I like Kenseiden too. It's been a long time since I've played LotS, but yeah, the play control is fairly similar, IIRC. The exploration is non-linear in a Legacy of the Wizard/Metroid sort of way, but there's a very specific order you have to do the fetch questing. It makes for a lot of traipsing back and forth through the hard-as-nails stages. Pretty soon, your finite number of lives run out and I don't think there are any continues.