Rating of
3.5/5
Lolivania Classic
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/29/25
“Gal Guardians: Demon Purge” (“GGDP”) is the first ‘Gal Gun’ spinoff title from Inti Creates, a Japanese Indie studio composed of former Capcom employees that has collaborated with Capcom and others (including WayForward) on a variety of old-school genres games living in a new-school world. Thus, they’ve had their fingers in both official ‘Mega Man’ releases, the disastrous ‘Mega Man’ spiritual successor that was “Mighty No. 9,” the ‘Blaster Master’ remakes, and even a brief stint working on “Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.” Inti Creates is not wholly beholden to outside IPs, however, and has a handful of its own, mostly focused on the SHMUP genre, with ‘Mighty Gunvolt,’ ‘Azure Striker,’ and ‘Gal Gun’ all falling within that bucket.
With few SHMUP fans in the MJ Crew (read: none), we generally don’t have much reason to follow Inti Creates’ works as closely as other developers whose genres we like. However, Chris, in his endless pursuit of lolis, did actually play at least one of the ‘Gal Gun’ games, while I remained blissfully ignorant of “GGDP’s” affiliation with that series. No, what convinced me to spend time on this game and award it one of the lower-tier slots in our annual Games of the Year listicle was the simple fact that it was a sidescrolling Metroidvania with local cooperative gameplay for two players. While I have been mostly disappointed in the Metroidvania subgenre lately and its ill-fated direction starting with titles like “Salt & Sanctuary,” “Hollow Knight,” and *shudder* “Dead Cells,” “GGDP” looked to less of a tryhard experience. Moreover, the fact that this was one of the desperately few Metroidvania games with local shared-screen coop meant that it was a perfect way for me and Chris to destroy a couple of Saturday afternoons.
Unfortunately, there was a bit of confusion on just what “GGDP” actually is, how it plays, and how it is tied to the greater ‘Gal Gun’… err… Cinematic Pantyverse. As such, while it was still an enjoyable enough experience based on my preconceptions, it also does a lot of things that might ruffle some feathers.
Presentation
“GGDP” wears its visual inspiration on its sleeve: This is a game that is OBVIOUSLY trying to be “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.” The sprites all have the same low-is resolution and fidelity that leaves them in an awkward space between “chunky pixels” and actually-refined, modern pixel art. As a result, everything tends to look a bit indistinct and can be difficult to discern fine details. However, enemies and the player characters are well animated and spray copious amounts of pixel-blood everywhere, and boss monsters in particular are very impressive to look at.
Audio is also HEAVILY influenced by “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night,” with similar goth-rock stylings and a distinctly Japanese flare. The soundtrack is good in the moment, but I honestly don’t find it particularly memorable outside of the game.
Technically, “GGDP” is pretty good. It supports Xinput out of the box and makes it easy to reassign controllers to Player 1 or Player 2 if the default doesn’t get it right for some reason. The game is also quite nice from a user-friendliness perspective, with NO DLC or microtransactions to worry about, plus a plethora of difficulty options that objectively make the gameplay experience better. However, on the down-side, the game’s engine inexplicably experiences lots of random frame-rate drops. I’m not entirely sure if these were intentional – as a throwback to the ‘slowdown’ we often got on older consoles that couldn’t handle everything on-screen at once – or if its genuinely an issue with not allocating enough system RAM… or maybe it’s because the game has a Switch version, and Inti Creates didn’t bother to release the limiters when NOT running on obsolete smartphone hardware.
Story
Going into “GGDP,” I had no idea that it was a tie-in to the ‘Gal Gun’ loli-SHMUPS, but the warped little gremlin sitting on the couch next to me immediately recognized the characters, even though he couldn’t quite place them. Thus, instead of being a serious take on sexy women hunting demons, like, say, my personal GoAT Classicvania title, “Midnight Castle Succubus,” it is a very silly, spoofy game with a story revolving around the one-boy at an all-girls school LITERALLY turning into a giant erection and a castle-wide scavenger hunt for missing panties.
But let’s start at the beginning: Maya and Shinobu are two school-girls (one busty, one flat, naturally) who attend high-school in modern Japan (*groan*). But they aren’t just school-girls, as they have both been trained in the secret arts of demon-slaying, and have an on-again, off-again frenemy-situationship with a pre-pubescent succubus named Kurona.
At some point since her last trouncing, Kurona discovers a magical demon mirror, and uses its powers to fuse the girls’ school with a demonic castle from Hell, trapping all of the students inside and causing several of them to fuse with the demons who control each region of the school/castle. Maya and Shinobu must use their demon-hunter powers – a magical halberd and an… anti-demon sub-machine gun – along with spells they pickup along the way as they attempt to rescue their fellow students, purge the demons, and ultimately spank Kurona hard enough that she takes a break from being a pain in the ass for a little while. Alone the way, they will enlist the help of several clever girls, a wayward angel, and the one male student who gets transformed into a huge pillar at the center of the castle (pillar, erection, hurr hurr durr).
In general, the story in “GGDP” is incredibly silly and at times incredibly stupid. But, hey, silly and stupid are perfectly cromulent aspects of comedy, so complaining about that here is pointless. However, I CAN complain about the game’s pacing and excessive use of repetition to pad out its relatively short play time. Chris and I got to see all three endings in just over 15 hours. However, seeing these endings requires running through the game’s castle from the beginning approximately FOUR (4!) times. First, just to clear the stages, second to find special items that will arouse column-boy enough to let him transport Maya and Shinobu to the top of the highest tower, a third time to find hidden machine parts for the second ending, and a fourth time to collect an ungodly quantity of lost panties in order to get the third (and weirdest) ending.
Gameplay
Remember up top when I said that I was looking forward to playing a shared-screen Metroidvania cooperatively with Chris? Yeah, toss that in the trash, as “GGDP” is NOT actually a Metroidvania, but is rather a Classicvania much more in-line with “Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse,” than “Symphony of the Night” and its descendants. The game is broken up into seven distinct stages, each with a boss at the end. While it is possible to teleport to the beginning of any stage from the end of any stage (and from the home base that unlocks at the beginning of the second run through the castle/school), there are no teleportation spots within the stages – though there are enough checkpoints to keep things from getting tedious. Even worse, the only map that’s available in-game is the vague outline that appears during stage selection, which doesn’t help much when the game is filled with unmarked one-way doors that make exploration far more of a chore than it needs to be.
On its default settings, “GGDP” feels very much like a typical old-school ‘Castlevania’ game, especially with the somewhat awkward jumping and the absolutely obscene amounts of knock-back characters experience when taking a hit from an enemy. Fortunately, the game does have a Casual Mode, which doesn’t change anything about enemy or boss difficulty, but simply disables the knock-back and gives the player unlimited one-ups. We played on Casual. We have no regrets. Suffering and struggle are for fools.
In general, “GGDP” plays very much like a ‘Castlevania’ fan might expect. Each of the two characters has different and complementary abilities. Maya is the melee beater who dishes out a ton of damage at close range, but has less health bars. Shinobu’s SMGs provide a ranged attack option, which eventually gains the ability to be fired at different angles, however, her shots are generally much weaker than Maya’s attacks, AND she has to stop and reload after every spent magazine, which can leave her open to getting biffed. Each of the girls also has a stable of special abilities that are collected from the game’s demonic boss enemies. These typically take the form of navigation tools, like Maya’s Penguin Caller that can freeze hot things (allowing them to be shattered) or Shinobu’s Proximity Mines that can blow up cracked floors. These spells all use Hearts as a resource (like ‘Castlevania’) with purple potion pots dropped by cracked candles providing a recharge. The girls also have a third resource – Pride – which allows them to perform a screen-clearing team attack that also deals fairly significant damage to bosses.
In single-player mode, the player can freely switch between Maya and Shinobu at will. In coop, the two girls are both on-screen at all times. However, since some platforming and navigational challenges can only be overcome by one of them, the other girl can freely transform into an orbiting ‘icon,’ highly reminiscent of the ‘bubble’ mechanic in ‘New Super Mario Bros.’ allowing her to skip the platforming and teleport to her partner. Unfortunately, in one of the only ways “GGDP” bucks the paradigms set by ‘Castlevania,’ the game’s general mobility skill upgrades aren’t all that great. There’s NO double-jump, though coop players can kinda-sorta simulate a double-jump by standing on each other’s heads… though, in most cases, the ability to stand on each other tends to complicate regular platforming and typically sends one player into an insta-death pit. While the coop mode allows players to do CPR on a downed ally for unlimited revives, death pits consume the body, so revival must wait until the next checkpoint, which can be doubly frustrating if the girl who fell in the pit is the only one who can overcome a navigation challenge in subsequent rooms/corridors!
Overall
“Gal Guardians: Demon Purge” isn’t the next great coop Metroidvania title we were hoping for… but it is a pretty good coop Classicvania title, and there are actually fare fewer of those. While the gameplay is solid, if not a bit idiosyncratic and intentionally-repetitive, and the various difficulty options allow for everyone to get something out of it, the silly narrative and the game’s particular sense of humor will ensure that only people of a certain (otaku) mindset will be able to truly enjoy it.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
