Viewtiful Joe is a constant balancing act. It's mostly a fun, creative beat em up. The mechanics of slowing and speeding up time are unique and well executed for combat and platforming. Add this on top of creative presentation, and the first three stages are a tightly paced and fun time. But unfortunately, a lot of the game's tough-but-fair gameplay can get dragged down by some obnoxious design choices that really start to crop up the further into the game you get. Sometimes enemies will hit you from off screen. Sometimes you need to make blind jumps. Sometimes you have to fight the same enemy with way too much health over and over. Sometimes the boss you're fighting has an annoying pattern that they use over and over. Not to mention the completely needless boss rush stage, which is capped off by a pretty terrible fight. It's unfortunate, because it takes what could have been a fantastic game down to just a good one.