Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap [SMS] One Life Clear

The Dragon's Trap is a really unique and interesting metroidvania, and my choice for the best Master System game.
Epilepsy warning: Lots of flashing lights here.
Mecha Dragon's Castle - 0:22
The beginning of this game is a simplified remake of the ending of the previous game, Wonder Boy in Monster Land. I think it's a pretty cool introduction. I like that, despite how easy he is, Mecha Dragon is the most durable enemy in the game. It's like they didn't want to cheapen the final boss of the previous game, you know?
Lizard-Man - 1:48
The first transformation, and the real beginning of The Dragon's Trap. I like the Lizard-Man form even though his stats are garbage. His ranged attack makes him play very differently from the others. Unfortunately you never have a reason to use him again once you unlock the next transformation. The Mummy Dragon is super easy once you know how to deal with him.
Mouse-Man - 14:09
My least favorite transformation. Mouse-Man's attack hitbox is tiny. His stats are surprisingly good, though. We buy the shogun equipment which will be useful for a long time. The Dragon Zombie is an absolutely pathetic boss.
Piranha-Man - 25:43
Lots of things to take care of before we go after the next boss. We need the thunder saber which can break a certain type of block. I appreciate that you only need to own the thunder saber for it to work. Equipping it isn't necessary. The blue antlions in the lava pits sometimes drop the dragon armor, so I cast tornado at some of them, but in the end I had to buy a suit instead. The dragon armor has poor defense and charm but grants immunity to lava. I've messed up a few runs by forgetting to unequip it after I didn't need it anymore.
With the thunder saber we can get the sphinx's treasure, so I make a trip back there. There are eight treasure chests inside the sphinx and you can only open one of them each time you visit. It's not very exciting to watch. I recommend skipping ahead to 38:19. The Mouse-Man form is good here since he can use the pyramid's shortcut. I also pick up the magical saber. It won't see any use for a while, but it's necessary to reach the final dungeon.
Afterwards I switch back to Piranha-Man and buy the lucky sword and samurai armor. The lucky sword is inexpensive, stronger than our shogun sword, and increases gold drops. It pays for itself in no time. The samurai armor is mostly for increasing our charm so we can buy the prince armor later, but the extra defense doesn't hurt. The Captain Dragon is the hardest boss so far but that's not saying much. It's easy to trap him in a loop. Because of the lucky sword, all of his drops are gold bags instead of gold coins, and we won't be short on money for the rest of the run.
Lion-Man - 50:34
Lion-Man is really good. He has the best stats aside from the Hu-Man form and his overhead attack is a lot more useful than the thrusting attack the other forms use. The muramasa blade is exceptionally powerful in his hands, even more so than the legendary sword and we definitely want to take advantage of that. First we need to buy the prince armor so we have enough charm to buy the muramasa blade. We also buy the hidden tasmanian sword since it has a very helpful ability we'll use later.
The Daimyo Dragon's lair is a big difficulty spike. It's no big deal with the muramasa blade, but unspoiled first-time players will likely hit a wall here. The ninjas and samurai are both far more dangerous than previous enemies, and they're even worse together. They're both bad at dealing with magic attacks, though. Daimyo Dragon can be tricky but the muramasa blade makes short work of him.
Hawk-Man - 1:02:40
Hawk-Man's cool. His stats are bad, but his ability to fly is very useful and opens up a lot of new areas. The shop above Daimyo Dragon's lair sells the hades armor, which is supposed to prevent your death one time and then break, but in this version it's bugged and will revive you an infinite number of times so long as you don't check your inventory. We don't buy it. Our first order of business as Hawk-Man is to fly back to Mecha Dragon's castle and retrieve the legendary equipment. The heavenly shield increases Hawk-Man's defense even more than the legendary shield, but it's useless for the other forms so we don't buy it.
With the legendary equipment, we fly to Vampier Dragon's castle. The gimmick to Vampier Dragon's castle is that you need to frequently switch forms to bypass obstacles, culminating in a dual between Hawk-Man and Vampier Dragon. Vampier Dragon is by far the toughest boss in the game - if you use Hawk-Man, that is. We have the tasmanian sword, which can be used to change forms at will. You can even return to Hu-Man form with it, rendering the rest of the quest pointless. As you can probably imagine, the tasmanian sword has immense sequence breaking potential. With Lion-Man's tremendous stats and the almighty muramasa blade (this isn't my sword!) Vampier Dragon has no chance.