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I just cleared Elite Beat Agents on easy. I'm not as good as I was at my best, but I'm not as rusty as I thought, either. I love this game, I'm glad I bought it. I was looking to give Ouendan another shot, but I seem to have... lost the cart. I'm hopeless.

Every other screen in Neutopia has a person you can talk to by pushing a block or burning something to reveal an entrance. I think it's because they didn't want to bother designing actual towns. There was one that had me laughing.

You walk in like every other hidden area to talk to another useless NPC and the guy inside says something like "Ha ha ha, fool! I am the Emperor of Darkness! Just kidding, you have to have a sense of humor in these times."

I finished the third dungeon. The boss was two creatures that fly around randomly and shoot what seems to be knives in eight directions. I got a new shield in that dungeon that made blocking them pretty easy, but it was also easy enough just to dodge. I used my fire rod mostly because of it's range. I pretty much use it to kill everything in this game. I found out that when I'm at full health, the fire attack is different. Slower and actually much less useful.

I guess they ripped off every aspect of Zelda and still needed more because it seems I'm going to need a rainbow drop to create a bridge.

I got elaborate directions for how to find the guy with the rainbow drop and when I got there he tells me someone stole it. Nice job guarding that thing.

I had a hunch about where the rainbow drop was going to be. I had visited the place before but I either didn't find the stairs or the trigger to allow them to appear wasn't active yet. I cleared the fourth dungeon. The rainbow bridge serves the same function as the ladder in Zelda 1, again to the point of being comical.

I'm conflicted here because the game obviously doesn't aspire to be anything better than a clone, and because it's been getting easier. But it's also highly interesting to play a game of this type again. None of the future Zelda games, even LttP, which was most similar, really captured the feel of the original.

So yeah, the music isn't as good as Zelda by a long shot, the graphics are a bit generic, and the atmosphere is lacking. But the gameplay itself is pretty solid if you don't mind it being a lot easier.

What makes it easier... wow, before I started making this post, I hadn't given the issue much thought, but there's so many things.

There are many more hints than Zelda and they're translated well enough to be comprehensible. You've also got a compass pointing you in the direction of the dungeon (even if you might not have all the items you need to get there or survive in the dungeon yet). It's a lot fairer in terms of the hidden overworld secrets, too. There's something hidden on almost every screen in the overworld, usually someone with a tip, but occasionally a critical item. But all you have to do is kill the enemies and either push a rock or burn something. There's very little in the way of bombing, and the stuff you have to burn is pretty obvious, plus you get unlimited uses of your fast moving fireball, unlike the slow one-time use blue candle. The overworld segments are getting larger, but so far, it hasn't been as daunting as being thrown into a map the size of the one in Zelda.

The dungeons haven't been that long, but they're entertaining while they last. There's a fair number of enemies and you can easily run out of health if you don't take it easy. Still, I haven't encountered anything like the screens full of wizzrobes and while I have four dungeons to go, I doubt it'll reach that point. There are traps like certain blocks with blades that shoot out if you get too close. You need to do a little more bombing in the dungeons, but the situations have still been pretty obvious to me. You certainly don't have to go bombing every wall like the 12 years olds discussing this game on message boards claim. I haven't come close to running out of bombs in a long time. You can carry two potions and while I've had to use one (generally in the middle of a boss battle) I've not yet had to use both. Oh, and you get lots and lots of gold. I've got 1100 right now without even trying. And this is despite buying the occasional potions for 300 gold each.

If I'm feeling cautious, which was the case in previous dungeons when I had less health, I'll do the dungeon in steps. The display of which areas you've explored is not saved, but the dungeon's treasure, overall map, and boss key are. For dungeon #4, that wasn't necessary as I never felt I was in real danger of a Game Over. That's another thing that makes it a lot easier... using an extremely common item dropped by enemies, you can warp back to your last save point, which is generally very near the dungeon entrance. You can save after getting out with some items, then reset to be back at full health.

The #4 boss wasn't anything special. In fact, I can't recall it's exact appearance, but it was long and snake like, with the weak point being the tail. It was kind of in segments, with the segments only loosely connected. You could hit it's head and the head would detach from the rest of the body a ways and then slowly move back. What I did was fireball it into a corner. I kept up the rapid fire attacks so it couldn't get out and alternated with occasional sword strikes until it was dead. It really had no chance.

The dungeons' item was steel armor. The next part of the game's overworld reminds me slightly of Mu in Illusion of Gaia.