Side scrolling action game where you use a sword, ranged fire magic, and a dog companion summon to fight enemies. Controls well, mostly good looking stages, good music. Useful and entertaining shops in each level where the shopkeeper gives you a new update of the area presented like a short broadcast. If the game just consisted of stages like the first three of the five I'd say it's a pretty great action game for the NES.

Main source of challenge tends to come from potentially falling off of cliffs and the cheap enemies who suddenly appear when you are on platforms that will knock you off of them, both from the knockback effect of getting hit and how things just spawn in or stage hazards that suddenly attack when you get near them or when they load in (at times when you are or are nearly making your jumps). Stage 4 and 5 are just terrible, with four being a short level of avoiding cliffs and high damaging lava with enemies that just can't decide on their pattern and a terrible boss fight, and five being a constantly repeating maze of the same rooms and minor boss fights until you take the correct door which then leads to a cheap instant kill trap that you seem to have to exploit the game to avoid then two terrible final bosses.

Strange decision to change from sword to magic attack by ducking and scrolling through inventory instead of just making use of the select button.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1361031121975222272