Sometimes, while just scrolling through the eShop, you come across a game that holds the promise of a life-changing experience. Occasionally, it doesn’t pan out the way you hoped, but you still get a few laughs along the way. That was my experience with Full Metal Schoolgirl, the second game released in October 2025 from former WWE developer—and occasional Earth Defense Force contributor—Yuke’s. While the game bursts with energy and boasts a dynamite sense of humor, its actual gameplay feels deeply undercooked and fails to stand out in an oversaturated genre.
When Even the Work Bots Are Sick of the Boss’ Crap
It’s a shame, because the pitch is perfect for our moment. The world of Full Metal Schoolgirl is dominated by corporate ownership, which has solved a labor crisis with cyborgs: a nearly fully inorganic workforce that cheerfully pushes papers, taps away at computers, and handles whatever other tasks are needed without stopping.
Of course, this has led to all kinds of abuse. Two cyborg ladies, far more colorful than their legions of coworkers, have decided enough is enough. It’s time for revenge.
To defeat the evil CEO of Meternal Jobz, these “Machine Girls” must climb a 100-floor skyscraper, take down the company’s entire management structure, and eventually face off with the man himself.
At first glance, the game may look like low-rent, anime-flavored cheesecake, but Full Metal Schoolgirl is more about chaotic workplace satire than anything else. It’s surprisingly funny—to the point where I favored the dub to fully appreciate all the sad, office culture-filtered whimpering from the enemies I was taking down. The theme song is absolutely unhinged, and pretty much every aspect of the localization is on fire. The world-building flavor of this game is a riot, and I cannot commend the localization team enough.
I was ready to have a blast based on the vibes alone, but unfortunately, I ended up desperately wishing this premise was attached to a better game.
Railroaded Roguelike
Full Metal Schoolgirl is a roguelike—because in this world, everything has to be a roguelike, as if decreed by some unwritten video game law. I’m exaggerating, of course, but in a world that now includes Ninja Gaiden 4, it would be nice to have a little more balance.
That’s not this game’s fault, but what is its fault is its unapologetically generic and dull progression structure. If you jump into this after playing something like Hades, you’ll find yourself wondering when you tripped and fell into a time machine.
Between runs, you collect resources and spend them to make your numbers go up. As your numbers increase, you’re better equipped to survive boss encounters, which then let you push the level numbers higher too. That’s it—no frills, no surprises.
There are a few new abilities you unlock along the way, but they hardly change the core gameplay and feel more like tutorialized gatekeeping than actual variety.
To make matters worse, the action mechanics are painfully simple and seldom change. You get a few basic physical attack strings and weapons that behave in textbook fashion. Everything else you find are passive modifiers impacting your stats in small ways—like stamina regeneration speed or slight changes to maximum HP. Weapons appear between rooms but don’t add or subtract from the game experience beyond number adjustments.
It’s the bare minimum of roguelike design—something the genre has long since surpassed through new ideas, mashups, and more complicated mechanics.
Brainless Battling
What Full Metal Schoolgirl most reminds me of are user-made roguelike rooms or islands in Fortnite. You have a lobby housing all the different weapons you can snag to start with, floating there for you. Then, you go through the motions—fighting unchanging, generic enemies using basic, uncomplicated mechanics—just to return to the beginning and make your numbers go higher so you can muscle your way a bit further down the line.
But unlike games with battle passes where you pay extra cash to grind toward unlocking a character like Scooby-Doo or a cheeseburger with legs, here you’re just doing it because that’s what’s on the menu.
I had a lot of hope going into Full Metal Schoolgirl. My pitch for this review was simple: “Hello, I would like to play this because it looks insane.” It seemed like some fun silliness to indulge in, and as it got started, the promise of a cathartic, satirical takedown of our soon-to-be-apocalyptic real-life labor structures had me ready for something special.
Then the dreaded Loop kicked in, and I realized I was in for several hours of grinding and bland, chicken-coded combat.
So it goes.
Full Metal Schoolgirl is available October 23, 2025, for 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
