I'd like to thank D3PUBLISHER for the review key to this title.

I've played games from many countries, but Japan tends to produce some of the wackiest game concepts I've ever experienced. Full Metal Schoolgirl is definitely absurd, but it's also pretty fun.

The plot is that in the future of 2089, Japan is an industrial powerhouse, at the cost of forcing overwork nationwide. You play as one of two cybernetically enhanced school girls, each of whom had their fathers killed while working for Meternal Jobz. They both want to avenge their parents while tearing down the company that literally worked them to death. On top of having to face down various robotic fiends, Meternal will force your heroines to face the "Working Dead", officer workers reanimated as combat cyborgs, so even the death of their original bodies cannot stop them from being slaves to the corporate machine.

The gameplay objective is to scale a 100-floor-high office building. The floors change appearance every time you scale a floor, so no two floors are the same. If you fall in battle, you start from the ground floor and have to try again. In between attempts, you can receive enhancements to your abilities to make further attempts easier.

Weirdly enough, your attempts are livestreamed via social media, and performing certain requests (like taking out all foes in a set number of seconds) can earn you bonus money for purchasing augments. Your internet rating can rise over time, ensuring more and more money for future attempts.

The primary gameplay loop is as follows: Starting from the ground floor (or via certain levels of the building if you progressed far enough to get the elevator keys), you must scale the building until you reach the top. You start with some basic guns and melee weapons that you can upgrade as you scale floors. Various cybernetic beings, automated gun turrets, and various traps are obstacles and enemies you must either destroy or evade. There are certain "boss" floors, where an unusually difficult enemy must be defeated, unlocking an elevator key that allows resuming progress on a later run at their floor instead of starting from the bottom floor.

Graphically, the game has a cel-shaded arcade theme with a strong infusion of anime visuals and, fitting the theme, cyberpunk techno aesthetics. Since this game's premise is based on a very silly theme, animations are wacky and very over the top as well. Overall, the graphics more than do the job of setting the game's tone and have no obvious defects.

Music and sounds are deep into the cyberpunk techno genre. The game voice-overs are in either English or Japanese, and the voice acting sounds pretty good in either language.

Full Metal Schoolgirl supports either keyboard and mouse input or any Steam-supported controller. The controls are pretty straightforward and easy to learn for the most part. It's worth noting, unfortunately, that the jumping controls are a bit annoying, especially since there are some bottomless pit areas and the jumping feels a bit stiff. The camera is tied to how you move your character, and while this is generally fine for combat, it can make the jumping segments a bit tedious since you can have trouble guessing your depth.

Stability is pretty good. This title runs natively on Microsoft Windows. I also got it running with little trouble on Linux and the Steam Deck out of the box. This is not an overly demanding game, so as long as you clear the minimum requirements, it should run quite smoothly.

A few personal notes. While the primary gameplay loop is pretty simple, this game has a lot of fun little quirks I found interesting and amusing. In some rooms, there is a TV you can interact with. Doing so will allow you to purchase a Battery (used for regaining health) from a TV shopping channel. Boss enemies can be taken down with a special move called a "Retirement Attack", just to further satirize the office worker parody this game has going. Finally, it isn't just enemies that are worth destroying; random objects can reward resources, sometimes quite a lot. Once you figure out all these little secrets, it adds a nice meta-layer to the gameplay that is interesting in its own right.

Morally, there is a fair bit of concerning content.

Violence is mainly committed via cyborgs using blades and projectile weapons against one another. There are mentions of blood in the game's rating, but it looks a lot more like oil in-game. Regardless, the exact degree of humanity in the cyborg enemies is left vague. At any rate, there is a lot of this "blood" when enemies are killed. Violence is generally in self-defense, though it must be stated that the player will have to initiate combat, and they are the ones to be violent first.

Language is generally around PG-13 level, with frequent mentions of d*mn, h*ll, b**t**d, and so on. There are some sexual innuendos, mainly from the scientist Professor Hakase, who is the one you pay in money and materials in intermissions to upgrade your abilities. The female characters are all in revealing outfits. Professor Hakase is the worst offender, essentially wearing bikini-style underwear and an open lab coat. She all but states she's into women, and the scene where she upgrades your abilities looks incredibly sexual with implied lesbian BDSM connotations.

This is set in a pretty sci-fi world. The "Working Dead" are basically the sci-fi equivalent of zombies, though unlike actual zombies, they do display some degree of residual sapience.

Morally, your protagonist wants to avenge the death of their father and wants to bring down an inhumane corporation that turns its workers into slaves via cybernetics. It's heavily implied that the general state of the world is such that laws are useless to stop this. Regardless, your method of interfering with these evil acts is essentially corporate terrorism. The fact that your actions are being broadcast on social media as a form of entertainment makes it clear that your lawless acts are further being promoted as acceptable for an entertained audience, who donates money to see it continue. Professor Hakase also notes her love of alcohol a few times.

Overall, this is a pretty entertaining game with a funny premise, albeit the price being asked is about double what I would have paid, given the level of content. Technically, the bad jumping physics aside, this is pretty solid. Morally, this is a game not fit for any save mature audiences, given the themes. Full Metal Schoolgirl is far from the weirdest game I've played, but I'll still recommend it for being fun if the high price doesn't turn you away.