Gal Guardians – Servants of the Dark Review – PC

Interestingly executed but a little off the mark for me

First a huge thanks to Keymailer, PQube and Inti Creates for the review key so I can look at this game.

So where to start, I guess I could say I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark as I played it. My tag line also gives a slight hint as to my overall affection for it.

To start with a good point, Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark is a fun game to play in bursts.

The Combat is fluid and fun and very enjoyable when chaining attacks into combo’s with the sub weapons. The sub weapons are plentiful although not in a great way, each sub weapon can have a different attribute which makes searching for the good ones a pain as your inventory is sorted by acquire time. Also, most of the time the sub weapons are not massively different, so you have a lot of chaff to search.

Sub weapons can also be harmful, in that they don’t have a buff at all and will actively debuff you, which is great for people looking for a challenge I guess.

The map is huge and its fun to dash around and explore. As you level up by finding the bones of the Demon Lord, you unlock more agility-based skills like extra jumps and various dash abilities. This helps you unlock more of the map and traverse areas you couldn’t before.

The size of the map is part of its downfall though, as one small death and you could be miles away from where you died. Making for a journey of epic proportions to get back to where you were.

This is compounded by the spacing of the fast travel and save points. With them both feeling extremely sparse and distant. Only adding to the pressure of surviving.

Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark also doesn’t tag places you are unable to progress automatically either, so make sure you start using the games markers as soon as possible otherwise you might forget places you can unlock after an upgrade.

Sub-weapons also play a vital part in unlocking these new areas, which is conveniently not explained very well. Elemental weapons for example can allow you to traverse paths by freezing water or burning vines, which would be a nice thing to know…

You have two controllable characters, which allows for co-op if you so want, but either mode allows you to revive the other character, only if you die in a bad spot it prevents you from reviving. Which happened more often than I would’ve liked (dying on a bouncy mushroom is not fun)

Levelling up each character is managed by returning to the Castle and depositing the bones of the Demon Lord. This allows you again to add an additional challenge to the game as you control when you level up. Although again means you can be reliant on finding a save point to go back and level up if you get stuck.

Dotted around the map are the souls of other servants of the Demon Lord, you can revive them back at the castle which unlocks a few extra options like a shop and a new fast travel point.

Though they can be in hidden locations which means being more meticulous in your searching of the map.

Bosses are fun to go up against and offer a nice challenge as you progress with a number of interesting patterns that reward you for paying attention to them and the ones I fought offered enough challenge to set me back a few times.

These bosses offer a nice break from the general mobs, which are eclectic enough to offer an interesting challenge across the areas. Unless you’re unlucky being knocked into water or pits.

Visually the game is gorgeous, the character CG’s that intersperse the story are bright and colourful. The voice acting is brilliant and each voice fits each character perfectly. Of course, the game has the Gal Gun sexy edge to it with how a lot of the characters are designed and the interactions between characters lean heavily into this. Which I enjoyed but I can see it being a bit too in your face for some.