Review: Gal Guardians: Demon Purge – Goofy Gorgeous Gothic Fun

In the off chance you’re not familiar with game developer Inti Creates, they are the people responsible for every Crayon Shin Chan game in the last – you don’t know what that is either? First off, how did you respond to me and secondly they are also responsible for the Megaman Zero and ZX series, Mergaman 9 and Mergaman 10, the Azure Striker Gunvolt and Luminous Avenger series, the Blaster Master Zero series, Dragon Marked for Death, Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 1 and Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2, and the Gal Gun games. Hopefully you’ve heard of one of those. If not, trust me when I say they are masters of fast-paced platforming action, even if they’ve had the occasional stinker (Mighty No 9) in their day. Now, while Inti Creates is mostly known for platformers, they also have some adventure and even shooter games under their belt, including one of the ones I mentioned above: Gal Gun.

Gal Gun is a comedy rail shooter series with the basic premise that you play an average ordinary boy who must shoot pheremone bullets to defend yourself against waves of magically lovestruck young women to set right a cupid’s mistake and get back your chance at finding love in life. In Gal*Gun: Double Peace, two of the possible love interests and also boss fights are demon hunting sisters Shinobu and Maya Kamizono, who fight against another possible love interest and boss fight, the demon Kurona. Gal Gun is a silly series. Anyway, I bring that up because it is relevant, as those two sisters are the playable protagonists of Gal Guardians: Demon Purge and their antagonist is the same Kurona who has merged their high school with the demon realm with the aid of a magic mirror and transformed it into a demon castle, and kidnapped and corrupted a number of the students to go along with it. It is then up to the sisters to save the day!

Moments before disaster strikes
Moments before disaster strikes

As far as combat goes, you take control of the either Shinobu or Maya at once, but you can switch between them at any time during a level. Each has their own weapon, sub weapons, and even more importantly HP pools, though the sisters share the same pool of sub weapon energy. Elder sister Shinobu is a ranger specialist, using a rapid fire submachine gun with a 100 bullet clip (she can run out, and if she does you either need to wait for bullets to regenerate, or risk her reload animation by tapping down twice), and sub weapons like a dagger thrown upwards at a 45 degree angle, grenades, land mines and a rocket launcher, for example. She also has more health by a wide margin, which might seem odd for the ranged character, but it makes sense when you realize her little sister Maya deals much more damage with her spear and paper shuriken and has more utility in her sub weapons, able to form defensive shields, create platforms, and freeze enemies and water in levels (this can also create platforms, for the record) and a handy umbrella for more aerial control. In addition, the sisters have a combined attack they can use only when a super meter is full that will either clear the screen of all normal monsters or deal significant damage to a boss. Both sisters have strengths and skills that need to be used to make it to the end of each level, rescue all their fellow students and eventually reach the top of the castle.

Of course, you are going to take damage, and maybe you’ll even lose all your life or fall down a bottomless pit or two. If that happens you aren’t down a life, instead you just take over from the last room transition or checkpoint as the other sister and try and make it back to your fallen character. If you can make it back to the sister and revive her, you continue on with both sisters with the formerly fallen one at half health. If not, tean at that point you lose a life. It’s entirely possible to lose a sister, reviver her, and then have her die repeatedly, though it’s been incredibly rare for me, happening only once in a boss fight and which was primarily due to knockback.

Each Boss is unique and fun, right down to their flashy desperation attacks
Each Boss is unique and fun, right down to their flashy desperation attacks

Speaking of bosses, and enemies in general, the sprite work in Gal Guardians: Demon Purge is amazing. Everything manages to stand out so it doesn’t get lost in the background or among other enemies. Even level traps are well communicated ahead of time, first in a safe manner, then increasingly lethally. The only thing I encountered that was not well telegraphed were several sections of false flooring that dropped the sisters into a lower area of the level, but that’s their entire point so I can’t hold it against them. Even the backgrounds and level tiles are well rendered, and often provide subtle clues about which sub weapon to use to gain access to hidden or out of the way areas in levels. The characters and enemies are all expertly animated and each boss also has a unique identity and is instantly recognizable as soon as their fight starts.

Like a lot of action platformer games, the bosses in Gal Guardians are unique, wild enemies with wild attack patterns, often each with their own unique challenges, and some form of fight-ending desperation attack. For those you familiar with Inti Creates’ Curse of the Moon, they’re a lot like that, only these can definitely kill your character and force you to restart a fight. These come in many forms, like grabbing one character and forcing your other one to hit the boss before she’s chomped to bits, to bringing down a flurry of chandeliers, or getting an extra life bar and entire new attack pattern. Fail to avoid these attacks and lose your life, and the boss regains some HP and you have to try the fight again, with the added worry of needing to revive the fallen sister mid fight. Win and you free another student, gain more sub weapons, and move on to the next level.

The game wants you to use sub weapons to explore and rescue other students as much as it wants you to use them to defeat enemies
other students as much as it wants you to use them to defeat enemies

Gal Guardians handles its sub weapons differently compared to other action platformers like, for example again, Curse of the Moon. Instead of having to find sub weapons mid level and swap between them, Gal Guardians lets the sisters switch between their sub weapons freely, but instead grants access to new sub weapons only at after defeating a level’s boss. This also encourages replayability as while each level is a more or less linear progression, each level can be freely revisited and each one has several colored pillars that are invulnerable to all the sister’s starting weapons. as well as secret areas and rescuable students that require sub weapons from later in the game to reach. As a perfect example, the third level, which gives Maya a freezing sub-weapon, has a demon at the start of the level that blocks an entire passageway and can only be defeated by ice. The game also encourages this backtracking and exploration by providing a level select pillar at the start of each level and saving all collected items, even if you quite a stage midway through.

Gal Guardians is currently light on alternate play modes though it does have co-op multiplayer which is local only for now as far as I am aware, but each player gets to take control of one of the sisters, and can swap between an active and a mascot mode at will, allowing less experienced players to duck out in sticky situations if necessary. The rules for losing sisters is also slightly relaxed in that a sister can be downed and the gameplay will not immediately stop, but if both characters die you will still lose a life, so make sure you revive your fellow players whenever you can. There are also three difficulty modes: veteran is the default normal, casual gets rid of lives and knockback and doubles the sub weapon capacity compared to normal, and Legend is the hard mode, but I don’t even know how it changes the rules. You can change the difficulty at any time though, so don’t worry about changing the difficulty to suit your tastes. You will just need to restart the level you’re on each time you change it. Lastly, there are language options for Gal Guardians, in the form of Pure mode, which includes Japanese voices and voiced cutscenes, and Refined Mode, which has unvoiced cutscenes and English Language for the gameplay. Me, I’m just gonna keep it on Japanese. 

Tim played Gal Guardians: Demon Purge on PC with a review code. Gal Guardians: Demon Purge is also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

This review was edited on March 9th, 2023 to reflect the announcement made by INTI CREATES that Grim Guardians: Demon Purge would have its name changed to Gal Guardians: Demon Purge in English-speaking territories. 

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