[Review] Biomotor Unitron - Nintendo Switch

[Review] Biomotor Unitron – Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Code Mystics
Published By: SNK
Categories: Retro, RPG
Release Date: 05.25.22

Code Mystics is hitting it out of the park with these NeoGeo Pocket Color ports. We’re finally starting to get into the games that aren’t SNK’s big IPs too, and I could not be more excited. Today we’re gonna cover Biomotor Unitron, a mech based RPG.

A handheld RPG, oh it must be a Pokemon clone huh? Not at all. Consider this more in the vein of Medarot or it’s American name, Medabots. You have your Unitron, you can customize it with parts, all of which change the spritework. This sound good? Then lets dig in.

Biomotor Unitron is a tournament fighter, but also has you go out into the world. You start the game choosing your race and gender. Boy, girl, this just decides your partner at the end of the day. The race however, outside of looks, will decide what your starting Unitron is.

There’s plenty of NPCs in the main hub, as well as a shop, and your workshop. Starting with tournaments, it’s as simple as it sounds. Do fights, rank up, make money. The higher rank you get, the more receptive the NPCs around town are to you, so be sure to talk to them after every successful win. The Shop sells (and buys) everything you’ll need. Parts, accessories for your Unitron, items that can heal, materials for the workshop, and so on.

Now we have the workshop. You save here, you check your stats here, equip net parts. You can also build new arms here. Your arms are your attacks, with each having their own stats and attack types. Try to get varied with what arms you use, don’t just grab the ones that look the coolest.

Going into the World Map is where we’ll get money not from tournaments, experience, and lots of items. There’s four regions, all with their own Aspect. Fire, Earth, Wind, Wood, etc… You’ll be fighting monsters in these areas, not other Unitron. There’s a lot of grinding to be hard. Fight, get money, fight, get money, etc…

In fights, you have HP and EP to worry about. EP is your energy for your attacks. At least early on, EP going down every attack seems negligible. Fights never last long enough for it to drain empty, and it refills after every fight anyway. However, you can refill it in battle if needed, and there are items to drain it from the opposition, which can be a valid strategy.

The grind I mentioned earlier definitely seeps into fighting. You’re going to get destroyed if you don’t get better parts. But to do that you’ll need to get money to buy parts and buy materials. To even build new parts, you’ll need to buy them in the first place. You’ll want to level up a lot too, as well as your partner. The higher level they are, the better built parts can be.

Biomotor Unitron looks good. I’ve always loved that NGPC aesthetic though. The colors were always more vibrant than the Gameboy Color and seemed more than just a portable NES. Biomotor Unitron’s music on the other hand, I don’t know how exactly to feel about. The songs are usually good, but a handful of them just have this terrible DING DING DING DING that will play in them. It’s terrible.

If you’ve played any of Code Mystic’s other NGPC releases, you know everything to expect here. I’m still in love with the manual scans. Please do this more often. Biomotor Unitron especially has a manual you should read to get used to the terms and abbreviations. Goofing in fights and trying to rewind is probably not gonna work though.

If you can get over the grind, Biomotor Unitron is a fun RPG and building your own Unitron can be lots of fun. Another lovely NeoGeo Pocket Color port. Can’t wait to see more and experience more games I never did as a kid.