The Guardian Legend (1988)

Preliminary: Well, despite the great music, I was not really feeling the starting shmup segment. It was moving too fast and you had no control of the speed of the scroll! But then the top-down action-adventure segment started and I liked how health was replenished quite forgivingly, it was Zelda but with shooting and more interesting power-ups and whatnot, and I liked that classic feeling I get of not being able to resist trying to finish out the adventure elements of an action-adventure game. With good music, interesting look, and an interesting concept, let's just hope the shmup segments don't bog it down enough that I don't push through!

Day 1

Welp, Corridor 1 was a lot more fun than whatever that intro shmup part was. I still prefer the being-hooked-into-the-action-adventure part of the game, but this shmup part was good! Uff the boss was a bit rough (felt borderline impossible to avoid at least some damage), but I got through it! Thank goodness for its relatively forgiving amount of health drops, I hope that keeps up

Not the best UI but pretty great, especially the map aspect. Map + strategywiki guide was all I needed (so far), no savestate abuse (again... so far haha. We shall see).

Uff Corridor 12 has that overly fast movement again for the shmup parts, making my eyes make me a bit dizzy. Darn my motion sickness. And uff that corridor was pretty terrible, moving too fast for me to enjoy it and just an onslaugth of enemies. I only survived thanks to the frequent health drops from the "red balls that come out of the ground" enemies. But it was not fun. I hope those type corridors don't end up convincing me not to push through the otherwise fun game.

The action-adventure shooter part is really growing on me tho, as I keep getting to know it. My regular weapon is getting upgrades and it's getting smoother. Plus, I like how many different upgrades you can have for your character and weapons. With all these weapon upgrades from Area 2, and the normal speed back, Corridor 2 was far more enjoyable than 12.

Day 2

I was slightly dreading how long this game is seeming now since I'm only going to Area 3 and there seems to be like 12 areas? or a lot? I dunno. But next thing you know I'm bopping my head to the music and getting in the groove. We'll see how I feel when I get to my next shmup part :-p At first I wasn't minding the Corridor 13 shmup part but uh... Sheesh! That boss TOOK FOREVER. I wasn't dying cuz the massive amount of missiles you kill off spawned lots of item capsules but sheesh that just got repetitive and long. I almost gave up thinking the game was bugged. As always, I am grateful that you can shoot away all?most? enemy projectiles, always a nice touch in action games. By the end of my play session I was definitely getting more into the groove, hopefully summer break I can do longer play sessions so these don't have to become such long multi-day games. As much as I'm enjoying it though, it is a bit too hard for me, and the Corridor I just did to end Area 4 scrolled super fast again. I legit get dizzy/sick feeling from those.

Day 3

I didn't have very long to play today and was originally considering just calling it in the game. I was enjoying it, but it was so hard and I have had to resort to outright savestate abuse for parts (even with the forgiving health drops). But here I am , sucked in again and playing later than I'm supposed to game lol. I was gonna jump to Dragon Warrior III (ah!), but looks like I'll be finishing this :-p Hopefully I get some longer play sessions soon. The negative, tho, is that I was getting to that point where I just wanted to get what was necessary -- nothing extra -- and crank out the game so I can move on. I am excited for when I shake off that feeling that I need to move on in my backlog and truly savor games, but I also have to recognize that a game this hard is okay that I can't truly savor it anyway. And that I will need the babying 90s era to allow me to do that :-p Plus... then my backlog will be shorter so it'll be less pressure :-p

Day 4

A lot of the minibosses and bosses just have too much health. I've never liked that as the fundament of a challenge: the mechanics should be the challenge, not just high health resulting repeating the mechanics over and over. I'm not entirely clear on how I know how many Rapid Fire upgrades I've gotten? Most the rest of that is marked in the UI menu. Ok, after the Corridor 8 boss, you cannot convince me people beat this withotu savestates or cheats (ok ok I know they can but sheesh!). At last my health and chip maximum are both fully maxed! Plus all my weapons fully upgraded!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: did NES programmers just no know it gets super laggy when you have more than (is it 4?) sprites on the screen at once? Why do so many NES games ignore this and, like in this game, have 200 sprites and bullets and enemies and chaos on the screen? Sheesh. There comes a point the Enemy Eraser is just outright needed so frequently. Corridor 9 was so insanely hard... to the point of not really fun. But again, with modern niceties like savestates, I made it through. But the difficulty level drained the fun aspect a bit (like always, the parts I found most fun were following a map, crossing off my list of upgrades based on the map, and adventuring around. ... aka my usual preference for the action-adventure elements of games). Ugh Corridor 20 just outright sucks. I might just not go for the final Attack upgrade. (I wound up pushing through... with copious amount of savestating, luckily the boss wasn't terrible, it was just the regular part of the Corridor that brutalized me). Welp after Corridor 21 (which I found a bit easier than Corridors 10 and 20, even tho it was basically a boss rush), it seems I've beaten the game cuz the alien planet is blowing up... but then it turned out there's more!

Ah! Turns out there's a final boss now! And it's hard! Luckily I had a well-timed full Energy Tank spawn, but still. At last, I've beaten it. And what a beautiful ending screen! (yes, I know I'm the greatest player....... when I have access to maps, a guide, and savestates. lol)

Look: 7.5/10 Nice variety of settings, nice full body main character sprite, and classic alien shmup boss graphics.

Sound: 8/10 Without such excellent tunes, I doubt I would've pushed through the difficult gameplay.

Play: 7.5/10 Some really annoying enemy mechanics, but so it goes with 80s hard games. This at least felt rewarding through it. And I can't deny the adventure elements kept me hooked.

Feel: 8/10 I don't really get what the plot is here or what the blue people are and why they are helpful but also pettily don't always help and charge you money lol. The great Sound, cute blue and red characters, and addictive adventure elements and upgrade system boosted this up.

Attachment: 7.5/10 It says something that I pushed through such a long game, and such a high difficulty, but the length and difficulty are also why I most likely wouldn't return to complete it. The addition of the Corridor Rush encourages replayability for sure (tho I personally didn't love the shmup parts) and it is a very full and robust game.

Overall: 7.7/10

Completion: Main Story

Playtime: ~4 hours

One thing I'm working on this summer (on top of all the other games I'm playing, plus life stuff that doesn't involve gaming) is finding NES games I never played when it was my main console and giving them a shot. The Guardian Legend was one of these games.

This game is excellent! I'm unsure why it never got the same praise and publicity that other NES stone cold classics got. It's a hybrid of a shooter with some overhead adventure elements.

The graphics are excellent for an NES title. The music sets a great tone to the game. The multiformat format I think is done brilliantly. Blaster Master is a game I love and I think The Guardian Legend does that concept even better. It helps that it has a password system that doesn't force you to complete it all in one go.

If you are an NES fan and think the only games worth playing are the Mario, Zelda, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania standard hits, give The Guardian Legend a shot.

This scrolling shooter is very epic feeling and overall very well designed. It has more depth than most shmups and has a nice progression system. It has only a few flaws, such as some flickering and slow down (but very minor/occasional) It was designed for the NES and is a NES exclusive (rather than the majority of shmups from the era which are arcade ports that often look/feel/sound/play dumbed down) and many of the flicker/slowdown issues arent as bad as most shmups i've played on nes. it's actually a very impressive NES title that outclasses would-be peers imo.

Aside from the original cover art, I dont think i've even heard it mentioned outside the first time i played it when I was quite young and found it too difficult to really dig into the meat of this game. I am a little surprised I haven't seen the core basics of TGL copied more, outside of Blaster Master and another little game I found out only in combing the net, it seems that there's not much like this. (basically a shooter with dungeons) What a great game to come back to later down the road and explore and enjoy.

I was able to complete it with cheats but feel it's deserving to come back at some point to master it perhaps. It's playable and fun at first, but gets crazy difficult by the end, if not impossible... And when you die, you die, and that's it. (it has one of those long clunky password systems) which is pretty much the only thing i would fault the game for.

Worth looking at if you like Blaster Master or shooters from this era. It's also a great one for challenge/competition/high scores. Quite replayable. I'll definitely have to make a better effort to bump up Compile's shmups on my playlist now.

Platform:

NES

Description:

Unique mix between top down zelda-esque maze action and vertical scrolling shmup.

The 2 styles of gameplay mix really well. I have played through the Sigma Star Saga too for example, where the 2 genres seem a little more disjointed. This one feels more homogenous. There is even a nice transition animation showing how your player sprite becomes the space ship and how it turns human again. The difficulty is actually also not impossible, but quite enjoyable even today. The enemy patterns and behaviours are varied and interesting, and the bosses look amazing. I like the progression too how you feel more and more powerful, and the arsenal you can choose from is interesting because every weapon seems to have a strategic use.

Disliked:

Some of the puzzles are just stupid. I had to google some of them to get the solution. I mean who would enter and leave a random room 20+ times to get a door in another room to open. Also some of the environments look a bit abstract, but that's not too bad.

Summary:

It's an awesome game, that is a bit hard to get into at first, but once you get the hang of things it's a fun and rewarding game. Higly recommended for shmup and top down action adventures alike.