Whatcha Playin?

Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark. It's a Metroidvania by Inti Creates about two demon maid sisters who are trying to restore their dark master, the demon lord Maxim Onslaught, after his defeat at the hands of a rival demon lord. You level up by collecting your lord's scattered bones, which unlocks new abilities as well as raising your stats, and you can collect subweapons as loot with random modifiers, and then condense the modifiers you want onto the weapons you like. You can swap between the sisters at any time (or play with a friend in co-op): one has a submachine gun, which is long range but consumes ammo, and the other has a whip which is short range but high damage.

It's superficially similar to the previous game, Gal Guardians: Demon Purge, which features two sisters in high school who are demon hunters trying to save their school from being transformed into a demon castle. But in addition to being significantly less horny (Demon Purge had a panty-collecting side quest... these games are in the same setting as Gal*Gun, so I guess this is to be expected), Servants has a much more open and interconnected world, compared to Demon Purge where the castle is separated into levels that mostly don't cross over into each other. At the same time, the design for each individual room is a lot less tight: in Demon Purge, almost every room has a specific challenge to overcome, but in Servants there are many filler rooms, and the difficulty of the enemy layouts is lower overall.

There are also a lot of elements I would consider somewhat half-baked, including the subweapon upgrade system and the way rebuilding the castle is handled. Overall it doesn't reach nearly the same heights as their excellent Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2, which I would consider the best modern Castlevania-like. Koji Igarashi was involved in that one, so maybe that's not surprising.

I would only recommend Servants of the Dark to fans of Demon Purge who don't mind the shift in level design, or who need something less embarrassing to suggest for co-op with a friend. If you're looking for a Castlevania-style game and haven't played any of the games I mentioned, I'd start with Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon if you're looking for classic Castlevania, or if you prefer the post-Symphony of the Night games, I recommend Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (also by Koji Igarashi, but with his studio ArtPlay instead of Inti Creates).