Helen's Mysterious Castle [PC] One Life Clear

An outstanding doujin RPG. Written review here:
5:11 - Golem The first boss. He's easy and there's really only one way to fight him. 9:57 - What is this?! A broadsword +6 has more defense than he can deal with. The mythril sword you get for beating him is also nice, but it costs tons of experience to level up and I'm trying to play quickly without grinding, so I favor the less expensive broadsword in this run. 12:02 - Griffin A broadsword +7 has enough attack power to scare the griffin into guarding. Since its guard takes an absurd 17 ticks of time and I can force it to guard whenever I want, this fight is very easy. 15:00 - The storage room I just came here to show off how the item retrieval mechanic works. When you drop one of your items you can come here to get it back. 15:23 - The village On a first playthrough you're supposed to talk to a bunch of NPCs to find out that you need to pose in front of the Demon King's statue to proceed. If you know what to do you can skip all of that. One benefit to doing the side quest is that the blacksmith becomes available to improve your equipment earlier. 25:25 - Venom, Lord of Poison He's just as afraid of my broadsword as the griffin was, and his guard move is even slower. For some reason his poison always seems to do zero damage? What a joke. 29:17 - Platinum Platinum is this game's metal slime analogue. It only appears in this dark area, and it runs away very quickly. You could easily play through the game and not know it exists 30:47 - Brand, Lord of Darkness Brand's gimmick is that the game doesn't show which move he's using, but you can tell by how quickly he animates. He isn't very strong. 37:32 - Sylas, Lord of Silence He's potentially dangerous if you can't beat him before he shuts down most of your equipment. A high level thunder spell will destroy him. The reason I kept the wooden shield up until now was to use it here. By the way, you open the door to the magic robe by taking focus away from the game's window by eg. alt tabbing. I think the magic robe is boring and a bit overpowered and I don't like using it. Since I'm trying to play through the whole game quickly and without dying, I'll take the advantage anyway. It could be worse, I could have used longsword SP. 41:44 - Paras, Lord of Paralysis Like Sylas, Paras can be a lot harder or easier depending on how your equipment loadout deals with his gimmick. The broadsword works really well. 45:47 - The Demon King This fight is mostly a matter of having a high level heal spell. If you can outheal his damage you're safe and if you can't you'll probably die. After entering the next floor, the blacksmith becomes available for those who skipped the side quest. 53:08 - Sky towers The enemies start becoming more dangerous at this point. A broadsword build counters a lot of them, though. I returned to the blacksmith so he could update my power bangle again, but he wasn't ready for more work. I'm not sure what the trigger is for him becoming available. The area where you can't heal is a good concept, they should've done more with it. 1:11:44 - Undead Knight This guy is one of the harder bosses. Both of his swords have dangerous gimmicks. Freezing Yasha damages your max HP and you really want to defend against that. Burning Agony starts weak but becomes progressively stronger over time. You need to win before it gets out of control. The humble longbow from the beginning of the game shuts him down hard when combined with speed shoes and a power bangle. Burning Agony does the same thing for you as it does for him, and it's good for ensuring you'll never meet an enemy who can endure or outheal your damage. Great weapon. 1:27:47 - Dragon It has high attack and defense but it's way too slow to be a real threat. You can easily heal through everything it does. The reward for beating it is the excellent dragon sword. 1:33:32 - Zack Zack can be really easy or really hard depending on your build. I botched this fight and nearly died twice. I just got scared of losing the run this far in and started hiding behind my shield. It doesn't go well for the enemies who try that and it didn't work for me either. Watch out for his spike guard. 1:46:12 - Krace His poison and max HP-draining Curse apply some pressure, but he's still weak. 1:50:41 - Hydra The playable version of the Demon King is without question the strongest thing in the game. Dark Brutality is absurdly good. 1:53:26 - Dragon Knight The Undead Knight isn't as impressive as the Demon King, but he still has an easy time. If Helen isn't using Burning Agony, the Undead Knight will have it. Otherwise it will be replaced with Blazing Slash. 1:56:22 - Quetzalcoatl Nothing Quetzalcoatl can do can hope to keep up with Zack's 70 HP heals. 1:59:11 - Cursed Krace This is just a harder version of his previous fight. He starts getting dangerous after the second time he uses Curse. Not too bad though.