Yuke’s is known for two things: wrestling video games and Earth Defense Force. Their games tend to look a bit on the haggard side and push the limits of consoles by piling tons of stuff on screen, frame rate be damned. They’ve come a long way since their humble beginnings producing Simple Series budget wrestling games on the first two PlayStation consoles, but now they have become the authority on tons of WWE releases.
Yuke’s has always been a working developer. They aren’t exactly “auteur” designers, but you could always catch glimpses of their quirkiness and personality in their EDF games. Their next game would be seemingly a satirical jab at crunch culture in Japan, while also exploring the parasocial relationship nature of video streamers and their audience, with a bit of anime flair.
Do you think you have the stamina to marathon 100 floors of the Maternal Jobz Corporation? What awaits at the top? Find out in our Full Metal Schoolgirl review!
FULL METAL SCHOOLGIRL
Developer: Yuke’s
Publisher: D3 Publisher
Platforms: Windows PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: October 23, 2025
Price: $49.99
In 2089, Japan has become an industrialized hellscape where the sum of all the worst cyberpunk fears has come true. People are commoditized and become drone-like workers to their corporate overlord. It’s gotten so bad that people have become full-on cyborgs to become more efficient workers and guzzle down energy drinks so they can keep working.
Never mind this scathing criticism of Japanese work culture and unregulated cost maximization; all you need to know is that you get to choose which roboticized anime girl you want to play as. The opening plot details unfold so quickly that I struggle to recall the protagonists’ motivations. This issue is compounded by the fact that these details are not revisited for many hours, causing the main story to fade into the background of the player’s memory, obscured by tedious gameplay.
I think these girls are out for some payback against this monstrous zaibatsu and want to take their grievances straight to the company’s top brass. It’s hardly important because there are very few cutscenes that explain anything, and plot points are rarely mentioned at all.
You pick between two girls (it doesn’t matter which) and they begin their ascent while live-streaming their attack. The one you don’t pick reappears as a recurring mid-boss, and the game makes no effort at all at hiding their identity. The idea behind the live-streaming is that the girls must keep their viewers interested.
Engaging your audience requires you to take bold risks and embrace challenges upon entering a room. You have the choice to either accept a standard challenge or showcase your skills by tackling the more difficult option, which results in a larger payout from the chat. Challenges can range from defeating all enemies without taking a hit, finishing within 20 seconds, executing a perfect parry, or using only one type of weapon.
The rate at which the game throws these gimmicks kept me hooked, as the core game can be very monotonous. Even if you bungle the challenge, you still earn loot, but given the random nature of the gameplay, it’s usually worse than what you already have. With enough upgrades, players can reroll a chance for a better drop.
Machine girls can only be upgraded after defeating a new boss or after dying, but that comes with a penalty to the upgrade materials. Most stats are tied to things like stamina, HP, starting weapon levels, max healing items, disc slots, and powering up special moves. You can’t make the girls’ core strength or defense improve because it’s tied to their weapons and data discs, which are always in flux. After all, players are constantly finding new ones.
There are enough upgrades, pick-ups, weapons, and drones to keep the gameplay interesting and carry the basic combat. Fighting is pretty basic and is supported mostly by the loot-based weapons, which can be totally loaded with different effects and properties. Most of the time, the drops will suck, but the drive to keep going to see what you’ll get is effective enough to push through the tiresome battling.
This is no Lollipop Chainsaw… it isn’t even OneeChanbara. The melee is as basic as it gets. There isn’t any depth or expression for any of the close-range weapons. Every weapon has a basic combo and an aerial attack, and that’s all. This wouldn’t be so bad, but there is no lock-on mechanic, which makes fighting more of a hassle than it should.
You’ll be trying to dash and boost to get behind a foe, but then lose sight of them, leaving the machine girls to attack blindly. If there were a lock-on mechanic, it would add more depth and variety to the combat. It’s a weird oversight not to have one in a game that’s so heavily focused on fighting for hours.
The level design is soul-draining. It’s endlessly repeating hallways and boxy rooms, where, once in a while, you might have some light platforming challenges. This is a result of being a rogue-lite, but all I could think of is how I wished Full Metal Schoolgirls had thoughtfully designed stages and was a shorter game with some setpieces. It all ends up feeling like padding.
The melee action may be dull, but at least the shooting feels good. There is a decent amount of different guns, and the randomness of their properties results in weapons that feel like something out of a Borderlands game. While it is true, you may find yourself with a lemon, but you’re never stuck with one for long, which helps keep the action interesting.
By far the most polished aspect of Full Metal Schoolgirls is its graphics. It’s going for a sharp, cel-shaded anime style, which is easy on the eyes. The visuals are explosive, and with the huge amount of foes the game throws at you, it can be easy to get lost in the chaos, and the only thing you’ll think about is to keep moving to stay alive.
The graphics are not on the same level of expression as HiFi Rush, but they don’t feel like a low-budget effort. It’s curious that, for such an anime-centric game, it inconsistently removes panty shots with a dynamic void system. What’s weird is that you can still catch glimpses, and eagle-eyed gamers will notice that the machine girls wear different styles depending on which uniform they wear.
Given the weeby target demographic, having no panty shots feels out of place. The premise and art style seemed like it was built for gratuitous fan service, yet it’s probably the most chaste, sleaze-game featuring a mechanic with unbelievably massive gazongas.
Worse yet, Full Metal Schoolgirls’ metaphor doesn’t make sense. Representing humans as robots was likely done because the developers didn’t want to make a gory game. They probably thought the robot metaphor was a clever way to illustrate how workers are like automatons, but they aren’t depicted like that at all. If they wanted to make a point about workers being exploited, they probably should have made them like zombies being forced to work even after death.
Full Metal Schoolgirls can be a grueling experience. It doesn’t have great combat, but it looks great and the gimmicky rogue-lite mechanics are cleverly designed enough that it sinks its hooks in you… in small doses anyway. Like EDF, it revolves around the grind and takes an appealing premise, but ultimately overstays its welcome with tedious padding. Maternal Jobz should have had 50 floors instead of 100, and it feels like 1,000.
FULL METAL SCHOOLGIRL was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a code provided by D3 Publisher. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. FULL METAL SCHOOLGIRL is now available for Windows PC (via Steam), PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2.
