Our main protagonists, Aya Hionomoto and Princess Silvia Hortensie
It's a special day in Misakimori Academy as its Ranger Club prepares for the "Blood Sweat and Tears" athletic meet. Their last training session goes awry, however, when a mysterious ball of light appears out of nowhere, and the members suddenly find themselves transported into a medieval fantasy world, Midgard. Fortunately, their supply truck, guns, and plenty of ammo came with them, and so they set up a base, start exploring, and try to find a way to get back home.As they run into and ally with natives of the world, however, they find themselves entangled in a war against the Jet Black Dragon and its horde of monstrous Devyants, with lost memories, time travel, and ancient prophecies only making things yet more complicated for our heroines.
Bullet Girls Phantasia is a third-person shooter and the third game in the Bullet Girls series, developed by Shade and published by D3 Publisher. It was originally released for Playstation 4 and Playstation Vita on August 9, 2018, a PC port via Steam vas released on January 17, 2020.
Compare Senran Kagura, a similar Fanservice-filled game series, but more on the Beat 'em Up side of things and centered around ninja girls.
This game provides examples of:
- Action Girl: The young women are all skilled shooters fighting their way around.
- Anti-Frustration Features: All collected underwear and materials can still be kept in case you lose a mission, at any difficulty.
- Art Evolution: Every game from the Bullet Girls series has different character designer, and this one is not an exception.
- Artificial Stupidity: Both the enemies and AI buddies have very simple AI. Most of the time they just run up to enemies/the player, stand still while attacking, and oftentimes get stuck in the scenery or get themselves blown up, intentionally or not. It makes using rocket launchers and grenades with a buddy very impractical.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Almost all enemies have blue, glowing crystal cores that, when shot, will deal absurd amounts of damage (to the point of a one-hit kill), and have a special sound and red hit effect. Upgraded Devyant Orcs with firearms have their heads as a critical hit point, instead.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Bazookas and Missile Launchers. On normal mode, they can easily clear out hordes of enemies with one well-placed shot; on anything higher than that, it just spreads enemies around, doesn't kill them outright, and can potentially damage your own buddy, making it impractical to bring along extra firepower. It's made worse by the game's balancing making anti-material shotguns and sniper rifles both more practical and effective weapons for their range, fire rates, and reload times. The only exception is the Homing Missile Launcher, but only specifically for flying enemies like attack choppers and dragons while they're impossible to damage otherwise.
- Battle Strip: The T.H.A.A.D. (Take Hold An Air Dress) manuever causes your character to shed all their clothing and leave them in just their underwear. Fanservice aside, it's very useful if you want to use a character's F.P.S. (Final Panty Strike) and don't want to risk the underwear getting utterly destroyed on the next hit, which is a real fear in higher difficulty levels.
- Berserk Button: Hardina's actual age. She's "eternally 17" and would prefer all talk end there.
- Boom, Headshot!: Upgraded orange, Devyant Orcs with firearms lose the blue core in their chests, and instead can be shot in the head for massive, devastating damage.
- Bottomless Magazines: You only have to worry about reload times for your many, many, many guns (and magical staves); the Ranger Club and their allies will NEVER run out of fresh clips, magazines, and explosives no matter how many you unload into the Devyant hordes.
- Casual Kink: Many of the girls openly show a preference for either being the subject of (e.g. Silvia) or subjecting others to (e.g. Sarria and Aki) intensive drillings.
- Censor Steam: With three different variations: mysterious beams of light, white smoke, or black scribbles.
- Clothing Damage: As part of the game's key Fanservice elements, your character's clothes will rip and even be completely annihilated with enough damage. Specific close-ups and cutscenes of the damage occurring to you, your buddy, or your humanoid enemies are optional.
- Desperation Attack: Final Panty Strike (F.P.S.) gives you an upgraded, devastatingly powerful version of your character's usual Scramble Overdrive (S.O.D.) Limit Break, at the cost of sacrificing your character's underwear, leaving your character exposed to both the elements and the full, devastating force of your enemy attacks. Used correctly, it can turn the tides of a bad fight; used incorrectly, it's a Hope Spot before the Game Over screen.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The intensive drillings are full of incredibly suggestive poses, sexual-sounding moans, and numerous tools whose designs can't have been accidents. The Steam release has a disclaimer saying there is no actual sexual content, but that this can be easily construed as sexual.
- Fanservice: The game revolves around scantilly dressed young women who are very attractive.
- Friendly Fire: Only with explosives, sans Yurina's S.O.D. turrets. It makes using Aki, Remi, grenades, or rocket launchers with buddies terribly impractical, as the AI is not very intelligent and will often stand close to the hordes of enemies, and thus, the blast radius.
- Fun with Acronyms: Final Panty Strike (F.P.S.), the above mentioned Desperation Attack. Ironically, the game is a third-person shooter.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Aside from getting back home in general, the Ranger Club worries about not being able to replenish their dwindling supplies of ammunition, explosives, and other basic supplies, not to mention maintenance issues. In-game, you will never run out of ammo, or worry about your guns breaking down on you in combat.
- Guide Dang It!: Material upgrades only drop at specific levels at specific difficulties.
- Gun Fu: Mai and Minagi both engage in this for their S.O.D.s. Mai engages in numerous Gun Kata poses while unloading her twin pistols into surrounding enemies, while Minagi performs acrobatics while firing, with flaming kanji spelling out her technique.
- Guns Akimbo: Club President Mai's preferred method of wielding her twin pistols, Thetis & Dione.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: HP recovery items are food, from sweet berries to elaborate modern desserts.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: You are allowed to take up to three weapons with you at any given time. These can be a combination of an assault rifle, a bazooka, and an LMG, all of which plus ammo are conveniently pulled out and put away from behind your character's back whenever needed. This is especially egregious as your characters can be left completely nude yet still have somewhere to store their weapons and ammo, and the Ranger Club has been doing this long before they learned of Midgardian magic.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: They go from Normal, Hard, then Ecstasy.
- Intrepid Merchant: Merrina, who doesn't mind going onto the field herself and fighting hordes of Devyants to acquire sweet, sweet loot. She acts as the game's shopkeeper, and is also the one that buys up all your duplicates for gold, using the massive hoard she has at her village. She prefers doing it in pairs, however, as she fearfully states she's too fragile to go out without a buddy if you chose her as your sole attacker.
- Jiggle Physics: Abundant, especially with busty characters like Mai and Yurina. Even the slightest amount of movement can set their chests a-bouncing.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: When the Ranger Club runs into her, Court Magician Sarria cannot remember a single thing about the all-important grimoire that is both the key to stopping the Jet Black Dragon and the Devyants, and that she was supposed to be the guardian of. It's eventually revealed that she IS the grimoire—all its contents were embedded in her memory before the original physical copy was destroyed.
- Limit Break: Scramble Overdrive (S.O.D.) is an incredibly powerful attack or buff that characters can use to turn the tides of battle. While it's oftentimes an AoE attack, it can also summon automated howitzer turrets (Yurina), robot servants (Silvia), or greatly increase your attack power plus add ice element (Ladoria).
- Little Bit Beastly: Merrina Iris, a cat girl. Amusingly enough, her tail realistically sprouts out between her buttcheeks rather than above her waist, unlike most portrayals.
- The Medic: Aya, who performs most of the first-aid and medical treatments off the battlefield. Notable in that she was originally supposed to be part of the First Aid Club before accidentally misfiling her application, and having a terribly unhelpful supervisor, at that.
- More Dakka: Aya's S.O.D., "One Woman Army", will have her summon several clones of Blazing Force around her then unload a massive full-auto barrage. With the proper upgrades, machine guns' output can get ridiculous, when using Saki especially.
- Ms. Fanservice: Everyone that is female, especially with the dress up feature, but Club President Mai is the most blatantly sexualized of the cast, and proudly so. She has one of the largest busts, wears black lace underwear with garter belts, and has a seductive, mature voice. She even winks at the camera during her S.O.D., among other seductive animations and poses.
- Named Weapons: Every character has a uniquely modeled and named weapon of their preferred type, always with better stats than the generic versions and with special attributes such as elemental effects or double the ammunition.
- Aya - Blazing Force - An assault rifle with fire damage.
- Yurina - M870YurinaCustom [sic] - A shotgun that can knockback enemies from much greater distances.
- Remi - Devil Kitty（ΦωΦ）- A bazooka with fire damage.
- Tsukiyo - Shadow Sniper - A sniper rifle with improved fire rate and damage.
- Saki - Sweets☆Party - A machine gun with higher damage plus improved knockback.
- Minagi - Azure Sovereign - An assault rifle with frost damage and lower recoil.
- Aki - Sunburst - A missile launcher with fire damage and improved fire rate.
- Mai - Thetis & Dione - Two semi-automatic handguns with reflex sights, used Guns Akimbo.
- Silvia - Rendir - A longsword with lightning damage.
- Sarria - Palantear - A staff with lightning and fire damage both.
- Hardina - Lufine - A bow with both ice damage and faster firing rate.
- Faren - Eldan & Elhia - Twin daggers imbued with lightning.
- Merrina - Divine Wrath - Lightning element magicite, exclusive to Merrina.
- Ladoria - Vallee - A longsword imbued with ice element, Ladoria's specialty.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the Ranger Club's attempts to defeat the Jet Black Dragon and its Devyant hordes when it was weaker in the past, they accidentally give it and its minions the edge that brought Midgard to the brink of destruction, when they forget crates full of modern weapons in the past.
- Not Completely Useless: The homing missile launcher only has one ammo, reloads very slowly, and has a long delay before firing while it's acquiring a target. Against almost all of the hordes of enemies, it's pretty useless, but against attack choppers, dragons in flight, and the crawlers who can roll around too quickly to hit, it's devastating.
- Numerical Hard: Much of the "challenge" of Hard and Ecstasy mode is the vastly increased enemy health pools, damage resistances, and damage output. Otherwise, it's just the same as Normal.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Watch out whenever Merrina drops her constant cat puns and cheerful disposition.
- Pungeon Master: Merrina, a catgirl, always speaks with cat puns, either replacing syllables with "nya" in Japanese, or adding "meow", "cat", and/or "purr" in her words in the English localization. When she drops the habit, you know she's pissed, and the unfortunate targets of her ire mention it.
- Really 700 Years Old: Hardina is several centuries old, but always insists she is "eternally 17". Ladoria's age is also unstated but in one dialog event she states she's at least a century younger than Hardina.
- Red Herring: After the Ranger Club discovers the time traveling powers of the ritual circle and the Grimoire, they believe that the mysterious allies in Midgard's ancient prophecy are their club advisor, Ms. Meika and her former clubmates. It turns out it's actually them, making a Stable Time Loop.
- The Reveal: Sarria IS the grimoire—all of its contents were embedded into her memory before the physical copy was destroyed, to prevent the Devyant horde from getting their hands on it.
- Third-Person Shooter
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Both King Hortensie and Princess Silvia Hortensie are noted to be taking very active, front-line roles in the war against the Jet Black Dragon and the Devyants, though before she allies with the Ranger Club, Silvia had been doing pretty badly on that front.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Chibi-chan ("Pipsqueak" in the English localization), the holy dragon's last surviving hatchling. The characters frequently coo over him and get into fights about who gets to spend time with him next.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Jet Black Dragon was banished to another dimension, to keep it from threatening Midgard again. The game's plot is kicked off when it escapes, with its Devyant army in tow.
- Sequel Hook: A few days after the Ranger Club saves Midgard and returns home, Sarria and Merrina open a brand new portal, with both a second holy dragon hatchling and news of a new crisis brewing in Midgard. Aya and Yurina fetch the rest of the Ranger Club, and the game ends.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: Yurina and eventually Sarria, also. The former is still as sweet and motherly as ever even when she's tied down her friends and is about to force-feed them cooked monster parts, and the latter develops a strong liking to performing intensive drilling sessions. (She'll even voice her disappointment if she's the subject of it than the subjector.)
- Stable Time Loop: The Ranger Club travels back in time to stop the Jet Black Dragon when it is weaker, and eventually discover that it's not their advisor Meika and her class that were the legendary heroes in the prophecy, it was them, and they are also the reason that the Devyants got access to modern weapons after they accidentally left crates full of surplus behind.
- Status Effects:
- Fire - Deals Damage Over Time.
- Frost - Slows down vicitms, the effects getting more and more severe the more it procs.
- Lightning - Has a chance to cancel attacks and stun the target.
- Poison - Enemy exclusive. Deals Damage Over Time, much like Fire, but has its own separate resistances.
- Stripperific: Silvia and Faren's armour. Especially egregious with the former, as it is the official armour of the female royal guards, with Silvia canonically having the only blue set, though the latter also explicitly exposes the wearer's bra.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: The Court Magician outfits mention that their frilly, colourful, lacey designs are by no means to appeal to King Hortensia's fetishes. This is repeated for each variation.
- Useless Useful Spell: A problem with some character's S.O.D. skills.
- Yurina's S.O.D., "Please, Protect Me!" Summoning up to six automated howitzer turrets sounds like a great thing, until you realize how fast they fire; the awkward, slow arcing and explosions the rounds do; and how little damage they do to the constantly moving Devyants. It mostly just spreads them around and knocks them down, making it impossible to aim for their critical hit spots.
- Silvia's S.O.D., "Royal Summons". It looks badass to have two bodyguard robots on your side, and then you realize how slowly they move and attack, how little damage they do, and how fast both you and the enemies will be at that point. They don't even taunt or attract enemy attention outright, not to mention are easy to outpace by accident.
- Aki's S.O.D., "Panzer Vor~!" is not entirely useless, as the tank she summons can blast several enemies surrounding you. Actually using it, however, is an exercise in clumsy controls, slow-firing main cannons, and poor damage output.
- Virtual Paper Doll: You can dress up your characters before battle.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: A few minutes in earth is equivalent to several hours to days in Midgard.
