Minor note before beginning: this game was first announced and sold as "Grim Guardians: Demon Purge", but a copyright dispute made Inti Creates change the title into "Gal Guardians: Demon Purge". Other than the title, the game is exactly the same.
Inti Creates is a small Japanese studio right now best known for their numerous side-scrollers: Mega Man Zero, Dragon Marked For Death, Blaster Master Zero, Azure Striker Gunvolt, Mighty No. 9...maybe forget the last one. But to some they are best know for the Gal Gun series, fixed-scrolling lightgun games where you fend off hordes of female highschoolers as you search for The Only True Love Of Your Life.
In 2022 Inti Creates re-relased Gal Gun Double Peace for modern systems and closed the Azure Gunvolt Trilogy, and while brewing a brand-new project, Inti Creates...created Gal Guardians: Demon Purge.
Gal Guardians takes the two main heroines of Gal Gun Double Peace, Shinobu and Maya Kamizono, and puts them into a Metroidvania. Scratch that, the Kamizono sisters are in Symphony Of The Night. Basically everything screams of that game, from sprites, movement, map, cutscenes, castle locations, and enemies. Story elements have of course been adapted from the Gal Gun series, with most main heroines and a small portion of the Sakurazaki Academy student body making an appearance. Even your avatar in Double Peace makes an appearance. Unfortunately Patako, Ekoro, and Kaoruko don't, probably because their original VAs cost too much.
You have two playable characters, Maya and Shinobu, which you can switch at will. They have their own health bar but share sub-weapon ammunition, and if one dies you are brought back to one room before. You can rescue the fallen sister by reaching the spot where she died and perform CPR (mash the X button). If the second sister dies before that, you lose one life; both sisters are brought back to life with full health, and you start at the last checkpoint. There are no save rooms, but the game saves often and checkpoints are plentiful.
Maya and Shinobu have different weapons: machinegun for Shinobu, and shikigami for Maya. Shinobu has the lowest attack power, but of course she is ranged and also has the longest lifebar. Maya is much stronger than Shinobu, she can one-shot enemies that Shinobu need to spend tens of bullets on, and can crawl in small spaces. Switching takes a second, and you can only do that when firmly on ground. I understand why they added this small pause when switching, but I'd have preferred it to be immediate and available anytime, it would have made some platforming sections less rigid, especially when you need to combine multiple sub-weapons to reach secret areas.
Sub-weapons are gained by defeating bosses, and both sisters have six each. The game is rather stingy with sub-weapon ammo, and I've ended up saving ammo for any kind of platforming challenge there might be. Enemies don't drop experience, ammo drops are incredibly rare, and health is either only hidden in walls or in clearly marked crates; it's easy to cheese enemies with Shinobu, and there are parts where I simply ran from enemies because there are no rewards for killing them.
You do get upgrades in the second part of the game (no, you don't go through the castle upside-down...at least, from what I've played) and I would suggest not to spend too much time trying to backtrack for secrets as you'll have to go through the castle a second time. Enemies respawn and so do bosses, and bosses get a couple of new attacks.
Taking a page from many Castlevania games, bosses have one final attack that could kill you. Not a particular fan of this, especially because if you lose one sister, you have to redo the boss all over. Bosses do not regain their full health upon retry and switch directly to whatever phase they were in the last time, but some of them are more tiresome than challenging. I really wish Gal Guardians would give more ammo for sub-weapons, there are some I don't really know how to use because resources are so limited that you might have to skip a secret simply because there weren't enough drops.
One more thing I find barely useful is the special attack: it's way too slow to execute and its bullet is slow too, and the few times I've tried using them against a boss it missed due to its slow speed.
Enemies also tend to be kinda dumb, with some of them not even changing facing when approached from behind. Enemies do not respawn for a set amount of time, and some rooms are way too large for their own good, enemies or no enemies. I really wished for a dash or something similar, because going from empty hallways with not even platforming challenges is incredibly boring. There's no map, but you can bring up a compass to check the general direction of bosses and nearby secrets. Sub-weapons are selected with L and R (Switch version), or you can hold down one of the two buttons to summon a weapon wheel...which works great with a analog stick, but diagonals on the d-pad aren't that responsive.
The game doesn't seem particularly long: in less than three hours I've completed the first part, and I don't expect the second part to be much longer (also because I'm not going for a 100% run).
I think Gal Guardians continues Inti Creates' tradition about sidescrollers: they are good, but always lack that something to make them special.
Inti Creates is a small Japanese studio right now best known for their numerous side-scrollers: Mega Man Zero, Dragon Marked For Death, Blaster Master Zero, Azure Striker Gunvolt, Mighty No. 9...maybe forget the last one. But to some they are best know for the Gal Gun series, fixed-scrolling lightgun games where you fend off hordes of female highschoolers as you search for The Only True Love Of Your Life.
In 2022 Inti Creates re-relased Gal Gun Double Peace for modern systems and closed the Azure Gunvolt Trilogy, and while brewing a brand-new project, Inti Creates...created Gal Guardians: Demon Purge.
Gal Guardians takes the two main heroines of Gal Gun Double Peace, Shinobu and Maya Kamizono, and puts them into a Metroidvania. Scratch that, the Kamizono sisters are in Symphony Of The Night. Basically everything screams of that game, from sprites, movement, map, cutscenes, castle locations, and enemies. Story elements have of course been adapted from the Gal Gun series, with most main heroines and a small portion of the Sakurazaki Academy student body making an appearance. Even your avatar in Double Peace makes an appearance. Unfortunately Patako, Ekoro, and Kaoruko don't, probably because their original VAs cost too much.
You have two playable characters, Maya and Shinobu, which you can switch at will. They have their own health bar but share sub-weapon ammunition, and if one dies you are brought back to one room before. You can rescue the fallen sister by reaching the spot where she died and perform CPR (mash the X button). If the second sister dies before that, you lose one life; both sisters are brought back to life with full health, and you start at the last checkpoint. There are no save rooms, but the game saves often and checkpoints are plentiful.
Maya and Shinobu have different weapons: machinegun for Shinobu, and shikigami for Maya. Shinobu has the lowest attack power, but of course she is ranged and also has the longest lifebar. Maya is much stronger than Shinobu, she can one-shot enemies that Shinobu need to spend tens of bullets on, and can crawl in small spaces. Switching takes a second, and you can only do that when firmly on ground. I understand why they added this small pause when switching, but I'd have preferred it to be immediate and available anytime, it would have made some platforming sections less rigid, especially when you need to combine multiple sub-weapons to reach secret areas.
Sub-weapons are gained by defeating bosses, and both sisters have six each. The game is rather stingy with sub-weapon ammo, and I've ended up saving ammo for any kind of platforming challenge there might be. Enemies don't drop experience, ammo drops are incredibly rare, and health is either only hidden in walls or in clearly marked crates; it's easy to cheese enemies with Shinobu, and there are parts where I simply ran from enemies because there are no rewards for killing them.
You do get upgrades in the second part of the game (no, you don't go through the castle upside-down...at least, from what I've played) and I would suggest not to spend too much time trying to backtrack for secrets as you'll have to go through the castle a second time. Enemies respawn and so do bosses, and bosses get a couple of new attacks.
Taking a page from many Castlevania games, bosses have one final attack that could kill you. Not a particular fan of this, especially because if you lose one sister, you have to redo the boss all over. Bosses do not regain their full health upon retry and switch directly to whatever phase they were in the last time, but some of them are more tiresome than challenging. I really wish Gal Guardians would give more ammo for sub-weapons, there are some I don't really know how to use because resources are so limited that you might have to skip a secret simply because there weren't enough drops.
One more thing I find barely useful is the special attack: it's way too slow to execute and its bullet is slow too, and the few times I've tried using them against a boss it missed due to its slow speed.
Enemies also tend to be kinda dumb, with some of them not even changing facing when approached from behind. Enemies do not respawn for a set amount of time, and some rooms are way too large for their own good, enemies or no enemies. I really wished for a dash or something similar, because going from empty hallways with not even platforming challenges is incredibly boring. There's no map, but you can bring up a compass to check the general direction of bosses and nearby secrets. Sub-weapons are selected with L and R (Switch version), or you can hold down one of the two buttons to summon a weapon wheel...which works great with a analog stick, but diagonals on the d-pad aren't that responsive.
The game doesn't seem particularly long: in less than three hours I've completed the first part, and I don't expect the second part to be much longer (also because I'm not going for a 100% run).
I think Gal Guardians continues Inti Creates' tradition about sidescrollers: they are good, but always lack that something to make them special.
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