well i went through the first 4 stages, mmm... it's ok, the graphics and sound are great but the actual game is a bit lacking, it does nothing bad but it doesn't do anything good either so you have this game that just feel very averagish... the stages are pretty much sets like megaman stages, each level has a theme with a "noun" knight and usualy a gimmick related to that theme, in fact some things are straightly ripped from megaman 2
spoiler (click to show/hide)
one of the level feature griffon that shoots flames exactly like the robo dogs in woodman stages, and another level feature a boss chasing you through a sidescrolling bit and then ends with you taking out the boss exactly like the mecha dragon
your health bar is huge, i currently have 8 health dots and each hits take half dot which i guess means i can take a wooping 16 hits before dying,health items are frequent and so far even though i came pretty close once, i never died because of enemies (that also means i never died on any boss) and all of my death have been instant deaths related to pits or spikes, there hasn't been a stage where i died more than thrice and in fact there have even been some stage where i went through the whole level without ever dying... on my first try! even if you die there are no lives and checkpoint are frequent (there are 5 checkpoint per stages and when you die the game shows you at what checkpoint you stopped) the only penality is that you drop some of your gold (which you use to buy new secondary weapon and power ups) but if you reach the place where you died you can pick your gold back
the stage gimmick haven't been very impressive so far we had...
spoiler (click to show/hide)
king knight = castle themed stage: there are books that you hit which make platform appear for a while and you have to cross before the platform disappears
ghost knight = graveyard themed stage: some part of the level are covered by darkness and only appear for a brief moment when thunder strike so it's kinda like brightman stage in megaman 4
plague knight = lab themed stage: a lot of the enemies in this stage explode or throw exploding bullet which usualy ends up with part of the level being destroyed, this one felt like the most accomplished gimmick
treasure knight = underwater stage: being underwater means your jump are floaty and there are a lot of spike on the ceiling so this one is kinda like bubbleman
each stage usualy has a relic hidden that you have to buy which is a secondary weapon that you activate by pressing UP + the fire button and consume magic jars exactly like in castlevania, a lot of these are simply bullet that shoots in different direction but one of these relic is a bracelet that make you invincible for roughly 3 seconds, this might not sound much but it let you cheat several trap simply by activating it as you jump toward the trap without care
it also makes the boss even more easy since as soon as you see the boss prepare his big attack you can simply pull out your panic button instead of actualy figuring out how to dodge the attack, the item is expensive to use but once again magic pot drops frequently and your magic bar like your health bar is also huge which make the item cost a non-issue... to top it off, there is also a potion that make you invincible for 10 seconds which you can magicaly get for free from a magic fish, i seriously have to wonder why they tought putting so many effect that make you invincible was a good idea
do note that even if you don't find a relic in a level it will be avaiable to buy when you return back to the village,albeit at a higher price
the levels aren't selected like in megaman but instead you have a map a-la super mario bros 3, the map has a village zone where you can spend your hard earned cash and see your collectibles and usualy let you pick between 2 or 3 different stages, when you finish a level optional bosses starts to wander around the map in the same way the hammer bros did in case the "nudge nudge wink wink" wasn't clear enough
the bosses are great! they jump around all over the stages, their animation is super fluid and some of them have really cool effect, the treasure knight boss is a giant hulk in a underwater suit who fight by swinging a giant anchor around and i was really impressed when he jumped on top of the stage, crashed his anchor on the bottom and scattered the sand all around, unfortunately as i said so far not a single boss defeated me, your health bar is bigger than the boss so if you go into a slapfight with a boss he usualy tends to run out of health before you do and even then as i said there is a bracelet that make you fucking invincible! (well one of the optional bosses did kill me... but in my defense i was kinda looking about how much i could abuse the invincibility bracelet by spamming it more than usualy)
this game seems really suited for personal challenge rather than a playthrough for normal people, there are achievement called feats and some of them are pretty dumb like "GO THROUGH THE WHOLE GAME WITHOUT TAKING DAMAGE" and the game seems to become easier and easier the more you look at the various power ups, there is even a feature where you can get more golds in a stage by purposefully forfeiting the checkpoint by destroying them
the 7/10 review are the one doing right, the one giving it a 9 clearly don't want to disappoint the nostalgia crowd
oh and by the way so far i died 13 times and my playtime is around 2 hours (through i did go through stage 3 twice because i missed an item) so assuming it's 4 more stage plus a boss castle i guess a 3-5 hour game isn't out of the question, there is an achievement for speed running the game in a hour and half if that can be a decent comparison
