At the hallway with the knights and medusa heads you can pinpoint the moment this game goes from a fun challenge to actually unbeatable. Really fun challenge before that tbf in its slow, careful action which means I have it in this weird place where you both 'definitely need to use save states' and 'shouldn't use save states' because saving speeds up the pacing in a weird way that doesn't fit the game and will probably make the game somewhat harder. When you do well in the game you find yourself kind of naturally flowing perfectly between enemies attacks in a way where the clunky controls don't feel stiff but instead intentional. And this intentionality is only felt because you know if you lose that balance and die there will be actual consequences, if you remove those consequences you find yourself throwing yourself at the game a lot more in a way that just breaks it and makes those clunky controls actually feel stiff.

But I still felt I had to use save states for three specific areas because without them I would've had to just stop. That hallway I mentioned is the hardest non-boss area and is followed by the hardest boss in the game with no way to recover health. Even with a save at the beginning of the fight I couldn't beat that boss because his attacks just fill the screen, I had to abuse save states further than that, adding them midfight. There's also the final form of Dracula which isn't too hard but seems to have one genuinely unavoidable attack.

It's annoying because this would be a perfect time-capsule of the NES style of games that you 'master' rather than finish if it wasn't for those couple parts. But with those it either feels way less rewarding to beat or wastes way too much of your time.



love this site cause my 'review' will just be whatever's on my mind directly after beating the game and there we go, i reviewed the quicksave function in emulators