It’s been a bit since I did a lengthy post for anything, and since I like talking about genre stuff and this game has something of a mess of different -vania genre things I figured I could talk enough to have a decently lengthy post for once.

Anyway, this is a -vania game, a kind of sequel to Gal Guardians which itself is the spiritual sequel to Gal Gun Double Peace. This is more of an ecchi game then it’s predecessor, though really not by much. 1 cg versus this game’s 4-ish. The more notable thing is that other then Maya and Shinobu showing up and being a boss fight + a sidequest + a hot spring cg the game has no other connection to Gal Gun. It actually feels more similar to a Disgaea in setting.

Quick story synopsis then. Two demon maids are on there way home from a vacation to find their lord’s castle smoking. They break in and arrive to see their lord getting killed by another Demon Lord, flanked by the Head-Main traitor who maid this attack possible. After fending off the head maid, the two demon maids are sad for a bit before poof, there Demon Lord who’s up as a floating skull, barely having survived getting blown up.

The trio set off to gather the demon lord’s bones which which strengthen him and up, and then get revenge on the ex head maid and her lord. That’s about it… You meet a cast of quirky characters and revive the entire castle as you travel the land in search of his bones. It’s not a story heavy game.

On to gameplay, and I’m going start with my issues. The biggest one is a lack of good tutorials, specifically around environmental reactions and what the devil dash can do. The dash is the big one, it’s the biggest roadblock in the game really.

So the game gives you quest goals to reach, and after the first two you are given two at once. Reaching both these spots, you gain nothing. No movement skills, no new weapons, no clear way forward. There is a new map marker to go to, but no way with the moveset you had to reach it. If you collected enough of the demon lord’s bones scattered in chests and dropped by enemies up to an amount in each area though, you will eventually learn Demon Dash. It lets you zoom around and run through enemies. What you aren’t told is it breaks floor hazards, breaks vines with purple static around them, and lets you run on water and lava. That last one being the big upgrade that lets you progress, and you aren’t even hinted at that this skill does that. There’s two issues with this.

The bigger one to me is a lack of information leading to a meandering point where you either look it up, get lucky, try everything, or be one of a small number of players who logic out that moving fast equals maybe running on water. Or you jump dash spam with the special demon dash like I did until I figured it out. The other issue is progression. You gain this move via leveling up, which is done via finding bones in the world. You actually gain plenty of moves via leveling. This makes sense narratively, but gameplay wise is really awkward feeling for a metroidvania. While you are leveling via items you find, you are still grinding drops to reach a minimum level to advance the game. Just killing enemies gives no xp, only finding bones lets you level.

This affects game design and actually leads to the bad info in tutorial issue. If you got devil dash in an area where running on water was required to leave, you’d use it to do that and learn from that. Instead you gain the skill in the castle’s throne room along with other skills like more jumps. Most metroidvania and igavania’s use the rooms you gain a power up in to tutorial the power up. Gal Guardians 2 can’t do that. It’s progression has you constantly gain skills in a vacuum apart from their utility.

There is a debate of sorts on whether the first game counts as a metroidvania at all. It is a level based game with a level select, which for purists is a no go(does Shantae not count then?). For me, it 100% is. You gain HP and damage ups from exploring, and you have to replay each level 3 times and explore to actually finish the game. Exploring and finding stuff is a big part of the first game. Gal Guardians 2 is the same thing, though I’d consider it closer to igavania then metroidvania. I make a distinction mostly through RPG elements, Super Metroid you only got stronger through finding stuff in specific spots while Symphony of the Night you also get stronger from leveling up and via enemy drops. In Gal 2, you get stronger from finding sub weapons and crafting them(a fairly fun system for me, though it opened up a bit to late. A lot of the more fun build options opened up to late.), or finding bones either from chests, specific big fights, or from random enemies. So kind of a mix of iga and metroid for powering up.

I had some fun with the game overall, though it had some really bad moments of where do I go and some bull in fights, mainly damage numbers were crazy high. By the end I felt too powerful, which I guess is the reward for playing on a higher difficulty that increases droprates.

Save for Gal Guardians 2: Servants of the Dark

All cgs + the highest difficulty unlocked.

Gameplay: 7/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 4/10