It's a Neo Geo, get angry, get focused, and get some Mountain Dew (or whatever you use to keep focused).
All of these are very hard, and you only have two hits in your life bar before your dead, unless you collect another orb to transform you into one of six forms, giving you four hit points. It doesn't really matter if you transform, shortly after you do, you'll transform back into the standard magician form, and then back to a body six feet underground. There are also power ups that allow you to do more damage, but one hit and those are gone. It's really that hard.
So, the game boils down to this: memorize the maps after constantly dying, knowing which points to walk past will spring enemies to spring on you and pray that you can make it through. Now, if you don't have a memory card for your Neo Geo, please, please, buy one. It's a necessity for wanting to take breaks from this game since it will infuriate you.
Anyway, enough ranting.
The game is cool to look at, the music is cool, the maps are epic, and when you beat a boss and the mini boss preceding it, man does it give you a sense of accomplishment. The monsters are incredibly cool, and aren't too hard to kill-- EXCEPT the frogs (after they've grown to their full size). The frogs are just nasty, and make you want to smash your controller through your TV screen, but luckily, you can just run past the monsters (with constant dying of course), to get to the next area.
The story is fairly generic with the main villain just talking crap about my suffering and how all things nasty will happen to me blah blah blah.
I know this probably sounds harsh like the game is awful, but it isn't. It's really satisfying when it's beat and going through all the rooms and collecting the treasures is really cool for setting high scores, yet my copy doesn't seem to like to register high scores (so weird). The music is cool in some areas, and the sound effects for the falling spiked wrecking balls and other nasties are just cool. The game just feels like it's made to get you pumped up.
This is a launch title, a good one, and a good game picking up if you're a neo geo gamer on a budget (Ironic to think that isn't it).
Anyway, pick it up and good luck. My one piece of advice is to go slowly through most of the game since if you rush through parts you'll just be overwhelmed by enemies and surely meet your demise.
Overall: 7.5