Dreamless Girl Isn't What it Seems To Be

Welcome back my weebs and otakus, it's Otakunofuji with a little note on Dreamless Girl on Xbox. Specifically about what it is and what it isn't. It's a visual novel crossed with a shmup, and the promo artwork features a cute girl in a tube top and fishnet stockings, but if you're expecting it to be a sexy fanservice game you will be very, very disappointed. 

For a video version of this article, skip down to the bottom.

So, Dreamless Girl is a visual novel about a lesbian school girl's mental health and trauma and bullying. It's kind of the least sexy story possible, but for some reason all of the artwork features this girl looking cute and wearing revealing outfits. I'll get in trouble for saying this, but it's the type of story that certain terminally online folks will gravitate towards and pretend to like - even if the story is bad and gameplay sucks - just so they can win Internet points from strangers because the story and themes are "heavy" and "mature". You know who I'm talking about. 

If you're expecting the shoot-em-up parts to be good at least, you'll also be disappointed. It's not bullet hell, but there's more going on than, say, Gradius. It's pretty simple, but also not easy. The difficulty mainly comes from almost every level being a gimmick, such as only being able to damage enemies while you stay in a moving box or not being able to dodge or not having normal bullets and only being able to use special shots and things like that. 

The main problem is that it just isn't fun. There are no epic overwhelming bullet hell battles, or cool set pieces, or interesting level backgrounds, or innovative scoring mechanics, or any of the other stuff that make other shmups fun to play. Dreamless Girl is just bland bog standard "yep, it's a shmup" with all of the difficulty but few of the other things that actually make the genre appealing.

One positive is that there is a surprising amount of content here for an $8 game. There are story missions, but also another set of missions you play through in order to unlock upgrades for your ship. There are a lot of upgrades to choose from, and being able to customize your ship to match your preferred gameplay style is actually pretty darn cool. There are multiple playable characters, too, each one with their own unique abilities and upgrades that all have to be unlocked separately, so there is a lot of stuff to do here. Whether all of that content is fun or not is another matter. 

So, to recap the opening statement of what Dreamless Girl is and isn't. It definitely isn't a sexy fanservice game. At all. What it is, is a prestige oscar bait "mature" story game tied to a fairly run of the mill shmup. I bought it because of the promo art, and because I like shmups, and was pretty disappointed with both of those things. I just personally didn't find it very fun. I won't say whether anyone else should buy it or not - it's only $8 - but it helps to know what you're getting into so you can set your expectations appropriately.