A shooter series with a light focus on ecchi and a big focus on humor, Gal Gun is one of the more unique games in the ecchi lineup. Each game features a high schooler suddenly getting immensely popular one day and needing to fend off hordes of girls while searching for his true love or risk being single for the rest of his life. In a way it’s a lesson on not taking the easy route through romance, in another way its a silly excuse for (kinda)attractive female zombies.

The Gal Gun series numbering is silly. You have the first game, just called Gal Gun on the PSP. That one is being remade and its new subtitle is Returns. Then you have Double Piece, the first English release. The third game is the VR game, simply called Gal Gun VR. Then you have Gal Gun 2, the fourth game in the series which is mostly just Gal Gun VR without the VR(and maybe a different story?).

I’m going to start with Double Peace as it was the first English release. Returns will be done after it comes out in short order to get what little word out that I can as its sales are very important to the ecchi market. Then 2 will happen when I get to it. VR isn’t happening for now. I don’t have a VR headset and not enough games require one that I want to play to make me consider getting one.

Double Peace

Our story starts with the main character getting shot by a full powered angel arrow shot out of a handgun. This has the power of 36 cupid arrows, and as such the MC now has all the attraction he will ever have for a single day. If he fails to find love before the day is out, he will never be attractive to anyone ever again. There is also a demon roaming the halls, making girls act cruel to those they are crushing on with the power of her spear. I feel like you could make a pretty dramatic story with this kind of plot, but this is a comedy. It dips into drama around once per route, but mostly it’s silly stuff. Probably my favorite part of the game is the MC and Ekoro, the angel that shot him, bantering. Her reactions to the stupid stuff you can say and do(like trying to play a card game to defeat a giant demon carrot that just swallowed your childhood friend) were easily the highlights of the game. Honestly I liked all the girls to some degree, except Maya. My main issue with her is how she talks being this incredibly slow thing that saps the flow out of any interaction with her. Her doll, Houdai-kun, on the other hand is my favorite voice in the game because it just sounds funny to me.

Anyway, the game starts with you being given the choice of pursing one of two childhood friends for MC’s true love. Shinobu, the pervy tsundere, or Maya, the quite one. After reading through these sisters routes, which are the most serious parts of the game, you unlock a threesome route and the Demon & Angel path. After the threesome path, the two sisters basically vanish from the game. The final path, the one you need to play the most for completion, does not feature the sisters at all. They serve as bosses in Demon and Angel, and nothing else. It’s really weird to me that Shinobu is essentially the main heroine with her location on the title screen and her route choice being first, but she’s really not important. Most of the actual game is with the demon hanging around making girls bully who they like(aka MC) and the angel sidekick.

The big thing at the end of the game is the ability to end with any of the around 70+ girls(aka the female zombies you shoot to orgasm with finger gun) who attend the MC’s school with him. While that might sound cool, it essentially amounts to around 5 unique voiced lines and two really easy boss fights in a row per run. I will admit they did a nice job with the roster, they have just enough uniqueness to be memorable within the game, whether it be from design or personality(which comes from phone quests, a short blurb on who they are, and how they talk). It’s basically a bunch of exaggerated one note characters you can pretend are the MC’s true love/ your waifu for the game. For a completionist, this is annoying. For casual play I would think it would be fun to end the game off by choosing your favorite from the crowd.

More on the zombies, I think the whole idea of filling the enemy roster with identifiable targets is cool. The amount of small changes they made to the clothes and character designs to pull it off are impressive for a small studio to. Ignoring alternate outfits and the secondary uniforms, they do a lot with the standard outfits to help people standout. You have the teachers wearing completely different things(which bothers me, if you change what the non main characters wear it changes all of them. Every other outfit the teachers wear the same thing as the students which makes them hard to spot), which helps identify them as they are the hardest normal enemies in the game. All the student council members have an armband, and they are the second strongest. Of course everyone can be beaten in one shot, which is thankfully not just the head all the time. Everyone’s weakpoint is consistent so if you remember who is who and who’s weakpoint is what, you can mow down the targets really quickly.

Now for the actual meat of the game, shooting girls to orgasm. Apparently being charged up with angel power gives the hero’s finger gun pleasure bullets or something silly like that, cause that is what he is using. Defeating a girl is making them orgasm and then moving on and doing it a good 50+ times per level to the around 15 or so girls that show up in that stage. A run of the game is around 13 stages, and you pick route at the end of stage 2, or what the game calls 1-2. Each route has a couple of unique stages and pulls from the 7 bosses the game has for you to fight. Mostly heroines with two giant monsters in the mix.

Along with your finger gun(used by clicking, this is a rail shooter after all) you also have two other special things. One is the zoom in sight, which lets you see quest items and vaguely through clothes though there is an item that lets you see through everything except round the boob and butt areas that you can buy only in the final route. The other is doki doki mode. Basically a bomb, this is the rubbing minigame that lets you clear the screen, though it has other uses for 100% and the final route. In doki doki, you can bring 1-3 girls depending on meter into a pocket dimension to rub or poke them. Find the good spot and they’ll fill up quick. When its done the girl explodes in pleasure and every other girl who is currently spawned will also be defeated. I don’t really think you should ever need this to fight(the game is not hard with a mouse and keyboard), but it can speed things up.

Back to the items bit, each run of the game is its own thing. Nothing carries over other then route unlocks and system save info, so any items you buy don’t get brought into new runs. This really isn’t an issue, since very few of the items are really useful. Probably the best is the measuring tape and the attack/hp ups, though I’ll get into why the measuring tape is useful in a bit. The stat changing items(and really the entire stat system) does not matter until the final route outside of a few dialogue choices for affection and maybe a few cgs differences, though I don’t think any cg variance is locked behind a stat gated answer. The rest of the buyables make you faster at getting away from the girls attacks/grapples. Useful for your first run or two, but after that you should have a good enough hang of things that you can ignore them. So buying things is basically unneeded outside of hp/attack until the final route, where everything changes.

So that whole every girl has an ending thing comes with a complete change to some systems in the game. First, each girl has an affection stat. Second, each girl has specific amounts they want your four personal stats to be at. Third, doki doki, and one hit kill shots boost affection for girls whom your stats make interested in you. Four, if a girl is at max hearts you can skip to the final boss and final doki doki’ing her to get her ending. So now your stats matter, doki doki is an affection bomb, and the money you get from sidequest and level completion really matters to help move your stats around. As kinda tiring as the final route gets for me to complete, I really like how much more it adds to the game system wise. Like now some of the mechanics make sense for why they existed.

Back to the core game experience. Each level is a rail shooter, basically the character moves and you just control a crosshair to shoot with. Each level has a few sidequests(shinies to shoot or zoom in on certain girls) and a few misc. things to shoot like pink slimes that boost your doki doki energy. Some levels have warning spots where the girls come in hordes while you stand still, but beyond those the games core stays pretty static. Shoot girls. As you move the crosshair over the girls, some colored text ill pop up. This is telling you there weakpoint to one shot them. There’s only four spots so it shouldn’t take long to figure out which color text means what body part. So you basically move the cursor over girls to find there weakspot and shoot and do that for around 5-10 minutes depending on level. There are boss fights to break this up, and I like the bosses. But I don’t really know how to describe them without way to much text so I won’t.

The last bit of gameplay I will go into is the final doki doki. Every route save for one ends with one of these. It takes the basic doki doki bomb thing and makes it slightly more complicated. Suddenly you are pleasuring the whole girl. You go spot to spot trying to fill a gauge on the left. You can stop at 50, but you basically always want the gauge full. Every girl’s sensitive spots are different, but all you have to do is move the cursor around. The bigger the text that shows up, the more points that spot is worth. You hold down the shot on that spot to gain more points on that shot. Eventually the girl will block the general area where you are shooting for a bit, so you go do another spot for two or so shots, or until she blocks the new place. Repeat until clear. It’s… one of the most sexual parts of the game and is actually kinda boring, probably because I’ve done it so many times.

A word on completion, you have this notebook with every girl in the game in it. For 100% you need to gold medal each girl. For all achievements you only need silver for reference sake, you don’t get anything for actually doing golds other then the actual gold medals. Each girl has three levels of medal, and you get a medal for 1. Filling out their their profile(find there student book hidden in a level, scan their 3 measurements with the zoom function which is what the tape measure is for, and doki doki them once) 2. Doki doki them in both of there alternate outfits(which you can change them into as there main whenever, but you basically want to be able to change them into the three options in the book) and 3. Get their ending. Any girls with story endings get gold just by getting true end, for every other girl, you have to do all three. Each one does do something. 2 lets you swap outfits in the profile screen. 3 lets you do their final doki doki in that screen as well as listen to their(un-subbed, voice only) confession line, and 1 maybe lets you enter the poser mode. That or silver lets you do that.

This is a comedy with lewd elements and not really a lewd game. It has things that are very much sexual, but I feel those are done mostly to be over the top rather then actually a turn on. For instance out of the 30 some cg, only two of them are even vaguely lewd. Unless tentacles kinda holding women turn you on, then I guess 8 of them? Kinda like Senran Kagura, the lewd is mostly in the gameplay. You have the see through clothes zoom, the whole shoot to orgasm, the rub bombs, final doki doki in its everything, and the minigames. For the first three routes involving the sisters, you have a small pool of minigames. Mostly about rubbing and then thrusting. The poses taken in these are outright sexual, with the first one you will likely encounter going from rubbing Shinobu’s butt into thrusting from behind her(into her skirt) because she got her big butt stuck in a window. 3 rotations of that. It’s very silly more then sexy, though its one of the more over the top ones that kinda slides into both.

The biggest reason I say that the above isn’t really sexy is probably the art style used for the characters. It’s a tad generic, or low quality. Probably a result of most of the models being from the Vita/PSP(apparently the series was first released for the 360 of all things. Not what I expected), and it being cheaper. That plus the mostly realistic curves of the cast makes the game not really stand out in any way. Like if you saw a screenshot of the gameplay of Gal Gun, you would likely not think its sexy. Cute, maybe? But honestly generic moe would probably be the best descriptor. Though if you like thick butts, there are plenty of those do to how the models pose when they fall down.

Now for the dlc talk. There’s two things about the dlc I want to mention, one is something people complain about the game a lot, the other is a pet peeve of sorts. The pet peeve is that the two bust size changing dlc are things you buy in between chapters in the story mode of the game, so there is no way to see the changes in the actual gallery. This isn’t a huge lost or anything, but it kind of sucks that the place you go to look at the models does not allow the player to actually use the dlc that affects the models physical traits.

The other dlc item of contention is the 80$+ see through clothes dlc. From what I understand, it was originally released as a joke, as honestly the item in game already does just as good a job as this overpriced dlc. People bought it though, and Inti Creates just let it hang around in the games ports. They don’t think it’s worth that price, at least I hope they don’t, and no one should think that is a serious thing you need to buy for full content. I consider it as a donation option of sorts, which is honestly what most dlc has become for games for me. Outside of actual game content like levels or characters, most dlc to me is just something like donating to the company for some small content bonus in my game(probably a result of getting out of triple A games for the most part). I get why people don’t like the overpriced dlc for this game, but some games are way worse and I don’t consider dlc practices when I look at how fun a game is. Unless they shove it in your face constantly or do some other stupid practice like locking the actual ending in dlc. So I just don’t care here. The pet peeve thing above honestly bugs me more.

Save for Gal Gun Double Peace

Save has all cgs and full girl database. There should be a save to each final level for all the routes mixed in with a lot of junk saves. Do to how score attack lets you replay basically any level/boss/minigame whenever you want I don’t see a need to make very precise saves.

Gameplay: 7/10 Eroticness: 5/10 Story: 3/10

Completion-What it took-

The goals this time is to get a gold medal on every girls profile in the roster, and get all cgs. Plus find the four unlockable outfits, though that is fairly easy.

Gold medals means finding the girls in both alternate outfits and doki doki’ing them, scan measurements, find their handbook, and get their ending. Unless they have a special ending, in which case just get their true end to gold medal them.

For all cgs, get all true ends. For some choices in the story routes, pick certain options to get cg variations and fail Shinobu’s first minigame for a few more unique variations. Get the bad end for both the Angel route and Demon route. Then in the anyone route, avoid getting any girl to max affection. Aka, get the no one ending. That is the hardest thing to do in the game.

All in all, see 9 unique full endings, then 70 generic endings. Not counting replays do to mistakes, it took 8+7 full runs of the game plus some for getting specific stuff.

Gal Gun Returns

The actual first game in the series, remastered and finally released in the west. It tells the story of Patako, the pink angel, screwing up her test to get a human into a relationship in basically the same way as Ekoro, just without a demon. Patako just accidentally left on multi fire mode on her bow. Then she landed 16 shots on our protagonist. After waking up and shooting for a bit, Patako approaches the man and explains basically the same thing that happened in Double Peace, get a girlfriend today or never. So after a mostly pointless personalty quiz, you choose your target immediately. You have a ghost seeing childhood friend, a rich girl, a younger girl in a band, and the close friend tomboy. You go through the first two levels and meet the girl you chose and learn this won’t be an easy task. They are immune to the popularity aura. Patako tries to circumvent this via doki doki mode, but the girls all have guardians, manifestations of some mental block on attraction to the main character. So now you need to get more popular power and make the girl like you more to hopefully break through the guardians by the end of the day.

From there the story changes completely based on the girl you picked and what they are doing that day. The thing is, this games first rerelease came with a mode called doki doki carnival. This is basically a followup on the girls true ends where it turns out just 1 girl liking you out of the entire female population is actually really rough. Basically Ekoro shows up to tell the player and Patako that 1. Your girlfriend is not permanently bound to you so you could find yourself without a partner ever, and 2. that Patako needs to fix her mistake completely and she kinda bullshits a plan together. Doki doki a bunch of girls and the energy should make you tolerable to them again. I actually found this mode more enjoyable to read then the main story. The snark between the three leads is nice, but really just having the general NPCs talk and chat and then seeing how they react to the protagonist because of Patako’s mistake was fun. Mostly the chatting, the reactions really sold how bad it would be to just suddenly be less then human or a criminal to everyone simply because your existence offends them. I had a lot of fun just seeing how odd the girls are when they aren’t going man crazy, even if it is mostly just simple slice of life stuff. It also includes a lot of small background things about patako and Heaven, like what the angel feather currency is and why Ekoro and Patako’s guns can do what they do to cause the plots.

As a game, it’s mostly the same as its sequel. The first obvious difference is that the zoom is garbage. It only zooms(no see through), and you cannot move the screen when zoomed at all.. There are no secrets to shoot through the levels, so I never found a use for the zoom. Second change is that instead of having a checkpoint stop after each level, this game just keeps going. It only saves after each minigame, which constitutes a stage. Each route is 5 stages long. The stages are mostly shorter then Double Peaces so it isn’t horrible to have longer between save points, but there are no real save points. You only have a quick save at each checkpoint to start back at that point. So no multiple saves for getting endings. Which means its a good thing every story scene in the game is replayable from the profile screen. Each main heroine has a memories sections where you can watch all the VN screens from their routes, including all three endings. Combined with the level select in score attack you can really play whatever you enjoy once you do everything once.

The biggest change for me though was doki doki mode. Double Peace had two styles, this only has one. Every doki doki is what is final doki doki in Double Peace. These take considerably longer then the other option you do in levels in DP, and depending on how often you use them here can double the games length. A single run of Returns is around an hour. With doki doki thrown in, add 30 minutes to an hour to that. These just slow the game down a lot. Honestly because I 100%ed Double Peace only a month before playing this I think the doki doki mode was far more annoyingly slow to me then it would have been otherwise. I was already sick of them going in after all.

So basically this a more arcadey style game then Double Peace. I think that’s a good way to look at it. This one expects a bit more time at once while Double Peace expects more time overall. Returns is the simpler game(it is the first one after all), making it better for quick sessions. Returns also shows you unlock progress more easily. In order to get everything in this game, you need to doki doki each girl 3 times, and those three must be in a single run. These are represented by stars near a girls name when you mouse over them. Golds stars represent current run doki doki’s, silver represent previous runs. Getting all three gives you their whole profile and lets you do the interact mode/doki doki whenver in the profile gallery.

One last thing to mention is the stats. You get that personality quiz from Patako right away and really the stats don’t do much. If you have stats the girl likes you get more answers that she likes in the dialogue. That’s really it. Each girl basically wants the same stats too. High three, low lust with only lust being different between the girls on how much they accept.

Ecchi is both better and worse. I’d say cg wise this isn’t going for ecchi at all. Returns does come with a huge amount of bonus art. Things like concept art, promotional art for stores to use, and even birthday images that probably went on twitter or some site like it as the whole cast had their birthdays. Only like 4-6 of these are remotely lewd, and there are 170~ of them.

The ecchi is better in the way that the models just look better, and have jiggle. I actually don’t remember if Double Peace had jiggle at all. Returns has it, and thanks to the what used to be dlc outfits, you can see them jiggle in far more outfits then a base Double Peace had to offer. I won’t say the models are great or even the graphics really, but it is definitely an improvement on Double Peace and from what I’ve seen of the original Gal Gun 1.

Overall I’d say Double Peace is the better game. While I like doki doki Carnival more then either of their stories, Returns only childhood friend/promise/meetings heroines aren’t a type of romance story I like. While Double Peace had a lot of that too, it also had Kurona and honestly more fun voice acting and characters. Gameplay wise Double Peace is a step up, meaning the only category I would give Returns is ecchi because of the better quality models. Returns is not bad, its just the first one.

Guess I should bring up the dlc thing for this game too. In the information for the release, it mentions “most of the dlc has been included.” Tow dlcs from the original game are missing. One is a collab outfit that they probably couldn’t get the rights for, some kind of swimsuit. Second is underwater mode. A change to the all route in score attack mode where the game move at less then half speed and all the girls are in swimsuits with snorkels on. Apparently it took 5 hours to finish and had no save points. Based on what I’ve heard, I don’t really care that this is missing. Doesn’t really sound like it adds much really.

PC save for Gal Gun Returns

All profiles complete, all titles gotten, all cgs purchased, and all doki doki carnival levels stared. Full cutscene replay and cg gallery.

Gameplay: 6/10 Eroticness: 6/10 Story: 4/10

Completion-What it took-

To fill the profile list you need to doki doki each enemy girl 3 times. Those three need to happen in a single run for that girl or her progress resets. You also need to doki doki each PE outfit and swimsuit to get the ribbon that shows a girl is done. Get all the pe and swimsuits doki doki’s done for a school year and you get that teachers pe and swimsuit set unlocked, as they never show up in them in game. That is the only reward for doing that by the way.

Next, do 12 runs of the main game minimum. One new ending per run. Each girl has 3, and in order to fill the replay bit in the profiles and get the main heroines ribbons, you need to get them. Then get the six endings to doki doki carnvial, three fails and three successes while also doing the mode 5 times to get all the final stage cutscenes in the gallery as well. In at least one run get 90,000 points before the final level to unlock the actual last endings pair. Fail it and then succeed if you don’t want to grind points again, as failing runs lets you restart the endings while getting the failure cutscene. Make sure to go back to finish those fail runs if you care about marking the actual levels as complete, as those only get marked when you complete a run and not by beating the level for some reason.

Finally, titles. I didn’t mention them above because they don’t do anything. You need all of them for an achievement and to fill the gallery bit they are in. Basically do runs with specific stat sets on routes you know you can get 600,000 points on. Don’t doki doki unless you know how to manipulate stats to get the titles you want. The way I did this was basically an extra 7 runs to get all titles on Aoi or Kaname routes as they offer enough points. That is everything.