I’m a big fan of the original Capcom series. I’m partial the arcade version of Ghouls and Ghosts, but I also enjoyed Super and Ultimate (Never played the retuned version sadly).
However, there seem to many spiritual successors to this series luckily.
Cursed Castilla EX is one of my favorites of these. But really just wanted to open this to the forum for suggestions.
Recently Battle Princess Madelyn?
Royal Edition I believe cut out the Metroid-y stuff and went back to a more GnG-only game.
Funny similar to Ultimate GNG and its Japan only retuned version.
Indeed.
In the case of Madelyn, I believe it was kickstarter stretch goals that kind of wrecked the game. So they made a version back to the original vision.
oops. EDIT
hmmm wasn’t there a puzzle game featuring characters from this series?
Yes, Arthur and Astaroth’s mysterious magic village. Or Incredible Toons; Arthur to astaroth no nazomakaimura to give it its proper JP name. On the Sega Saturn. Completely different gameplay but an interesting little game with rather nice music. I suspect it isn7t what OP is looking for though, but hey, there ya go.
Have you tried the WonderSwan game? Apparently one of the titles you can enjoy without understanding Japanese.