Story 6

This is a game about defeating an evil wizard and restoring peace. The wizard lives in a strange, twisty castle you will explore. You actually mainly walk on the outside of it, as there are ramparts to fall off, and never see any furniture. While this area has some minibosses, shops and foes - its more a prep area - to level you up and get strong enough for the 2nd part. At the end of the castle you come to a large cave like system and this is actually where the meat of the story and game happen. There are 7 towers, and you must walk up the long staircases out of the cave and into the tower, to fight the bosses, get a bell, and burn it. The burning of the bells is the main point of the game, as they are how the wizard gets his power. Honestly, its pretty fleshed out for a NES game, and this is one of the better parts of the game.


Graphics: 7
While this may seem low-level on the graphics compared to something like Star Tropics, this was an early release.. its better to compare it to something like Legend of Zelda 1. The evil castle and towers are full of evil energy (like grinning faces on the wall) and can remind one of scarier games like Monster Party. The viewpoint is a isometric 3-d angle that shows depth (compare climbing up Deadly Tower's mpressive stairs and then looking at the original Legend of Zelda with its flat, ladder like dias). The hero is a large character and has some detail. The enemies are varied, and can be fearsome ghosts, dragons or knights, or rather silly; the early enemies are innocent looking blue globs that just dance in place.. one of the toughest regular enemies is a bat about 4 pixels tall, thats fast and can tank so many swords to the face.


Sound: 4

There are not a lof of musical tracks, and they are OK, its just you hear the same 2 or 3 songs. Moving from one screen to another resets the music , so as you explore the many tight corridors and paths on the castle, expect to hear the beginning part of the music "DUN DUN DA DA DUN" over and over as you'll move into the next area before it gets to a chance to continue. The boss music of the 7 evil demon lords is pretty good, simple but manacing. There is a few gratings sounds, like at the very end of the game and the noise made when you burn one of the evil bells. If there were more tracks and they didn't reset the loop, it would be better.


Depth: 7

While it looks fairly simple, there are items to acquire, stores to shop at, and secrets to find. It is an RPG so there is a screen to equip gear and use potions and such. The shops are a mixed bag, because they tend to be hidden, and many of them are put in these large phantom dungeon zones ( more on that later). The toweres you climb also have special gear in them, the best swords and armor, even a powerup that lets you shoot two swords, etc. But rather than earn these from boss wins, these are also hidden secrets, and if you kill the boss, get the bell and leave, it closes the area forever... you cannot return to get the items you missed.
So there is more depth that it looks like, but frustratingly hidden behind bad ideas like invisible warps.



Difficulty: 10

The hero starts off really weak. In the original instruction book to the game, it said his starting gear was so weak, it gave him no confidence (yikes). Mind you the character is a prince, and if he can't afford better gear, we are in trouble. The prince's large sprite, weak damage, and ability to only shoot again when his sword has left the screen/hit something really undermines him. To make matters worse, the enemies are numerous, and often can fly or move faster than Prince Myer, and repeatedly hit him over and over.. each time he is hit, he suffers knockback. Now, if you've played Castlevania, or Ninja Gaiden, this is what kind of knockback I am talking about. It can knock you off ledges, instantly killing you, knock you into worse situations with enemies.
This wouldn't be so bad but when you die, there is a password, but it takes half your money. So if you were saving up for something, tough. There is no save feature, just a password for when he falls.

If the prince can find better gear he actually becomes quite dangerous, armor to save on his life and stronger weapons so you're not hitting a blue bouncing ball 50 times to get 5 money (woo). This is when the game makes the worst decision, and has the best shops and items hidden away in secret invisible areas. In the castle, to get to shops, you have to find an invisible dungeon space (it looks just like a regular spot) and THEN.. you find out there is about 40 screens of enemies in a maze that has 2 or 3 shops, and 1 exit. Yeah, you can't leave the same way you came in. The enemies in the hidden areas are often very strong, and its exploring here that is very frustrating as you have no idea how to get out, and will die and lose whatever you were trying to save up for, if you could have found a shop. In the towers at the 2nd half of the game, there are hidden invisible rooms (and some called parallel worlds) that can unfairly put you right in the center of 10 enemies. The gear in the towers is amazing (a free sword found in the fire monsters tower pretty much 2 shots most foes), IF you can survive to get it.

Funny enough, the bosses are the weakest enemies. All of the tower bosses have wildly different looks but most follow the same boring strategy, lazily float around and haphazardly sprinkle fireballs down on you. They don't track you like the annoying ghosts you had to fight in the parallel world, and they lack the high HP of basic foes like the bouncing blue blob.

The overly complex hidden zones should have just been regular areas, and the shop system shouldn't be hidden behind mazes more difficult than the rest of the game. The prince starts out weak, and takes a long time to feel he's worthy of this quest.


Addictive: 3

This game doesn't respect your time. The fact most of the games items are hidden behind invisible rooms hidden on regular looking tiles, was the worst decision in the game. I can think of one other NES game that tried this same tactic.. Super Pitfall, and it didn't work there either. It feels cheap, and the fact the prince can't even kill a bouncing ball on the first screen without 20 -30 hits just makes him uncool. Where are your knights, prince? You shoulda brought backup.