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Gal Metal


radiofloyd
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I read Nintendo Life’s review of this at work today and decided to pick it up. So far it’s only been released on the Japanese eshop store. All the western press seem to refer to it as Gal Metal so that’s what I’ve called this thread, although I can’t find any official English title for the game, just the Japanese title ガルメタル (ga-ru-me-ta-ru). I was wondering why it wasn’t translated as Girl Metal, so I checked my dictionary and apparently “girl” is usually written ガール, a slightly longer “ga” sound, so maybe Gal Metal is the best translation. (Side note, Gal Gun is written differently again in Japanese, ギャル - gya-ru.)

 

 

Semantics aside, it’s a visual novel/rhythm action game. You can play using the joy cons, pro controller or even touch screen I think. I wanted to play with the joy cons as in this video:

 

 

But the game wouldn’t recognize my joycons (I realised afterwards this was because I had them set as Controller 2, you have it set them as Controller 1 in the Switch controller menu) so I played the first chapter using the pro-controller. For the rhythm-action part of the game, it’s not about matching button presses with on-screen icons, it’s more about keeping rhythm with the song and trying to string together combos, but as long as you are doing that you are free to play however you like (but if you haven’t built up a sufficient score by the end of the performance, you will fail). In the first chapter there were just two button presses introduced, the bass drum and the snare drum (if memory serves), so it was really easy to play on the pro controller. I can’t say I understand what I’m supposed to be doing completely but o got a way high score than required so...so far so good. Later once i connected the joy cons properly I tried it with that, I got a much lower score but it’s the more fun way to play so I think I’ll stick with that for now.

 

But it’s as much a visual novel/manga as it is a rhythm action game. Basically the story is, a group of alien octopuses come to destroy Earth because people from Earth sent a cd of metal music into space which subsequently destroyed the alien octopus planet, because...because that’s their weakness. So they’ve come to exact revenge. They abduct a young boy and girl (the girl is a drummer) and put the boy inside the girl’s body (like in the anime Your Name). The girl whose body the boy has taken over is a drummer in a school metal band, so she basically acts as your teacher. So basically you defend Earth against their attack by performing metal music. Yeah it’s pretty crazy...

 

The reason that I say it’s as much a visual novel as it is a rhythm action game is that there was more more reading than rhythm-action in the first chapter, so your enjoyment of the game (and value for money) will be reduced significantly if you can’t read Japanese. So far there has been no mention of a western release but it’s early days I guess.

 

In terms of the difficulty of the Japanese, it’s pretty similar to the manga I’ve read. I’ve studied around three-quarters of the regular use kanji so I have a pretty good base to work with. I didn’t have to look up new words too often in the first chapter (but the game does have kanji that I haven’t studied and it doesn’t give you the readings for them). But because there are no kanji readings it will be really good reading practice for me I think. The game is pretty learner friendly because the text doesn’t advance until you tell it to, and the writing is large and easy to read on the tv.

 

The art style and animation has been relatively simple so far, it’s obviously not a AAA game. But it’s pretty cool, if nothing else other than a fun way to study some Japanese.

 

 

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