I have a very conflicted relationship with this game. On one hand it’s one of the most beautiful looking and sounding games I’ve ever experienced, the controls are buttery smooth, and the platforming is super tight. There are several moments in the game where you’re greeted with fun platforming challenges that are tough but reasonable enough to where it’s all the more satisfying once you clear them.

On the other hand, the sudden difficulty spikes that come out of nowhere, extremely cryptic hidden cages that basically require a guide to find and are required to access the final level and ending, and the limited lives and continues system that saves alongside your progress, meaning if you get a game over or use up all your continues, all that will stay that way until you either grind for extra lives or, in the case of continues, start a new save since you cannot get any new continues, all make for one of the most stressful and exhausting games I’ve ever played.

To add insult to injury, if you clear the final level and save after that, there’s no way to access it again. So all that hard work is for one end level you can only play once, and that’s it.

If you want your experience to be a little less strenuous, I recommend you use the 99 lives cheat, nobody will blame you anyway, or you could play the GBA or DSiware versions which help to balance the difficulty a little bit better by adding more hit points.

This is the kind of game that I really REALLY want to love, especially as the first game of one of my favorite game franchises, but it’s hard to with some of its horrible design choices.