I played through Ghost Lion and the NES Metal Gear recently, and have just completed the first chapter of Magic of Scheherazade.
Metal Gear NES, at first I was happy because I was coming to terms with the flow of the game, but there comes a part where you have to rescue the Dr and his daughter that solidifies the game as hot garbage. They are both behind hidden walls you need to punch to open, with no indication that you can punch through them (or even any previous hints that punching through walls is a 'thing' in the game). Then to get through the daughter, you have to navigate through these pitfalls that open really quickly, with no indication of where they will be (you just have to memorize their positions), and the hit detection is so terrible - if you even slightly are skimming the side of them, it's an instant death. And you have to take about 10 min to get back to that spot. Luckily, there's an exploit where if you go to the menu as soon as the pitfalls open, they'll disappear.
Magic of Scheheazade seems pretty good so far though! An action RPG, with the occasional turn based battles... it's got time travel, an Arab theme, some charming designs, and is by far the best out of the NES games I've been playing lately.
Ghost Lion is one of the few RPGs localized in the 8 bit, post-DQ boom era and is a mess of a game. There are some interesting ideas here - like how you get to summon different creatures from items you find throughout your adventure, or how the game is fairly nonlinear with lots of optional items to pick up and dungeons to explore, but the repetitive nature of combat, high encounter rate, the most GRATING rpg battle music ever, and a system where you find "fragments of hope' to level up instead of getting EXP, make it a chore. Luckily it doesn't take more than ~6 hours, the dungeons are small and easily navigable, and due to the 'fragment of hope' system there's hardly any grinding - if you fight all the battles you come across (which you will probably be forced to, since you have maybe about a 20% chance at successfully escaping), you don't have to worry about gold.
One of the summons is a tad racist too, you summon a black warrior dude from a spear
But seriously, listen to this horrible battle theme. Now imagine hearing it hundreds of times throughout the course of the game.