Keeping the sense of "weight" the previous games had despite expanding so much the player's movement in general and their control of their jump arc specifically is pretty remarkable. SC4 rarely uses the new hardware to load the screen with enemies or flashy effects, and it rarely needs to. It seems that from moment 1 of having better-than-8-bit hardware available to them, Konami started progressing noticeably towards the complete gothic atmosphere they'd master in time for Rondo and Symphony.

However, despite the technical leaps and gameplay changes, the persisting fundamentals here start to show themselves once the player acclimates in a not-always-positive light. Enemy designs/behavior is rarely more complex than it was in previous games, and while that's mostly OK in the levels thanks to other obstacles and the fact that blazing through with your 8way whip once you know how to handle enemies just feels great, the same doesn't hold for the bosses. The boss fights in this game are just bad and probably the biggest thing holding this back from feeling like a MMX-level generation leap. Once again, get the item that's best for damaging bosses (this time it's the cross) and spam it until they die. If you want to whip only, you can, it'll just take longer. The continuing simplicity is just a weird choice when so many of the boss monsters are reused from previous games, it's like if the Super Mario World castles ended with the Lost Levels versions of the original SMB castle fights instead of actual new bosses. (To be clear, my gripe is not that this game is a sorta-remake of the first and as a result has some of its bosses, it's that the levels feel enough of the time like a new Castlevania for a new generation that the bosses being exactly the same sort of interaction -- with the same characters -- as the old makes them all the more disappointing).

I should probably also mention the music. It's, uh, really good. Except for that remix of Vampire Killer you'll hear for a couple minutes on the final stage, that's really bad. But most of the soundtrack uses SNES's capabilities so well for so early in its lifespan that I guess that's a case of it standing out for sounding more like what you'd expect a dev's beginner attempt at bringing their old series composition to new hardware than all the great remixes and new songs on the rest of the soundtrack.

Another run and gun people tend to vastly overstate the difficulty of (except on Expert but outside of trying to beat the final stage without dying it really isnt that bad), but that and music quality are as far as the similarities between this and Journey to Silius go. This is probably the only game I think about in terms of being a developer’s “debut title” because it is just that impressive how many things are done and done right in this game. The character moveset and level-to-level selection/progression are well ahead of their time, and while the weapon system isn’t groundbreaking it’s extremely well refined, with almost every weapon and combination having unique features and uses. Weapon balance is far from perfect, but it’s good enough on Normal that the average player should be able to clear the game in a couple hours once they commit to one they like, unless it’s Fire+Chaser as that requires a little more practice. What’s really impressive with the weapon balancing is the approach Treasure took to it wrt difficulty selection; kneecapping easymode combinations shows both understanding and consideration of the mechanics they created that were far from common in the early nineties.

Levels and bosses are almost all good, with the major exception of the shmup section, which, while it clearly resembles enough a real shmup to suggest the team’s background at Konami and the possibility (eventually realized) that Treasure could make a great shmup, is unfortunately really fucking boring and also has no checkpoints. The dice palace, despite being a high point in creativity, is also a lull for those having trouble or otherwise grinding out a challenge/new weapon run due to the waiting around you have to do to roll again, but the music is nice and fast forward exists these days so I won’t begrudge it too much.

Aesthetically Gunstar Heroes is pretty charming, but Treasure would quite outdo themselves pretty soon after this. I do really like how the font/look of onscreen text and life totals is something they kept around for so many of their later titles.

Overall, one of few single player games of this short length that I can say would reward any amount of time put into it, even if you don’t aspire to a damageless clear or WR score etc. Not that I plan on coming back to it super often, just that I can’t conceive of playing this game “too many times”, nor “too few” aside from 0. Classic.

Graphics and music are great here, both the NES and FDS versions are extremely impressive for their hardware. Same goes for the character variety and amount of stages/environments though impressive doesn't necessarily mean good in that case -- losing the six-stage, linear, minimal downtime arcade structure of the first game robs some of the impetus to play in my view. Playing CV1 over and over for a 1cc, whip only level clear, beating bosses w/o abusing holywater, etc is rewarding. In CV3, I have little interest in even starting to route a stage order or character path towards a 1cc, let alone seriously attempting one. So now that I've seen all the stages (which is still more content than most NES action/platformers, mind), not really much bringing me back to this one. Oh well, October is over anyway.