Two uniformed sisters, one specializing in long range submachine guns and modern weaponry, the other in shorter ranged and more magical fare, must now face down the demon world in the name of peace and love. If this sounds familiar it’s because Inti Creates has created a new entry into one of their newest platformer franchises and Gal Gun spinoffs: Gal Guardians. However, this entry does not star Maya and Shinobu Kamizono like the first one did, nor does it star any prior existing Gal Gun characters. Instead, it features an almost entirely new cast of characters throughout, but most importantly maid sisters, Kirika and Masha, and the demon lord, Maxim, who they serve devotedly.
Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark begins as elder sister, Kirika, and younger sister, Masha, are returning early to Lord Maxim’s after their vacation, only to see it under attack. Fearing the worst, they rush to their master’s throne room, only to arrive just as rival demon, Lord Lyzenorg, explodes Maxim’s body and sics double agent head maid, Lysa, who facilitated the attack on the castle, to deal with the maid sisters. After driving off the traitorous maid, the sisters almost vow to begin a mission of vengeance before discovering that Maxim is not dead, he’s just been reduced to a floating burning skull, with the rest of his many bones scattered across the demon realms. Now armed with a mission to restore Maxim’s missing body, restore the castle and bring its massacred servants back to life, and ultimately stop Lyzenorg’s conquest of the demon realm, the maid sisters set out on their quest.
So, how do they go about this? As I mentioned above, Kirika is the ranged weapons expert of the maids, wielding an automatic submachine gun as her primary weapon – it deals less powerful hits but in rapid succession- with a heavier shotgun available when she dashes. Both of these weapons require ammo to use, drawing from the same pool, and when you run out of bullets, you need to reload and fortunately there are infinite bullets in reserve. Masha, meanwhile, wields a whip and her attacks are more powerful but far shorter range. She can also charge up her whip and unleash a slightly more powerful attack, or expend a seed (these are dropped by enemies and can only be picked up by Masha) to unleash a more powerful elemental charge attack. These weapons remain fixed with no upgrades apart from boosts from level. Instead, the sisters are customized through their choice of sub-weapons. As for Maxim, he starts out useless but as you play through the game and collect more of his bones to offer to his throne not only do the sisters gain levels and improved stats like HP, attack, and sub weapon energy, Maxim also levels and gains more powers that help the sisters, like heal, multiple air jumps, air dashes, super dashes, and more. Both sisters are playable at all times, swappable in single player and simultaneous in co-op. Like in Demon Purge it’s not the end of the world to lose a sister; if one sisters falls in combat, you can go to her body and mash the attack button to revive her – though this does become more difficult if done multiple times in rapid succession.
Also like Demon Purge, Servants of the Dark handles sub-weapons in a very unique manner. However, while these were unlocked and available at the end of each level for the Kamizono sisters, for the Maid sisters, they are instead more like RPG equipment, in that they are randomly dropped, go into your inventory, and can be freely equipped and unequipped. Sub-weapons are broadly split into three categories: purple, which can be equipped by either sister and are primarily knives and bat; pink, that can only be equipped by Kirika and are weapons like grenades, axes, polarms, and boomerangs; and green, exclusive to Masha, which all summon creatures or living weapons to attack semi independently. Each sister can have two sub-weapons active at the same time and can eventually hot swap between four sets of two. Maxim also has his own special equipment, medals, which can improve the Sister’s stats, grant them special powers, or have unique effects, but not all of them are useful.
One other thing to note about sub-weapons that make them different from most other Metroidvanias is that they can provide all sorts of bonuses. These come in the form of increased ammo capacity or faster reload for Kirika, faster whip charges for Masha, increase HP or drop rates for the sister they’re attached to, or they can change the weapon’s attributes by making them stronger, cost less, give them elemental attributes and secondary effects. The thing is what you get on a sub-weapon is entirely random, determined when they drop, and sometimes a weapon will get a bad attribute for itself or even just a negative modifier like doubling their use cost. Fortunately, it is possible to transfer these attributes from a donor weapon to another for a small fee, though you are limited to four effects to a weapon. You can also upgrade a sub-weapon for added effect or sacrifice copies to your selected sub-weapon to power it up. In fact, despite not having the best selection of attached attributes, one of the first sub-weapons I found was clutched throughout the entire game because its cost reduction reduction skill and secondary power on upgrade made it effectively stronger than more other weapons – all the way to the final boss of the game.
Of course, the NPC who performs these upgrades isn’t immediately available at the start of Servants of the Dark. In fact he’s dead. One of the game’s side quests involves searching far and wide for the souls of Maxim’s servants who perished in the castle assault and shoving them back into their body to revive them. Most of these are found close to the main story plot, with a few in odd, out of the way locations. Especially odd is how difficult it can be to find the NPC who enables easy fast travel out of the castle, given how often you need to travel back to the castle to level up and thus gain more progression skills. This also leads me to the only two major complaints I have with Servants of the Dark, and both have to do with the otherwise very unique and fun levelling system.
You do not gain levels by gaining XP when killing enemies. Instead, after discovering that various monsters have taken Maxim’s bones to try and become more powerful, you collect the bones, which can be found regularly dropped from enemies and in large bundles hidden in chests in the game. Each time you find a new area there will be a set amount of bones that can drop in that area, so when these run out it’s a good time to return to the castle and level up and hopefully get a new movement boost or other upgrade. However, one of the mandatory bones that you need to get – and only this one bone – must be purchased, and for quite a sum of money. This is usually not a problem as money is fairly plentiful, but it is possible to spend all your money ahead of this purchase and need to grind up to afford this plot-mandatory bone.
The other major problem came in the fact that there are two important Maxim abilities absolutely required for completing the game: Maxim Dash and Straight. While the game tells you what they do, they don’t ever tell you how to do them, at least in the translation of the build I played. Inti Creates have promised to put out a patch to address these issues, but just in case: Maxim Dash is performed by pressing the dash button and Maxim Power button simultaneously, and Maxim Straight – the one that gave me trouble – is performed by pushing the Maxim Power button, then both sub-weapon buttons simultaneously. You can also hold up or down before pressing the sub-weapon buttons to perform the attack upwards or downwards as needed. There’s also one servant who doesn’t make her purpose initially clear, but she’s not mandatory for plot so that’s not as drastic.
There are also some very nice design decisions to balance out the strange ones, like allowing you to move and have a full-sized map open at the same time in addition to the map in the menu. The map also closes itself automatically if you attack or take damage. The game always signposts where your next objective is on the map, even for areas you haven’t found yet, to give you an idea of where you need to go. It also auto marks chests and other areas of interest when they get close enough.
Every character in Servants of the Dark is new except for a couple cameos from the Kamizono sisters, and all of their sprites are detailed and expressive. Even the short-lived boss characters have tons of personality and fluid animations be they gigantic or human sized. There’s only Japanese audio, but evey single line in the game, aside from the incidental combat dialogue, is fully subtitled with a very faithful and humorous translation.
Including all my faffing about, it took me around 16 hours to complete Servants of the Dark with a few extras to fill out the achievements and get the true ending (there are two and it’s possible to get both on a single playthrough without too much difficulty), and it was all time well spent. I would like a few more visual quality of life updates – anything to denote an upgraded or boosted sub-weapon at a glance would be nice. I did accidentally toss one of my best sub-weapons when clearing inventory and had to reload my last save to get it back – but on the whole, I absolutely enjoyed the comedy action experience Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark offers.
Tim played Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark on PC with a provided review copy.
