It is borderline impossible to play this game the way it wants you to, but it's so stylish and charming that I think it's worth your time anyway, even if you have to brute force your way through it. It's easy to see why The Maid Fuku to Kikanjuu didn't take off the way its Simple Series peers like The OneeChanbara or The Chikyu Boeigun (now Earth Defense Force) did because it just blatantly doesn't function on any level. It wants to be a Devil May Cry-style spectacle fighter (I refuse to call them Character Action games) but you only have one "combo" and it's so difficult to pull off, let alone chain, that if you aren't incredibly stubborn in getting it to work you might not even realize it exists. Even if you can get it to work consistently (I never did) most of the game you'll be fighting weak, slow enemies that rarely attack, and you need to be attacked to start your combo, so it's incredibly inefficient to use it outside of the fact that you have to if you want a good score, and you need a good score to get money, and you need money to unlock anything that might add more variety to the game (again, I never did). Outside of that, you have a sword and a machine gun (and a useless sniper rifle). The machine gun ruins your score but it's also the only efficient weapon in the game. The sword is kind of fun and the only thing outside of the combos that make this game feel anything like the more intense, fast-paced spectacle fighter it desperately wants to be, but you can only attack with it if you aren't moving so the gameplay always screeches to a halt when you try to use it. It probably sounds like I don't like this game very much, but there's a lot to love here outside of the monotonous gameplay. The presentation is great, the graphics are really charming, and the story is simple but fun. I like the chapter screens with a little monologue from the main character and a title that's always just an anime movie with one word replaced with "maid" (and I'm pretty sure the title of the game itself is a reference to the 1981 film "Sailor Suit and Machine Gun"). I like the robot maid enemies you fight for most of the game even if they kinda give up on that visual theme in the later levels. I love that you can press a button that just makes your character do a little animation of some maid-related activity like fixing tea or sweeping the floor, they're all incredibly cute (I dont like that you need to do a certain amount in each level with a certain amount of enemies on screen to get a good score, but oh well). It's a Simple series game, so you probably aren't expecting something mechanically complex and detailed anyway. Just looking at the presentation and tone, The Maid Fuku to Kikanjuu is incredible. You can beat it in about an hour and it's got an English patch, so it's absolutely worth checking out.