A dramatic improvement over Castlevania: The Adventure right up until you reach the end-game at which point it descends into the same miserable design that the NES Castlevanias suffer from in their late-game also. All of the last three bosses are absurdly difficult in an explicitly unfair way, requiring near-pixel-perfect memorisation and execution, with the final boss being hellish even with aggressive usage of save states.

It's a shame as there's some legitimately solid design up until that point including a creative range of mechanics and gimmicks, and about as convincing a replication of the Castlevania aesthetic as you'd ever manage to make on the Game Boy. Much like the original Castlevania I just can't imagine ever stomaching this end-game again for the sake of experiencing the good stuff that is going on here however.