The passwords were absolutely nightmarish. In addition to being super long, they didn't even use spaces like in Metroid so it was a lot harder to write everything down correctly. I more than once lost a lot of progress from incorrectly writing down a password when I was a kid.
Overall though, this probably was Color Dreams / Wisdom Tree's best game. Unlike a lot of their other games, it's quite playable and can actually be a bit of fun if you give it a chance. It's certainly nothing compared to The Legend of Zelda (which it's a knockoff of), but it's not terrible.