Graphics and sound are great, but there are couple of things that make this more difficult than it needs to be. The main character sprite is too far forward on the screen, so, when enemies spawn there's not enough time to react. To alleviate hand strain making the roll a button combo (down+A) would be a lot easier on my hands. Also, the double press made me accidentally roll into enemies when I was trying to position myself to hit enemies with the sword.
Viewing post in Sword of the Apocalypse - GameBoy Color Episode 1 comments
The button combo makes it a lot easier to execute the roll, but now it looks like the jump can be triggered during the roll. So, if you hold down and spam "A" you can effectively skip over large chunks of the levels.
edit: are you supposed to be able to roll over the spike pit in the third part of the demo if you choose the swordsman? I can't jump over it, and I can't get the jump+roll to trigger to get over it either.
I might be doing something wrong, but it looks like the roll isn't working correctly? I took a short video to demonstrate: https://vimeo.com/1110316662?