After a great introduction in the humble Monochrome brick, Firebrand spread it wings and decided to move to the full color screen of the NES (Usually is the other way around) and came back with a vengeance in the Sequel/Remake/Prequel (Is complicated, we'll discuss it later) how the NES made justice to the past game? Let's find out
Gargoyle's Quest II: The Demon Darkness was released two years later from the first game in 1992, the by the time better software of the NES allowed a cooler Demon Realm, more screen space to see where the heck we are going and most importantly, redone mechanics, the story according to Capcom seems to be a Remake rather than a prequel, but that doesn't matter by the time being, for now let's see how well Firebrand Fared
STORY
Rather than an epic scroll telling the story of the Firebrand, instead we get a simple "Before humans showed up, Firebrand wanted to be cool", here Firebrand is a mere rookie, mentioning that he trained day and night to be a warrior, but for now we aren't even allowed to leave the city, the game starts right in the final day of his training, where the king Moloch (The game still uses the censored names, but there is no way in Long Horse's name i am calling him Morock) grants him the power to cling to walls and sends him to his final mission before graduating the nightmarishly hard task of... picking a pot
View attachment 87233
Firebrand: HSSSSSSSSSSS (Hey, don't judge, after all the crap the training put me through, this is basically holidays)
After an antepiece tutorial on the flight and graplling mechanics, you go to see Moloch, who conglatulates you and dies... WAIT WHAT
Yep, while leaving Moloch's Castle one of the guards mentions strangers being nearby, and they seem to start their invasion, with your hometown empty, you got no time to grieve, since you have to find what is going on now, with no indications more that a nearby demon king being sick, you leave the town in our first battle where the new engine gets to shine
I like to think of this game as a remake, because while admitibly good, the first game is rough aroud the edges, but the prequel angle still applies since we see how Firebrand slowly became the murder machine we know and Love (To hate), regardless, the story is far more expanded due to the bigger capacities of a NES cart
GAMEPLAY
View attachment 87237
Firebrand: HEEEEEHEEEEEEEHEEEEEEEE (I know i can fly, but by Lucifer spitting tornadoes is fun)
The Lore Department wasn't the only glowup, for starters you get a max of EIGHT hearts instead of five, and no enemy makes more than one HP of damage, so if the game tells you you have eight hit points, you get the entire hitpoint bar, not only that, but you breath arsenal was redone, useless breaths were overhauled or flatout axec for actually useful replacements, the "Upgrade by milstone" system remains, but you can find two hidden extra hitpoints, even if you misplace them, six hitpoints with nothing hitting by two is still an upgrade
Firebrand still is slow on foot, but now his horizontal flight is faster, and while the game has slowdowns, they are no different from the slowdown of... say, Megaman
DIFFICULTY
View attachment 87242
One misstep and back to the beggining of the section, and no, you can't cheese it by exploiting Merci Invincibiliy (Tried it, the fire below ignores it)
What the game fixes in cheap shots turns it into actual difficulty, for starters you can now buy up to nine lives, the passwords are longer but nothing too hard to write (Or simply take a photo) and more screen space means you can maneuver more smoothly, to keep things interesting enemies has more varied patterns, 2D Dungeons are more complex requiring to milk every aspect of the game and now bosses are as mean as the levels while the levels now being fairer, also rather than a galore of random encounters, you get stationary NPC's that when talked try to kill you because, IDK Firebrand actually likes his Mac and Cheese with Ketchup or something
GRAPHICS
View attachment 87245
Oh, so the "Ocean" was fire all along... then how the Demons take a bath or what they water the forests with?
Just look at the sidescroller's HUD, now compare it to the one in GQ 1, they had a substancial cleaning, for starters you don't need to pause to see how many lives you got, and that is just the surface, the cities look far "prettier" (they still look like how housing looks in Hell, but now they are more defined) the Overworld is more detailed and Firebrand still keeps his oddly cute Penguin Waddle while walking
MUSIC
If Gargoyle Quest Got Memorable tunes in a system without the fancy tools of the NES's Hardware, then here they cooked, the overworld theme feels moody, the "Random" battle music is far from the basic one of the predeccesor, and while not as memorable as Braegar's castle, the final dungeon of GQ 2 is easly a fitting ending to a challenging game
ADDENIUM: The curious Demake on GB
GAH! the Demon Realm was invaded by the evil...Color thieves?
Before we get to the veredict, let's discuss the curious case of the Gameboy port, coming one year later only in Japan the Demon Darkness got its claws into the brick that saw the Spin-off born, the changes are surprinsingly minimal:
Obviously there is no color (Tried it on Super Gameboy, is more of the "Paint over it with a single color pallete" that does happen on Pokemon Red) and there is obvious screen crunch, but that aside, the game remains the same, heck, the music sounds the same as the NES original, granted, some parts aside, it sounds far from the crunchiness i expected of the relative limits of the Handheld
CONCLUSION
Firebrand got a bit barebones and at times unfair first Quest, but here, they took what worked and polished it the best they could, Prequel or Remake what matters is that Gargoyle's Quest II solves many problems of its predeccesor, ¿NES or Gameboy? you may ask, well, that depends on preference, for the time being, this game gets an approve seal in my book, and with that we only have a final quest for our great Red Demon to conclude this adventure, stay tuned friends of the darkness, your Nightmare eating tapir has said all he has to for now, until then... *Turns into a cloud and fades from sight, a red egg shaped stone left behind*
Bakuma out
Pros
- + Difficulty is slighly fairer
- + More Lifebars
- + Screen space is bigger
- + Useless weapons are axed of the prequel
- + Bigger 2D maps
- + Controls aren't jankier anymore
Cons
- - Difficulty can peak at inappropiate times
- - Firebrand moves relatively slowly
- - Censored translation is still present
- - Slight slowdowns
- - Longer Password (But not too long)
8
out of 10
Overall
A definitive example of what a sequel can do, especially while remaing the same but fixing the issues of the past game
