The Guardian Legend (NES) - TGL Mode ALL Clear (No Deaths)
44Full run of The Guardian Legend (ガーディック外伝) by Compile, playing the TGL mode (shmup levels only), this was played on a real NES. Also: I just reached 10,000 subscribers as I'm posting this video!
Stage Listing:
00:00 - Start
01:29 - Area 0
04:06 - Area 1 - Ocean Area Start
08:31 - Area 11
12:08 - Area 12
15:13 - Area 2
18:47 - Area 13 - Forest Area Start
22:07 - Area 3
25:40 - Area 14
29:10 - Area 4
31:37 - Area 15 - Cave Area Start
34:42 - Area 5
37:08 - Area 16
39:45 - Area 6
42:55 - Area 17 - Biological Area Start
44:22 - Area 17 - Boss Point Farming
56:35 - Area 7
1:00:57 - Area 18
1:03:26 - Area 8
1:06:35 - Area 19 Desert Area Start
1:09:32 - Area 9
1:11:47 - Area 20
1:14:11 - Area 10
1:16:59 - Area 21 - Boss Rush
1:20:47 - Area 22
1:21:17 - Final Boss + Ending
The Guardian Legend is one of the elusive RPG/shmup hybrid games where you play half the game as some sort of Zelda clone and the other half as a shoot em up. I'm playing this under "TGL" mode (enter "TGL" as your password when you start the game), where it lets you skip all of the Zelda style levels and play the game as a pure shoot em up.
The basics of the game are to kill as many enemies as possible throughout each level in order to gain experience points (this is the value shown at the end of each level). I should note that this amount is different from what is displayed as your score during the stages, and point farming the end of level bosses does not add experience. In fact, the longer you take to kill the bosses, the lower your experience points gained is.
So what does the experience do? Well it gives you access to more weapons and upgrades to your ship, and you will absolutely need these to stand any chance in this game, as your ships basic weapon is nearly worthless.
I want to note that I did do some point farming in this run in order to demonstrate how broken the scoring system in the game is, had I continued for another hour or so I could have maxed the score, in which case apparently the game just crashes (so I've heard).
Speaking of broken, this game is basically broken on a few fundamental ways, for one, it is nearly impossible to not get hit by things in the game, in fact in many cases you are even encouraged to run into and kill things to gain more experience. In many ways, The Guardian Legend is basically one of the dreaded Euroshumps people like to crap on. In that you have a lifebar and are basically expected to take damage, unlike more traditional shmup design where everything is (theoretically at least) dodgeable.
Another way the game is broken is that you can get items called enemy erasers which basically destroy everything on screen. The fact that you can hoard these items makes the later stages nearly a joke. You can basically heal yourself to full life at any time later in the game by spamming them in order to generate more health and chip items. So as long as you have the enemy erasers in stock, you are nearly unkillable. Add that combined with the fact that you can farm them from the bosses makes the game pretty broken.
In fact, the hardest part of the game is the very beginning third of it, with the hardest boss coming quite early on (Area 3). From that point on the game becomes much easier, especially if you use the correct items, specifically the 2 sword weapons, the Fireball, and the Enemy Erasers as I mentioned.
Finally the game is just too long. Now I realize the TGL mode isn't the "real" way to play this game, and these shmup levels are meant to be played as part of a larger experience, but I've got to judge it like I see it, and at 23 levels (Which are numbered in a strange order as you can see from my timecodes above), this game just goes on forever and repeats bosses over and over again.
Now despite all of that you probably think I hate this game. That isn't true! I actually do enjoy this game despite the many flaws. I especially love using the sword items to stab enemies from all sides, it's pretty cool thing to play around with melee weapons in shmups as they are not often seen. I think a little bit more polish and thoughtful design would have made this one of the best shmups on the NES, instead of just a really good one.
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