My one gameplay gripe with this game: The boss on the 7th labyrinth. The fact that there's no way to kill him once 1/3 of your hit points are gone (and your fire power becomes too weak to reach him) is incredibly frustrating. That's bad game design to force a player to die with the majority of their life still left over. The boss isn't THAT difficult, but it's still the principle of the matter - even with two vitality potions, you're only able to beat the boss with effectively 2/3rds of a life bar when every boss prior has allowed you two full bars.
https://youtu.be/8YG2P4JevME?t=7451
Bad game design or bad tactics relying on fire instead of your sword. 
Hey, thanks for that. Definitely bad tactics on my end. I tried a few times to hit him when he was moving around, and there's little difference in the animation between when he's moving and still, so I just assumed he'd be immune to the sword while stationary as he was moving. That fight looked A LOT easier than I made it out to be the 2 or 3 times I did it with both vitality vials and constant dodging. I don't think I had the strongest sword at that point yet though, so it might have been more of a struggle. Good to know there is a reasonable way to defeat him though. Still doesn't excuse the non-diagonal movement.
Yesterday the lady and I fired up AIR ZONK looking for a quick fix and ended up finishing it pretty quickly. That's sure a short ride, but a hell of a fun one. Awesome parallax with huge sprites, although the slowdown, especially as things ramp up towards the end, can become really bad. The final level is wild, just one boss after the other and then sometimes they come back (like the Stephen King book!), making for quite the final showdown. The final final boss is kind of cheap and extremely difficult once you've died once and lose your powerups - I basically had to rely on kamikaze-ing him with my after burners every time I'd respawn to take him out. Love the variety in all the powerups and buddies and stuff, although the game has way too many of those crappy little dude powerups that almost always are less desirable than the big boy powerups (especially considering the latter ones give you an extra hit and the small guy doesn't). They built a solid framework for a new franchise with this - shame that the sequel sounds like a major step down...
We also started up VALIS II after we finished with ZONK - it's nice playing as a strong female character (that wears far too little body armor to protect herself!) and the cut scenes are nicely staged and effective. The levels and gameplay are pretty simple, but it's all satisfying and controls well enough. The boss battles are pretty laughable, you just kind of stand there and hack away and kill the boss before it even starts to really get into any patterns. It won't win any awards for complexity or level design, but it's a fun time and the experience is heightened by the presentation - the cut scenes are quality but the standout is the music, so many awesome tunes in that one! We made it to Level 5 in a quick playthrough, and to my surprise looking it up this morning that's one level from the end...between this and ZONK that's two decently expensive games that each take less than an hour to complete. Ah well, at least the gameplay is fun. Looking forward to exploring the rest of the VALIS series after II is done - I've got III already (disc only, so if anyone has a manual/back insert you'd be a hero) but am eager to get the imports of I and IV soon (again, if anyone has a copy to sell I'd be paying). Oh sweet, sweet Yuko...
