I had a few paragraphs written closed the tab and it got ate up so I'll keep it brief.

SotN is one hell of a game to come out in 1997 in the age where the 3D graphic push was damn near mandatory for your game to succeed, but SotN having beautiful pixel art, 2D side-scrolling action that is seamless speaks volumes this game's aged better as time went on compared to 3D games trying to figure anything out.

It's not without faults though. The whole search-action part feels really underwhelming as you gain few useful abilities to unlock new areas, heck some places are just unlocked through some key items that you'll never use. Especially way more annoying you'd find out to use Mist through a gate only to find out behind there is a sword that's not much better with what you have. Even yet if I really REALLY love the art direction in this game, some rooms look straight up the same which is not much of a bad thing, but nothing really had a landmark to jolt my brain to think back to the sections of the castle. Familars straight up suck, Fairy helps a lot but my boy Demon Card got cheated hard just to press a button twice.

But still highly recommended, even for it being the other side of the coin to Metroidvania.