>>11792127
It's a good game and I like it, but as >>11792235 says it's not quite good enough to fully rise above the "discount Castlevania" feeling, even if you really get into it (which I did at one point), and the boss weakness system is quite poorly handled. It's not a game I'd recommend to the average person curious about the NES but it's worth suggesting to somebody who loves the platform enough to want to venture away from the really popular stuff. Oh and I guess it can fit into the co-op games niche since Cutrus (the falcon) can optionally be controlled by player 2.

I never finished it as a kid, though I got fairly far into it and collected a number of clues. It does the "clues hidden in the walls" thing better than Castlevania II did, at least. I came back as an adult and thoroughly explored it. It turns out to have multiple loops of increasing difficulty (another feature borrowed from Castlevania, though Castlevania borrowed it from countless earlier games of course) and I believe I went through all of them, so it's capable of being at least that much fun. Even though I finished it on multiple difficulty levels, I never figured out the slightest thing about the boss weakness system. Apparently it's good enough to come up with strategies for each boss; I remember having fun doing that. Boss fights were the best part of the game for me on this go-round.

Combat outside boss fights is okay, level design is okay, music is unusually good (though not quite Castlevania-tier). Special weapons are pretty cool and Cutrus is pretty cool. It's a solid game.