Wow, this is a stellar entry! Music is great, graphics are great, skills are cool. A few minor bits, the gamepad support for the menus was hypersensitive (though maybe my controller? But it’s not an issue with other games) so it would sometimes double move, which meant arrowing up from the map could accidentally wrap to quit, which made me very very sad and avoidable if start also unpaused.
Along those lines, it would have been nice to pause into the map, then arrow to change modes. Also weird was resetting the music on pause (or maybe it was going into the map). I loved the music but as the world expanded, I had to check it a lot more so kept hearing the first few bars. That, combined with the fear of accidentally quiting, is making it feel bad as time goes on, especially because I don’t know what to do next (I have the hammer, boots, fireball, whip, shield and gauntlet). I’ve just been wandering around hitting most of the walls with the hammer, mostly uselessly.
I really appreciate the frequent health/magic drops, I went a looooong time before finding the first save. Also, the slime hitbox is weird, jumping and attacking doesn’t seem to work on them but the other enemies can be damaged that way.
Anyways, this is such a quality game, these smaller things (minus accidentally quitting) really stand out. I’m thoroughly impress you squeezed all this onto a nes controller!