For those of you who are unfamiliar with Castlevania, it is different than other platform games of it's sort because the entire game is one big level. When you start, though, you cannot access the entire "level" because you cannot jump high enough, smash a certain brick blocking your path. etc. As you progress through the game you gain abilities that will allow you to overcome obstacles that daunted you earlier. Akuji progresses much in the same way but it is not quite as open ended since the game area is divided into sections, so you do not have to backtrack nearly as much. Essentially, Akuji is dumbed-down Castlevania, and that's not a bad thing at all.

Although all the in game text is in Japanese, absolutely none of it is neccesary to play through the game and there is little story to the game anyways. What story there is can be understood through the pictures that go along with the text.

I played the game in Normal mode and the first couple of area's were pretty easy, but the difficulty really picked up a notch at the third area. Easy mode is a good "kid mode".

Alex 4 is also one of those rare games that can literally 'be fun for the whole family', because it's not a very hard game to play --it's just a hard game to play well. At the start of the game you are given 3 lives, lose those 3 lives and the game is over. However, you can continue from where ever you 'died', with the only consequence being the loss of your score. I really enjoyed this continue system, as it makes it that much less of a pain to 100% every level, which is a durn hard thing to do, but you'll likely be playing fer hours and hours trying to complete this daunting task anyway. Alex 4 is just that much fun.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it's made by the same guys who bestowed upon us all the blessed goodness of Icy Tower. And that's really all you need to know.