This is one of the oldest games I have ever finished. Sadly, I did not like it at all. As someone who has never played any of the old 2D Castlevania games before, this was a very rough introduction to the series. It all went rather fine and as expected for a game of this era, until I met the grimm reaper boss. It took me over 70 tries to beat that mf. Without the savestate I did before the fight starts, I would have not been able to beat him. But eventually I did. I wonder how people back in the days managed to beat him without any savestates and starting over and over again. It must have taken weeks or rather months to know and play the game well enough to beat him consistently. After defeating the grimm reaper, I managed to also reach the final boss. The damage I did was most often a trade of, as I would also get hit while attacking. After several tries, I decided to not waste any more time than necessary to be finally done with this game. I started to do a savestate after every successful hit. Eventually, several minutes later, I beat him... to find out that there is a second phase... and so I continued my savestate abuse until the credits rolled. I love to use savestates, but I never used them like this before. I like to be able to restart bossfights instantly after I failed at them, but I usually do not use savestates during those fights. If I had not used those savestates, I would have never beaten the game, so it was a tradeoff. I beat it, but I basically cheated. All in all, this is the worst retro classic game I have played yet, as it is totally unfair, way too difficult and the gameplay itself did not feel very fun to me. Some of the music tracks were nice though.