Look: 8/10 The doors at the end of levels remind me of Mario 2. And some cute settings to the levels, one of the main things getting me to push through the mediocre, repetitive gameplay (compared to its contemporary NES games, that is)

Mostly the Look is where it shined, but some of the enemies (before they started moving) were hard to distinguish from items. Cute overall, though. It was endearing to see some of the enemies from the first one return (and the way your character puts his arms out to the side when standing still, but also some interesting new ones like the stretchy neck enemy :-p Nothing spectacular with the Look, but still really good and cute for its time (and fitting for the theme/vibe).

Sound: 7/10 That jump sound gets annoying after a bit, overall just fine. I won't include it in the score since I usually don't for games unless it helps the score. Tho the more I play with sound on, which seems to be my new norm, the more I feel like that's kinda illegitimate. (Edit: plus, the more I played on, the more I liked some of the gameplay jingles)

Play: 7/10 Takes wayy too long between stages! Fresh from Metroid, I was disappointed with the lack of variety in jump mechanics. But dang am I getting spoiled then! After all, this is a console/microcomputer game and it has mid-jump movement and attacks! I truly am getting acclimated to the later 80s expectations indeed. But at least I was able to expect the NES/arcade tight responsive controls for last minute turn and shoots and dodges. And fun when you accidentally, er or intentionally, squash an enemy instead of projectile them :-p

Kinda hard to tell which platform blocks can be jumped through and which cant. Also, I got some power-ups and it wasn't clear whether I had upgraded my shuriken or used the invisibility potion? It doesn't matter though, I only really started to fret about that as I got to Stage 20, supposedly the last of the unique stages.

Some pro-tips: short gaps, it's often better just to walk across not try to jump

Feel: 7/10 Oh shoot I forgot about the frog in the first one! At one point I got a super huge extra bonus after a stage for some reason? Not sure what I did lol but we take that. Anyway, it has a cute overall Feel, mostly thanks to the Look and that I'm familiar with the first one. Nothing great, but a cute fun decent NES game.

Attachment: 7/10 The fight against Catfish Pirate (Stage 10) sure was clunky... what was going on with the frog controls in this one. But it was also super easy... I hadn't even used savestates yet and fresh out of Metroid, that's surprising lol. It sure felt like an ending, and the fact I wasn't sure whether I wanted to push through the alleged 10 remaining unique levels (I assume at least the bonus/boss stages repeat? oh it's 2 of them during the boss stages), isn't such a positive about the game overall

Catfish Pirate was definitely harder the 2nd time around, but the controls were just as awful and clunky during the Catfish Pirate parts heh. But hey, I got it done. Indeed, same "ending" as last time I beat Catfish Pirate and thus it just moves on to Stage 21.

Completion: All 20 unique stages, Score 538,100 Playtime: 50 minutes (I love having runtime actually tracked now!)