{"id":22342,"date":"2022-06-08T00:01:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T00:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=22342"},"modified":"2022-05-29T13:02:26","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T13:02:26","slug":"biomotor-unitron-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/08\/biomotor-unitron-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Biomotor Unitron (Switch)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Back in the late 90\u2019s\/early 2000\u2019s, game maker SNK released a handheld called the NEO GEO Pocket Color, to compete with Nintendo\u2019s Game Boy Color.\u00a0 I loved that handheld, and I\u2019ve been super happy that over the past few years, many of those games have been re-released on the Switch.\u00a0 The newest one to be re-released is Biomotor Unitron, the first RPG on the handheld and I\u2019ve never heard of it before.\u00a0 And I call myself a NGPC expert!\u00a0 In the game, a meteor crashes on a distant planet, causing powerful crystals to form.\u00a0 A country on this planet uses those crystals to power mechanical battle robots to win a war.\u00a0 Around two centuries later, the people of the planet use those robots, called Unitrons, to battle in tournaments.\u00a0 Biomotor Unitron is a sci-fi fantasy dungeon crawling RPG.<\/p>\n

When you first start the game, you\u2019ll choose a race, like Human, Forester (think elves), Mariner (fish people), lizardmen, and more.\u00a0 You\u2019ll then pick the gender of the person you\u2019ll play as, and the other gender will be your engineer.\u00a0 You can then visit a menu-based town where you can talk to people who might give you hints or items.\u00a0 The two places you\u2019ll visit the most are the shop, where you can buy items, and your workshop, where you\u2019ll tinker with your mech.\u00a0 There is also an Arena where you\u2019ll do battle with a bunch of mechs in a row, and winning these battles will increase your rank and let you buy more powerful things in the shop and move the story along.<\/p>\n

There are also dungeons you can explore, based on the elements in the game.\u00a0 So there is a forest dungeon, cave, mountain, and ice areas.\u00a0 Each dungeon is seven floors and is pseudo randomly generated.\u00a0 Here you\u2019ll battle monsters and collect money and treasures.\u00a0 To fully finish the game, you\u2019ll have to go through every dungeon plus a special one at the end.\u00a0 You\u2019ll gain experience points and level up by beating monsters in the dungeon as well as battles in the arena.\u00a0 Your engineer will gain levels when you have him or her create items in the workshop.\u00a0 You can equip all sorts of stuff to your mech to make it more powerful, and it\u2019s cool that your mech\u2019s appearance changes depending on what you have equipped.<\/p>\n

Since this game came out 20 years ago, it doesn\u2019t have all the quality of life features that a lot of today\u2019s games have.\u00a0 But luckily, there is an option screen that takes care of a lot of that.\u00a0 You view the action on a mock up NEO GEO Pocket Color handheld (which is weird when you are playing the handheld on the Switch handheld mode), but you can choose to zoom in on the screen to make it much easier to see.\u00a0 You can also toggle various screen filters, and rewind, too. You can also view the original instruction manual which is helpful for a game like this.\u00a0 You can\u2019t trade items with another NGPC like you could in the original game, though.<\/p>\n

The only problems I had with this game is that it being a handheld RPG from 20 years ago, it can be a little obtuse and goals aren\u2019t always as clear.\u00a0 Think original Game Boy Pok\u00e9mon.\u00a0 But the game does as best as it can.\u00a0 There was a Biomotor sequel in Japan only.\u00a0 I wonder if they\u2019ll translate that one and bring it over here now?\u00a0 I\u2019d rather than translate Card Fighters 2, though!\u00a0 Hopefully we\u2019ll get even more NGPC games ported to the Switch that that, as well as others like Puzzle Link and Crush Roller!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Biomotor Unitron is rated E for Everyone with ESRB descriptors of Alcohol Reference and Mild Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 You only see pictures of your mech with little battle animations around them, with an exploding animation for the defeated mech or monster.\u00a0 So really no worse than Pok\u00e9mon.\u00a0 When you visit the pub, you can read text that eludes to someone being drunk, so that\u2019s where the alcohol reference comes from.\u00a0 Because of the reading skill required, this game is best for older kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the late 90\u2019s\/early 2000\u2019s, game maker SNK released a handheld called the NEO GEO Pocket Color, to compete with Nintendo\u2019s Game Boy Color.\u00a0 I loved that handheld, and I\u2019ve been super happy that over the past few years, many of those games have been re-released on the Switch.\u00a0 The newest one to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22342"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22344,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions\/22344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}