 Say God Drunk In the past, this channel has looked at a fair share of Super Nintendo games that never left Japan, but I haven't looked at too many Genesis or Mega Drive games that had the same treatment. Until now, Togi O, or King Colossus, is the kind of game that's going to check off a lot of boxes for a lot of people. Number one, it's an import with a fan-made English translation patch, so this may essentially be a new game for a lot of people. Number two, it's a top-down action role-playing game with hack-and-slash-combat. And three, this game was designed by Torio Yoshida, who had a large part in one of the best Genesis games ever made, Phantasy Star 4. So yeah, King Colossus is well worth checking out just based on those factoids alone. Plus, I mean, how many top-down action games even exist on the Genesis, like three? There's Beyond Oasis, Crusader of Senti, Landstalker. So yeah, King Colossus helps to fill a pretty big gap in the Genesis or Mega Drive library. I know it's tempting to take one glance at the footage here and get excited, like, oh my god, it's linked to the past with on Genesis! But I should temper expectations a little bit. I mean, that's the whole point of this channel, to try and set expectations to older games. So I should let you know that while this is definitely a good game, it's not any kind of lost classic or anything like that. It's a solid playthrough, but it has its flaws. The combat is a little weird, there's platforming involved, which is always a little wonky in games like this, and there's plenty of backtracking here. But hey, it's an action RPG, you hack and slash enemies, you level up, you find new items, unlock new areas, solve the occasional puzzle. So if that's what you're looking for, then you've found it with King Colossus. One thing I really like about this game is that it starts fast. No big sweeping grandiose story sequence or anything. You just wake up in a bed as a boy who doesn't remember his own past. All he knows is that he's got this strange mark on his hand and that he was raised by this old dude, which is healthily explained by this bit of blatant exposition by him asking, Boy, aren't you glad I raised ya? He sends you off on a mission to find this dude who stole a sword. So you find the sword thief and he says, Yeah, if you could kill that fish man in the spring, that would be great. Okay. Wait, what sense does that make? You stole the sword and I want it back. So I want to fight you, you dingus. Or better yet, why don't you kill the thing with the sword you stole? Shush. So you defeat fish man, talk to the thief, he gives you the sword and now you've got to go get it refurbished. So you take it to some other guy and it turns out, of course, that their location is deep inside another dungeon. Then you got to do something else for that guy in another location. And yeah, you get the idea by now. This same structure repeats throughout the game. Not a whole lot of story here, which is fine, but I will point out that the fan translation patch here is excellent because not only does it translate the text, it fixes a lot of bugs in the gameplay as well. So kudos to M-I-J-E-T for their work on this one. I should stress that while this game is playable without a patch, it's definitely recommended you play with the English patch to get through this one. The dungeon structure here is kind of like if you took the design of the early East games and have it mixed with the Super Nintendo NX action RPGs, like Illusion of Gaia and Soul Blazer, where you have to destroy all enemies in an area so you're able to obtain the item you need to progress with the dungeon. And yeah, there's definitely some backtracking here and there, but at least once you unlock an area, it stays unlocked so you can just skip the enemies in that area at that point. All the usual RPG stuff is here, too. Experience points, magic points and spells, upgradable weapons, armor, items, bombs you can use to open up new areas. Gee, why does that look familiar? What's kind of interesting is that there's no overworld here, just a map that moves you from place to place similar to how you'd move in a tactical RPG. So at least you can switch between areas quickly instead of wandering around forever. The combat is gonna make or break this game for some people. The range of your sword you start out with is not ideal. You have to practically be standing on top of enemies to do any damage. And it definitely takes a while to get used to. And because of this, this game is pretty dang hard at the early going. But the good thing is, you do get much better weapons the further you progress. It's just that the early weapons combined with the hit detection will make this one feel wonky for some people. There's also platforming here. And again, that's one of those things that depends on the player. I had no trouble with it, but some people hate platforming in games like this. I will point out that you can move diagonally in this game, so at least there's that. One major benefit King Colossus has that I have to point out is that this game was programmed with a battery save, which means you can save anywhere in the game. Yeah, that tampers the difficulty of this one a little bit, since you can just cheese the hell out of that mechanic. But it's one of those quality of life things that really helps a game like this age well. Also, I gotta point out the music. It's really good, and it goes a long way in helping carrying the experience of this play through. So yeah, King Colossus is a good solid game. No, this game doesn't come close to stuff like Link to the Past, or even Beyond Oasis or Crusader of Senti. I mean, for one thing, it's a role-playing game, so it's a different experience entirely, but still, there just aren't many games like this for the Genesis or Mega Drive. If I had to come up with a Super Nintendo comparison, I'd say this feels like a compliment to games like Illusion of Gaia or Soul Blazer or Taranigma. This game is much, much shorter and less in-depth than any of those, but the dungeon design definitely has a similar feel. So yeah, if you dig those games, or if you're just looking for an action RPG on the Genesis or Mega Drive, then definitely check out King Colossus. All right, I wanna thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.