I finished Demon's Crest, one of the SNES games available on the SNES Online app on the Nintendo Switch. Or at least I think I beat it, but I am pretty sure I did not. I mean, I did get the "The End" title card and the often annoying reset to get back to the main menu because doing otherwise in SNES era games apparently was not a thing that developers thought of. However, I know that I did not beat-beat the game because there were empty spots in my inventory screen that never saw any additional forms for Firebrand to take beyond that of the Ground Gargoyle and Aerial Gargoyle.
Okay, let us back up a little bit for a moment and head back to the beginning.
Demon's Crest is the sequel to the 1991 Game Boy game Gargoyle's Quest and the 1992 NES game Gargoyle's Quest II. You play the demon gargoyle Firebrand who is out to save the Ghoul Realm from Phalanx (who is a stand-in name-wise for Satan). The game opens epically enough with Firebrand in a ruined coliseum prison fighting an undead dragon who has a limited move set that is pretty easy to figure out once you get over the fact that the first enemy you are going up against is a god damn giant undead dragon. You then play through themed stages such as underground caverns, a forest filled with fire, which is all standard platforming fare, then you fight a mini-boss halfway through, followed by more platforming stages before going up against a final boss who you earn a new ability from and then you can explore an overworld map.
Each location is labeled with a Roman numeral (I - IV), presumably the order that you proceed through the stages, which is what I did. Throughout the levels, you come across vellum and vials that are used to cast spells and drink potions. I did have to look up what the spells and potions did because I felt that the in-game description was either too cryptic or seemed too obvious in a way that made me question how obvious the descriptions actually were; I did not even start using consumables until Area IV, which isn't meant as a brag, just a statement of my ignorance for in-game items. After beating-not-beating the game, I looked up more information about the additional crests, and levels and it turned out that there are still three additional stages that have yet to either appear or be unlocked, but more on this later.
I did have a couple of issues with the mechanics of the game once you were able to level up Firebrand a bit. After Stage II, you gain the ability to change to a different type of Demon who operates slightly different compared to Firebrand. For instance, Firebrand in his default form can hover and spits a fire projectile across the screen. When using the Crest of Earth, Firebrand changes into the Ground Gargoyle and loses his wings but instead gains the ability to bash through walls, and now spits a brownish flame that travels along the ground that does more damage than fire. As you progress, you also gain different types of breath weapons such as a tornado that acts as a temporary platform. If I had my way, you would be able to cycle through which crest you have equipped with either the L/R shoulder button, then use the other shoulder button to cycle through the types of breath weapons you could use. Sadly, in order to make any changes to Firebrand, you have to pause the game, select which crest you wanted to change to, select which breath weapon you wanted to use, then return to the game. In the one instance below, I ended up switching four times in a span of 30 seconds. At first, I thought that this was going to be too cumbersome, especially at the rate below, but I found myself usually sticking to the standard Firebrand form for most of the stages until I gained the Aerial Gargoyle crest and then I used that almost exclusively.
For the most part, I would try to play the game legitimately, although I would create a save state before fighting the mini-boss and boss; I guess it is not really legitimately playing the game at that point. But I would play through stages as the game intended, then just take advantage of modern technology built into the port of the game so that I did not have to drag out the length of the game by another couple of hours. I admit that during the Flame Lord fight (<-right over there)that I spam-used the save state to the point where I loaded a save state after each hit, knowing that I could avoid the attacks but just wasn't, until I did manage to defeat the Flame Lord with only one HP remaining. While I will not say that I am overly proud of that battle, it is done, I did it, and I admit how I beat it. Besides, isn't in a demon's interest to find alternatives to completing a task that takes advantage of situations? Sure, why not.
If you look back up at the world map, about 446 words ago, this was all I was able to discover. So after defeating Level 4, I went to the next visually available stage, which put me up against Phalanx (Satan). I did use the same (cheating) technique to defeat him, although to a lesser extent. I guess there was a hint of sorts when Phalanx said "Ah. . . you've arrived much earlier than I expected Firebrand" in that I should have done more before attempting the final boss. I think I just interpreted his statement as one of a villain not expecting to be confronted by a powerful adversary? Maybe? In the opening, there is mention of a "Legend" and I feel like Prophecy may not be too far off either, so maybe Phalanx would have known that Firebrand would return to reclaim the Crests? Maybe I am just speculating too much. And while we are speculating, maybe the format is similar to previous Gargoyle's Quest games having to go back and complete levels again, further exploring areas that were previously inaccessible? (I wish that the previous two entries in the Gargoyle's Quest franchise would be made available on the Switch The "bad" ending though was completely unexpected. Being told that maybe the Demon Realm would have been better under the rule of Phalanx, "than the hell they are now confined to. . ." due to the power vacuum left by Phalanx's defeat.
What I think my next step is to go back through the individual levels with the different Gargoyle Crests, explore a lot more, and hopefully, not have to fight that damnable Fire Lord all over again.
~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
Dinner's Ready
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