I probably need to play a fair bit more to come to a fully formed opinion, but I think I have seen enough to say that this game, despite being disappointingly unpolished, has a very, very, very funny core gameplay loop. Like, very few things in a video game are as funny as hearing the muffled, barely audible screams of one of your friends along with monster noises. When in the first three hours of playing a game you laugh out loud more than you have at pretty much any other multiplayer game besides maybe Mario Party. It bears a lot of resemblance to Among Us, which also relies heavily on social interaction to supplement its simple gameplay, and I still love to play a game of Among Us with my friends, even three years later. So even though I'm sure the internet will forget about it, and even though I probably won't be playing it a whole lot going forward, I think this is a social game that will stand the test of time for me personally and be something I pick up with my pals every so often for the foreseeable future.

Video games as a medium have led up to this game. It is the conclusion of a story that Tetsuya Takahashi has been trying to tell since Xenogears in 1998. The characters are all amazingly written and have great chemistry, the combat doesn't quite reach the highs of XC2 but the field gameplay is far better. The music takes a bit to get used to from past games, but ultimately is amazing as well. And the story is by far the best in the series, tying together the main themes from XC1 and 2 while introducing new ones as well, all tying a bow on the series as a whole with an emotional, unparalleled ending. Basically, this game is peak fiction, peak gameplay, just peak video games. It's my current favorite game of all time, and it probably will be for a very, very long time (i.e., until Xenoblade 4 comes out).

Taking this game down is one of the worst mistakes Nintendo has ever made. I am not kidding when I say that this game had some of the funniest and most enjoyable matches of any multiplayer game I've ever played. Mario is such an inherently fun game but that just gets taken to the extreme with the chaos that ensues in this one. Getting sent to an endgame level with a timer that's running out, no coins, and then seeing a legion of Lakitus spawn in, all chucking their ballistic missiles to lay waste to the ecosystem is genuinely one of the funniest experiences you could ever have playing a Mario game. And now you can't ever play it again. Thanks, Nintendo! I'll always miss the fun I had playing this game, and I seriously hope Nintendo brings it back (or more likely, a fan recreation) because the few weeks I played this game were truly special.

I absolutely loved this game, and I'd call it my new favorite game on the NES.

I think to really talk about why this game is special, you need to talk about the artistry that went into this game. In my opinion, this is one of the earliest examples of video games being an art form. The visuals are simply phenomenal. Each level has gorgeous backgrounds and tilesets. Level 3 in particular, when you get to the end and see Dracula's tower off in the distance against a dark sky illuminated by the moon... it's just fantastic. The enemy designs are also amazing. It's a weird hodgepodge of classic movie monsters all realized in amazing sprites, many with lots of animation. And the SOUNDTRACK. Every single track is an absolute banger, no exceptions. The music never gets old, never gets stale, which is especially impressive given how much you're going to hear each one. Every piece of music is extremely upbeat with surprisingly complicated rhythms and melodies that just perfectly evoke the haunted castle motif. The visuals and soundtrack come together to impeccably form the classic cheesy horror movie vibes. Absolutely incredible.

The gameplay is less fantastic, but still very good. Simon is extremely limited at all times. You walk fairly slowly, and you can only jump straight up or forward with fixed momentum, unable to move in midair. Your whip has decent range but using it stops you and leaves you vulnerable. You have access to a variety of subweapons (the holy water is insanely broken) but you have to find those in the level, and if you die, you lose it. Enemies meanwhile take no knockback, often move quickly and have weird patterns or have ranged attacks that take off a huge chunk of health or throw you directly into a bottomless pit. The odds are stacked against you, and while the limited options can be frustrating, it also allows for greater control and precision. You always know exactly how far your whip will go, how far you'll jump, if you can move out of the way in time. This puts far more of the responsibility for deaths on the player.

That's not to say there isn't some classic NES unfairness to be seen. The hit detection on platforms is really weird, and you'll often fall off of one when it really looks like you should have made it. Enemies can have weird spawn patterns that they deviate from and make it hard to predict when they'll show up. Worst of all, some enemies have different attack patterns that they seem to switch between randomly, making some of them a roll of the dice if you can get past them easily or lose half your health trying to beat them. However, unlike a lot of games, these difficulty imbalances are pretty infrequent. Levels 2 and 4 are the worst offenders, but even they aren't that bad once you get the hang of things.

Overall, I really really liked this game. Definitely one of the best games on the NES.

Some of the sickest ideas and one of the best soundtracks on the Game Boy, completely squandered with some of the slowest, most boring movement I've ever seen in a video game, a terrible framerate that slows and stutters whenever there's two enemies on screen, and some just abysmal level design full of cheap one-hit kills. The tough-but-fair brilliance of the first game is replaced with unrelenting tedium, even for such a short game. Just skip this one, it's not worth playing (but you should listen to the soundtrack though it goes CRAZY).

EDIT: 3/10 -> 2/10 if the game is nearly irredeemable why did i give it a 3???