Valis IV (1991)

Beat on Hard with final score of 11/100 (based on time and power up collection). This was a fun game and the protagonist is gorgeous, especially in her valkyrie armor. The game was challenging and I did a fair bit of save state scumming, but damage from enemies and hazards was not bad. The 1st level and boss were very easy, while the rest of the bosses took a couple tries to figure out their pattern. I liked the ranged attack but did not find the power ups for it all that useful. The upward arcing shot was good against the flying boss while the homing shot was good against the mermaid, with her spending so much time too low to reach. The tiger riding boss gave me a bit of trouble due to contact damage from trying to get behind him; had to watch the height of his jumps to not get caught at the edge or clipped by the short hop. The flying mage general boss was the most annoying with the unpredictable way that he would glide across the screen, often clipping me with contact damage. The 2nd time fighting him was worse because I could not avoid damage from his fireballs; 1st time he kept sending them high so I could just duck but 2nd time he always sent 1 high and 1 low. The superman style flying boss was easy because of his fixed pattern. By the time I got to the final boss I had most of my inventory full of armor, and did a lot of damage to him due to his jumping around. If I was him I would keep guard up all the time and only use ranged spells. His lifesteal orbs made the fight difficult because they were hard to avoid. I almost always took a long time to beat the stages and had to fight the bosses at their full power. The game gave me Ys and Castlevania feel, and has some pretty sweet music. The only thing I really disliked was the double press direction to run. I never once did it by accident, but it was somewhat difficult to pull off when it was needed for a big jump.

7.8/10