Good Lord 5: Otogirisou

If you ever owned a Mac II when you were reasonably old enough, or, like me, like old games, you surely know about games like Shadowgate and Deja Vu. Text-based adventure games have been around for aeons, and they even now pop up in normal gaming discussions. Why? Because these games preceeded RPGs as the most mature gaming genre available. In fact, I would argue that they ARE the most mature games available today, because of their difficulty and lack of childishness.

There was a short period in Japan where these games were as popular as they were here in the US, and not suprisingly these games were essential copies of their US counterparts. However, these games tended to have some differences (Anime was involved occasionally, the stories were centered around Japan, etc) as opposed as to our US versions. Still, they were good.



Otogirisou is one of those games where you wonder after playing it why you played it and look at the clock dissapointedly at how much time you wasted on it. The game is a text-based game akin to a DOS game, but being on the SNES, it limits it slightly. Instead of typing in (Or clicking around) for commands, you simply choose options from A, B, or C- interesting, because theoretically this game could be mastered quite quickly. However, it is interesting to see a "Serious" text game on the SNES.




The first thing that leads this game into the Good Lord catagory is the gameplay. You read. A lot. It took me less than 5 seconds to discover that my attempts at being a super-cool translator in this game would take me hours and hours and hours- time I don't intend to give. Literally, even turning "Turbo" mode on an emulator, this game will take you upwards of 30 minutes to beat, If you're mashing buttons and not even reading. Yes, I said it right. That's not counting reading time, which you will need a lot of. Strange, because this game seems like it could have implemented at LEAST a save feature, but for some reason it's notoriously absent (At least from what I saw).

Page 1    Page 2