Wow, impressive style and I love the world and character designs.
The appeal of the graphics and sound sets up strong expectations for gameplay, which I really tried to master. I spent around an hour trying to get to the vampire queen. I wanted to reach at least a point where I felt like I had made decent main-story progress. Unfortunately I was defeated in that castle so many times I had to end my journey there, but the world itself made me want to explore it.
My main feedback would of been to lower the opening difficulty some, and move some of the how to play dialogue into the starting town. Notably there was a line I didn’t read until the mouse camp about being able to duck under flying enemies that would of saved me some time.
Also the cat made me think I actually had to do that grind which took up the first half of my play. Maybe if it had clued me in at that moment that it was a suspiciously large amount of carrots I would of searched for other options sooner but I just went out and fought enemies and got like 20 game overs, lol.
That said, I still didn’t want it to hold my hand, just some clue. It was pretty authentic to NES feel to have to search out other options with no hand holding, so bonus points there for that.
If you want my feedback about combat changes I would say the player’s attack range is too short in the side scroll, and side scroll enemies appear very frequently in the graveyard area so despite being easier to manage they still become quickly too overwhelming. Also, in general I felt like the enemies had a lot of hit points. At least in the beginning part I played.
Overall great entry you really went all out on the style of the game and I can appreciate the vision behind that. I even tried some time with and without the crt filter. I noticed it seemed some art choices were made with the filter in mind but I couldn’t stare at it for too long before feeling disoriented. I don’t typically enjoy crt filters but I like to give everything in a project a chance and see the vision. Good work!