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When playing Super Light Speed Gran-Doll, some gamers may have flashbacks about an old game series, Valis for several old game systems (PCE/TG16, SFC/SNES and MD/Genesis). This can be justified since the game features a similar heroine with special armor and weapon, battling with aliens in a 2D side-scroller.
Hikaru looks like a typical high school girl, but she actually possesses Gran-Doll, a special robot that can separate the body parts into a suitable armor for Hikaru. After the transformation, Hikaru is filled with incredible power and strength. In the beginning of story, her boyfriend is captured by the enemies, so she has to transform herself and rescue him. The story plays an important role in this game, it carries along with many FMV scenes between each level. These cut-scenes are all drawn in anime style featuring high quality animation and nice character designs. Not to mention that they found some good voices to fit the characters.
Graphically, the backgrounds look average, actually they look like the old 16-bit games. A similar problem applies to the sprite animations, they look quite plain, and some enemies seem to bit choppy with merely 2-3 frames of animations. The music and sound effects are dull in some occassions, but they are sufficient for a game like this.
Gameplay-wise, it plays like some other 2D action side-scrollers. Her main weapon is a power-gun like Rockman (Megaman). She has a rope-hanger like Bionic Commando, so she can swing herself from one side to another side. Also, her armor can be upgraded with certain power-ups. The levels are long and repetitive, it can get boring after a few hours of playing.
Super Light Speed Gran-Doll's main flaw is that, the control is quite loose. In other words, it is not really responsive. Whenever you jump or attack, you don't feel like that you have direct control of the character. In the end, if you're a fan of the old Valis series, you should give this game a look. If you're looking for better gameplay and high playability like Castlevania, you might want to look elsewhere.
Final score: 6 out of 10.