a blast based on the game’s vibes alone, but unfortunately, I walked away wishing such a promising premise was attached to a better game.
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### Railroaded Roguelike
Full Metal Schoolgirl is a roguelike—because apparently, every game needs to be a roguelike nowadays. I may be exaggerating, but in a market that now includes something as formidable as **Ninja Gaiden 4**, a little variety would be welcome.
The game’s problem isn’t its genre choice, but the execution within that genre. The progression system is unapologetically generic and soulless.
Between runs, you collect resources to increase your stats. As your stats improve, you’re better equipped to survive boss encounters, which lets you progress further up the floors. That’s it. That’s the entire system.
You unlock a few new abilities over time, but these feel more like gated tutorials than meaningful shifts in gameplay.
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### Barebones Action and Minimal Variety
The gameplay mechanics are painfully simple and rarely change. You have a few basic attack combos and textbook weapon behaviors. Everything else you encounter is passive—small stat modifiers like slightly faster stamina regeneration or minor health adjustments.
Weapons appear randomly between rooms but never add anything beyond minor numerical stat changes. This is the bare minimum of what a roguelike can be, a standard the genre surpassed long ago as it evolved with fresh ideas, cross-genre mashups, and more complex gameplay.
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### Brainless Battling
Full Metal Schoolgirl most closely resembles user-made roguelike maps or islands you might find in Fortnite. You start in a lobby, picking from a floating selection of weapons, then go through the motions fighting unchanging, generic enemies with basic, uninspired mechanics.
Unlike Fortnite, though, you aren’t grinding for a battle pass or cosmetic unlocks—you’re just stuck doing the same cycle because that’s what’s on the menu.
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### Final Thoughts
I entered Full Metal Schoolgirl with hope and a simple pitch for this review: “Hello, I want to play this because it looks insane.” It sounded like a fun, silly romp, and the early promise of a cathartic, satirical strike against our soon-to-be-apocalyptic labor practices had me excited.
But then the dreaded loop set in, and I realized I was facing several hours of grinding and bland, underwhelming combat.
So it goes.
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**Full Metal Schoolgirl** launched on October 23, 2025, for PC, Nintendo Switch 2, and PlayStation 5. A Switch 2 review code was provided by the publisher.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146472/full-metal-schoolgirl-review-score
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