I have not played many Game Boy games, but I think I'd say this is the best I've played on the platform so far aside from maybe the original Pokémon games. Gargoyle's Quest is primarily a platformer with a nice mix of classic RPG elements in there, such as an overworld, random encounters, and NPCs to talk to. It almost felt like a Metroidvania at times since the character you play as grows in power over time as you earn upgrades, except the NPCs kinda just hand them to you once you complete a task whereas Metroidvanias have you explore to find upgrades. The main character - Firebrand - has three abilities that are simple but make him stand out among other platformer heroes: hovering in the air, spitting fireballs, and clinging to walls. As you progress through the game, you'll also get upgrades to three basic stats: Jump, Fly, and Health. Health and Jump are self explanatory, but Fly requires a bit of explanation. Your flying (its closer to floating in my opinion) has a dedicated bar next to your health, which makes flying a somewhat interesting balancing act between staying in the air long enough to get to your destination or avoid harm's way without running out of the bar. Whenever you cling to a wall or land on the ground, the bar instantly fills back up. The challenge is eventually trivialized once you get the upgrade near the very end that just lets you fly infinitely, but that's not until way later. The game also has different ranged weapons that you gain as you progress and can swap between. They all function about the same as the fireball in combat, but they let you shoot two at a time whereas the fireball can only be used once before an enemy is hit. The game sometimes makes you swap between weapons in a rather gimmicky way that I wasn't a big fan of; for example, the final boss only takes damage if you hit him in the head with Darkfire. The weapon that I felt had the most fun use was the Blockcutter, which can...you guessed it, break certain blocks within the platforming levels. I think they could have made fun secrets with it, but instead it just goes rather underutilized. The last thing I want to mention about this game is its currency collectible called Vials. You get them for either defeating enemies in the overworld, grabbing them from the ground in the overworld, or finding them in levels. I almost always had my Vial count at the max (99 Vials) since you only ever use them to buy Talismans of the Cyclone, which are basically lives in this game. All that explanation aside, this was a fun game to play, but I likely won't be revisiting it just like a bunch of other games I've played on here. However, I am quite excited to get into the rest of Firebrand's small series of games, especially Demon's Crest (which I played before this game but never beat).

So, I figure I should clarify this as a little addendum of a paragraph...I fully admit to having used the 3DS's emulation tools for Gargoyle's Quest and a GameFAQs walkthrough. However, I made sure I did not abuse either resource. I just used a walkthrough because there were certain points in this game that stumped my dumb brain, though most of it was achievable without a guide. I used a walkthrough to save me the headache of constant wandering and random encounters while I'm trying to figure out where to go. I could definitely feel the age of this game since it uses a password system in lieu of actual saves, so I used restore points purely as a way to bypass having to go all the way back and redo things I had already done without having to memorize a password that may not even keep all the game upgrades. I made sure I only used restore points right at the start of a level so that I was still beating the levels normally. Yea, you could say I cheated if you're a hardcore kinda gamer, but I feel like that's a necessary evil for old games like this that I'm not familiar with inside and out. Ultimately, I tried to use restore points and the walkthrough as sparingly and fairly as possible. I was able to complete the game at a pretty good time of 9 hours and 39 minutes, according to my 3DS's Activity Log.