I was more tenacious as a kid but only got to play this as a rental so didn't get very far. I remember it being rather fun once I got past the
Moat Monster,
trekking through the dungeon, getting surprised by enemies. I don't remember passing a boss...but going back to revisit it after I got the cart for my collection I must say it's endearing yet annoying.

The animation is unique to the NES and I think more of it as a puzzler than an action game...kind of like
Boy and his Blob
or
Prince of Persia
. The only problem I see is that there's no real learning curve...and no endless continues!
Endless continues and even lives have been
all but worked out of games now but I guess they were a holdover from the arcade style of programming...many games were even ports based off of the original style and programming, modified to run on the NES chipset...but even though the NES Dragon's Lair was vastly different than the laserdisc arcade one, they figured the feel of
"popping quarters"
at least deserved some attention.
One thing I wonder about is
why many NES games have three plays...like your first game, then two continues after you lose all your lives. My rationale is, we all played our arcade games with pocket change...and the most a person "should" have after breaking a dollar is $0.75. I don't remember many games costing more than a quarter in the 80's...so do NES games with continues give you the
"benefit of the doubt"
and say you have a full $0.75 to play the game you already paid $90 for?

-dano