More reviews for all of you.
Sadly, this is another example of how a game becomes un-fun due to bad decisions on gameplay mechanics. This time is Gal-Gun's spinoff Gal Gardians: Demon Purge.
Inti tries to pull a "Contravania".
Once you've startup the game, the first thing to do is to select what "Style" you'll want to play. Veteran is your Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden (NES game, not the Arcade beat em' up) styled "get pushed back when you're hit" with limited lives, while "Casual" is more of a "Beginner Mode" removing the knockback and granting infinite lives. Oldschoolers, you can call this "Game Genie Mode".
The plot of the game is about how the school where the Kamizono sisters study suddenly becomes an enourmous demon castle trapping their beloved friends inside. Since the sisters come from a bloodline of demon hunters, is now up to them to find the cause of the problem and eliminate it.
The first character will be controlling is Shinobu Kamizono. She's the "Gunner" type character of the game since she uses a gun allowing the player to attack from longer distances than her sister Maya (who I'll talk about later). I really like the idea of using a gun since that keeps you from harm and makes a Metroidvania/Castletroid look more like Contra (¿Contravania?) giving us a new playing style which breaks the routine. In fact, is because of this what justifies the "Gun" on Gal-Gun: Take control of a girl and go around killing your enemies with a gun. Like Castlevania and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, you have sub-weapons, on Shinobu's case, its a dagger which can be fired diagonally pretty much like Miriam on COTM. Shinobu's special weapons are more of the "Offensive" type than Maya's, which I'll explain later in this review. As soon as you progress in the game you'll be accessing new weapons like mines and grenades.
Gal-Gun or "Fail-Gun"?
For a "Run N' Gun" type character, Shinobu has fatal flaws. First one is the lack of aim. Like Megaman, Turrican, the NES Bucky O'Hare game and even Clash Force, there's no diagonal or vertical aim. You can only shoot forward and crouching and that's only the beginning of our problems with her. Everytime you shoot, you're locked in position, even when jumping, making you vulnerable since your enemies are in movement. Is just like in Rolling Thunder 2 when Leila and Albatross get locked in place everytime you shoot, but at least they can jump when the player presses the fire button. But in Rolling Thunder 2, the pace was more relaxed and the enemies took one or two shots before dying. Gal Guardians is a whole different thing as its more fast paced and in a Run N' Gun game that demands quick reflexes these are the most fatal flaws and they really need to be fixed. Another annoying thins is that Shinobu is also unable to crawl on tight spaces, forcing you to switch to Maya in order to do so. If you ask me, making character switch for crawl through small spaces is ridiculous. Compare that with let's say, Contra Hard Corps. You can crawl and dash through small spaces regardless if you're playing with Sheena or Browny (CX-2 and CX-4 in Probotector). To put it simple, combat skills and styles shouldn't affect the mobility and they've just concentrate on limit the attack range based on weaponry. But that's not the end of our problems, because Shinobu can't shoot small enemies while crouching like the spider-skull monsters. In any other Run N' Gun game, your character crouches low enough or lays down the floor to have the gun at ground level in order to take down small enemies or shoot through enemy defenses or tight spots, in Super Turrican you had to face that problem with your weaponry at level 1, but you'll be addressing the issue by picking power ups (the red vulcan and blue laser for instance) increasing the frontal fire width or adding diagonal fire. This doesn't happen in Gal Guardians. The best thing you can do is to try to jump over that enemy or switch to Maya and eliminate it with her melee attacks.
Damn the Short Ranged weaponry.
While in good games like Megaman, the Contra series, Metal Slug and GunForce, the bullets can cross one side of the screen to another, in Gal Guardians' is not the case. Shinobu's bullets stop at half screen, so if you're planning to "snipe" a big enemy you'll be requiring to calculate the distance between you and that enemy hoping it doesn't attack you based on how far you are.
Guess what? It's Down and DOWN.
Another annoying flaw that you have to reload your Demon Hunter Gun after firing 100 rounds. To reload your gun you have to press down twice, but you can do that by just pressing the fire button again. I know its a gun with regular ammo, but this is a game, the least thing you'll mind about is to having limited ammunition. Think Contra and GunForce where you have machine guns firing non-stop, while in GunForce the limited ammo is only for the special weapons like the Autofire or the Bazooka, not the default gun. Back to Gal Guardians, as if reloading wasn't a hassle already, the game locks you up in a reloading animation, making you vulnerable for two seconds requring to be as far as possible from an enemy to reload. I mean, this weapon reloading thing should be limited only to 3rd Person gun games like Halo and the Gears of War series, where at least you can move while reloading and on Gears' case, you can have a stronger fire by pressing the reload button in the right time. Speaking of this reloading button shit, I think they should left the Right Trigger to do that, but no, they left both Triggers (R1-R2 on PlayStation) for the character swapping. I mean why to have "Left" and "Right" character swap buttons since the game only has two characters to offer. This left or right thing should be for something like Megaman X where you can use L and R to move between the obtained weapons and tap both to return to the X-Buster, but back there it had a reason why since you can choose 8 special weapons.
Gal-Gun? More like "Gal-Slash".
Maya on the other side, is a much more useful character, starting off with her mobility to crawl through tight spaces, but her combat capabilities are more powerful even if they're short ranged melee attacks. These are capable of break through shielding enemies like the armored knights, along with a devastating triple attack sequence similar to the oh-so-famous "Hu-ha-ho" of Zero from Megaman X4. Although she's strong with her attacks, she has less HP than Shinobu, but in terms of controls, playing with Maya makes the game feel much more like a Castlevania game or a Bloodstained game, not to mention, she has defensive skills like an origami figure barrier and even an origami ride-on bird to reach higher places you were unable to reach before in a similar way to the Balloon from Pharaoh Man's stage in Megaman IV. To put it simple, playing with Maya makes the game more Castlevania/Bloodstained like as it was intended, while playing with Shinobu, the game is just trolling you. What a letdown for a Run N' Gun character with potential. It is worth to mention that the game at least plays fair when you switch characters. Like K.I.D./Taxan's G.I. Joe and Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country games, the whole game "pauses" as you switch from Shinobu to Maya and viceversa. However, you can't switch in mid-air like in G.I. Joe, so if Shinobu has low energy and there's an imminent hit, you'll have to lose her and wait until you can find her and revive her.
*Insert cassette rewinding noises*
Yeah, I said "Revive her". To be fair, there is good things among this broken mess like splitting the life on two characters acting as the halves. Like the two player mode "Rewind" from Double Dragon Neon, you can revive the defeated character once the spare character reaches the point where the other was killed. Reviving her will bring her back with half health. Fortunately, you can revive her as much as you need it, preventing you from losing a life unless you continue your playing withour saving the fallen sister, contrasting Double Dragon Neon's life reduction per Rewind until you were forced to lose a life. Speaking of lives, you can fill the little gauge on the upper right with Pride points obtained from defeated enemies and broken chandeliers. Occasionally you can get a 1up Item by getting a specific item to reach it. Pride points are also fundamental to unleash the "Bomb" weapon of the game: The Sisters "Secret Arte" which is an overpowered silver bullet that inflicts a lot of damage to the bosses.
Now that I've mentioned the main mechanics of the characters, let's go onto the gameplay. While at first it might resembles a Metroidvania/Castletroid actually is more like Megaman Zero and the Azure Striker Gunvolt in gameplay, as the paths are more linear and focused on killing enemies to advance rather than the explore areas and avoid enemies if you want like in Super Metroid, making Gal Guardians more like a "Contravania" and "Contraman" (portmaneau of Contra and Megaman coined by me), especially when you play as Shinobu. There's some Castlevania/Bloodstained nods like the use of sub-weapons for either defense and attack, but their capacity is too low, requiring you to use them in more "strategic" situations like using Shinobu's dagger to strike enemies from the ceiling. The game difficulty ranges in the classic Castlevania grade where the wrong move at the wrong moment could take a lot of HP or even kill you. For instance, being pushed off from a moving platform to either a spike or a bottomless pit. Speaking of pits, the third level pulls unfair shit. There's these dinosaur-dragon creatures that breath supercold air freezing the floor and making you prone to sliding, there's also the pushing wind stage hazard in the style of Ninja Gaiden II which you can exploit to move left or right faster and going up or down, and don't get me started with the fight with Kurona's "Wily Machine" as it pelts the floor with mini Kuronas and the second form covers the screen on fog keeping you from watching the platforms. Don't be surprised if you get killed a few times figuring out the levels.
Thank you! *Gives item* Hya!!
The game also pulls a Metal Slug by giving you the option of freeing characters scattered across the levels of the game, adding not just Metal Slug vibes, but also Super Metroid as we have this "Treasure hunt" where the items were replaced by missing students. This will require to break walls, using the unlocked weapons and abilities like the Crane Origami as provisional platforms and even an umbrella to avoid falling on spikes by reducing the falling speed. One thing to notice is that when you play a co-op 2 Player mode, you can use the other player's character as a human platform to reach higher places (Ex: Player 1 jumps with Player 2 on top, then Player 2 reaches a higher platform during P1's jump).
That's a VERY COWARD move for a boss.
Like in Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, when you defeat the boss, it will try to do a final desperate move to take you down, for example, the "Giant Bat" will capture the sister you're using and you have to save her before she's almost dead or the rabbit fiend that will make chandeliers drop before dying. I know desperate "do-before-dying" moves are sometimes used on bosses. A good example are Guardian's Knight from Thunder Force V and Barbaric Berserk Beast from Thunder Force VI who fires a massive beam before blowing apart, but you had plenty of time to avoid the deathbeam. In Gal Guardians' (and Curse of the Moon's) case is just an example of sore loser moves because they're fast and with little to no time to react and cancel their attack. Well, here's a strategy for the bosses that use that attack: Use the Secret Arte attack, you'll be invincible as you fire the bullet and the boss will be either destroyed or simply pass through the attack animation.
Go back and find what you've forgot or go forward?
Your choice.
Here we have another point in favor of the game: Warp Columns. After completing a level, you can revisit a stage in order to rescue students and finding hidden items like Life ups and Weapon ups that allow you to carry more ammo for your subweapons, giving the game a more Metroid-like exploration along with a bit of Megaman X-like stage revisiting at the same time since you can revisit a level all the times you want to revisit it. Now that we're talking about navigation, you don't have a Metroid/SOTN-like map. Instead you have a compass of some sorts with arrows indicating where are the missing students, certain items and even the boss. Throughout the levels there's split paths like stairs and ramps that work as shortcuts or make the stage length longer. Some of the doors are originally locked, but in your revisits you can open them if you have the indicated item (A charged ramming attack with Maya's umbrella for example), adding replay value to the game in the style of the red/green/yellow gate locks in Super Metroid.
I'm about to snap right now...
The Library stage is the worst of all stages. The reason of this is because its like the door mazes from Jurassic Park II: The Chaos Continues, but this time it requires you to enter door after door after door in order to find switches to unlock other doors and this is where the Castlevania fun goes down the gutter and becomes more like the coffin maze from the Hollywood stage of The Simpsons: Bart VS The World. ¿Remember what the Angry Video Game Nerd said? "Going through the coffins, the coffins, the coffins. Back here again. Goin' to the next coffin, the coffins, coffins, FUCK! I hate this shit. Just tell me where to go". Same bullshit for Gal Guardians at that point. The boss battle there is quite obnoxious, since you can only see four platforms which you can reach unless you use Maya's "Crane Origami", but guess what?, on the far sides there's small platforms which were almost hidden. Fortunately, the game regains the regular Castlevania/Bloodstained formula after this cryptic level with even better skills such as the grappling hook which acts like the grapple in Bionic Commando and Super Turrican 2 (minus the swinging) and there's parts where you'll be using the unlocked skills more often than firing your weapons. Just remember this: Don't be surprised if you die in your first playthroughs, you're not gonna die because of your incompetence or being overwhelmed, but by Shinobu's horrible controls. It's more than natural that you'll react to an enemy attack by dodging it while still firing, but when the game supress that natural instinct locking you on place, there's little time to react and what's worse, no room for error when it's about reloading the damned gun. So what's gonna happen is that you're gonna die, revive Shinobu, die as Maya, revive Maya, repeat that process until you can complete the level. It's basically R-Typing on a platform game, and just when you've thought you've reached the end after defeating Kurona, guess what? Her future self will appear and send you ALL THE WAY BACK TO LEVEL 1. Yeah, this game is clearly saying you're gonna start the game all over again. ¿What are they, insane?
Now we're talking...
After being kicked out to the first stage of the game in your first encounter with Adult Kurona, the game will give you new skills, and one of them is what I've been criticizing the whole time: Addressing the lack of vertical aim, which makes Shinobu a little bit more useful and I say "a little bit" because it partially addresses the problem since it lacks of "aiming down" (Metal Slug's "Jump and aim down in mid-air" for example). It also increases her firepower by giving her large missiles during the "auto firing", addressing the lack of a wider fire. While being able to aim vertically makes it more like Cyber-Lip and Metal Slug, the idea of making a natural skill an unlockable feature is completely out of any human logic. I mean, why not give me the option of make Shinobu more controllable like being able to aim diagonally, run while firing and fire then jump while firing rather than "Press jump and then fire" and cancelling the bullet restriction for a more fast paced action? Hope Inti could fix that mess.
While restarting the whole game again before facing the final boss sounds tedious and annoying as hell, we should consider this as a third chance of revisiting the game's levels in case we're missing something. Now you'll unlock a "Hub" where you can choose the levels on any order you want, and the levels will play with alternate routes leading to new and longer segments of the stage, revisiting old bosses with new attack patterns. This new hub also unlocks the subweapon upgrading and additional area called the Gymnasium. To upgrade your subweapons you'll be getting candies from Risu everytime you complete a level even if that means revisit the first level over and over and over. The point here is that Candies are the currency for Chiru who will upgrade your subweapons. But the nail that seals the fucking coffin is the final battle in the Dimensional Rift, where you'll have to fight three bosses: Fake Houdai, Adult Kurona and a giant Adult Kurona. If you die on the second or third boss, you'll have to do the three fights all over again. This makes the infamous level 6 of Ninja Gaiden look easy and the whole Ninja Gaiden III look fun. If you have a bad temper with games, avoid this one at all costs.
This mission has been aborted!
You can try your best with this game, but in the end, the game will defeat you due to the combination of crap factors mentioned already. I mean, I was able to complete Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX without suffering too much with difficulty, but Gal Guardians is a mess despite the nice gameplay features and Castlevania-esque homages, and multiple endings based on rescuing students and finding panties hidden accross the levels ("What were they thinking?" Who knows), but the final battle with Adult Kurona was the last straw for me.
"Grim" was its former name.
Originally, this game was meant to be called Grim Guardians: Demon Purge but it was renamed. Its like "What happened?" it was meant to be something different like the Darius III/Gun Frontier 2 game that became Metal Black? No, it wasn't a former project turned into something else, the name change was due to a trademark complaint. ¿The reason? According to the website Delisted Games, the "Funny Guy" behind the complaint was a developer called Outerdawn and its game Grimguard Tactics. Outerdawn thought the name Grim Guardians sound very similar to its crappy game, so they threw Inti Creates a boo-hoo trademark complaint and this name change happened to avoid legal action. I mean, WHAT A BUNCH OF BABIES. One thing is that one name shares similarities and another is using the same identical name, leading to confusions almost immediately like Devastator from Radiangames, whose name is the same of the Constructicon giant from the Transformers franchise and we don't see Hasbro whining about it, and guess what: There's plenty of examples to be found like Gun Frontier, the Taito shmup with the same name as Leiji Matsumoto's manga, Darius' Silver Hawks being confused with Rankin-Bass cartoon SilverHawks, Octonaut: Hoshi no Tako which had to be renamed as Takotan due to a naming issue with the show Octonauts, but the best example is Netflix's movie Thunder Force, which has nothing to do with Tecno Soft's series of shmups and leads to confusions in Google just like the Silver Hawk does (You can get more search results from the movie than any of the 6 games combined). I never saw Sega complaining about that or threatening Netflix with legal actions, so why Outerdawn did that? Simple: Crybabies who want attention.
If Grim Guardians was so much trouble for Outerdawn, ¿Couldn't Inti just call the game Grim Gal Guardians: Demon Purge? That would keep the "Grim" on the logo, include the "Gal" on it and Outerdawn could stop crying about it. Sounds like a simple, effective solution, but NO!, they had to keep the initials "GGDP" to be on-par with the other GGDP: Gal-Gun: Double Peace because Gal-Gun rules say so (The creator following the rules dictated by its creation?, sounds odd). Anyway, even the new name is a hint to its origin (GAL GUardiaNs).
Could also be "Gal-Bloodstained" to pun Gal-Gun and Bloodstained just like Gal-Gunvolt Burst did with the Gunvolt series, but you know why would be out of the question already...
"Name Change Option", R-Type already did it.
...unless they could give the player the option of customizing the title and logo. Sounds crazy, but it already happened before.
If there's something R-Type Final 2 taught us is that you can give players the option of changing the game's title to their liking as an unlockable reward. Inti could do the same with Gal Guardians, giving us "Grim" as a possibility, opening a window of options beyond restoring Grim Guardians like "Grim Gun", "Gal-Gun III", "Gal-Gun: Demon Purge" "Gal Gunstained", "Gunstained Guardians", use the classic Gal-Gun logo, etc. Speaking of Grim Guardians, the former name sounded more like a boss name that would fit on a shmup such as R-Type Delta, yeah I can imagine a couple of heavily armed Bydo robots being called like that (and Outerdawn's Grimguard sounds like if Grimlock made a combat team with the Dinobots. Can almost expect to hear Grimlock saying "We Dinobots are now the Grimguard").
No map, but we have a radar.
Graphically, it's a complete twist of the common kawaiiness of the Gal-Gun games in favor of a more horror-like setting based on Castlevania and Inti's own Bloodstained series. The pixel art is faithful to the legendary Castlevania: Symphony of the Night up to the 32-bit styled color palette to the point that this game feels classic, yet modern with solid animations based on speed, something that Inti learned with the Gunvolt series. One of the most notorious aspects of the game is that you can splash the enemies blood on the walls and stairs in the background like in Squad Killer. Believe it or not, the scenery and the bestiary are the best aspect of the game, from gothic dungeons and haunted libraries to visceral creatures with massive detailing that brings them to life. Like Symphony of The Night and Order of Ecclesia, your characters have this "Shadow" effect when they move similar to the Turbo effects from Forgotten Worlds and Super Street Fighter II Turbo, making the game look faster than it actually should, but it works damn well. If Inti made the Curse of the Moon games with these graphics rather than the NES-like ones they've used, it would be a resounding accomplishment.
I knew this was gonna happen...
Anime girls aren't everything on a videogame. It's the gameplay, graphics and music what makes the major part of a videogame.
But talking about it is popular demand, so I'm not gonna say no to make a small review on that aspect.
I wanna be in your arms.
If only for one day.
I wanna be in your arms.
You feel so far away from me.
Lovely face: Check.
Pretty eyes: Check.
Cute voice with strength and seriousness when needed: Check.
Inherited from Gal-Gun: Double Peace, the original character cast of the game is back, along with a few new faces and that means one thing: Anime-styled characters. I've never played the games of this series, but I saw artwork of it, and I can confirm that Shinobu has grown since the last time we saw her on Double Peace. This is a detail that I appreciate, rather than following Bloodstained's "SOTN-Inspired" artwork and CGI model cutscenes, they've relied on 2D anime illustrations which for some reason reminds me of those of Kazuhiko Kakoi (GRA) on the mid-last years of Triggerheart Exelica during the XBLA-Exelica Enhanced transition era. As for the monsters and demons, they look amazing and if someone made a fan-made Castlevania or Bloodstained game with them, they'll fit perfectly well on them. I wouldn't be surprised if Inti throws Miriam on the game just like it happened with Blasphemous.
The Gal-Gun series is NOTORIOUS for its fanservice and slight ecchi and fetish themes, the most obvious ones are the plant boss with the tentacle cliché, finding panties and Houdai's "Pheromone Power" sub-plot which requires fetish related items like tights and school swimsuits. If you feel uncomfortable with these themes, you've better avoid this game.
No, the "Doomguy" appears.
The music is completely anime "Horror-Comedy" as it combines the anime romanti-comedy paces from the Gal-Gun series and blends them with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night/Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night styled keys and strings making it an experimental atmosphere that like the anime-style, works with the game perfectly. The comical notes only lasts on the first level of the game as the seriousness take control of the action in the castle. For some reason, when you die, you don't get a tragic fanfare. Instead you have a bell pealing sound while your character says her last words (or screams if she falls on a pit). The game grants you the option of playing on either "Pure" or "Refined", the first one has the original Japanese voices while the second is the English dub. But the most common thing you'll be hearing is "Rirodo Kanryo" or "Reloaded!" if you're playing with the English voices since you'll be reloading too often. Not as annoying and repetitive like the "Bonus!" in Blazing Star, but a close contender. A lot of the voices from the Gal-Gun series made their return to this game giving the game even more familiarity. The English dub had potential but Inti ruined it since it mutes the cutscene dialogues, limiting the voice acting to the in-game voice samples. The voice acting is your typical ADV Films-like english dub with voices that sounds like they're lifted from an 90s-00's anime VHS.
TRIVIA GUARDIANS: CURIOSITY PURGE
Gal-Gun and Gunvolt. The "Gun" is on the family.
- First Inti Creates game and Gal-Gun related game that suffers a legal challenge due to naming.
- The sudden renaming made a scar and shade of some sorts on Inti's recent works like Umbraclaw where the fans joke about a possible renaming (Example: "Waiting for the news that states the rebranding of the game in Cat Galling" in a Gematsu post).
- Shinobu's level start/respawn quote "Akuma Hunter no chikara, misete ageru wa!" (I'll show you the power of a Demon Hunter) is a nod to "Megami no chikara, misete ageru wa!" (I'll show you the power of a Goddess), the catchphrase of Purple Heart from Compile Heart's RPG Hyperdimension Neptunia.
- This is the second spin-off of the Gal-Gun series, being Gal-Gunvolt and Gal-Gunvolt Burst the first ones of them and the lone crossover as well.
- The giant bat boss is based on the Myotia, the Giant bat from Castlevania: Dracula X as it splits into small bats that move into a "Wave" path before merging into the large bat.
- Kurona's flying machine is a nod to the Wily Machine from the Megaman series and the Granfaloon boss from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as it is composed by multiple parts and drops small Kuronas like Granfaloon's corpses.
- The Kamizono sisters are daughters of Dr. Kamizono from the Azure Striker Gunvolt series.
- Within the Gunvolt canon, it is very hinted that Shinobu is the mother of Copen and Mytyl, while Maya is their aunt.
- Both Shinobu and Copen use very often the phrase "Tenmafukumetsu" (天魔覆滅) which means "Overthrow the Demon".
- The name Kamizono comes from "Kami" (神 = God) and "Zono" (園 = Garden).
I think what you've tried to say was "Mission Failed".
Unless you're a huge fan of Metroidvanias/Castletroids or the Gal-Gun series, and love bullshit difficulty this will be the game for you. Casual gamers and Run N' Gun fans should prefer to pick something else. Shinobu's controls and forced reloading are infuriating for Run N' Gun enthusiasts to the point you'll be preferring to play Cyber-Lip than this. Doing a "Contravania" had potential, but Inti ruined it. If you're gonna play it, try to play with Maya more often than her sister, clear the first half of the game, then uninstall it. Don't bother with the second half of the game.
Weird controls, harsh difficulty.
A total wreck on the Yang Scale due to a series of bad decisions.
Description of a "Corporate Crybaby".
POST-DATA: Despite the name change, for me this game is GRIM GUARDIANS.
Outerdawn, you can go cry to a corner.