I don't know. Take what I said about Wampus and remember it here-- I don't know if it's just because I'm not used to NES games, but this game feels unfair. I know a lot of NES games were brutally hard and unfair, but I don't know. How many of the brutally hard and unfair things we associate with the NES would've never been passable if the original hardware wasn't so limited?
At the same time, I played the PC version, which runs at 60fps and is butter smooth graphically. I just feel like there's too much going on. Like, a vertical action platformer. Cool. Why did every level need to ALSO be an autoscroller? Like I saw a few chests across the levels, but I never stopped to try and open them because the levels were scrolling too fast for me to feel like it was a good decision to waste time trying to figure out how to open them, especially when I died the first time not from an enemy, but from the autoscroll itself because I couldn't figure out what key was the attack key to break the first set of bricks on the first level. Why did it need to be a 1-hit health system with no way to upgrade it (from what I found)? Why was the player only granted 3 lives before having to start over? Everything was so slippery and slidey and fast with no hesitation, so I'd end up dying completely randomly because a bat happened to fly into the path of my fall. For a game with so much happening so quickly (trampolines, bats, exploding skeletons are all introduced in the first 3 short levels), it's a little shocking that the player is punished with having to start over (potentially with the entire game) if they don't immediately understand how things work. And also, to be honest, the gameplay wasn't that fun or compelling enough to warrant it being such a fickle life/death system. Like, when I died, I didn't think "oh boy! I could see how that was my fault. But that was really fun, so I can't wait to try again!" I thought "well that was dumb". And I'm saying this as someone who enjoyed both LOVE (which I just played/reviewed literally right before this) and Dadish, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with or completely opposed to difficult/precise games. Like, even Wampus, another modern day NES game was able to feel more fun and fair than this.
Bonus points for cute character design and nice spritework. But I don't see myself coming back to this one any time soon.
At the same time, I played the PC version, which runs at 60fps and is butter smooth graphically. I just feel like there's too much going on. Like, a vertical action platformer. Cool. Why did every level need to ALSO be an autoscroller? Like I saw a few chests across the levels, but I never stopped to try and open them because the levels were scrolling too fast for me to feel like it was a good decision to waste time trying to figure out how to open them, especially when I died the first time not from an enemy, but from the autoscroll itself because I couldn't figure out what key was the attack key to break the first set of bricks on the first level. Why did it need to be a 1-hit health system with no way to upgrade it (from what I found)? Why was the player only granted 3 lives before having to start over? Everything was so slippery and slidey and fast with no hesitation, so I'd end up dying completely randomly because a bat happened to fly into the path of my fall. For a game with so much happening so quickly (trampolines, bats, exploding skeletons are all introduced in the first 3 short levels), it's a little shocking that the player is punished with having to start over (potentially with the entire game) if they don't immediately understand how things work. And also, to be honest, the gameplay wasn't that fun or compelling enough to warrant it being such a fickle life/death system. Like, when I died, I didn't think "oh boy! I could see how that was my fault. But that was really fun, so I can't wait to try again!" I thought "well that was dumb". And I'm saying this as someone who enjoyed both LOVE (which I just played/reviewed literally right before this) and Dadish, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with or completely opposed to difficult/precise games. Like, even Wampus, another modern day NES game was able to feel more fun and fair than this.
Bonus points for cute character design and nice spritework. But I don't see myself coming back to this one any time soon.