[FC] 月風魔伝 (1987)

How:
Found it mentioned a couple of times on hg101 forums, then read the review on the same site and immediately went out to play (and beat it in two days).
Pros:
- Fast-paced and addicting gameplay
- Cool setting
- Some levels can be rather challenging
- Nice variety of weapons and items
- Colorful and evocative levels and monsters
- The varied gameplay (side-scrolling action, dungeon crawling, boss fights, map exploration) strikes a good balance
Cons:
- Requires a good amount of backtracking
- Easy to exploit in order to max out the character stats
- Boss fights are too easy
- A bit short