It's new to me: Gargoyle's Quest II: The Demon Darkness

A sequel that's a prequel and is also mostly the same thing, but that's not a complaint.

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

In the 80s and early 90s, Capcom had a thing for platformers that expected more out of you than the standard running and jumping. Bionic Commando didn’t have a jump button, but instead had you swinging around and raising yourself up on a grappling hook. As Mega Man games added new features, your options for movement dramatically changed, and weren’t limited to Mega Man’s own, more standard movements. And then there’s Gargoyle’s Quest, which, despite being an 8-bit Game Boy game released in 1990, featured a movement scheme that allowed for jumping, floating, flying, and grabbing on to walls to help you both climb and fly higher, as well as set yourself in place to attack from a different vantage point.

Gargoyle’s Quest II: The Demon Darkness is the follow-up to that quality Game Boy title, this time on the NES. Not a whole lot has changed from one game to the next, though, your movement options have been even further expanded, with protagonist Firebrand now able to essentially build temporary platforms to stand on through the use of the Tornado attack. That means you can reset your flying gauge, or stop in the middle of a platform- or wall-less area to reorient yourself or fight off some incoming baddies, in addition to all of the other movement types from the first game that carried over into this one. Not bad for 1992, huh?

As I wrote about the original game, which is a spin-off from the Ghosts ‘n Goblins franchise, Gargoyle’s Quest (II) feels a lot fresher and newer than it actually is due to how layered the platforming is. The real tell for its age isn’t in its gameplay or mechanics, but in some of its visuals — in the Game Boy release, it was the monochrome look, naturally, but more in the slow scrolling text in dialogue boxes, and the shortened words in menus. On the NES, you’ve still got the weirdly sized text that comes a little slow in boxes, and the world-traveling sprite for protagonist Firebrand is still small, the existence of password saves is a clear tell, too, but otherwise, this all plays like it could be a modern indie retro platformer that wanted to focus more on variety in mobility than on speed.

Image credit: MobyGames

Once again, the game is split between traveling on an overworld map like you’re in a role-playing game and side-scrolling platforming. The graphics on the overworld map look so befitting of an RPG that, as I was playing, I kept thinking about the critics who were annoyed about Final Fantasy IV (II on the NES, IV on the Famicom) often looking like an NES title instead of an SNES one, with its tiny sprites reminiscent of 8-bit games and not the 16-bit ones that would follow. There’s more color even in Final Fantasy IV’s extremely basic SNES getup given the inherent advantages of the hardware it’s on, but Gargoyle’s Quest II still looks like it fits right in with the RPGs of the era thanks to it being a late-life NES title made by a team that knew how to get the most out of the system. It’s not quite Kirby’s Adventure levels of detail, but what is?

The audio side is also worth mentioning, as composer Yuki Iwai did an excellent job of creating a sound that fits this demon world. It’s in line with what they produced for Gargoyle’s Quest on the Game Boy, but like with the visuals, it’s all better here. Despite the relative limitations of the NES’ sound chip, the gothic vibe that befits gargoyles, demons, ghouls, and the castles they inhabit comes through the music of Gargoyle’s Quest II with ease. And there are more themes this time around, as well.

You’ll spend most of Gargoyle’s Quest II finding wing power-ups that will let you fly for longer periods of time and jump higher, as well as attacks that will let you do more damage, or break weakened blocks, or, in the case of the Magic Tornado upgrade, let you fire off temporary platforms to stand on. Which is also, Magic Tornado aside, how the original Gargoyle’s Quest worked. Sometimes a franchise would debut on a handheld like the Game Boy and then get a massive expansion on a console, but, screen resolution and coloring aside, we’re still talking about a pair of 8-bit platforms here. Gargoyle’s Quest II, in many ways, is just a boosted version of the same idea that already existed, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Gargoyle’s Quest is great, and Gargoyle’s Quest II is just different enough, and also great, that it’s perfectly fine the series didn’t take a major leap forward in its transition from handheld to console.

There’s a pretty predictable pattern to Gargoyle Quest II’s progress, but predictable isn’t bad. You show up in a town, find out from the townspeople or a leader that there’s some kind of magic item that will help with [situation], then you go to a dungeon/cave/castle to find said item. Maybe before reaching said destination, you find a broken bridge you’ll need to fly your way across while enemies shoot fireballs at you and try to knock you out of the air, into the burning, insta-killing river below. You don’t want to just fly straight to the exits without doing a little bit of exploring, either, as the vials you collect to trade in for Maelstrom — which is just an extra life — are rarely out in the open, and the price for another life goes up whenever you do buy one, to keep you from making things too easy. Luckily, there are little Firebrand statuettes you can find if you explore enough, too, and those are extra lives as well.

As for the story, Gargoyle’s Quest II, despite being a numbered sequel, is actually a prequel that explains the origins of Firebrand as a demon warrior capable of carrying out the quest you’ve already played through but he hasn’t experienced yet. While on a training mission, tragedy struck Firebrand’s hometown, so he sets out to find the source of said tragedy, and along the way stops the much larger plot it was merely a piece of. It’s nothing revolutionary or that will have you on the edge of your seat, but it does the job of setting you up for the adventure Firebrand is about to take.

Random battles no longer occur in Gargoyle’s Quest II, but there are instead enemies on the world map which you can fight as often as you’d like in order to receive additional vials. Like in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, entering into a battle on the overworld map screen will bring you to a side-scrolling segment, in which you try to defeat the enemies without dying in order to exit. There are usually obstacles to avoid within these little segments, too, not just enemies, but all you have to do is not die: your health will refill when you successfully complete a fight. Your health, by the way, will also upgrade throughout the game, by way of various vitality items you find, sometimes just from talking to various NPCs who are happy to grant you the assist after you helped them out. So, make sure you talk to everyone you see: this is a game with RPG trappings from 1992, after all, and NPCs are often your only source of information with regards to where you have to go next, or where you might be able to find an item.

Image credit: MobyGames

One other change, and it’s mostly a welcome one, is that the extremely tiny hit boxes that bosses in the original Gargoyle’s Quest had are gone: you can hit bosses just about anywhere now and they’ll take damage. These major foes also take up less of the screen’s real estate thanks to the resolution change going from the Game Boy to the NES, so you’re less likely to accidentally bump into them due to everything being smushed together on a small screen. That being said, now boss fights are almost too easy: it’s pretty easy to pick up on a movement pattern and make them pay without taking much or any damage, if you’ve got a good handle on what Firebrand is capable of. That’s a minor complaint, though, and there’s certainly enough difficulty in Gargoyle’s Quest II thanks to the various platforming challenges that come from its complexity.

Capcom didn’t forget the Game Boy audience that enjoyed the original game, as they eventually ported Gargoyle’s Quest II to that system Well, in Japan and in China, anyway: everyone else had to experience the game on the NES, its initial platform. While there were additional stages to play through in this port, as well as some new powers to deploy, but it brings with it the resolution issues native to the hardware. While you can’t buy an official copy and understand what’s going on if you can only read English, there is an unofficial translation patch to fix that, based on the NES’ English edition.

If you enjoyed Gargoyle’s Quest, you’ll feel the same about its sequel/prequel, only probably a little more positively thanks to its practically enhanced visuals and the dropping of random encounters. It’s a shame it’s no longer available for purchase anywhere since the Wii U and 3DS eShops shut down, but maybe it’ll join Gargoyle’s Quest and the SNES sequel Demon’s Crest on Nintendo Switch Online. That’s not as good as it being available to purchase, but it also beats it not being playable at all.

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