My first impression was that this was one of THOSE rom hacks that almost requires the use of states... turns out I'd just picked the hardest two stages.  The first of these was Pit's stage, which has a lot of awkward jumps, and he certainly wasn't the easiest boss to tackle with just the arm cannon.  The other really difficult stage was Black Mage, but that was mostly the final stretch.  The rest was pretty balanced overall, aside from what I felt was an overuse of Rush Coil, and I love how the overall aesthetic of the backgrounds was kind of an early-NES Hudson fever dream; these are the kinds of worlds I dream of.  The second Rygar stage in particular was just stunning, especially when complemented with its pink menu.  PolyGirl also looks great on the Weapon Get screen, and your robot dog companion is Dynamic Exploration and Navigation Defense Y-bot... nice.  The Gunman stage was a very fun tribute to the black box games.  There were some neat quality of life updates, too, like cycling through your weapons with Select and a working energy balancer.  This was a nice sendoff for the series.