wish I could play again
Already played the game with little to no Saves and Rewinds but now i did with just none of it. and in the right order i should have done before
yeah i like it way more
yeah i like it way more
good sprites
I mean, it's perfectly fine, especially if you like a hard challenge, but I just don't find Firebrand that fun to control, and no way in hell am I going to try and find all those stupidly hidden treasures.
a really fun game! one of the more underrated SNES classics
Absolutely an all timer. So many fun abilities and a neat world map
Demon's Crest is a spin-off of the much more popular Ghosts 'n Goblins franchise by Capcom. In it, you play as the dreaded Arremer, Firebrand, who was possibly responsible for the many deaths of Arthur in previous titles. This is an excellent action platformer by Capcom. It has a cool world map that is used as a stage select area, excellent levels with tons of secrets and collectibles, and really awesome bosses. It reminds me a lot of Mega Man X's level design. A super tight experience that I consider a must-play.
No
Seems like a good action platformer based on the first few levels I played.
God I loved this. It was so cool and well made. Your abilities are fun and interesting and I loved how they worked for traversal and exploration. I'd love to see this come back.
The collectibles don't take too much time to collect thankfully but goddamn the 2 last bosses are way too fucking frustrating,
This review contains spoilers
Metroidvania/mezcla/Megaman
Un juego oscuro repleto de secretos y zonas por explorar, donde necesitaremos ir consiguiendo nuevas habilidades e items para poder acceder a nuevas zonas. Ademas para poder ver el final verdadero necesitaremos tener el 100% de los items. El apartado musical nos satisface en todo momento, graficamente increible para su epoca.
Un juego oscuro repleto de secretos y zonas por explorar, donde necesitaremos ir consiguiendo nuevas habilidades e items para poder acceder a nuevas zonas. Ademas para poder ver el final verdadero necesitaremos tener el 100% de los items. El apartado musical nos satisface en todo momento, graficamente increible para su epoca.
As it is one of the last games for the SNES, it really gets everything out of the console technically, especially graphically. The sprites look fantastic and the levels are beautifully designed. The game also has no end of atmosphere, especially for an SNES game it was very dark. I really enjoyed the gameplay itself, and Firebrand's different abilities complement each other well. Unfortunately, you have to do a lot of backtracking during the rather short duration of the game to find the various transformations and other items. Unfortunately, there are no clues as to where anything else might be hidden, which quickly leads to frustration. The level of difficulty is also a bit strange. Sometimes I was stuck on bosses for ages, sometimes, especially towards the end, I defeated bosses with 5 attacks, which didn't feel very balanced. The music was great for the most part, but a bit more variety would have helped here too, especially the boss fight theme really got on my nerves. All in all a good game but I would recommend reading a guide to avoid unnecessary backtracking.
Really outstanding but done a disservice by an incredibly short playtime. It's so full of mechanics and unique presentations of time-tested game basics, and the player just isn't given enough time to play around with its toybox.
Aesthetically it's staggering though, presenting incredibly menacing sprite work, a truly charming bestiary, and a gloomy soundtrack. On this alone it's worth checking out, but know that playing through to see multiple endings is the best way to get the content for your time, but will only extend the short experience so much.
Aesthetically it's staggering though, presenting incredibly menacing sprite work, a truly charming bestiary, and a gloomy soundtrack. On this alone it's worth checking out, but know that playing through to see multiple endings is the best way to get the content for your time, but will only extend the short experience so much.
I like how different this game feels from other platformers of the era. It dabbles a bit into the Metroidvania style by requiring you to revisit areas to unlock all the upgrades. Every level has various paths each with their own visual style and bosses. It does a poor job of explaining a lot of this stuff, including the fact that you can beat the game pretty soon after you finish the first level, since the final boss is just kinda right on the world map. I was confused when I beat the game after like, 30 minutes. But all the extra levels and abilities you unlock make the exploration worth it, and the game opens up quite nicely when you have everything under your belt. I will say they kinda botched the platforming by giving you the ability to fly endlessly. Gargoyle's Quest did this a lot better by having you slowly gain better air time, and the moment you actually did gain infinite flight was wonderful. Here, it just exists as a way to disengage from basically every obstacle. But this game is more about the exploration than anything. It's not even all that hard, at least until you get to the ridiculously cheap final boss, which is probably the most egregious difficulty spike I've ever seen. Fuck that thing. Still, great game! 4/6
Every Halloween.
Classic Capcom action game, hard on the bosses side
Uno de los juegos más difíciles de la SNES.
Se siente la progresión a través del juego, Firebrand va consiguiendo las crestas y cada una sirve en una situación específica. Te sientes increíblemente poderoso cuando puedes convertirte en la Ultimate Gargoyle.
No logré ganarle al final boss, algún día volveré a intentarlo.
Se siente la progresión a través del juego, Firebrand va consiguiendo las crestas y cada una sirve en una situación específica. Te sientes increíblemente poderoso cuando puedes convertirte en la Ultimate Gargoyle.
No logré ganarle al final boss, algún día volveré a intentarlo.
This review contains spoilers
Giving one of the mightier enemies from Ghosts N’ Goblins their own game is bizarre enough. Extending that game to a full-blown trilogy that spans three different consoles is something to behold. That is what became of Capcom’s menacing, flying devil Firebrand as the Gargoyle’s Quest trilogy closed out with Demon’s Crest on the SNES in 1994. Demon’s Crest is by and large considered to be the best installment of this trilogy. With the added flair of being featured on the graphically superior SNES, this common assessment is understandable. While this game garnered more praise than its predecessors, Demon’s Crest still flew under the radar throughout the SNES’s lifespan, giving it a “hidden gem” reputation. This could be attributed to the fact that Demon’s Crest doesn’t bear the same namesake as the previous games, but it’s not as if the previous two entries are highly regarded. Demon’s Crest is the shining example to those few who have played this franchise. It’s a shame, really, because Demon’s Crest holds so many exemplary features to just be confined to cult status.
The narrative of Demon’s Crest is a simple enough premise that establishes the game's lore. In the Demon Realm that makes up the setting, six crests with different elemental properties are scattered across the land. If combined, the six crests accumulate enough power for someone to conquer entire worlds like the Chaos Emeralds. Firebrand has all of the crests at the beginning, but the crests are stolen by another demon named Phalanx. Firebrand must adventure across the land of Demons to recover the six crests and defeat Phalanx before he harnesses their power and takes over the realm.
For being condemned to relative obscurity, Demon’s Crest blows many other SNES titles out of the water in many aspects. For one, the presentation here is fantastic. The grandiose fantasy world of Demon’s Crest is depicted with a range of lurid colors with an impressive amount of detail. As early as the first level, the misty water surrounding the dark bog with leafless trees evokes a spooky atmosphere. Skeletons can also be found entombed in dirt casings to give off the impression that this is an ancient land with a horrific history behind it. One section of a level has Firebrand soar over a platformless sky, and the color scheme between the layers of clouds with the sun setting over them is utterly sublime. The submerged ruins consist of towering columns with gothic gargoyles pouring green water from the tops of them, flooding the ruins with the remains of a city in the background. These are a few major examples, but every level of this game has the same consistent, A-grade attention to detail and graphical output. The gothic spectacle presented here makes the one in Super Castlevania IV look half-assed and amateurish by comparison. It’s a high compliment considering Super Castlevania IV is one of my favorite games on the SNES. The character animations also uphold the same impressive attention to detail as one can hardly detect the 16-bit pixels behind the animated sprites. One example is the dragon boss that chases Firebrand at the very beginning. It’s a marvel of detailed animation. The player can discern every fissure of flesh deteriorating from its bones.
Playing as Firebrand is also quite the spectacle. He’s a muscular demon that can fly and shoot fire from his mouth, so I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t want to play as him. Those few with some discrepancies might feel like playing as an imposing beast wouldn’t offer the player any challenge. He’s a big red pain in the ass in the Ghost’s N’ Goblins series, so one might assume that he’s overpowered, resulting in a facile experience. Admittedly, Demon’s Crest is not as hard as Ghosts N’ Goblins, but what is? It’s not as if Firebrand is continually perched in the sky, breathing fire down at knights that take a mere two hits to die. He’s in the demon realm now and an even more hostile place that Arthur probably couldn’t endure for more than two seconds. The environment has been upscaled to appropriately fit Firebrand’s stature. His standard offensive power is shooting fire from his mouth. While it’s fairly effective against enemies, the player has to be somewhat accurate with their shots due to the less-than-firepower speed of flaming spurts. Firebrand also has a headbutt move, but it’s only used to destroy objects in the immediate background. Firebrand can also hover in the air after jumping for as long as the player desires. In the previous games, the ability to hover was finite, making platforming challenges perilous in some cases. One could argue that being able to hover in the air forever may make the game easier, but the game opts for something else completely. Instead of platforming challenges, the game tries to overwhelm the player with enemies from all angles. Firebrand’s hovering will often be interrupted by flying enemies careening towards him, or an ax lobbed at him from below. Firebrand can only also hover over heights he can jump, which aren’t far off the ground.
As his base level, Firebrand still has one of the most versatile movesets of the 16-bit era. The main objective of finding the crests even increases Firebrand’s versatility even further. With each crest obtained, Firebrand gains another form that coincides with the element it’s named after. The earth crest form allows him to break large obstacles by charging into them and spit a wave of energy that ripples on the ground. The air crest allows him to fly upward. One would think this would complete Firebrand’s flight range, making him unstoppable, but the air form only flies upward incrementally instead of continually, making it somewhat awkward. The water crest allows Firebrand to swim. It’s the lamest crest in terms of offense but considering all other forms take damage from water, it’s made incredibly useful. The one crest that does complete Firebrand’s move set is the time crest. The form is essentially a stronger base Firebrand rendering the initial Firebrand form obsolete. Once I received this form, the game did start to feel much easier. The challenging boss battles that were once tests of endurance went down in seconds thanks to this form, and I’m not sure I benefited from this.
Each of the crests in this game is retrieved from thoroughly exploring each level. This is also how the player finds health upgrades, urns to carry potions, and talismans that give Firebrand specific perks. With all this exploration-intensive progression, Demon’s Crest should’ve been a Metroidvania game. Sure, Demon's Crest came out in 1994. Super Metroid hadn’t laid the foundation for the genre yet, and Symphony of the Night hadn’t popularized the genre. However, there were already games before Demon’s Crest that had a vague understanding of seamless world design and a Metroidvania-esque sense of progression (Ufouria: The Saga, Wonder Kid), so I can surmise that possibility for Demon’s Crest appropriately. I don’t expect the developers of Demon’s Crest to be visionaries. All the same, I wish they had done something different with the overall cohesion between levels because what they came up with isn’t great. The previous game opted for a traversable hub world for Firebrand to walk around with the sublevels. It kind of came across like the towns from Zelda II. The main map in Demon’s Crest is a tiny mode 7 maps that Firebrand flies around in, swooping down to start the levels. The world map is easily the least attractive part of the game, and controlling Firebrand here is nauseating. He mostly misses the marked areas, and directing him back to the areas feels like using tank controls. A seamless design between these levels would’ve been a giant improvement. Considering the game already has the player backtracking between them to uncover items and crests they couldn’t get to before, a Metroidvania-styled world would fit this game like a glove.
The world map also makes progression confusing to follow. The player can access the first four levels of this game at any time, giving the illusion that they can be completed in any order like in Mega Man. The game does not make it clear that while this is true, each level has different paths that need to be searched to progress through the game. I had gone through the first four levels thinking I had beat them, but I still felt like something was wrong, and I wasn’t ready to fight Phalanx yet. Upon discovering that sometimes crests and essential items were found off the beaten path in each level, more levels were unlocked, giving me the impression that I was finally on the right track. How was I supposed to know this without a map or any direction from the game? The progression in this game isn’t free-flowing and non-linear as it seems; it’s actually obtuse and sloppy. Fighting Phalanx is also available right from the start, and defeating him without receiving all the crests will prematurely end the game, also giving the player the “bad ending.” Let me ask you this: if Dr. Wily’s castle was available from the start and the player was able to defeat him, why would the player be punished for doing this when the game gives them a chance to? It’s like putting a steak in front of a dog and batting them with a newspaper when they start to eat it. The dog will be upset and confused like any player in this game. It’s not like the directive to not do this was apparent.
Demon’s Crest is a prime example of a hidden gem in the SNES library. It may not be as readily recognized or lauded as Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, or Chrono Trigger, but it’s a game that’s worth the effort to uncover and play. However, does it deserve to be ranked among the greatest in the system despite its lack of notoriety? Sadly, no. The strengths of this game cannot be overstated. It’s a gorgeous 16-bit platformer that offers a lot with its short playtime. Plus, Firebrand is a delightful character to play due to his eclectic moveset. However, I cannot excuse the progression of this game as I find it unfair to the player. The world here had a potential that the developers were too near-sighted to see. As a result, Demon’s Crest had the potential to be one of the greatest games on the SNES but falters due to its shortcomings. Maybe this game is best suited as a suitable alternative to play when they get tired of Mario and Zelda. However, I think this game should at least have more acclaim than its parent franchise, Ghosts N’ Goblins.
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
The narrative of Demon’s Crest is a simple enough premise that establishes the game's lore. In the Demon Realm that makes up the setting, six crests with different elemental properties are scattered across the land. If combined, the six crests accumulate enough power for someone to conquer entire worlds like the Chaos Emeralds. Firebrand has all of the crests at the beginning, but the crests are stolen by another demon named Phalanx. Firebrand must adventure across the land of Demons to recover the six crests and defeat Phalanx before he harnesses their power and takes over the realm.
For being condemned to relative obscurity, Demon’s Crest blows many other SNES titles out of the water in many aspects. For one, the presentation here is fantastic. The grandiose fantasy world of Demon’s Crest is depicted with a range of lurid colors with an impressive amount of detail. As early as the first level, the misty water surrounding the dark bog with leafless trees evokes a spooky atmosphere. Skeletons can also be found entombed in dirt casings to give off the impression that this is an ancient land with a horrific history behind it. One section of a level has Firebrand soar over a platformless sky, and the color scheme between the layers of clouds with the sun setting over them is utterly sublime. The submerged ruins consist of towering columns with gothic gargoyles pouring green water from the tops of them, flooding the ruins with the remains of a city in the background. These are a few major examples, but every level of this game has the same consistent, A-grade attention to detail and graphical output. The gothic spectacle presented here makes the one in Super Castlevania IV look half-assed and amateurish by comparison. It’s a high compliment considering Super Castlevania IV is one of my favorite games on the SNES. The character animations also uphold the same impressive attention to detail as one can hardly detect the 16-bit pixels behind the animated sprites. One example is the dragon boss that chases Firebrand at the very beginning. It’s a marvel of detailed animation. The player can discern every fissure of flesh deteriorating from its bones.
Playing as Firebrand is also quite the spectacle. He’s a muscular demon that can fly and shoot fire from his mouth, so I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t want to play as him. Those few with some discrepancies might feel like playing as an imposing beast wouldn’t offer the player any challenge. He’s a big red pain in the ass in the Ghost’s N’ Goblins series, so one might assume that he’s overpowered, resulting in a facile experience. Admittedly, Demon’s Crest is not as hard as Ghosts N’ Goblins, but what is? It’s not as if Firebrand is continually perched in the sky, breathing fire down at knights that take a mere two hits to die. He’s in the demon realm now and an even more hostile place that Arthur probably couldn’t endure for more than two seconds. The environment has been upscaled to appropriately fit Firebrand’s stature. His standard offensive power is shooting fire from his mouth. While it’s fairly effective against enemies, the player has to be somewhat accurate with their shots due to the less-than-firepower speed of flaming spurts. Firebrand also has a headbutt move, but it’s only used to destroy objects in the immediate background. Firebrand can also hover in the air after jumping for as long as the player desires. In the previous games, the ability to hover was finite, making platforming challenges perilous in some cases. One could argue that being able to hover in the air forever may make the game easier, but the game opts for something else completely. Instead of platforming challenges, the game tries to overwhelm the player with enemies from all angles. Firebrand’s hovering will often be interrupted by flying enemies careening towards him, or an ax lobbed at him from below. Firebrand can only also hover over heights he can jump, which aren’t far off the ground.
As his base level, Firebrand still has one of the most versatile movesets of the 16-bit era. The main objective of finding the crests even increases Firebrand’s versatility even further. With each crest obtained, Firebrand gains another form that coincides with the element it’s named after. The earth crest form allows him to break large obstacles by charging into them and spit a wave of energy that ripples on the ground. The air crest allows him to fly upward. One would think this would complete Firebrand’s flight range, making him unstoppable, but the air form only flies upward incrementally instead of continually, making it somewhat awkward. The water crest allows Firebrand to swim. It’s the lamest crest in terms of offense but considering all other forms take damage from water, it’s made incredibly useful. The one crest that does complete Firebrand’s move set is the time crest. The form is essentially a stronger base Firebrand rendering the initial Firebrand form obsolete. Once I received this form, the game did start to feel much easier. The challenging boss battles that were once tests of endurance went down in seconds thanks to this form, and I’m not sure I benefited from this.
Each of the crests in this game is retrieved from thoroughly exploring each level. This is also how the player finds health upgrades, urns to carry potions, and talismans that give Firebrand specific perks. With all this exploration-intensive progression, Demon’s Crest should’ve been a Metroidvania game. Sure, Demon's Crest came out in 1994. Super Metroid hadn’t laid the foundation for the genre yet, and Symphony of the Night hadn’t popularized the genre. However, there were already games before Demon’s Crest that had a vague understanding of seamless world design and a Metroidvania-esque sense of progression (Ufouria: The Saga, Wonder Kid), so I can surmise that possibility for Demon’s Crest appropriately. I don’t expect the developers of Demon’s Crest to be visionaries. All the same, I wish they had done something different with the overall cohesion between levels because what they came up with isn’t great. The previous game opted for a traversable hub world for Firebrand to walk around with the sublevels. It kind of came across like the towns from Zelda II. The main map in Demon’s Crest is a tiny mode 7 maps that Firebrand flies around in, swooping down to start the levels. The world map is easily the least attractive part of the game, and controlling Firebrand here is nauseating. He mostly misses the marked areas, and directing him back to the areas feels like using tank controls. A seamless design between these levels would’ve been a giant improvement. Considering the game already has the player backtracking between them to uncover items and crests they couldn’t get to before, a Metroidvania-styled world would fit this game like a glove.
The world map also makes progression confusing to follow. The player can access the first four levels of this game at any time, giving the illusion that they can be completed in any order like in Mega Man. The game does not make it clear that while this is true, each level has different paths that need to be searched to progress through the game. I had gone through the first four levels thinking I had beat them, but I still felt like something was wrong, and I wasn’t ready to fight Phalanx yet. Upon discovering that sometimes crests and essential items were found off the beaten path in each level, more levels were unlocked, giving me the impression that I was finally on the right track. How was I supposed to know this without a map or any direction from the game? The progression in this game isn’t free-flowing and non-linear as it seems; it’s actually obtuse and sloppy. Fighting Phalanx is also available right from the start, and defeating him without receiving all the crests will prematurely end the game, also giving the player the “bad ending.” Let me ask you this: if Dr. Wily’s castle was available from the start and the player was able to defeat him, why would the player be punished for doing this when the game gives them a chance to? It’s like putting a steak in front of a dog and batting them with a newspaper when they start to eat it. The dog will be upset and confused like any player in this game. It’s not like the directive to not do this was apparent.
Demon’s Crest is a prime example of a hidden gem in the SNES library. It may not be as readily recognized or lauded as Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, or Chrono Trigger, but it’s a game that’s worth the effort to uncover and play. However, does it deserve to be ranked among the greatest in the system despite its lack of notoriety? Sadly, no. The strengths of this game cannot be overstated. It’s a gorgeous 16-bit platformer that offers a lot with its short playtime. Plus, Firebrand is a delightful character to play due to his eclectic moveset. However, I cannot excuse the progression of this game as I find it unfair to the player. The world here had a potential that the developers were too near-sighted to see. As a result, Demon’s Crest had the potential to be one of the greatest games on the SNES but falters due to its shortcomings. Maybe this game is best suited as a suitable alternative to play when they get tired of Mario and Zelda. However, I think this game should at least have more acclaim than its parent franchise, Ghosts N’ Goblins.
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
Good graphics and music, felt like the game was wasted potential especially after the 2 game boy games, you get a world map here and some dialogue from NPCs and bosses but the stages left me hanging. Bosses were all over the place in terms of difficulty which was kind of confusing, too.
the beginning was kinda rough without knowing some of the stuff to get better/stronger before meeting some bosses but overall it was great once you get the hang of it.
it's the best of the Firebrand Trilogy and honestly the best Ghost'n Goblins game in the series.
also the gargoyles in these games are hot like GODDAMN, Capcom
it's the best of the Firebrand Trilogy and honestly the best Ghost'n Goblins game in the series.
also the gargoyles in these games are hot like GODDAMN, Capcom
Ghosts 'n goblins can go to the principal's office, this is the real good stuff.
I think this game strikes a really fun in-between of exploration and linear platforming, more games should do it. Super good atmosphere and artwork too.
Demon's Crest is one of those games that's nut-crunchingly hard without feeling unfair. I get my ass kicked in the boss fights, but I feel like it's because my slow ass can't keep up...well, maybe they do have a bit too much health. At least the game has infinite lives, meaning infinite tries without taking away your checkpoints, which is almost unheard of for an old platformer. The atmosphere, Mode 7 overworld map, background effects, and minor adventure/RPG elements are all quite impeccable. This game's graphics and sound are definitely high-end for SNES, befitting the Capcom brand.
I would probably love this game if it didn't kick my ass so hard, but I'm sure a lot of other people love it just for that.
I would probably love this game if it didn't kick my ass so hard, but I'm sure a lot of other people love it just for that.
Un juego muy original (y que esta vez a diferencia de Ghost and goblins puedo jugar como un ser humano) y divertido que propone jugar como un enemigo de otra saga. El único problema gordo que le veo, es que varios desafíos se pueden pasar fácilmente con ciertas habilidades y que bueno, el enemigo vuela indefinidamente, y que los enemigos alados tienen patrones muy parecidos. Pero aún así, la propuesta pseudo metroidvania, me pareció bastante amena.
A little confusing at first to figure out where to go. But the graphics are great with appropiate music. The slowdown can be crazy at times. The combat is fun and the different forms can be neat to experiment with. The secret final boss is a nice addition. Not a must play snes game, but definitely one that you cant go wrong with.
Demon's Crest suprised me with how good it was and is easily the best of the trilogy. Capcom took the core gameplay of Gargoyle's Quest 1 and 2 and upgraded it to the point where it is essentially Megaman X with a Ghosts N Goblins coat of paint, both in Gameplay and Presentation. The game also has metroidvania elements in the sense where you can replay levels and they all have branching paths leading to different upgrades that you will need to collect to have a chance with the final boss... Or you could just go straight to the final boss from the get go - BOTW style. Demon's Crest is definitely one of the most underrated SNES games as it belongs up there with the likes of Megaman X and Super Metroid, but is barely spoken about. If you like Megaman X and want a spooky theme to it, this is the game you must try.
Gostei.
Loved playing as a demon tho this game makes you a bit too overpowered, there was backtracking but it wasn't as good as I hoped since you can quite literally fly over everything and it just makes the experience and exploration less fun. Cool music and bosses but altogether... a slight above average experience.
Firebrand is so cool and hes my friend