Part 4: Stage Thoughts IV

_{The longest stage name, the broadest picture...}

Stage Thoughts

• The moving floor energy with the weird mouth things that emit/suck it up is very impressive-looking. Too bad you never have to interact with it at all and it just goes away. Again, teaching you something for later or wasted level design element?
  
• Still not sure what's up with the burning headless armour enemies. They are so ludicrously docile that I keep thinking they're meant to have a gimmick, like become super fast if you get too close or something and I just never activate it because I'm good at spacing?
  
• Now that I take another look at the video, it's obvious that the tiny columns are platforms, because they're just part of the floor tileset. Still a weird thing to just put there, imo.
  
• I think I let the mermen completely uncommented. Their shadow in the water is very smoothly done and their movement is very clear, that is excellently made especially for the Game Boy.
  
• With some serious squinting, the manual does indeed say "hold A on a rope while pressing down to descend quickly", so the fault lies solely with me not wanting to squint before now.
  
• It's super nice that the spikes don't instant kill you though.
  
• I like the way the secret in the wall is telegraphed, it's weird though that you only get a big heart for it. My instinct for wall chicken is completely nonexistant apparently because I keep not finding some.
  
• Fortunately though, the game so far is really easy and I don't need healing, yay?
  
• Now that I take another look at the manual, wall chicken isn't even mentioned as a powerup in it.
  
• The boss is a cute idea in concept but it, again, is way too easy. Maybe they designed the bosses with the leather whip in mind, but even if it took twice as long, it would still be a super simple pattern to find out on your own I feel.
  

In general, I hope that the difficulty picks up a little now we're out of the "robot master" stages, but that it stays reasonable enough that I don't have to do a lot of editing .

Music

New Messiah [Crystal Castle]

This is very much "first stage in a Castlevania game", at least at the start. Dunno about the weird-sounding bridge. So, who's the New Messiah? The weirdass crystal wizard? Christopher again? Weird guy called Susej who calls himself the grandson of God?