Well, this one was real rough at the start, not knowing what anything did, and dying to one explosion or powerful enemy hit, and having the first level loop infinitely until you find a specific item under a specific tree and also hiding the level end key under another specific tree. But over the course of a few days I got better at the game and learned how to progress, and then honestly, the game wasn't that hard. It was kinda fun even!

There definitely are some issues with the game though. The aforementioned item under a specific tree makes the game really tedious, blowing up every single object until you find it. Some of the later levels get pretty rough to navigate through, just cause there are walls you need to blow up that take multiple bombs. And then if you run out of bombs, it becomes REALLY tedious. And while the music is really nice and well made... I kinda wish there were more tracks. The main theme played for like, 80% of my playtime.

The majority of the game that isn't tedious is decent though. Playing around with the wide variety of powerups was really nice and added some good strategy to the game, and it was really satisfying finding some stairs and collecting a ton of powerups & bombs. Also the way the game works makes it uncommon for you to run out of bombs or powerups unless you're being reckless with them, so I rarely felt like I wasn't well equipped. And the constantly draining health wasn't actually that much of a nuisance. I never really had a shortage of the health item, and it warns you when you're getting low on health at a pretty safe distance, and even with getting hit by weak attacks all the time, it didn't drain all that quickly at all.

Anyways, I don't think I'd recommend this game randomly to just anyone, but if you're looking for something new to play on the NES/Famicom, you could do a LOT worse than this. This game is pretty alright.

Reviewed on May 26, 2023


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