Milk Princess Shooting is a horizontal shmup in where we are tasked with defeating four rival females. According to the store page, each of these enemy bosses are from different retro IPs ranging from the Fighting genre to Visual Novels. There is no story or setup. Right from the get-go we only have a single stage to choose from before we go blasting our way through anything between them and us. While this has never been translated from Japanese, all of the menus are in English and the lack of any further text makes it an easy one to pick right up.
All you need to know are the three buttons that are used for this title. Z is to shoot, X is a sword attack that can reflect incoming projectiles, and the C key temporarily shields you from all damage. Activating that said shield requires you to have a full SP meter beforehand, which can only be filled by grazing bullets. For those unfamiliar with that term, you essentially have to get as close to a projectile as possible without actually getting hit. The zone for it is really forgiving, so you will likely be filling that meter up just by dodging projectiles naturally.
Starting off, you can only fire a brief barrage of bullets in a straight line. By destroying enough enemies, you will soon come across a power-up to permanently beef up your offense for the rest of that stage. It will allow you to turn the tide on your often time numerous foes with a spread-fire, yet it does reduce your straightforward rate of fire. In exchange for that, you will shoot with two additional streams that will cover a far larger area. It changes up your playstyle, which is neat, but it still would have been nice to be able to switch back for singular foes, aka boss fights.
Your Milk Princess is built like a tank. It will take many, many projectiles to take her down. She, in fact, has three life bars. After you lose the first one, your clothes are torn off and you will soon find out why they call her Milk Princess. In this nude form, her way of shooting projectiles changes up once more. Instead of magic, she will be squeezing on her breasts to shoot forth a mighty volley of mammary milk. These shoot out in a tight spread while causing massive damage. You’ll take more damage due to not having armor, but your offense will be through the roof.
While in the nude, your sword is gone, meaning so too is your ability to reflect incoming projectiles. The C key will no longer cast up a protective shield either. It will now launch a deadly wave of holy magic forward. You essentially become a glass cannon and are forced into a more offensive playstyle than you would in your regular form. There is no change in the third health bar. You’ll just receive more health to carry on the fight. It is a fun little way to give struggling players a helping hand and is more creative than simply having lives.
When it comes to challenge, it is mostly none existent here. We are simply given too much health and damage potential. Not to mention you regain all your health when reaching a boss, and again during her final form in already tiny levels. It will take about 20 minutes to conquer all 4 stages. A hard mode would have done wonders for replay value and length. Possibly the biggest downside has to be the movement. It feels a tad clunky and awkward to move your character around. Not enough to cause you to take unnecessary hits but just enough for it to not feel fluid or precise.
Once you finally reach that stage’s boss, your health will refill as stated before. That makes how you played through the rest of the level pretty much redundant, but whatever, challenge was never the focus for better or worse. Facing off against a boss and damaging them follows much the same rules you have. They have three health bars while continually putting up a stiffer resistance upon losing one. Eventually, the projectiles on-screen darn near reach Bullet Hell amounts, and you will have to put a good deal more effort dodging than against regular foes. By inflicting enough damage, her clothes will begin tearing off. In her final phase, she’ll turn into a giant in one last showdown before you can finally get her fully nude.
If you do end up losing, you’ll have to start the stage all over again. It is an easy title yet it is punishing in that regard. With every stage that is completed, it will ramp up the difficulty by a small margin. I didn’t really feel a difference between the first boss fight and the last, but the stages themselves do get a tad more bite to them. The background art is nothing to write home about, honestly. I do appreciate that they attempt to have a theme though. The icy-haired girl is fought in a frozen tundra, a shrine maiden in the forest, etc.
After finishing the game, you will unlock the Gallery and can see each boss in various states of clothing. It is a nice addition as you don’t have much time after fighting them to view their nude form before being thrown back to the level select screen. Another thing to note is that going into fullscreen is none functional. You’ll need a program like Lossless Scaling to simulate a fullscreen experience as I have for this review. All in all, Milk Princess Shooting is a quirky enough game to be memorable. With only four nude static pictures of the heroines, the hentai aspect may be a tougher sell if that’s your goal. At 660 Yen, I’d say go ahead and pick this one up if you’re looking for a one-off casual shmup to spend half an hour on.
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