It's not hard to argue that this game has been significantly surpassed by its numerous future offspring, but there's still a lot of magic in this game despite its age and flaws.

The music in this game is amazing and memorable. There's a lot of great variety in the tracks and hearing the classic tunes in CD quality (a first for Americans, at the time) is delightful.

The gameplay remains great due to the timeless nature of this gameplay loop. It's just really fun exploring the castle and the game paces out the power ups quite well. The movement still feels really fantastic making it pretty fun even when you're back tracking. The game also still has a lot of charms with its numerous goofy enemies and memorable bosses.

The main issue with the game is its difficulty. It's simply too easy which makes for a breezy comfort play, but doesn't satisfy anyone wanting a challenge more akin to the classic titles. There are now numerous hacks available that attempt to fix it.

Really cool to see one of the MV OGs. This really feels like it has most of the hallmarks of the style used today. I was honestly kind of surprised as to how fully formed it felt. The only real thing missing was air dash, but that's made up for with the bat. There might be more secrets here than most metroidvanias I've played. The art direction is really cool and I loved the level design. My only real problem is that almost all the bosses were pushovers and could be easily killed without actually learning their movement patterns.

I fucked up and didn't realize I was in the final fight so I didn't prepare to get the true ending, which is a shame because I'm basically missing out on half the game and would have to do it all over again to get it. Oh well, maybe I'll give it another go in a few years and get the full experience.