First game I’ve beaten this year!!! It probably doesn’t deserve 5* for how cryptic the last dungeon, solomon shrine can be. As well as some boss fights that are pretty bad (bat demon guy in book 1. Darm is also one of the hardest bosses in any game I’ve played, if not the hardest). And the combat feeling rather janky at times. But I’ll give credit where it’s due, for a game that was released in 1989, it generally does a pretty good job of giving you hints on what to do next, so I only had to resort to a guide maybe twice for each part of the game. The QoL is also surprising, menu saving is a godsend in this kind of game.

And to cap this off with things I liked about the game:
-Maze level design is fun! The game almost feels like a metroidvania at points because of it.
-Music is fantastic.
-Bump system, while previously stated as janky, still has a lot of charm within.
-Story as well as the world building is decent-good

Good fun

I struggled to beat this game a couple years back. Found myself getting bored a bit after playing a few minutes. I found the reason to be that I never bothered much with exploring. That is a huge part to this game and having that balance between exploration and combat really makes this game something special, and is what makes it well distinct from eternal. However, in the last third of the game the level design unfortunately becomes a lot more straight and exploration is something I couldn’t really be bothered with as there wasn’t much more to upgrade at that point in the game. So when I’m only doing combat stuff, as insinuated previously, it makes the game a lot less engaging. Not to mention the comical boss design which doesn’t help those last few levels either.

Really fun. Traveling across Europe is really damn cool, and the stage design is generally really good. The bosses weren’t anything too special, even Dracula himself wasn’t all that intimidating as long as you’re paying attention to the final phase. The final stage feels very slapped together having the fight against Death, Elizabeth, and Dracula all in one level with as stated previously, the fights aren’t all that special. But admittedly the room in that stage that segments the screen, displaying different parts of the level was pretty cool. The two player character’s are nice. I personally preferred playing as Eric. The charge jump and spear twirl are just too fun. And on one last note, I really do not like that this game has limited continues. I’m a purist when it comes to using save states in this series, and this is a game where it sadly felt necessary to use save states in later levels because I couldn’t be bothered marathoning through the last couple of levels with only one extra life after reaching boss fights.

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is an amazingly simple game. For a Metroidvania it doesn’t go too heavy on exploration, and focuses more on the action/combat, which is mechanically solid and never gets all that difficult. The combat in question revolves around a cool elemental switching system, with some lite rpg components sprinkled on top which combines to make a fun, engaging, and sometimes hectic experience. And another thing to note, I really liked the main theme of the narrative, at least what I interpreted of it. Naturally, since it’s a metroidvania said narrative isn’t really too prevalent, and you only get small bits of dialogue here and there, mainly after boss fights and such, but for what’s there, it’s nice. Also the game has beautiful pixel art, and the animations of the enemies/bosses as well as deedlit are fantastic as well. Looking at a couple of Deedlit’s animations, I can draw comparisons between them and Alucard’s animations in symphony of the night which is really cool at least I think. The only critiques that I have for the game are that I feel it could be harder, or at least a hard difficulty unlock would be appreciated, the way the game is structured makes it feel a bit too linear, and on-top of that I wish they went deeper into the exploration (as-in adding more hidden rooms, and other secrets to find).