A wrongly coloured protagonist on the cover that’s supposed to be red? Oh yeah, it’s Gameboy time.
“Gargoyle’s Quest” was released in 1990 for the Nintendo Gameboy by Capcom as a spinoff of “Ghosts ‘n Goblins.” Now, “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” was released in Arcades in 1985 and on home consoles such as the NES.
The game is infamous for its unforgiving difficulty. The most infamous enemy for anyone who played “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” is the Red Devil (officially called a Red Arremer) for being fast and cheap.
However, a Red Arremer had an entire trilogy of games with the “Gargoyle’s Quest” games. Specifically, the Red Arremer Firebrand.
I’ll be playing "Gargoyle’s Quest” on the Nintendo 3DS thanks to the Virtual Console. I played the game back in 2016 the same way.
What can Firebrand do?
Before we answer that question, the game opens with a text scroll of how the Destroyers tried to, well, destroy the Ghoul Realm but were stopped. However, in the modern-day Ghoul Realm, a threat arises.
When you enter the game proper, three ghouls explain to Firebrand that the town they're in is being attacked, with all three ghouls dying. Which is...
...Quite the introduction. I don't know any other game that starts out with three NPCs dying in front of you. Although, it helps set how dangerous the situation is.
Firebrand, our cold protagonist with zero reaction to death, escapes using his gargoyle abilities. He can temporarily fly, stick to walls, jump, and fire projectiles.
Firebrand's abilities keep a good flow with the levels and are well-designed, but most importantly, fun. Overtime, Firebrand gets upgrades to his flight time, jump height, etc. from meeting milestones like beating a level. Starting the game with barely any flight time to infinite flight in the last parts of the game is beyond satisfying.
The upgrade system is also very well done, rewarding progress. The projectile types are fantastic too, such as the projectile that creates a sticky wall on spikes to traverse spike-covered walls.
New projectiles are always given at just the right times, making the game challenging, but fair. This challenging fairness is supported thanks to the lovely level design that are splendidly built around Firebrand's abilities.
The enemies, set-pieces, and more are all excellent. Levels don't just go from left to right, sometimes Firebrand must traverse up by climbing towers, go down to find the path forward, and left. I can't think of a way to make going left seem cool.
The levels are open and explorative. If Firebrand goes off the beaten path, he can find one-ups, money (vials), etc..
The bosses are great too, with patterns that'll keep the player on edge but still test them well. I will say the final boss isn't good since he takes forever to kill unless you say "screw it" and go all-in.
Another thing to note is the sprite flicker is quite bad during bosses. Sprite flickering, for anyone unaware, is when parts of sprites visibly disappear for split seconds, which is caused by too many things happening on screen.
Despite the flickering, "Gargoyle's Quest" looks nice for the Gameboy, but the music is where the presentation shines the most. Every track in this game is atmospheric and lovely from the Demon Border, Boss Theme, and especially Hell Field.
The sound all around is great too, with each sound effect having a good punch. Although, because of the hardware limitations of the Gameboy, sounds overlap each other, which can interrupt the beautiful music when talking to NPCs in the overworld. I get it's on the hardware and not the game, but it still bugged-
...Wait, did I just say there was an overworld??
Role Playing
Yes, yes I did. There is an overworld that’s played from an overtop perspective like the NES "Final Fantasy" games. The overworld is where one-ups are bought, NPCs are talked to, and where random encounters take place.
This was an unique thing at the time, a platformer that also plays like an RPG. It manages to blend both genres well by having a good balance of action and role-playing, but not without its faults.
Random encounters are too frequent and repetitive with the rewards, in this case vials, being too small. It makes traveling the overworld a huge pain.
Random encounters are where most vials are earned, however I'd prefer finding them out in the overworld and in levels, those vials are more satisfying to find. Even more so since there's a password system that acts as saving the game as long as the password is written down, not making vials THAT essential.
The overworld also contains puzzles too, but they aren’t anything special. However, none of them are frustratingly unfair, as hints are provided.
In villages and rare occurrences in the overworld, you can talk to the strange NPCs. The text is slow with awkward pauses, which only makes the weird dialogue weirder. Even the shopkeeper that sells you one-ups is weird.
Yet he still sells me more... What kind of marketing strategy is this?
It's hard to tell if the weirdness is intentional or because the developer's English wasn't great. I lean towards unintentional because there are times where you must answer yes or no to a question where neither choice logically applies.
This dialogue hurts my brain sometimes. The only time the dialogue hindered me was with getting new projectiles, as I didn't know I got them because the game didn't communicate that well. A few times, I had to use an item with little direction from NPCs, who seemed to be on a different page.
However, my biggest problem with the overworld is the clunky menu used to talk to NPCs, use items, and check your stats & other things. It makes something as simple as talking to an NPC tedious.
Most games have you go up to an NPC and press A, not press A to bring up a menu to select the ability talk to an NPC. It makes the overworld's pacing awkward as you stop in your tracks to do the simplest things like pick up an item.
The menu in levels you use to switch weapons has the same problem, except it's even slower. I always dislike using it.
However, how do I explain this... Despite my criticisms, these problems don't bug me as much as I might make them seem. I did get used to the random encounters, the menus (still dislike it), and the NPC dialogue has a weird charm to it that makes it enjoyable.
These are still problems, but I don't think hey massively hinder the experience. Besides, the overworld does more clever things then horrible things, as it makes the Ghoul Realm feel more alive. You feel as though you understand the world better, which gives more weight to what's at stake if Firebrand fails.
Overall (A+)
“Gargoyle’s Quest” is amazing in a lot of regards. It’s unique, well-designed, fun, creative, memorable, and other buzz words I can use to summarize “Gargoyle’s Quest” as fantastic.
It isn’t perfect, but all it needs to do is tweak the overworld to remove or decrease random encounters, remove the menu to talk to NPCs and so on, make the dialogue and level menu smoother, and fix the English/dialogue problems. The gameplay as it is is perfect though.
This is one of those games where I seriously want more of it instantly.
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