The pixel art is right up my alley, especially the bosses. Figuring out their patterns to win is also engaging.
Let me say first off that I did finish the game and enjoyed it, but I had to struggle through a lot that made it feel like work at times.
These are a few sins this game makes.
1) Loose controls. Shooting, especially when you get the upgrade shot, has a long delay that you need to account for (it almost felt like a downgrade when I got it because of this). The upgrade shot also prevents you from using the upgrade jump which means you often take damage because of the multiple delay points. Jumping is also rather floaty in general (you hit the high point of the jump and hang there for awhile).
2.1) Save point frustration - Exploration. There aren't enough saves in obvious places. This is especially bad when you are exploring a new area and keep finding new stuff but as dying loses progress (and health regeneration is only at save points) it's sometimes a good idea to just go back to a known save rather than hope that a new room has one.
2.2) Save point frustration - Bosses. The save point when you restart from a boss fight may have multiple enemies between them. This means to fight a boss at full HP you need to be careful to not take damage between the save and the boss (Even the last boss!!!) This is super annoying as it effectively pads out the time between you dying and actually trying again.
3) Warps. There are only 4 of them and like save points aren't in great places. What's worse is that you need to work to unlock them rather than just finding one. The main point of these warps are so you can more quickly backtrack to explored areas to complete 100% the game, WHY would you require players to collect enough things before they can use the warp so they can collect more things? Having the save points also allow for warps with no restrictions would've been much more useful.
Minor quibbles.
Items that aren't yet obtained don't show up in the map.
The intro to the game was a bit misleading. I was really expecting (hoping) for multiple jobs as the intro behaves so much differently than the rest of the game.