Goemon is one of the few Konami franchises I don't have much experience with, this and...Quiz Magic Academy? I don't really know why it's taken me this long to really play this game, I've played it a few times at parties or when messing around with rompacks as a kid, but recently I finally sat down and played the first SNES game. I mostly just wanted to get to the later SNES games, because they've all been translated now and look fantastic, but it didn't feel right to skip this one.

Now, I just want to say, this game is great, very charming and polished, great sprites, music, level design, all of it is proper Konami. However, the last stage on a first playthrough is...I don't want to say brutal or difficult, because it's not that, I was annoyed more than frustrated. My problem was that you have to grind for gold in order to dig yourself out of the prison, grinding wasn't so bad in the earlier stages because there were many ways to go about it. But with this stage, you're forced to go through hoards of enemies, really annoying ones with spreadshot rifles and spears. When you don't have a buddy with you and have lost all of your upgrades, this is a slog. I know this isn't the games' fault, it's a short arcadey game that wants you to replay it with your friends and breeze through it after learning it through your first couple of runs, but man I just want to get to the sequels.

I'll come back to this game later and properly finish it, it was really fun, but there are other Goemon games I'm more interested in.