The penalty points come from the field and the battle screens. Because the tileset used for this game was pretty small, the road to Mendille has this repetitive and undetailed look to it. I also noticed that battles take place on a black window. The window's oriented very nicely, though.

But although all the options are available, some of the features in this game take the short end of the stick, particularly in battle. There are only two things you can do if you're in battle: Fight or Run. It would have been nice to see some magic spells or items being used, or at least a "Defend" option. But alas, the battle element is not very deep. Because of the nature of this game, buying the right armor in the right order is the key to winning Night Stalkers.

This wouldn't have been so bad too, except the enemies get too strong if it takes you too long to accomplish the game's many tasks. Throw in a high enemy frequency and Night Stalkers doesn't really give gamers a fighting chance. The leftover frustration after playing takes away from its replay value.

The more battles you win, the stronger the enemies become. If you participate in too many battles (especially if you are significantly stronger than the current batch of enemies you meet) the enemies find some maniacal way of becoming stronger than you. Eventually even the simple, dull-witted orcs receive god-like power. This makes gathering experience (and playing the game) impractical and eventually impossible.

The result of this new enemy-generating system is a "flight over fight" mechanism, where you hero will more often have to run away from enemies then try to earn gold. But without experience you may never beat the boss at this game's end.