This game was provided to us by Inti Creates and PressEngine to review. Thank you!
When a demon turns your school into a massive demonic castle, the demon hunter Kamizono siblings must work together to save the day! Grim Guardians: Demon Purge is a 2D Castlevania-esque game set in a twisted demonic world. Swapping between the two sisters, you will slash and shoot your way through the castle and the monster that inhabit it. Save your classmates and destroy gigantic bosses to unlock new sub-weapons to reach new places in the castle.
Grim Guardians: Demon Purge is a game that wows on multiple different fronts. The artstyle is beautiful, the mechanics are interesting, but my favorite part by far...the animations. The developers meshed the visuals with very fluid animations that I love to see on my screen. Slicing up enemies with Maya feels awesome watching her slash them in half so cleanly with 1-2 strokes (some enemies do take more hits). Regardless, I love everything about the aesthetic and animations with this game.
I also do enjoy the gameplay, but I have some reservations about some elements. I like that Maya, the melee sister, has less health, but does more damage, while Shinobu, the ranged sister, has more health but does less damage. My biggest issue was the switching mechanic and Shinobu's movement. While I do like the idea, the switching can only be done when standing still instead of anywhere and I would have loved to be able to switch mid-jump. It also feels a bit weird that you can't move around when you are shooting your gun. These could have been done for balance reasons and it didn't stop me from enjoying the game, but I definitely tried to continually do both of these often enough.
Luckily, enjoying this game on the Steam Deck is easy and optimal right out of the box! This will be a game you can play through fully with a minimal amount of drain and low temps, all at 60 FPS. I did feel a couple of times where it slowed slightly, but it seemed to be frame pacing issues and they didn't happen often enough to be really noticeable.
Otherwise, I found no controller/input lag that impacted my playthrough and the game output to a native 1280x720. I did try to force this to 1280x800, but it wouldn't budge. The game has full controller support, which you can customize as the game starts, cloud saves, and local coop that is drop-in (no online though).
Grim Guardians: Demons Purge is a beautiful and well-made game that shines in its presentation and animations. The gameplay loop is pretty wonderful as well, but there are those little nuisances that can feel jarring at times and mess up fluidity of other Castlevania-esque games I have played. Overall, this is still a competent and enjoyable game to play and, thanks to how easy it is to run out of the box, it has become our newest Best on Deck game!
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Grim Guardians: Demon Purge is a gorgeous and well-presented Castlevania-esque game. It is very competent, even with some minor issues, and thanks to how easy it runs, it's a Best on Deck game!
