Review: Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark Is a Natural Evolution

Inti Creates' track record shows that it knows its way around the 2D action kitchen better than most. While there has been the occasional misfire, you can generally expect to have a good time when you see the Inti Creates logo pop up. Gal Guardians: Demon Purge was no exception to that, with the developer slyly packaging a spiritual follow-up to the Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon games as a Gal*Gun spin-off. A solid romp, but one whose expansive levels made it hard not to wonder how the concept would do if given the full Metroidvania treatment. Wonder no more, friends. Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark is here, and this time it's exploratory.

The two-character mechanic makes a return in this game, but this time we've got a new dynamic duo. Kirika and Masha are a pair of demon maids who serve the great Demon Lord Maxim. After coming back from a little vacation, the two sisters are shocked to discover the castle has been attacked. All of Maxim's servants have been reduced to piles of bones, and the maids arrive at the throne room just in time to see their lord seemingly taken out by a turncoat maid and her true boss, the Demon Lord Lyzenborg. After a brief scuffle with the enemy, the sisters find themselves alone in the wreckage.

Luckily, it turns out that Maxim is not quite out of the game. While his power has been significantly diminished, he lives on as a floating skull. If his scattered bones can be collected, he can regain his original power. It's up to Kirika and Masha to venture out into the world and bring back every single bone they can find. It's a vast land filled with dangerous demons, monsters, and even some very familiar demon hunters. As Maxim's strength recovers, he can grant additional abilities to the sisters that will help them reach new locations and handle new obstacles. You know, the usual Metroidvania stuff.

Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark uses a similar gameplay dynamic with its playable characters. Kirika uses guns and can pepper enemies from a distance. She has to occasionally reload, and each individual shot only does a little bit of damage. Masha is the melee character, using her whip to thrash her foes up close. She can also make use of a selection of magic seeds that have various effects. In addition to their basic weapons, both sisters can equip two sub-items. You'll mainly encounter these as drops from enemies. There's quite a variety on offer, and they're useful for anything from shoring up each sister's weaknesses to interacting with the environments.

On top of that, Maxim himself can help out. He follows the sisters around in his floating skull form, and you can equip a number of special badges to him that convey different abilities and effects. He can also make use of a selection of demonic powers that expands as he gains levels. As a bonus, the maids' stats will also improve with each level Maxim gains. You can increase Maxim's level by collecting his bones and returning them to his throne room. The first one of these is found as part of the story, but after that they can be dropped by regular enemies, found in chests, or pop up in other places as rewards.

The powers Maxim offers are vital to your progress and you're probably going to need those stat boosts to deal with the baddies, so regular trips back home to make bone deposits are a must. In theory, this makes for a nice loop where you go out and explore for a while then head home to lick your wounds and upgrade. In practice, the game is easy enough and offers enough chances to restore your health that you'll rarely need to head home and patch up. The main reason to go back is simply to toss the bones and gain some levels. It's easy to head back from any of the frequent save spots, but returning to where you were is another matter entirely. You'll find fast travel spots now and then, but they're few and far between.

The more I thought about this, the more it felt like a lot of backtracking just for the sake of not doing a more normal experience system. It's particularly bad early on when you don't have a ton of navigation abilities. As things open up it gets more tolerable. You'll have more reasons to go back to Maxim Castle as more facilities open up there, and with more abilities unlocked you'll have more fun scooting through the areas to make your way back. It probably could have been handled a lot more elegantly, but I suppose in the long run it's not that big of a deal.

A lot of my issues with Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark can be categorized that way, I suppose. The inventory system is a mess as you quickly accumulate a ton of near-useless junk and can't do much more with it than chuck in the item box back home. The enemy variety could be better, with a heavy reliance on palette swaps despite rather large differences between each biome. The map is in some ways very useful due to it marking major points of interest, but it lacks the fine detail many other games in this genre offer. I also wish the game actually told you how to perform the new moves you've unlocked. Some of them are pretty complex and I basically had to smack the buttons in various combinations until something triggered in those cases.

None of that should really put you off of playing this game if you like the Metroidvania genre, though. For whatever failings Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark may have, it's ultimately got a lot going for it. The map is large and full of fun secrets to uncover. You get a lot of diversity in the terrain both in appearance and form. Puzzles are interesting to work out even if they can be a bit obtuse at times. As you would probably expect from an Inti Creates game, the boss battles are excellent. It's really satisfying to learn the patterns and then execute your strategy perfectly.

The game has a lot of heart thanks to its charming characters and interesting world. You get plenty of fun banter between the sisters and Maxim, and the rest of the cast members do their part as well. Finding the souls of Maxim's servants and reviving them is always a treat, even if only to see what oddball pops up next. The pixel art graphics are very expressive in form and animation, too. On the audio end of things, the soundtrack does a good job of reminding you that this series is a riff on a riff of Castlevania, and the energetic voice acting rounds out the presentation nicely.

I haven't even mentioned the multiplayer feature yet. As with the first game, two players can play together, each one taking control of one of the sisters. While multiplayer Metroidvania-style games aren't unheard of these days, it's an uncommon enough feature to be noteworthy. The only bummer is that at launch you'll have to cozy up locally. Online multiplayer is apparently coming in a post-launch update, so keep that in mind if that's important for your needs.

The shift to a full-on Metroidvania format makes Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark a bigger and more satisfying game than the already enjoyable original. With charming characters, interesting map design, and thrilling boss battles, it's easy to forgive this game for minor sins like excessive backtracking and weak tutorials. Servants of the Dark is a solid choice for fans of the original game or Metroidvania enthusiasts alike.

Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark is available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, and PC via Steam.

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