Gargoyle's Quest (Game Boy) Review

Remember that insanely difficult Ghosts n Goblins game Capcom put out in the arcades and later released on the NES? Turns out, the annoying red devil Firebrand got it’s own game on the Gameboy by the title Gargoyle’s quest which is actually one of the three games released on three different consoles. Gargoyles Quest 2 on the NES or Daemons Crest on the Super Nintendo.

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Released in 1990 by Capcom Gargoyle’s Quest puts you in the perspective of Firebrand. Who goes from town to town in RPG fashion talking to different folks as well as dive into the platforming sections of the game. This might remind you of an old school dragon quest game where some of the townspeople will give you some vague advice as to what you should be doing next.

There’s also random encounters in Gargoyle’s Quest, hello Zelda 2. I used to be a fan of all those grind heavy RPGs but Gargoyle’s Quest wasn’t that annoying since most of the travels are rather short and didn’t pull me into a random encounter every three seconds. The only real annoyance was if I died, I’d have to make the trek back to the level and had to go through these battles at least once moving from the town to the stage.

There’s no save functionality but luckily there’s a password system that you can write down to continue your progress. If you die, you’ll be brought back to the latest town and get a chance to get the latest password from the town.

This saved me from having to reenter passwords every time I died. You could just skip this all together and just find a way to play this with save states.

That leads to the difficulty of Gargoyle’s Quest. For a game that plays so well, it will come with it’s challenges. Expect to learn the patterns of a lot of the enemies and stages in order to progress. With unlimited continues if you die, you can get familiar with each of the stages.

Gargoyle’s quest gets it right with the use of the Gameboy's two buttons. You have a meter on the bottom that allows Firebrand to hover in the air for a certain period of time. As you progress through the game, Firebrand get abilities to jump higher or increase the amount of time you can fly in the air. Then there’s adding additional hearts or even new weapons. You can also climb onto walls and shoot at enemies while hanging on. The controls in Gargoyle’s quest is excellent. Everything you do can be so precise.

Gargoyle's Quest is a great release on the Gameboy. If you’re pretty good at the game you can finish it in 3 hours or so which is a good time for a platformer on the Gameboy. Gargoyle’s quest is one of the best games on the game boy. It’s definitely up there with the portable heavyweights like Pokémon, Mario Land 2 and Link’s Awakening.