ROM Hacks News
There is a certain archetype of NES game that has this criteria: The game-play is rock solid, the graphics are beautiful, the music is kick-ass, and the difficulty is way, way too hard. Journey to Silius is one of these games.
Journey to Silius is really special; you *want* to see more of it. You *want* to beat it. But the frustration of playing it long outstays the fun. You could cheat with infinite lives or continues with game genie - but, then what’s the point? Instead, this patch aims to “correct” the cruel difficulty, while making minimal changes to keep the game true to its original form. The result is the game is still very difficult, but with skill and knowledge, it is much more manageable.
What this patch does specifically is increase the chance of health drops. In the base game, the player has a very rare chance of getting a health drop (and, is twice as likely to get a weapon energy drop instead). The patch gives both health and weapon energy drops a 12.5% chance of happening on any standard enemy. Limited continues were kept in to keep the high-stakes gameplay.
The change is subtle, but the results are great: with more health drops, there is significantly less frustration, the challenge is (still) difficult but fair, and the game is much more fun.
For many of (us) which have given up on Journey to Silius because it was just unrealistically difficult, consider this patch the solution.
