There's so much I appreciate about how Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse iterates on the formula of the first game, after the effectively-unrelated misstep that was Castlevania II. The art direction and variety in locations is sublime, the branching paths add great replay value, and the soundtrack is full of peak retro NES bangers. But...the difficulty in this version (I've read that the original Japanese release is much more fair) is unconscionable to the point that it hampers the experience for me. The first Castlevania had the notorious fight with Death, but otherwise, it was hard but fair; each level was short enough that you didn't lose much progress when running out of lives and could clearly push farther on each successive attempt. There's no boss in Castlevania III that is as difficult as Death in the first game, but the platforming sections and enemy encounters are jacked up to a level of difficulty that is more sadistic than meaningfully challenging, especially considering how the longer levels mean that you might lose a substantial amount of progress if (and when) you run out of lives. I intend on playing the Japanese version in the future for the sake of comparison, but the only way I was able to appreciate this game without tearing my hair out was employing save states liberally in the later stages.