Gal Guardians: Demon Purge - It's the Girls Versus the Ghouls in a School Subverted and a Castle Made

While most classic gaming franchises seem doomed to obscurity, sinking into the shadows of an ever-crowded, cloudier past, a few surmount their medium’s ephemeral curses for a renewed recursion. Super Mario Bros. is remembered today because of its successor, the superior Super Mario World. And the original Mega Man series clings to life, in part, by its many elaborate spinoffs, from Battle Network to Mega Man X.

Konami’s Castlevania is another of these seemingly immortal franchises, although its continued prominence is sustained less through official sequels and more through a growing reservoir of third-party homages and retro-styled knockoffs. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania Edition. Even Vampire Survivors. Konami’s vampiric property endures in spite of its IP holder’s negligence, saved by the almost communal devotion shared between fans and indie developers alike. New Castlevania games are rare, but Castlevania-esque tributes, motifs, and what-ifs are surprisingly common.

And Gal Guardians is more proof to point.

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But an unlikely point, considering that Gal Guardians is derived not from a classic action/adventure series of vampire slayers and twisted castles, but rather, from a modern-day rail gunner of pheromones and moaning schoolgirls. Indeed, Gal Guardians is a 2-D spin-off from Gal Gun: Double Peace and Gal Gun 2, a couple of farcical shooters in which a guy must liberate a school from a mischievous demon’s control by intoxicating the student body with his heavenly-endowed “pheromone shot.” It’s all unapologetic, pervy nonsense—a parody of sorts that trades blasting monsters with classrooms of lovestruck, stalking girls.

Gal Guardians, however, far from what fans might assume, is not particularly girly, silly, or pink. It’s dark. Creepy. And plenty red from all the blood players will surely spill as they push the game’s two heroines, Shinobu and Maya, through a school now consumed by floors and corridors of winding, labyrinthine horror. Yes, the frilly antics of before have been swapped for some serious blasting action. This shift in aesthetics and tone is peculiar, for sure, but as a tribute to the ghoulish scares of Castlevania, it’s still pretty fun.

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But which brand of Castlevania? Konami’s long-lauded series usually takes one of two approaches—the more linear, level-by-level template in which difficulty is emphasized over exploration, and the more open-ended reverse wherein players must often surmise their way through an environment of branching paths and misleading dead ends. Guardians finds a compromise by offering traditional stages that, although superficially linear, can be replayed at any time as new abilities are accrued. Indeed, each stage must be replayed at least once, for defeating the final boss only forces a “second quest” which must be surpassed before achieving one of the game's multiple endings.

This addendum is, in many ways, where the real game begins, the initial playthrough being but the pretense for what becomes a scavenger hunt as players scour the “castle” for certain necessary McGuffins. And Guardians is full of iffy "souvenirs," from trapped classmates and stat upgrades to forty pairs of misplaced panties. (Seems the game hasn’t forgotten its original inspiration after all.)

The plot, fortunately, is simple enough and doesn’t need prior knowledge of the Gal Gun games. Shinobu and Maya are typical high school students who just so happen to be master demon hunters. And then, without obvious explanation, their school gets transformed into a ghastly castle of haunts and ghouls; apparently, the building has been fused to the demon world with the entire student body brought along for the trip. The culprit behind the madness is a cute succubus named Kurona. Defeat her and, in theory, the student body will be whisked back to reality.

But unlike Gal Gun’s sugary silliness, Guardians is surprisingly humorless beyond a few sisterly quips and barbs tossed here or there. The castle is a veritable splatterhouse of nasty creatures and walking disfigurement, as if the grounds have become the playground for the experiments released from some God-forsaken lab. If Gal Gun stripped Hell of its darker veneer for something merely more pesky, more mischievous…Guardians recalls that Hell is indeed a place of ugliness and blood. The aesthetics are rendered skillfully, adopting the best of the 16-bit and 32-bit age’s 2-D toolkit in a very Castlevania: Symphony of the Night way. And yet, it seems a missed opportunity considering the franchise’s colorful backdrop. What if, just maybe, the game could have embraced its heritage with a style imbued more in rainbow than venom and gloom? Offered a castle more in line with Oz or Wonderland than Dante’s Inferno? Instead of being an homage to Castlevania, Guardians could have been its devoted counterpoint--its brightly lit, inverted alternative.

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Nevertheless, the game, if not particularly inventive, still offers plenty of polished fun. In single-player, both girls can be controlled via a “tag-team” dynamic, with Shinobu specializing in long-range gunplay while the younger Maya wields a devastating sword. Players can switch between the two styles as needed, and if one girls falls, she can be resuscitated by the other sister. Bosses are fittingly huge, climactic, and sometimes don’t seem to play fair, with some even sporting last-resort, desperation moves when brought to the edge of defeat (a nice homage to Rondo of Blood). Both girls also pack their own specialized subweapons, with Shinobu favoring weapons of a certain bluster and muscle, and Maya’s being more defensive in orientation. In short, they make a good team and complement each other well.

The star, however, is truly Shinobu…her righteous Uzi granting the gameplay an almost run-and-gun feel that would otherwise be sacrilege for a genre traditionally constricted to close-quarters combat. But more than blasphemy, the gal’s fast-blasting gunplay is a revelation…invigorating the rather predictable proceedings into something different, even redeeming. Completing the game is almost impossible without some of Maya’s swordplay. But gamers will always be anxious to wield Shinobu again.

The game’s co-op mode is also smart, allowing two friends to command a sister each as they fight the demon hordes together. Should one player fall, the other can assist with some quick CPR, replacing the usual solitary tag-teaming with some real-world team-building. Players can even use each other as stepping stones to reach areas otherwise inaccessible early on.

As stated, knowledge of the Gal Gun franchise isn't necessary for Guardians to be enjoyed. In fact, knowing the characters’ wacky history only undermines what’s a decidedly somber spin-off. Newcomers will no doubt wonder, as they slay vile atrocities and save innocent lives through Guardians’ eight heinous stages, why they’re also collecting swimsuits and panties and other odd female accoutrements. The game’s true flaw is that it can’t resist subverting its own tale of demonic revenge by instilling the sillier remains of a decidedly checkered past. Gameplay-wise, Guardians' attempt to split the difference between the linear and adventure sides of the Castlevania franchise works just fine. But narratively, blending Castlevania’s gothic themes with Gal Gun’s bubblegummy, sexy delivery is like toothpaste on cake. It looks okay but doesn't taste great.

Gal Guardians should have featured a new cast of characters, a separate story, a new world. No panties mentioned, just sisters slaying demons as they talk about boys and bicker harmlessly amongst themselves. Or, Gal Guardians could have been continued as is—the unapologetic extension of Gal Gun's amorous world of schools transformed into the kinky and kitsch. No goth and drama, no zombies and blade-wielding hunchbacks…perhaps not even a castle. But a circus, a candyland, a mall—a garish carnival all comprised with a dessert cart of garish, leering dangers. Cat girls and jealous bunnies and haughty matrons all watching, all demanding, all flaunting their own brand of maven intentions. That’s what Gal Guardians probably should have been…not a nod to Castlevania exactly, but, if anything, a parody thereof. A subversion favoring the fanciful, the lightly scandalous, the absurdity only a video game can provide. And what Gal Gun had already so ably done.

A run-and-gun Parodius, perchance?

So, no, Gal Guardians is merely a good Castlevania game that, thanks to Shinobu’s action-reload gameplay, does shirk the distinction of clone while still failing to otherwise significantly grow. It’s still trapped, in a sense, by another franchise’s past versus forging its own personality of pheromones and squealing girls. Mimicking Castlevania made sense, but it wasn’t brave. Only mundane.

But a Gal Gun platform adventure with all the sights of a decadent but colorful, more flamboyant hell?

Now that would be a game to see.--D

Look familiar? Gal Guardians obviously cribs its stylings from the Castlevania series, even directly borrowing some of the same settings and structure.

The game's two heroines, Shinobu and Maya, specialize in long-range and short-range attacks, respectively. Both characters can be swapped on the fly tag-team style while maintaining their individual stances and style. Note how, on the left (or bottom) two pictures, both girls brace against the winds with a similar but separate distinction after having just been switched.

Shinobu and Maya are just two normal school girls who also happen to be part-time exorcists/demon hunters. And today, on a fateful day walking to school, they find their "school" transformed and in need of a certain cleansing of its own. And spoiler: after making it to the top of this fortress, the two are sent unceremoniously back to the entrance, forced to endure the gauntlet a second time.

The two sisters enjoy their banter, adding a bit of humor to the otherwise grim proceedings. Story blurbs like this pop up through the adventure.

End-stage bosses are diverse, often huge, and when teetering on defeat, will sometimes try a devastating desperation move a la Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.

Level designs vary from being straightforward (top) to being a bit more dynamic, as seen with the pirate ship firing cannonballs from the background (bottom).

The first playthrough merely sees the protagonists returned to the starting point...but now with a lot more to do. More than just getting back to the castle's top, the duo must free any remaining trapped classmates, explore any newly accessible areas, and most importantly, collect a certain category of clothing specific to the female disposition. The latter objective brings Gal Guardians more in line its more outlandish and irreverent Gal Gun sister series.

The sisters are unique in terms of their HP and weaponry, including a whole slew of sub-weaponry. They also can combine to produce a "lethal shot"...although it's often difficult to time properly for the bigger, quicker monsters.

Here, Maya uses her penguin freeze sub-weapon to snuff out an otherwise impassable enemy. Sure enough, a distressed classmate was trapped on the other side.

Thanks to both Zhang Gaming and Pokedude900 of YouTube fame for some of these screen grabs!