Pyroclastica

Something about this game is very hard to explain, and I know won’t sound right when I try to type it out and I’m reading this back to myself later. It is definitely a “keep the strategy guide / walkthrough handy” type game, but that isn’t what makes it good or bad — plenty of NES games are like this. The first few hours of the game feel very fun. After that first few hours though, the whole thing starts to get… annoying?
Maybe this has more to do with my mood or something but it was around the first General Kielbasa (not looking up his real name) fight that I started thinking nothing about this is any fun at all. The middle part of the game feels like a slog, though it does sort of pick up again toward the end, when you have so much equipment that it feels like you’re an all powerful deity.
Like so many other NES games, this one rolls out that trope where toward the end of the game, you have to go through a gauntlet of fighting all the other bosses you’ve fought so far, in succession.
Visuals in this game are really good, nice graphics, interesting colors, even cool enemy design. Sounds, however, are very bad. Every music for every location started to get annoying after a while, the “you’re hit” sound is awful and makes you want to snap the controller in half, and mostly there’s no way out of this because you need the volume turned on to hear whether an enemy is completely resisting your attack.
Overall I’m glad I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again.

Crystalis