- Bosses and enemies are weaker. They take fewer hits to kill. Serpent statues which took 5 hits before now take 4 hits. Knights which took 8 hits before now take 6 hits. This fixes the problem I had of their projectiles being thrown in between my whips, so I can now intuitively run up to them and whip them to death. Just the way I like it.
- Grant has a different weapon: a dagger that he now throws across the screen. This makes a lot of sections easier because you can attack things from a distance. The Cyclops fight to rescue Sypha is made a piece of cake by this change.
- The Cyclops behaves differently than in the NA version. In that version, it would randomly pace back and forth beneath you to try to trick you into coming down at the wrong time. However, now it keeps it's distance from you while you are up on the platform. It's almost like a real fight now, where the Cyclops is aware that it can't hit you up there and is waiting for you to come down before engaging. In the NA version, the Cyclops there acted more like it was aware that it's own life didn't matter because it's just a game, and it only cared about killing you.
- The most interesting change was the water serpents boss. In the NA version, their fire breath would extend almost all the way across the middle platform. This forced you to stand at the other end, too far away to hit them with the whip. Sypha's spells could hit them if you had them, but if you didn't, then it was a slow battle where you only have minimal opportunity to hit them. In the Famicom version, their range has been reduced, but with the addition of being able to fire the flames diagonally at you. This actually makes the fight more fun and interesting. You still have a pattern to learn, but you can stand close enough to hit them with the whip.
- The golden demon boss now jumps around differently in a way that conveys its patterns to to player. It shows early in the fight that its toes fall through the platforms above, meaning that its entire foot must be above the platform in order for him to land up there. He also fires his projectiles for the first time while up on the platform, letting the player safely observe the pattern from below.
- The final level is a much smoother experience. That section where you are blocked by a serpent statue while standing on crumbling floor can now be gotten through because you can kill it fast enough before the floor breaks. The bats that appear while swinging on the pendulums are no longer there. Not only that, the game starts you at the stairs before Dracula as long as you have lives. The candle that contained a Dagger before the battle area in the NA version now holds a Cross. This makes so much of a difference in the final fight, it's almost as if it was designed with the Cross in mind.
- The most important change of all was the reduced damage that you take from enemies. Now most enemies only do 3 bars of damage and enemy projectiles do 2 bars of damage. In the NA version, enemies did more damage on average, enemy projectiles dealt the same damage, and by the end levels all enemies would do a fourth of your health per hit. For the Famicom version, certain enemies only start dealing damage on par with the NA version when you get to the final levels. All of a sudden, taking damage isn't so much of a problem when you don't die in four hits. It makes it so that you can still clear stage sections while making a few mistakes here and there. The battle with Death is still exactly the same as in the NA version, but it's now less of a chore to get to Death in the first place. The punishment for failure is now much more fair.
submitted by /u/HOTU-Orbit
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