FO went through Rygar really quickly! Like, maybe in an hour or two. I guess you might not need to do much / any dedicated level building.
I pretty much just leveled as I went along. One thing I did differently that I've never done before is that I did the Tower of Garba before Lapis. I couldn't beat the entire Tower of Garba at first, but none of the bosses regenerate, except for the Snail on the second floor's middle room, and that one is easy to avoid if you know what to do. So, I'd fight a boss, and then probably die on the next one because I didn't have enough life. Then continue, beat that boss, and die on the next one, etc. I didn't have enough strength to beat the last boss there, Garba, at first, but I beat the regenerating Snail over and over again until I did.
Nintendo Power once suggested a good way to build up is to beat the robots in Lapis over and over again until you can kill them in one hit, but my Snail method actually worked better because the Snail gives so much more Tone and Last points. By the time I got to Lapis, I could already beat the robots in one hit and the whole area was pretty easy.
This game's graphics are very glitchy. Objects often disappear or shift around.
Speaking of glitches, I once watched a tool-assisted speedrun of Rygar. The time on the video seemed impossibly short, even for a TAS, but then what happens is that the player goes to Lapis and glitches into the ending scene, which is apparently stored one screen below the Lapis boss room in the game's memory. While it's interesting to learn about glitches like that, it would also be interesting to see a more legitimate playthrough.
