Review scoopings 3/5 · Jun 24, 2023
Great Potential Wasted On Tacky Puzzles And A Clunky Attack Mechanic
Hm, there are a lot of options for difficulty. I want to just do the beginner lol, cuz I hate complex mazes. Butttttt, since this has adventure elements (you don't just find the princess, you have to "find a cross to prevent her from turning into a witch, a potion to wake her up, and a ring to get her …
Hm, there are a lot of options for difficulty. I want to just do the beginner lol, cuz I hate complex mazes. Butttttt, since this has adventure elements (you don't just find the princess, you have to "find a cross to prevent her from turning into a witch, a potion to wake her up, and a ring to get her to marry the player," I suppose I should do Beginner. If I really love it, I could try Average. It seems Average and Expert are considered quite hard. Gah! I love that you can accidentally kill the princess you're trying to save lol
Look: 8/10
Overall, great look, I like the bright vibrant colors and the enemy sprites and the walls. Good ol Sega vibe. Lol! The drama of the stooped over princess. Zelda, is that you? 
Sound: 8/10 Okay, when you get the Cross and other items, like, what's the story here? Did some of the people who worked on this game go on to work on Zelda? Cuz this is uncanny... Great, fun, Sega-style jingle too for the main gameplay song.
Play: 6/10
I do wish the hammering attack mechanic was a bit smoother, like maybe you hit a bit farther or you didn't have to stop to do it, but you get used to it as one of the quirks. Other than that though, nice tight controls that are on par with arcade and NES controls. I love how swift the Pause function is. Dumb! Imagine my surprise when I got to the Princess the first time, knowing I had every item I'm suppose to, but it says I don't have enough treasure to save her?! What did I miss hm. I know I got the ring and the cross... and the potion. Odd. Alright, phew I got it the 2nd time. Not sure what I missed the first time... 
Ohhh, I think it was that I hit an enemy on a treasure tile, which doesn't count as getting that treasure. I do wish you could move diagonally. Or if keeping with how it is, it were more grid-like, like your steps stepped one full tile over.
Pro-tip: hit a little early, the collision masks are a bit goofy--forgiving at least--as long as you're still in the attack animation when the enemy runs into you, it counts as if you had actually slammed them with the hammer :-p better than waiting too long and dying ;)
Feel: 7/10
Is it just me or does this kinda give Zelda dungeon feels?? (Well, this predates Zelda but). The locked doors, the music, the enemies and room-to-room navigation 
Some of the secrets/ways-to-make-items-appear definitely reminded of Zelda too, in that they were illogical :-p . Hit away some blocks and tada a Ring appears. But it's okay, they typically were quite figure-out-able. If only the gameplay were a bit more fun and the attack mechanic a bit tighter, so that solving the tackier puzzles in Beginner, let alone Average and Expert, would be more fun. Cool there's 2P and Editor though.
Attachment: 7/10 As undeniably great the Feel was, I wasn't sure if I'd wanna get through the challenge of Average and Expert. I'm not much of a dungeon puzzle person heh. And indeed, before I even got to those, I wound up burning out during the Beginner version (I knew I should have stuck with Practice lol... smh). I just had grown tired of the breaking-tiles-as-the-puzzle mechanic. I didn't find it interesting to break a bunch of tiles to see how you make items appear. It seems center tiles tend to be the ones, but still about halfway through the Beginner level, I gave up. Great game though, if you don't mind the quirky hammer-as-attack mechanic and the break-tiles-as-puzzle gameplay!
Completion: Completed Practice level, halfway through Beginner level (had found Cross and Potion, not sure whether I was getting enough Treasures though not sure how to decipher that) Playtime: ~40 mins