Retroview - Demon's Crest

Source: Youtube Channel LordTyphoon

 I remember being scared of this game when I was a kid, and for good reasons.  Look at those deep, rich and eerie backdrops drawn by the artists.  There is so much detail and mystery within the environment.  And just listen to that music:

Source: Youtube Channel 61u

It’s a simple melody, but is also entrancing and haunting.  The subtle nature of the music is truly atmospheric, completing the aesthetics of the game's world and environment.  You know why the music is so good?  Because it's by Toshihiko Horiyama, the same composer who has created incredible tracks for games like Megaman X1, X3, X4, Megaman 7, Megaman & Bass, Onimusha 2, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.

 Demon's Crest is a far cry from its predecessors.  No longer will Firebrand be walking through boring towns with empty houses or running into random battles in a large empty map that's linear anyways.  No longer will Firebrand be subjected to flying for only 2 seconds or running errands having to go back and forth.  He will; however, still be slower than his enemies and have an ambiguous hit-box around spikes.  As you can see from the video above, Demon's Crest start off with a boss battle right from the get go and goes about his usual platforming.  After completing the first level, the player is presented with a world map.  BUT, you fly around instead of walking around AND the map is non-linear.  This means that the player can complete the levels in any order they wish rather than being subjected to a single path.  The way the map is presented reminds of Actraiser where the player hovers above and chooses a level to go into with a similar side-scroll platforming gameplay.  The archaic vial and lives system has been taken out entirely and the player can continue as many times as they want.  This, by no means, makes it any easier.  The level designs are challenging, but fair (much more fair compared to the first two games).  The bosses have diabolical movement patterns that's a lot harder to predict and can inflict quite a bit of damage if the player doesn't have certain items yet.  After about 2-3 hours of playing, I finished the game.  I was surprised to have reached the ending when I only had 20% of my items.  I realized that I had the most basic ending and that there was still about 60-70% of the game that I haven't played yet.  Many levels can be revisited several times over as multiple paths branch out into different areas.  Demon's Crest has a lot more abilities than the first two and requires a lot of switching between forms and abilities to get through some areas.  This was extremely bothersome in the first two Gargoyle's Quest and even more so this one as the pause screen would be an entirely different screen rather than a small sub menu on the bottom.  There are 5 abilities and 5 forms to choose from, and having to constantly “pause” the game to switch between them really broke the flow of the game.  Using the R and L shoulder keys would have been a great solution to switch between the abilities via a wheel selector or at the very least kind of like what Secret of Mana did for a menu.  Still, the transition between Gargoyle's Quest 2 and Demon's Crest is so significant that it's like a game of its own.  There's a lot of thought put into concept, level design, the aesthetics, and even the story is vastly different from the first two.  Demon's Crest is undoubtedly the best in the Gargoyle's series and is sadly underrated and forgotten by many SNES players.  After playing these three games, I find Firebrand to be a very enjoyable character to play in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.  I would recommend playing Demon's Crest out of the three.