Part 1: Stage 1

The stage names are incredibly creative for this one. The stage, and this is something I could say about every stage in this game, is nothing to write home about. It's mostly flat, with a few enemies put in seemingly at random, and you really gotta strain to look for setups that were actually planned out to inconvenience the player in any way or make you work for your victory. The fights themselves are super easy, everything that doesn't die in one hit has a practically nonexistant AI, and I'm forgetting parts as I write.

The biggest feature of the stage are probably the trap rooms, which are a bafflingly stupid concept. They are foreshadowed by the candles being white, but design-wise, I fail to see their purpose: make you wake up after long minutes of nothing happening? There is ONE thing they could be there for, and that is teach you for how to unlock the secret stage, but even for that, I don't think they're needed per se. Also, later there's a trap room without a candle attached, so...?

I'm equally not fond of the special item placement, the Axe from the classic games, because it's a blind choice between the dead-end path and the progress path. There is no way to tell which is which, so you end up getting lucky or backtracking. Wait, you end up backtracking anyway because of the "dead end" thing. And the collectible doesn't even do anything - baffling.

The boss is named "Creatures Bat" and, according to the manual, artificially created via fusion of human and bat traits. That would explain why its legs are so stiff. Its pattern, like all of the bosses in this game, is dead simple and I won't bother to spell out any tactics. Whip it when it stops moving.


Music

Prologue

Bloody Tears (Stage 1)

Boss Battle
Trap Room