OwenOtter

OwenOtter

A retro-game and Switch playing ott

Comments 221

Re: Review: Unicorn Overlord (Switch) - A Crowning Tactical RPG Achievement For Vanillaware

OwenOtter

@lazyboyblue I trust Vanillaware, as well. I still picked up the demo, 'cause this has been my most anticipated game for this year since it's announcement last fall.

the demo lets you do 3 tutorial fights, THEN it lets you play up to 5 hours in the starting location, and it's barely enough to see all the demo content unless you rush it.

I can't wait. JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEEEEEINS!!!!

Re: Tactical RPG 'Unicorn Overlord' Demo Gallops Onto eShop, Save Data Carries Over

OwenOtter

@Sarkos
I finally played enough of the demo yesterday for a definitive answer on it's scope.
The demo starts with the first 3 battles of the game, then once the open world... er... opens... a 5 hour timer begins that ticks down during in-game running time (as in, not while the menus are open, only during travel and battle and maybe dialogue).
Not a bad free sample. Will tide me over quite well the next week out of only 2 til main game launch!

Re: Soapbox: "Go Outside, Get Some Fresh Air" - Why Won't Outmoded Gamer Stereotypes Die?

OwenOtter

Yes, I've been playing video games since I was at least 6.

I've also made black belt in karate at 23 (starting from 14), read several novels and poems (including Elie Wiesel's NIGHT for crying out loud), studied Liectenauer-style German longsword, played several games of D&D, volunteer my time at conventions, walk my very hilly neighborhood several times a week, held a successful relationship / marriage for 20ish years...

... and yet there are still customers at the used game store I work at who think my stock-in-trade is "a waste of time". People who wouldn't believe a word of my accomplishments. Personally I don't care who does or who does not, the point is, people who play games can and do have other things in their lives.

There's many parents and families and retro enthusiasts for every one or two anti-game snobs shopping for their family members and hating every minute of it, but this is the 21st Century, people. Hating on people's hobbies is one of the many things that we should have left behind long ago.

Re: Feature: Best Switch Video Game Characters Of 2023

OwenOtter

@BodkinDQ
Zappy! I agree! My favorite characters AND units in Fire Emblem Engage are Yunaka and Chloe.

Yunaka for the cheerful cutscene demeanor falling away into deadly-serious and bloody crit-hit quotes. Also, make her a wolf rider when she's up for promotion, and get even more mileage out of her innate dodge and crit bonuses.

Chloe 'cause she's got a warm fascination with fairy tales, and a bottomless stomach for nearly any style of food. She's not as nimble or deadly as Yunaka, but she's worth keeping on the roster 'cause she gets her passive nearly all the time. Her passives only need for a guy and girl to stand next to one another within 2 tiles of her... and that's nearly guaranteed to just happen naturally in play.

Re: Talking Point: What Are The Worst Parts Of Your Favourite Games?

OwenOtter

Megaman 2: Wily Stage 4 boss: the Boobeam Trap.
Who decided the boss should be a puzzle room? That's fine and dandy, but also if you FAIL the puzzle, you have to lose a life and manually farm ammo for the ONLY WEAPON that harms ANYTHING in the room, AND the stage layout is THE WORST for farming drops!

Chrono Trigger: Escaping the Blackbird.
Bringing Ayla makes this weaponless jailbreak more tolerable, but it's not difficult, just annoying.

Dragon Quest 4: Chapter 3. Taloon the Arms Merchant.
I've been a retail wage slave all my adult life, I don't need to be one in my video games, thank you very much. At least he gets to quit his job and go into business himself eventually... but you still have to farm for stock. And the commission from the King of Endor, so you can afford enough money to end the chapter?
The entirety of Chapter 3 of DQ is based around the worst part of any DQ -grinding levels and farming for money and drops. In a game whose genre had a reputation for not respecting your game time in the 90s, who decided to devote an entire story segment to all the worst things that made that reputation?
I want it on record Taloon himself as a character is perfectly quaint and even useful sometimes, but his intro chapter SUUUUUUCKS.

Shatterhand: Area C, the submarine. Let's make this level a confined, linear corridor with the spongiest enemies imaginable, make some of them tiny homing blobs, and bar your progress with glass vats containing HUGE damage sponges that ALSO spawn shrapnel when they die! BRILLIANT!

That about covers what's on the top of my head.

Re: Feature: 21 Vintage Nintendo Games You Can Now Only Buy For Original Hardware

OwenOtter

Another Light Gun refugee waiting for rescue from the NES catalogue is To The Earth, a frantic trigger-pulling sci-fi game.

In To The Earth, you're the gunner of a blockade runner on an urgent mission from a space station in Neptune's orbit, carrying a vital cure to an alien plague back to Earth through their fleet. It's a relentless shooting gallery where you can lose your craft's shields in a matter of seconds if not careful. At every checkpoint, you have a one-second chance to shoot a refueling pod dropped by an ally before the game pauses at said checkpoint - the only pause you get in the game. There's also a screen nuke that recharges regularly during play, to be used wisely through the stages.

If you dont have an NES, a Zapper, and a CRT to play it on (or one of those modern light guns that actually works with HD TVs), you'll never know the joy and pain this one can bring.

Re: Nintendo And Critical Role Combine Zelda: TOTK With Tabletop RPG In New 'One-Shot' Special

OwenOtter

Some Discord friends and I actually played in a campaign of Cyberpunk RED (Tabletop RPG and the basis of 2077 ) set in a far future Hyrule. The Sheikah had become the global conglomerate SheikahTech, and the five races lived in uneasy truce in a now-fully developed nation. My character was a cranky Goron combat medic named Mokoy (see if you can pick up the reference), whose family sunk into debt sending their bright kid away from the factory and mining towns and into med school.

We nicknamed the campaign "Ocarina of Crime"

Re: Talking Point: Who Did You Marry In Fire Emblem: Awakening?

OwenOtter

@daveMcFlave

If we're talking Three Houses, it was Petra. I loved her hair and her enthusiastic attitude. I was very pleased with the results.

If it were possible in Fire Emblem Engage, I'd be marrying Chloe. I love her name, her colors, her romantic notions of fairy-tale joy, her attitude in general

Re: Poll: Bayonetta 3 Is Out Today On Switch, Are You Getting It?

OwenOtter

@FishyS I've played Monster Hunter Rise and Bayonetta 1, and Bayo games are not anything like Monster Hunter. I'd imagine the large screen-filling enemies are what make you think so, but this game is more like a Devil May Cry or other Platinum games, with flashy moves and timing-based combos and blocking and parrying, rather than MonHun's slower-paced and animation-locked combat. In Bayonetta, animations can be cancelled into other moves easily, where in Monster Hunter, you have to wait for one move to complete (which can take a few seconds) before you can start another one.

Re: Poll: Bayonetta 3 Is Out Today On Switch, Are You Getting It?

OwenOtter

@circasurviver I see your doubts, but your math is off.

It's true 24% of responders (as of the time I type this) answered "Not interested" and that's the highest individual answer. It's also true that 17% answered with "Need 1 and/or 2 first".

HOWEVER... THREE answers are varying states of "I'm getting it" and they total 54% to the 41% for "No" and the remainder is non-commital.

So on this Nintendo-centric website, over half the people voting (myself included) say yes.

Re: Talking Point: Given The Voice Artist Controversy, Will You Be Boycotting Bayonetta 3?

OwenOtter

In my opinion, given what I've read, the problem of actors being underpaid for game work is industry-wide. No amount of "voting with our dollars" short of a complete and total boycott of all major studios (which is MASSIVE and never gonna happen) would fix the issue. Furthermore, Hellena sounds to me like she's breaking NDA and dragging her understudy into the mud for doing the work she refused. Two wrongs don't make a right, and I count... at least three, probably more, at play here.

I'll still be picking it up on the nearest payday to launch time as scheduled. It's not a problem I can solve by my abstention, and it IS a BIG problem, but it's bigger than Hellena and Jennifer, and the way I see it, Hellena's attempt to stand up in the face of the problem is just coming off as selfish and petty, the foolish way she appears to have spouted off about it. It's harming the cause she should be focusing on.

Re: Mini Review: Yars: Recharged - A Relaxed, Repetitive Reinvention Of An Atari Classic

OwenOtter

I never in my life thought I'd be rooting so hard for FLIES, of all things but here we are!

Yars are, after all, mutant flies which stowed away in the foodstuffs of a failed outer space mission, evolving into a largely peaceful, but powerful race of spaceborne insectoids that can eat almost anything and shoot the excess energy for defense from their bodies in energy balls.

I loved the story of this game from the moment I read the comic that came with the 2600 version, and this game is pretty good! Budget priced for pick-up playability, fitting tribute / upgrade to the source material.

Also, all the achievements are named from Rush's music