Beat in slow motion mode. This looked and played very much like Castlevania but with some mechanics more like Mega Man. The jumping was pretty good with full directional control while in the air, though it was difficult to not bump his head from those 2 tile high alcoves. The jump button was inconsistent, which led to a lot of dumb deaths. A review said it was caused by pressing jump too soon after attacking but that did not always seem to be the case and it seemed to happen with D pad buttons too. The standard attack was a short range projectile, slightly longer than a whip and doing significant damage with turbo held. He could also shoot straight up and while crouched. No diagonal or down aiming, which would have helped a lot. Pressing select changed into mana mode which used a more powerful spell that consumed mana per shot. He started with twin flame which shot 2 projectiles the full screen length and passed through obstacles. I used it a lot for sniping. New spells were unlocked after each stage. Blizzard froze weak enemies in place and was very useful for those invincible bugs and infinite spawning flying heads. It also froze lava and was required to pass many points. Breaker was similar to twin but more powerful, firing a long range beam. Thunder also did a long range beam then followed up with a full screen nuke that killed all weak enemies. Overdrive created balls that orbited the guy, similar to Mega Man's leaf shield but with only 3 balls further away from the guy. There were also permanent upgrades like higher jump, reduced damage, reduced mana cost, max mp and hp, and ability to destroy blocks. Enemies dropped mana and health rather than finding it in the environment. Mana drops seemed random and potentially farmable while health seemed fixed. I enjoyed most of this game as each screen seemed more like a tactical puzzle to solve. Most screens did not have respawning enemies and there was no time limit so there was no rush. When the enemies were infinite it was more about rushing the platforming while using blizzard or overdrive to deal with enemies. There were a few times he could turn into a dragon and fly but this did not add much. There were not any proper shoot em up sequences. I would have preferred the dragon be something limited you could use on any screen to bypass the challenge. The last 2 stages were where the difficulty got ridiculous and I wished I could cheese. There were many awkwardly positioned enemies that were very difficult to kill without taking a lot of damage or being knocked into a pit for instant death. Seriously, being knocked back with zero control over the character should not even be a thing in games, especially not from just getting shot. I had to look up the 2nd last boss to find out I had to use breaker. It was very annoying that the boss stayed up too high to hit from the sides so I had to shoot from directly below. The most frustrating part by far was the wall heads near the end of the final stage; they shot so quickly and the platforms were so small that taking any hit most likely caused death. Plus the stupid invincible flying thing that could not be frozen. I managed to scrape through with extreme save state scumming and good levels of health and mana, then got stuck on the final screen at what looked like an impossibly high jump. Had to check a different walkthrough to learn that you could clip into the bottom of the platform and somehow "climb" up. Final boss took 2 attempts as I first spammed lightning without regard to what I hit. I had trouble with the homing projectiles afterwards. Next try I focused my beams on the 2 lower spitters since the higher ones were further away, which made the projectiles a little easier to deal with. Phase 2 was inexplicably as the dragon in kind of a shoot em up boss. It seemed to be glitched for me as the boss suddenly teleported around and I could not damage any of its parts but could hurt an invisible spot near the center of the screen.

This game had some good mechanics marred by others that were unnecessarily frustrating. I would have preferred more environmental puzzles, tactical spell use and multi path exploration with consistent jump controls and no cheap instant deaths.

6.5/10