The Krion Conquest is an anomaly. It’s a clear rip of Mega Man, sharing many visual cues and aping certain gameplay functions. By all rights it should be a good game – boasting cute, colourful graphics and killer bosses and decent music. But the North American release omits certain features that seem to have cast it in a negative light with a lot of folks. But The Krion Conquest is by no means a “bad” NES game. Sometimes frustrating, rigid, and unforgiving. But by no means bad by NES bad standards.
Released originally on the Famicom as Magical Kids Doropie, The Krion Conquest strips a number of features out. It removed many of the cutscenes from the Famicom version, relegating story to the first introductory cutscene. Next, Magical Doropie featured the ability to continue. The Krion Conquest does not. It has three lives, HP refills are very scarce, and you start with three lives with 1ups scattered around the game for Francesca to collect. That’s the real point of contention – and one I agree with. The Krion Conquest is difficult, not overly so, but the lack of continues makes practice on later levels a trial and a lack of passwords means you must play through the game in one sitting. With 4 main worlds and 3 levels + a boss level apiece, it’s not really that long. But learning levels on your cautious first play means consecutive attempts can add up.
But see, most deaths are mitigated in The Krion Conquest by the virtue of patience. Enemies in this game can be relentless and manifold. You need to clear anything pursuing you while you have the chance. Trying to rush when you don’t know how to manipulate the game (and I don’t) can be lethal. But Francesca starts with all of her spells and while some of them are very situational, you have so much utility at your disposal from ground one. The game doesn’t play badly, I think a lot of that sentiment comes from the game’s proximity to the Mega Man series in presentation.
Is Mega Man more agile than Francesca? Absolutely. Francesca has trouble firing midair. She has a broom she can ride (that does not consume energy by the way) but it disappears when she jumps meaning you need to be careful. Item drops are much more common in Mega Man. Mega Man has a password. Sure. All great. But there are clear solutions at your disposal to pretty much every situation presented to you in Krion – you have a spell for it. The biggest drain on Francesca is how infrequently your game recharges your life energy and how infrequently enemies drop pick-ups. Unfortunately the game does become a bit of memorization, but the point is that it’s manageable. A bad game would present you a situation and make the solution downright Sisyphean.
The only times I felt the controls or mechanics getting in my way were some situations with the broom. Sometimes ‘threading the needle’ between spikes while flying was touch, particularly a few spots later in the game. Furthermore, on the broom you only have a standard shot which means small enemies can easily sneak past your shots and drain your life even further. You can duck while on he broom, or change its direction to make it go up (or right/left, never down) but a lot of the broom sections are legit clusterfucks that often become the most consistent drain on your life energy.
What it is, is a very colourful, clean action platformer with some cool if situational powers. Francesca is a cute witch and the enemies have personality – even if we’ve seen them somewhere before. The game plays well in spite of some sketchy areas, and the backgrounds are great.
Bosses are an absolute highlight. Bosses can be fairly extended battles with great enemy design and multiple attacks. There’s a definite strategy emergent in each fight and some make use of your spells and some make use of pattern recognition. Some of these sprites are rather large and all of them are nicely detailed, and every one of them is a different experience.
Ultimately The Krion Conquest is most interesting as an oddity. In terms of collecting, Magical Doropie is several hundred Canadian right now, and The Krion Conquest has certainly raised in price. Honestly it’s a mediocre game that is really only going to appeal to enthusiasts of the platform. And for that reason if you see it cheap, pick it up – you could do much worse.
But to recommend playing it – well, I’d recommend playing Magical Doropie over Krion, but it’s not a game I can flat out recommend because there is a lot better on the NES. For context I bought The Krion Conquest over a decade ago and have picked at it here and there over time, assuring myself it was solid but not putting the time required into it due to the lack of continues. And, well, it’s alright. It took me a few attempts at clearing this game to get there, and I do feel good about it – but it is definitely messy and frustrating at times.
Games like The Krion Conquest have so much promise. They look great, give tremendous first impressions, but the more you get into them the more the problems start to surface. It’s okay, it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not great by any measure either. If you’re into NES obscura, give it a shot.
Yes, this game has its issues for sure. Mostly the goofs of the North America version. I played a good amount of this years ago but never finished.
It does a good job as a Mega Man knock-off, though disregarding that, it is only mediocre and I would say a big part of that is the forgettable music. The music in Mega Man 2/3 (especially) are what excelled those games to being considered the best.
I think what’s most disappointing here is that the game was a fresh look at the Mega Man formula, had a likeable character, and a different approach. But it just doesn’t measure up. You mention MM2 and 3, heralded as definitive games of the platform. But playing Mega Man games as they came out back then, they started to wear thin. I like 5 and 6 more now than I did back then for instance. If this was tighter it would have provided a great alternative within the same action subgenre.
And right now, the game often goes for more than $100 more than what I originally paid for it. There comes a time where a value proposition must include whether that obscure title you want is fun enough to merit it. Not so, in this case. Magical Doropie is _not_ cheap either, and honestly having cutscenes and continues doesn’t elevate the game enough to merit exorbitant pricing. It’s not bad, but mediocre can’t get that kind of recommendation.
Well, the best Mega Man types that aren’t Mega Man are Capcom’s other games… the Disney ones. Plug in for The Disney Afternoon Collection.
Also, not sure if you’ve played it, but Little Sampson is another Mega Man knock-off/tribute (depending on your view) but I liked that game better than The Krion Conquest.
Yeah, that price is outrageous. As soon as something is rare it goes way up, regardless of quality.
You call the Krion Conquest price outrageous but mention Little Samson, now THAT is outrageous ;). Great game, I doubt I’ll ever have a copy to take a picture of it in tree branches though ha ha.
Ah! Well, of course I didn’t know that it was even more expensive but sucks though.
Yeah, it is. Yes.
Hmm, I have this strange feeling that Matt didn’t play past stage 2-1. I wonder why…
If the character controls were as responsive and precise as Mega Man 2, this would have been a pretty decent game. However, the controls are absolutely horrible in comparison with any NES classic. The tease is that nearly everything else is there.
I’ve cleared the Krion Conquest. If you’re wondering why I don’t have screen shots beyond that point – I generally keep visuals from games to the early segments in the event someone would want to play through it themselves.
Krion Conquest isn’t better than the Mega Man entries by any stretch of the imagination, and that was never my purpose writing about it here. However, it’s not without merit and there’s a lot of good there. My final paragraph echoes what you say – the more you play, the more problems start to surface and it’s a shame because it had a lot of potential.