Grim Guardians: Demon Purge (Switch) Review

Castlevania-like Gameplay with Swap Mechanics and Co-Op

There is not much of a commute for demon hunter sisters Shinobu and Maya after their school is yanked into a dark realm full of monsters and transformed students. Grim Guardians: Demon Purge is the latest retro-inspired game from developer Inti Creates, mimicking the classic Castlevania feel rather than the RPG approach of more Castlevania: Symphony of the Night-style games though artistically Grim Guardians shares a lot with Symphony. Grim Guardians is surprisingly a spin-off of another Inti Creates developed game Gal*Gun: Double Peace (a fairly naughty rail shooter) featuring the same characters in a different scenario. Going for a straightforward story of heroic girls that work in tandem to take down a mischievous villain, Grim Guardians sticks to the core roots of the genre but adds the fun layer of swappable characters while playing alone or taking on a more unique option for the genre, a challenging cooperative mode with a friend. 

Inti Creates continues to be one of my go-to developers for retro-inspired games, one of my favorite design philosophies to see in games. So many compelling mechanics deserve further exploration or refinement, and retro-inspired titles have this in spades. Almost as a follow-up to the stellar Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon games, Grim Guardians is another title to pour through for genre enthusiasts. There’s not much going on for the game’s story, characters, and setting that we haven’t seen before but everything in the game is expertly built for solid action-platforming fun.

While traversing their twisted school, Shinobu and Maya encounter nightmarish creatures that they bravely carve up in bloody anime fashion, steadily gaining more tools and weapons as levels get progressively more complex. Shinobu wields anti-demon arms such as a submachine gun or a rocket launcher while Maya uses close-range weapons and magic through her master of origami. The two complement each other well and their abilities are interesting for those who have played several iterations of this genre. 

There are two main ways to play Grim Guardians plus an unlockable Legend difficulty. Veteran Style features limited lives, knockback, and generally, a more retro feeling challenge. Meanwhile, Casual Style has infinite lives, no knockback, and is more forgiving overall. Legend difficulty is earned after clearing the game’s story and there are at least three endings to earn, one of which being a more direct reference to Gal*Gun. This difficulty format is similar to what was available in both Curse of the Moon games, which were expertly crafted tributes to classics that I absolutely adore. 

I chose to play the easier route and opted mostly for single-player over co-op for the majority of my playtime with Grim Guardians though I did play much of the second run in co-op. Swapping and managing health and ammo is engaging and the minute accuracy in the game’s movement is what one would expect from the masters at Inti Creates. Mastering switching can be used to save oneself from damage in tight situations though I would have liked a bit of an invulnerability period when swapping for a really creative option defensively. Damage stacks quickly and it can be tough to learn where an enemy can hurt Maya or Shinobu, resulting in a lot of moments of losing valuable health from simply touching foes. This gets really hard to manage in the more hectic co-op mode, due to the number of effects on-screen.

Picking up Grim Guardians is like visiting a favorite park and meeting new friends. It wasn’t long before I was figuring out the optimal ways to take out monsters and utilizing the sub-weapons to get to hard-to-reach areas. Upon beating the game for the first time, a second playthrough opens up new options that really make the game’s platforming fun to master. That said, replaying areas can be a pain for the few levels that outstay their welcome. The library, in particular, is really tough to navigate in one section, stretching that level further. The lack of a map becomes really painful here and I loathed having to play this part twice. Thankfully, there is a fast travel option to warp between levels but I would have loved to have been able to warp between checkpoints within levels to make exploring more palatable. I wasn’t compelled to find all of the upgrades or save all of the displaced students, though doing so unlocks the aforementioned reference ending. 

As with most games from this development group, Grim Guardians: Demon Purge features absolutely gorgeous pixel art and backgrounds. The art direction of these games always excites me and I often kept playing just to see the next crazy boss or image composition. Each boss was a spectacle of visual design and the fights were engaging. Better yet, at least on the difficulty I played on, the bosses are fairly forgiving. Their health bars are broken into pieces and returning to the fight after a loss puts the bosses’ health back at that portion rather than starting the fight over again. This sort of mechanic absolutely needs to be in more games. I do get a lot of enjoyment out of learning the patterns and overcoming bosses like this but I really didn’t want to mess with knockback for my first time through. The last few battles were such a pain and it often felt like repeatedly throwing myself against a steel wall, slowly denting it in with each go. I could not be bothered to make the final push at the game’s last, three-stage encounter. 

Should there have been a more interesting story, maybe I would have finished Grim Guardians and maybe one day I’ll return to it if DLC is added or something. If extra rewards become available or other ways to play are introduced, I would come back to Grim Guardians.

My lack of a deeper connection to the game doesn’t help that the game’s voiceover is only available in Japanese and I just prefer to play most things of this nature in English. Battle cries and short phrases are used in English but funny voice acting would’ve made the game far more charming with the potential for enhancing the script with good voice reads. There are many voice actors I can imagine in this game that would’ve made the story way more fun.

I also wasn’t aware of how naughty the game can be. I wouldn’t have been aware of the Gal*Gun connection had I not researched the game a bit. The themes and scenarios never cross into an 18+ rating but it was surprising to see the game flip in the second half to a mission to gather undies, a dirty magazine, and other pervy items to activate the only male character’s “pheromone” powers. I’m sure this is funnier to those who have played Gal*Gun but it felt pretty out of place with the rest of the game. That said, the character designs are all well-crafted and cute. I just wish there was more character to these characters.

Maybe a sequel could make the demon-hunting sisters more interesting but at least the gameplay overall is solid, tough enough to force one to learn the ins and outs of combat, and presented beautifully. 

For Castlevania-like fans, those who have enjoyed past Inti Creates titles, and anyone who enjoys a light-hearted adventure with tough gameplay cannot go wrong with Grim Guardians: Demon Purge. Having a game like this with a really fun co-op mode is probably enough for most buddy gamers to check it out and I recommend trying it. My partner and I really loved the challenge; overcoming a tough boss resulted in us cheering and cracking high-fives. The difference in characters results in making up for one another’s weaknesses and boosting each other’s strengths in a satisfying journey but one that was just hard enough that we had to call it quits after hitting a certain point.  

Regardless, Inti Creates continues its history of beautiful pixel-art style games inspired by classics and I deeply appreciate their development team’s approach to retro design iteration and innovation. 

SCORES

GAMEPLAY - 7.5/10

VISUALS - 8.5/10

SOUND - 7/10

CONTROLS - 7/10

REPLAY VALUE - 7/10

OVERALL - 7.4/10

Learn more about Grim Guardians: Demon Purge on the official website. A digital Switch copy was provided for the purpose of review. Screenshots were captured via native Switch features.