This level's opening text is fairly useless. The last guy here disappeared. I'm sure he did, otherwise I wouldn't be here. That's a fairly annoying cliche, but whatever. I also get a note. Putting any stable weapon into water gets me a healing item. This is a lie. I wasn't really in a mood for a game that lied to me, but I guess I don't have a choice at the moment.
My tactic from last time of trying to dodge attacks isn't working. Attacking from as far as you can, where the enemy is inside fog, works, to a point. Which has its own problem, namely, some enemies aren't in areas where that's an option. Plus either way I still have to deal with aiming, which is incredibly annoying. I'm an hour in, combat is an unplayable mess, and there are no saves. Its even more of a Dungeon Master-clone than a FPS, just without any RPG and a strange magic system.
The element of the level is copper, and there's not much of it. You only get like 2 or 3 pieces, and one is needed for a key. I remember getting a shield from a fire source, which I'm sure is absolutely necessary for later. All this means if you were playing on original hardware completely legitimately, this game would involve you restarting it so much. Just so much. That's two strikes against it.
Further, the game isn't really much to look at, and the puzzles don't amount to much yet. Just find keys for doors, any items that don't improve my stats, allow me to see what key I need for a door or open those doors are useless right now. I can't even detect where I am in the maze really, not without the map. And I haven't mentioned it yet, but I'm getting crystals at the end of each level and the game is implying they're important, but my inventory is leaning pretty closely towards being full. All this is leaning towards a bad game, but its too late for me to scrap this entry and just do a summary, so, onward to level 4.
Typical fluff, but if I drop a stable key in a pool I can summon "a great power", which either means a monster or hopefully a good weapon. Also, starting me RIGHT behind an enemy. This game is ticking all the flaw boxes it can. Also, what's the point of having to find the lizard statue to see what door needs which key if they're always right in front of me? The bad design continues, now there are black widows shooting at me, and they are difficult to kill and zap my strength like it was nothing.
The element of the 4th level is sulfur. And my criticism of of the puzzles being nothing hits me in the face. Because the game leaves a note that I have to put sulfur in fire, then water to get a healing item. Considering every encounter on this floor has been sheer terror, that's nice and not-so-nice. I'm sure I could explore the alchemy system more thoroughly in order to figure out how to maximize my usage of these things, but in order to do that I'd have to essentially savescum, or cheat. I'm just trying to do this so I'm not playing through the whole game again and again. Like Galactic Empire, for instance. Still, I did a little, and figured out that dust of elements can be transformed into those elements, which makes things interesting.
I'll give the game one thing, I finished the 4th level here, meaning I'm starting at the fifth next time. Roughly halfway and just over an hour. Still, if this is any indication of the future, I'm not going to be enjoying future Game Boy titles.
This Session: 30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 10 Minutes
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