Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog review: Soldiers of Shallow

The moment I discovered Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog, I knew I had to get my hands on it. This game, built on the visual novel engine Ren’Py and pushing it to its limits, is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Invoking PC-98 games and hard sci-fi anime of the 80s (especially Mobile Suit Gundam), Gun-Dog was checking boxes in a way that promised I was going to have a great weekend. While it got off to a promising start, I ended up walking away with a frustrating level of disappointment in a story that felt so deeply interested in invoking others’ work it forgot to actually be about something.

Old-school accuracy

Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is set in the aftermath of the Solar War, a conflict between Earth-based humans and space-faring groups living in space colonies and on other planets. Your character is a security guard on the Gun-Dog, a small ship full of military misfits sent out on a mission to investigate strange readings involving another ship of similar class and crew. Not only do you uncover a strange mystery with far-reaching implications, but you also have to confront your past as one of the few survivors of a losing exchange toward the end of the war.

During the story, you’ll explore the Gun-Dog and interact with characters in a very traditional, old-school, adventure game kind of way. You have a list of verbs (Move, Look, etc) and everything is done with text and making choices. No gameplay gimmicks, no fluff. Pure visual novel, in a way that feels incredibly deliberate. This appeal to authenticity is impressive, even more so than a game with similar vibes I loved last year, Neurodiver. Many of the characters are fun and interesting, with quirky personalities that don’t simply rely on tropes and archetypes. Some have more depth than others, highlighting how important their roles are in the overall story pretty transparently.

Walking among giants

While the moment to moment writing is good in a mechanical prose sense, my biggest issue with Gun-Dog is how shallow it all feels in the end. There are messy, dramatic moments, a compelling romance, a sinister build to something big, and a conflict within the crew itself that becomes a surprise climax. While the pieces are loud and fun, they’re all paper-thin, progressing in a way that’s more like an episodic, Saturday morning cartoon than the sweeping, serious space operas Gun-Dog is aggressively invoking. It’s all plot, with characters ping-ponging into each other as each beat is presented and resolved. There's barely a hint of subtext, aside from some simple callbacks to the protagonist’s background that are more like bookends than woven threads.

It’s hard to really drill down into all that without going into spoilers, and we obviously don’t want to go that route with a visual novel that’s pure storytelling. I do want to stress that on a surface level, Gun-Dog’s writing is fun and exciting, although it ends on a deflating cliffhanger that sacrifices a coherent ending for a sequel hook. There’s an odd bit of meta-gimmickry that pops up in subsequent playthroughs, but it doesn’t really go anywhere as while you can make alternative choices that result in different scenes or an alternative scenario or two, the beats and where the story ends up don’t really change. Not having multiple routes or endings isn’t a dealbreaker, by any means. A visual novel can simply tell its story and move on, and still be a decent read. Gun-Dog is a decent read!

Wow, cool robot!

The real bummer though, is how Gun-Dog deliberately occupies a specific space and makes blatant references to crucial works in this genre canon that swing so much harder. It feels almost disingenuous when Gun-Dog practically screams: “Did you watch Zeta Gundam like I did? Hell yeah, brother!” then proceeds to unfold with the narrative ambition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. References and homage are not substitutes for storytelling, and while Gun-Dog writes a beautiful love letter, it fails to follow it up with romance of its own. Unfortunately the earlier comparison to Neurodiver backfires here.

Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is a remarkable tribute to PC-98 visual novels and hard sci-fi anime of a specific vintage. The visuals are pitch-perfect with multiple settings that offer different vibes, and the soundtrack is a complex beast of speaker-straining chiptunes that enhances the mood even further. But this is a severe case of style over substance, and the storytelling does not deliver on the promises being made by Gun-Dog’s immaculate presentation. I had a decent time but walked away massively disappointed, feeling like I had been tricked into watching a Disney Star Wars spinoff by someone promising the next Armored Trooper VOTOMS. I’d be totally willing to check out what’s next from this team, but with massively tempered expectations.

Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is available on February 20, 2025 for the PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4 and 5.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.