This game used to always piss me off as a kid because I could never beat the first level. Since then, I have always been a devout Altered Beast hater despite never getting through the first level. Today however, I have finally finished Altered Beast and I can say with full confidence that this game is dog shit. I will give it some credit though since Altered Beast does do some cool things. The whole progression system where you slowly power up and turn into a beast is really cool. There's also this part where you turn into a dragon and there's this pseudo bullet hell boss fight. That was really good. Other than that, most of this game blows. It's stupidly hard, and sometimes the game pulls these bullshit tactics that just make the game feel like it's broken. At the end of the day, I don't think I hate Altered Beast as much as I used to, but I still would never consider this game a classic.