Wizards & Warriors (1987)

I have a semi-storied history with Wizards and Warriors that probably makes it impossible to look at completely objectively, but consider the following four points in favor of this game:

1. Can be completed in an hour or two
2. Unlimited continues
3. A soundtrack composed by David Wise
4. See title

All in all it's a short and sweet platformer that unashamedly shows its age. If you want to be able to say that you actually beat an NES game from start to finish, you could do much worse than this.

Going through some of the games I played for the NES, there are a tons of early NES games I hated a lot. and for multiple reasons too.

This game has many troubles ranging from quality, to artstyle, but one key area that drags it completely down is the controls. see, the developers tried to act smart and make this game with frustrating control scheme so that "in theory" you have more freedom in controlling your character.

In practical sense, however, this is by far, the worst game to control on the NES so far. the controls of the console were known, they are very limited, but even with some creativity, many found other ways to get around it, but this one just thrown everything on the player and told them to figure it out. a complete disaster.

Beat with a little help from a walkthrough to find some of the keys and to figure out the point of the game. Oh it was one of those platformers where you have to collect a certain number of gems and keys before you could progress to the next level. Lame, I was expecting something more epic given the title and box art. The method of attack was somewhat interesting because the D buttons influenced the direction and motion of sword swings, and that simple contact damage with the sword hurt enemies. Unfortunately the game was not much fun. The enemies were relentless infinitely respawning little shits. If they knocked the player around on inflicting damage then the game would have been beyond frustrating. The game felt impossible to beat without abusing the absolute zero death penalty; the guy just got back up at full hp with no progress loss at all other than boss hp. The bosses were not too difficult, other than the final boss whose room was way too large. The platforming was very annoying because holding down the jump button repeated jumping, which caused a lot of unintentional jumps, and since the platforming was mostly vertical, falling could result in a lot of lost progress. There were some cool items to help, like ranged attacks, slight levitation to give greater height to a jump, and feather fall. Still none of this saved the game from being lame. It really should have played more like Super Mario, Castlevania, Metroid or Zelda 2, with less focus on platforming and infinite enemies constantly in your face, and more tactical combat with limited resources. Infinite continues was fine, but not when it allowed you to just ignore enemies and hazards. The game actually had good stage music but this was ruined by the obnoxious music that played when low on hp or under the effects of potions.

5.5/10