vanillaware somehow making the most beautiful 2d game of all time once again. Gameplay has so much depth it's unbelievable (to the point where it may be a little too intimidating). Good story with great characters. Ended up doing every possible map because I was enjoying it so much.
And once again to reiterate
visually phenomenal on every possible level, like just the designs and every little aspect of visuals down to the hud menus (which you will be spending 40% of your time in) has so much thought and love packed into it.
And once again to reiterate
visually phenomenal on every possible level, like just the designs and every little aspect of visuals down to the hud menus (which you will be spending 40% of your time in) has so much thought and love packed into it.
Played on an emulator
Didn't complete yet, so far about 40% into the story, but unicorn overlord is a great strategy game, where strategy and team compositions/tactics are actually what decides if you'll win a fight or be utterly run down into the ground.
Vanillaware artstyle so it's an automatic good rating from me, but I was honestly surprised how good the game plays and how much there is to do. The world is full of lore and sidequests, and it's actually worth completing them.
Didn't complete yet, so far about 40% into the story, but unicorn overlord is a great strategy game, where strategy and team compositions/tactics are actually what decides if you'll win a fight or be utterly run down into the ground.
Vanillaware artstyle so it's an automatic good rating from me, but I was honestly surprised how good the game plays and how much there is to do. The world is full of lore and sidequests, and it's actually worth completing them.
It's very FE inspired to the point where its in its DNA but despite that it still manages to develop its own identity and be a veryyyy fun game. The story's a little lacking however its characters are lively enough to keep you entertained/invested
God damn this is a beautiful TRPG with incredible depth, fun combat, delicious food & sexy elves. I definitely slept on this game, almost 100 hours in.
It's peak. The story doesn't do anything transformative for the genre, but it is still incredibly fun and enticing and just enough Vanillaware twist to keep me going. The gameplay is where this game really shines.
Best way to describe this game is a Real-Time Fire Emblem with little armies instead of individual units. The game has a gorgeous art style (Common Vanillaware W), and the cast of characters is expansive. However, once I tinkered with my unit composition I rarely changed it up, as it usually proved to be extremely effective. On that point, the game can be pretty easy, especially once you figure out how to pair different characters together for maximum efficiency. Still kinda annoyed that this game didn't really show the MC marrying the Maiden (In this case it was Morard for me), but I can just keep that as a little head-cannon for myself.
I had a lot of fun tweaking the unit compositions, gambits, and equipment. I love that hit of dopamine when you discover some surprise synergy with party members.
Common Vanillaware kino
A good alternative to Fire Emblem, and adds the Vanillaware delightful 2D art
Great visual style and voice acting are par for the course for Vanillaware, so what else is there? An (almost) real-time strategy with plot that would not look out of place in a Fire Emblem (in other words, rather generic).
It’s a shame, because with some extra budget this game would’ve been absolutely stellar. So you have the well-designed stages and deeply enjoyable battle system, but then you step out on the world map. What awaits you there is extremely basic side quests, unit conversations which weren’t even drawn or voiced for whatever reason and…that’s it, really. There’s a mining mini game too, which is fun until you realize how many times you need to do it to get all treasure maps.
So, worth a playthrough? Absolutely. Worth sinking hundreds of hours into? Probably not. Here’s to hoping Vanillaware spread their resources a bit better next time.
It’s a shame, because with some extra budget this game would’ve been absolutely stellar. So you have the well-designed stages and deeply enjoyable battle system, but then you step out on the world map. What awaits you there is extremely basic side quests, unit conversations which weren’t even drawn or voiced for whatever reason and…that’s it, really. There’s a mining mini game too, which is fun until you realize how many times you need to do it to get all treasure maps.
So, worth a playthrough? Absolutely. Worth sinking hundreds of hours into? Probably not. Here’s to hoping Vanillaware spread their resources a bit better next time.
Coming to this from 13 Sentinels it is almost precisely the opposite of what I expected. Where 13S has a phenomenal plot full of complexity, mystery, and deep characterization, UO's written like generic pulp fantasy—no, not even that, like a monster-of-the-week TV show apisiring to generic pulp fantasy. But where 13S's combat feels sloggy and bolted-on, UO's is consistently fun and reasonably engaging.
The core failing of the game is the fact that word, "reasonably". Although battles in the game are never boring, the systems promise far more than they're actually able to deliver. The game is stuck between two worlds: a stolid traditional Attack Magic Item Flee system and an FFXII-style fully automated luxury battlesim. It's straining towards the latter and it almost manages to grasp it, but the small gap remaining makes all the difference.
The goal of a system like this is to elicit in the player strategic thinking. Consider which characters complement one another's skills, which skills are useful in which circumstances, how to make a unit that's flexible, powerful, and effective against the present challenge. Find clever combinations of skills and equipment that exploit holes in your enemies' defenses. This is what Unicorn Overlord wants, and it's what it narrowly misses.
This is how a battle goes: your unit (composed of several characters) bumps into an enemy unit. Each unit is arranged on its own 3x2 grid, and each character has a set of active and passive actions they use under certain user-defined conditions in initiative order as long as they have resources. You can customize these before the battle, swap equipment with anything in storage, and the game will tell you how much net damage you will deal and how much you will take. Once you're satisfied with your setup, you hit go and the battle plays out automatically. Since resources are very limited, most battles only last a few "turn cycles" as they would exist in a Dragon Quest style system.
In practice, this system has a few critical issues. The first and most noticeable is the degree of variance in each battle. Whether hits are critical or miss entirely is up to the random number generator, which is of course quite sensitive to initial conditions—as indeed are the deterministic behaviors of a battle. This means that you can change a prospective battle from losing to winning often enough by simply rearranging your characters or toggling skills on and off arbitrarily, a practice which quickly overwhelms the amount of time you spend on actual tactical decisions.
The ability to change a unit's programming for each battle also erodes the gap between this system and something more traditional. With some finagling, you can usually choose fairly specifically which enemy will be hit by which attack, allowing you to essentially route around the automation and pre-plan a more standard RPG battle. That level of customizability undermines the conceit of programming.
At the furthest extreme, because you can swap any equipment with anything in storage before a battle or between battles, in principle the best way to play is to keep all your top-tier gear unequipped and just swap it on each unit before they fight and off once they're done. I couldn't bring myself to go to such noxious lengths most of the time, but I did keep a few "just in case" initiative boosters around.
I hypothesize that this game would be substantially more fun if you voluntarily chose not to change your unit's loadout after deploying them. I just wish this were something that was built into the game, rather than something players have to turn to upon discovering that the game doesn't live up to its own goals.
The core failing of the game is the fact that word, "reasonably". Although battles in the game are never boring, the systems promise far more than they're actually able to deliver. The game is stuck between two worlds: a stolid traditional Attack Magic Item Flee system and an FFXII-style fully automated luxury battlesim. It's straining towards the latter and it almost manages to grasp it, but the small gap remaining makes all the difference.
The goal of a system like this is to elicit in the player strategic thinking. Consider which characters complement one another's skills, which skills are useful in which circumstances, how to make a unit that's flexible, powerful, and effective against the present challenge. Find clever combinations of skills and equipment that exploit holes in your enemies' defenses. This is what Unicorn Overlord wants, and it's what it narrowly misses.
This is how a battle goes: your unit (composed of several characters) bumps into an enemy unit. Each unit is arranged on its own 3x2 grid, and each character has a set of active and passive actions they use under certain user-defined conditions in initiative order as long as they have resources. You can customize these before the battle, swap equipment with anything in storage, and the game will tell you how much net damage you will deal and how much you will take. Once you're satisfied with your setup, you hit go and the battle plays out automatically. Since resources are very limited, most battles only last a few "turn cycles" as they would exist in a Dragon Quest style system.
In practice, this system has a few critical issues. The first and most noticeable is the degree of variance in each battle. Whether hits are critical or miss entirely is up to the random number generator, which is of course quite sensitive to initial conditions—as indeed are the deterministic behaviors of a battle. This means that you can change a prospective battle from losing to winning often enough by simply rearranging your characters or toggling skills on and off arbitrarily, a practice which quickly overwhelms the amount of time you spend on actual tactical decisions.
The ability to change a unit's programming for each battle also erodes the gap between this system and something more traditional. With some finagling, you can usually choose fairly specifically which enemy will be hit by which attack, allowing you to essentially route around the automation and pre-plan a more standard RPG battle. That level of customizability undermines the conceit of programming.
At the furthest extreme, because you can swap any equipment with anything in storage before a battle or between battles, in principle the best way to play is to keep all your top-tier gear unequipped and just swap it on each unit before they fight and off once they're done. I couldn't bring myself to go to such noxious lengths most of the time, but I did keep a few "just in case" initiative boosters around.
I hypothesize that this game would be substantially more fun if you voluntarily chose not to change your unit's loadout after deploying them. I just wish this were something that was built into the game, rather than something players have to turn to upon discovering that the game doesn't live up to its own goals.
im kind of a hater of the gameplay but the art is pretty cool
This review contains spoilers
I really like what Unicorn Overlord has going. You get the squad management of a Final Fantasy Tactics with a dash of the Final Fantasy 12 Gambit system and you get a really interesting mix.
It is simultaneously really hands off (you don't issue commands in a fight) but also incredibly micromanagable through the conditionals you can set on commands. You get to assign your units to squads of 2-5. Each character has their own class that can be upgraded later in the game. You can use just the main named characters you pick up throughout play but you'll probably want to bolster your ranks with generic units of similar classes, if not for your battle ranks, but to hold the cities for you and gather resources.
I got about 3/5 of the way through the game? I finished the 3rd continent, Elheim, did a bunch of sidequests for the first 3 areas, and still had a long-seeming way to go.
After 45 hours, I had my fill.
The game isn't bad, but something is wrong with it that I can't put my finger on it. Maybe a bit slow at times? Game is gorgeous as hell though.
I might pick this up again in the future, but for now, I enjoyed my time with it.
It is simultaneously really hands off (you don't issue commands in a fight) but also incredibly micromanagable through the conditionals you can set on commands. You get to assign your units to squads of 2-5. Each character has their own class that can be upgraded later in the game. You can use just the main named characters you pick up throughout play but you'll probably want to bolster your ranks with generic units of similar classes, if not for your battle ranks, but to hold the cities for you and gather resources.
I got about 3/5 of the way through the game? I finished the 3rd continent, Elheim, did a bunch of sidequests for the first 3 areas, and still had a long-seeming way to go.
After 45 hours, I had my fill.
The game isn't bad, but something is wrong with it that I can't put my finger on it. Maybe a bit slow at times? Game is gorgeous as hell though.
I might pick this up again in the future, but for now, I enjoyed my time with it.
great art, great voices. and also virginia.
From a gameplay standpoint, probably the best strategy RPG I've played. Absolutely beautiful soundtrack, a great score, and a pretty simple story, but it really didn't need any more than that.
Game Finished In 2024 #13:
Vanillaware really is something special. I wasn't intimately familiar with them until 13 Sentinels, but that game alone was great enough to put me completely on board with whatever comes next. Luckily, what came next was also INCREDIBLE.
13 Sentinels was a marvel of a story with kind of incidental strategy gameplay, and Unicorn Overlord completely inverts this by having a marvel of a strategy game and kind of incidental plot. It's not that there's nothing there but there is not a lot worth noting. The Zenoirans are ontologically evil in every way, and every problem in the setting can be traced back to the giant asshole at the top of the empire, or his Ascian-like asshole wizard sidekick. Unicorn Overlord's gameplay and setting evoke Fire Emblem hard, but there's a LOT to make it stand out from Nintendo's SRPG series. Instead of controlling individual characters, you control 2x3 grid units of several characters, and they are controlled in realtime, too. Positioning matters too, as both you and your enemies have access to row and column based attacks. This immediately makes teambuilding interesting, as party composition matters a lot, to the point that before a battle begins you can modify it to try to swing the outcome in your favor. But where Unicorn Overlord plays its true hand is what happens when you engage a battle. You do not control your units individually in Unicorn Overlord, instead battles involving them play out automatically according to the tactics you assigned them beforehand.
People with good taste will immediately clock the concept as being similar to Gambits from FF12, a wonderful system of RPG design allowing you to essentially program your party however you want to help ease the issues game AI usually has. Unicorn Overlord goes a step further, by having multiple abilities tied to your equipment as well, making for interesting decision making at every level of the process. The way these systems interact heavily invokes the same neurons as teambuilding in a gacha game, but without the gambling or overdesigned swimsuits or fixation on singular thigh highs. The game's structure is as open ended as the teambuilding, with the main story being offset by sidequests of varying flavors, from the more traditional extra chapters with new party members, to dedicated grinding spots to shorter affairs called liberation quests, where you engage in a short battle to free a town. This freeform exploration lets you play the game at your own pace, doing what you want to when you want to. This game provides you with the ability to tackle final quest, where the enemies are level 40, as early as the first region of five. You're not going to win it that early, but that the option is there is impressive. There is even a small amount of choice in the plot, as you get to decide the fates of multiple characters. This is significantly lessened, though, by the fact that the nicer option is, without fail, always correct. Even the most Villageburner The Bandit-coded characters are more beneficial to spare than execute/jail, as another character to recruit is worth more than any other rewards. Perhaps this is a point to be made, thematically.
Unicorn Overlord has a lot of mechanics, but the way these are integrated is mostly seamless, so you never have to engage in too much busywork. It's not all perfect, as the sheer number of units you control with a fully maxed out army is incredibly hard to manage without significant grinding, so I ended up using less units than the game allowed me to. There is plenty of opportunity to kit out your party, though it was hard at times to discern when it should be done. Finally, the roster without generics was at times confusing, as multiple classes had only one or two characters attached to them. If you have no problem using generics, this is less of an issue, as they are to my understanding just as good as unique units, but I wanted to appreciate the bespoke character designs, which contained MULTIPLE winners. This is a fair bit understandable, though, as the game on a presentation level is immaculate. Hand drawn sprites with very little in the way of cut corners, with a lot of smart design in the way they were used for efficiency. Every battle happens in a section of the world map, reducing the need for multiple maps. Generics, despite my gripes earlier, allow you to fill out your army when need be, and their models are the same as the enemies, just recolored.
Unicorn Overlord is a real gem of a game, taking ideas other games did well and doing them arguably even better by combining them. The game was good enough that I went out of my way to get the Platinum trophy in it, and I only started to feel a bit tired at the VERY end because i wanted to make sure I had grinded enough for endgame. This is an incredibly easy recommend, and is a strong contender for GOTY 2024.
Vanillaware really is something special. I wasn't intimately familiar with them until 13 Sentinels, but that game alone was great enough to put me completely on board with whatever comes next. Luckily, what came next was also INCREDIBLE.
13 Sentinels was a marvel of a story with kind of incidental strategy gameplay, and Unicorn Overlord completely inverts this by having a marvel of a strategy game and kind of incidental plot. It's not that there's nothing there but there is not a lot worth noting. The Zenoirans are ontologically evil in every way, and every problem in the setting can be traced back to the giant asshole at the top of the empire, or his Ascian-like asshole wizard sidekick. Unicorn Overlord's gameplay and setting evoke Fire Emblem hard, but there's a LOT to make it stand out from Nintendo's SRPG series. Instead of controlling individual characters, you control 2x3 grid units of several characters, and they are controlled in realtime, too. Positioning matters too, as both you and your enemies have access to row and column based attacks. This immediately makes teambuilding interesting, as party composition matters a lot, to the point that before a battle begins you can modify it to try to swing the outcome in your favor. But where Unicorn Overlord plays its true hand is what happens when you engage a battle. You do not control your units individually in Unicorn Overlord, instead battles involving them play out automatically according to the tactics you assigned them beforehand.
People with good taste will immediately clock the concept as being similar to Gambits from FF12, a wonderful system of RPG design allowing you to essentially program your party however you want to help ease the issues game AI usually has. Unicorn Overlord goes a step further, by having multiple abilities tied to your equipment as well, making for interesting decision making at every level of the process. The way these systems interact heavily invokes the same neurons as teambuilding in a gacha game, but without the gambling or overdesigned swimsuits or fixation on singular thigh highs. The game's structure is as open ended as the teambuilding, with the main story being offset by sidequests of varying flavors, from the more traditional extra chapters with new party members, to dedicated grinding spots to shorter affairs called liberation quests, where you engage in a short battle to free a town. This freeform exploration lets you play the game at your own pace, doing what you want to when you want to. This game provides you with the ability to tackle final quest, where the enemies are level 40, as early as the first region of five. You're not going to win it that early, but that the option is there is impressive. There is even a small amount of choice in the plot, as you get to decide the fates of multiple characters. This is significantly lessened, though, by the fact that the nicer option is, without fail, always correct. Even the most Villageburner The Bandit-coded characters are more beneficial to spare than execute/jail, as another character to recruit is worth more than any other rewards. Perhaps this is a point to be made, thematically.
Unicorn Overlord has a lot of mechanics, but the way these are integrated is mostly seamless, so you never have to engage in too much busywork. It's not all perfect, as the sheer number of units you control with a fully maxed out army is incredibly hard to manage without significant grinding, so I ended up using less units than the game allowed me to. There is plenty of opportunity to kit out your party, though it was hard at times to discern when it should be done. Finally, the roster without generics was at times confusing, as multiple classes had only one or two characters attached to them. If you have no problem using generics, this is less of an issue, as they are to my understanding just as good as unique units, but I wanted to appreciate the bespoke character designs, which contained MULTIPLE winners. This is a fair bit understandable, though, as the game on a presentation level is immaculate. Hand drawn sprites with very little in the way of cut corners, with a lot of smart design in the way they were used for efficiency. Every battle happens in a section of the world map, reducing the need for multiple maps. Generics, despite my gripes earlier, allow you to fill out your army when need be, and their models are the same as the enemies, just recolored.
Unicorn Overlord is a real gem of a game, taking ideas other games did well and doing them arguably even better by combining them. The game was good enough that I went out of my way to get the Platinum trophy in it, and I only started to feel a bit tired at the VERY end because i wanted to make sure I had grinded enough for endgame. This is an incredibly easy recommend, and is a strong contender for GOTY 2024.
This review contains spoilers
Didn't think we would get a spiritual successor to Ogre Battle, but you won't hear me complaining after I played this game and ended loving this game greatly. Came in high hopes and came out with pretty much most either achieved or surpassed with only some minor nitpicks.
To start off with the best of what makes UO so great is the gameplay. As stated before, this game is pretty much a spiritual successor to the Ogre Battle games in how it plays; I.e a RTS with RPG elements where you make squads of units that fight in auto battles and is more so about positing these squads in the right fights to win each battle rather than commanding each unit's exact action. And for the most part, UO makes MANY improvements to the combat and unit variety. In Ogre Battle 64, while I had a bunch of different units, it felt like I was usually just trying to optimize each team to be their own little death ball to carve through the map in most cases (with maybe one or two specialized teams for very specific enemies). In this game however, while some overpowered teams that decimate through everything can exist, there's so many more ways to build each team now. You can factor in stuff like passive effects/actions, buffs, debuffs, status effects, special moves, and other fun stuff to screw around with. Each character doesn't feel like a replaceable cog in a death ball machine, but rather a specific piece for a team to function that still has many ways to be utilized in. There's a great deal of synergy to be found with many different units in this game. I'm still learning about funny team combinations or learning how to better utilize certain characters/unit that I overlooked. Even if you're not the most apt team builder, I'm willing to bet there's still some fun and enjoyable team set ups that you can make. While the goal of each team is still defeat the foes before you, how to do so feels more varied and inspired compared to the fights in Ogre Battle.
That alone would make the combat and team building aspect of this game amazing, however, we haven't mentioned the Tactics system yet. For those who played FF12 ZA, this is basically the gambit system (i.e control how each character's AI works), which feels so natural with the auto-battle aspect of the game. If you know how to program your unit's actions correctly, it enables a lot of creativity and creates a great deal of fun through fine-tuning each team before they're sent off to battle. Now admittedly, this aspect of the game can be overwhelming, it certainly took me a bit to properly learn and how to make efficient teams (hell, even still have a lot to learn still now), but for some, that too is part of the fun for this game through trial and error before you find your favorite team set ups. Then once you see those set ups in action and see them work splendidly, it creates a nice rewarding feeling that never gets old.
Making this better is the game having plenty of great battles/maps to release these teams onto. In general, a lot of the map design for Unicorn Overlord is quite fun. Sure there's some stinkers I'll rant about if you give me the chance to if asked, but in general, the map design for this game is great. There's many rememberable battles in this one with some fun twists, cool stage gimmicks, and includes one of my new favorite maps in the form of "The Two Princes" in ANY SRPG. In addition to the teams you can deploy, there are Valor skills you can use tied to each class that opens up MANY ways to engage with each fight. Some are kind of broken and utterly cheese some maps, but it's fun figuring out how best to use the Valor skills to your advantage. Like-wise with the items you can use mid-battle as this game greatly encourages using your items rather than hoarding them away, which helps to open up another avenue of strategy for you (though they are kind of broken if you're playing below Expert as you don't have an item limit there). All of this, plus the unit variety, flexible team building, AND tactics system make for one hell of an amazing gameplay loop.
That said, there's another aspect of the loop that helps UO really stand out; The (mostly) open world nature of the game. Besides needing to beat the first main story mission to explore the other nations of Fevrith, this game is open world and you can move around in any order. In a lesser game, I could see this bothering me, especially since I'm not exactly a fan of the open world formula, but Unicorn Overlord handles its open world aspect extremely well. Rather than having large open areas with some bits of stuff to do scattered about, this game is tightly designed to find stuff wherever you go. Usually it comes in the form of another battle/mission, but that's what makes it work so well; You rarely go without the combat for a long time/denying you of stuff to do for the sake of being "open." Once you do one fight and maybe screwed around in the area you liberated for a bit or adjusted your teams after getting a new character, it's onto the next one. Besides the finding new fights, each victory usually liberates a town on the world map, giving you more stuff to buy, maybe some extra quests to check out, and the ability to rebuild these towns after the oppression they endured. Not to mention there's items to find on the map and if you want to certainly places, you can run past enemies too. There's rarely a shortage of things to do in Unicorn Overlord, making it one of the few open world that I actively enjoy.
For those who do enjoy open world stuff and worried they might be too restrained with Unicorn Overlord, don't worry; If you know how to win certain battles/best make used of you teams, you can easily sequence break into the higher leveled areas and mess around there. You can even do the final battle incredibly early if you know what you're doing. The open ended nature of this game makes it even more suitable for repeat runs on top of the team building and combat (which in themselves opens up so many ways to mess around with the game).
While I have glowing praise for this game, I do have some complaints/nitpicks for the gameplay. First is how, while generally being content rich, how much the game runs out of some gas in the later areas. There's still enough to do, but Bastoria and the Orthodoxy have a lot less fights and story in them sadly. On one hand, this does open up to some bigger scale battles since I think there are maybe a bit too many shorter fights in this game, but on the other it does suck there's less fights at certain points of the game where the player really gets to make some very fun teams. I'm also kind of agree with the crowd that wished there was some more post game content/NG+ since there's a lot given to you at the end you also don't get enough time to enjoy.
Another issue I have is also for those more end game areas, there are two VERY annoying enemy types that can really ruin your time without specific checks; Featherbows and Quick Cast Sorceresses. The former has a passive that blinds all your units in a row if one of them tries to attack, which can really draw out fights. As for the latter, they basically get a free chance to freeze an entire row of your units, which can be absolutely devastating. I don't mind the specific challenge against these enemies, but you see them a lot in the end, which in turn becomes very grating and sometimes screws over some fun teams that you've built.
Also while I love the unit variety in this game, I do kind of wished we got monster units like Ogre Battle/Tactics (stuff like Dragons, Hellhounds, the Undead, Fairies, Octopuses, etc. That kind of more unusual units).
My last issue with the game is that it kind of starts off slow. I get them not wanting to overwhelm the player like the Ogre Battle games, especially with team building stuff (Ex. OB 64 throws five teams of roughly 15-20ish units total for you organize ASAP, even more once you throw in the soldier groups you need to throw in to get more generic units, which in itself is another story of complexity), but sometimes UO feels slow at first with 2-3 sized units with only one Action Point (i.e one move per fight basically). At least combat gets fast quickly and some early teams do offer a lot of variety, but I wished we got to use larger squads a bit faster. Even with these flaws, the gameplay is just fantastic and is overall amazing provided you like screwing around with stuff and finding new exciting things to try out.
Next up is the story. The story itself isn't going to be winning any rewards as it's fairly basic as you've might of heard, but this game is very much a "case of simple doesn't mean bad." It's a standard tale of a Prince reclaiming his fallen kingdom while freeing other nations, a common story especially for those that have played Fire Emblem, but I think generally it's told, or rather executed well enough. The game doesn't try to be too goofy or overly serious with its tone or how it portrays this narrative, which is honestly very refreshing. It's pretty much hearing a classical story once again, it might not be the most revolutionary thing, but it's going to be a fun enough story to enjoy. Plus given the open ended nature of the game, it feels fine to have a more basic story to prevent things from getting overly complicated (especially given all the scene variations depending on your order of play; More on that later). And in spite of its more simple nature, I do think the story still has some nice highs in certain spots and it does throw some curveballs for some of the more easily predictable stuff that I will give the game credit for.
Helping it to be a simple but effective are the characters. Again, you aren't going to be getting some ground breaking characters, but I feel the cast isn't as bare bones as many claim. Though it's in an odd spot; It feels like they're in a middle of triple circle Venn diagram where it has aspects of FE1 characters (a lot who don't get many lines, but still many characters who still stand out), the early GBA FE characters/supports (actually get more characterization, albeit kind of limited), and FE Tellius where characters get scenes beyond their join map/supports (i.e getting to see non-main characters get some extra screen time, including some main story scenes, even if it's just a minuscule bit). Hope that kind weird explanation made sense, but basically despite the seeming shallow or basic at first, there is some surprising depth. I do wish more was done (we'll get to that soon enough), but I ended up endeared to a good number of characters as well as found a few scenes and rapports that legitimately impressed me.
Also one other thing that impressed me was the variance in some scenes and story bits depending on the order you play the game. Thanks to the open world nature, there's some neat details if you do certain things in order. For example in Drakenhold, if you complete the main story quest in it without recruiting a certain character, when you do recruit them their recruitment scene changes slightly to adjust to a possible story reveal if you did it. Or how early if you reach the midway point with another minor character recruited, they are better addressed in a story scene. But some of the more interesting stuff is if you rush to the final boss super early on and see some very dark, but morbidly interesting changes that happen that kind of deconstruct the idea of the hero rushing to the end early that people typically have. The fact there's so much variance in an overall simple plot is honestly really cool and shows there was a lot of care placed into the writing for a seemingly basic tale.
While not strictly story related, I do also want to give a shoutout to the Archives in this game. It's basically this game's version of the Hugo's/Warren's Reports in the Ogre Battle/Tactics games. Granted not as in depth as those glossaries, but it gives a lot of fun extra material to read into for those who care about the lore of the game. Not only that, but it basically has something akin to Golden Sun Dark Dawn's Red Word system where if there's another important term (and you found it), it actually takes you there so you can read up on it. More games with a decent amount of lore need to do that more often.
Now for the story negatives. Besides the story being more basic (which I don't find a problem), I have two main gripes. The first is that while I like the story and find it good, it does feel like a multiple points where it's obviously missing something to go from "just good" to better (and perhaps to something great). There's a few villains, namely two arc villains for certain nations, who I'd feel like would be a lot more interesting if they just had one or two more elements better explained/explored about them. As is, they're fine enough, but you can plainly see how they're close to being something a lot better and were missing one final push to make them truly standout. My other issue is how near the end of the game, there's a lot of honestly really cool lore dumps about the world and exact nature of the villains, but I REALLY wished we got more hints/build up to it. Thankfully we weren't completely without some hints and most of these lore dumps do feel like a natural continuation, but there's some information that would have been very nice to learn BEFORE you're that late into the game.
I do have one issue with the characters as well; So this game has rapports, or basically FE supports, and they're some of the best source of characterization for a lot of characters and get to give the cast more life. The problem is that there's A LOT of rapport chains, instead of having the usual three talks, only have two or even one. Now, I fully understand writing for a playable cast of like 60ish characters is a lot and I'm thankfully for what we have (again, these rapports are great and show why this cast isn't flat as many claim), but there's so many cases where some rapports should have gotten the full three talks. It feels like it's sort of the opposite problem of FE6 where instead of it taking forever to unlock really good supports, it's easy to unlock rapports and find some you'll love to only then find out it was the only one between certain characters.
That all said and done, while the story and characters won't be the greatest amongst SRPGs, I think it gets at least a respectable and enjoyable place among them, even if more could have been done.
For some remaining areas before we close off...
The music for this game is excellent. I do think that it does start off more tame, but once you get deeper into the game, it REALLY picks up. Especially for the boss battle themes as they're easily the highlights of this game's OST.
The presentation for this game is also fantastic and another highlight for this game. The art is great, especially for the character designs and the numerous backgrounds they created, making this one of the nicest looking games I've seen in a bit. Battles also flow nice enough (though I wish the speed up was the default speed for some animations to give them some extra oomph). The voice acting is also pretty great and some VA have some AMAZING line reads for certain spots. Also the food looks absurdly good, which seems to be a Vanillaware Staple that was fun to learn about.
In conclusion, Unicorn Overlord is a fantastic game. Granted, I do feel like it requires the right mindset given how different it is to other SRPGs most are used to, but it's truly a worthy game to check out. If you're unsure, on the game, there's a decently large demo that you can check out that I highly recommend. Unless something drastic happens with the games I play this year, this might be my favorite game in 2024.
To start off with the best of what makes UO so great is the gameplay. As stated before, this game is pretty much a spiritual successor to the Ogre Battle games in how it plays; I.e a RTS with RPG elements where you make squads of units that fight in auto battles and is more so about positing these squads in the right fights to win each battle rather than commanding each unit's exact action. And for the most part, UO makes MANY improvements to the combat and unit variety. In Ogre Battle 64, while I had a bunch of different units, it felt like I was usually just trying to optimize each team to be their own little death ball to carve through the map in most cases (with maybe one or two specialized teams for very specific enemies). In this game however, while some overpowered teams that decimate through everything can exist, there's so many more ways to build each team now. You can factor in stuff like passive effects/actions, buffs, debuffs, status effects, special moves, and other fun stuff to screw around with. Each character doesn't feel like a replaceable cog in a death ball machine, but rather a specific piece for a team to function that still has many ways to be utilized in. There's a great deal of synergy to be found with many different units in this game. I'm still learning about funny team combinations or learning how to better utilize certain characters/unit that I overlooked. Even if you're not the most apt team builder, I'm willing to bet there's still some fun and enjoyable team set ups that you can make. While the goal of each team is still defeat the foes before you, how to do so feels more varied and inspired compared to the fights in Ogre Battle.
That alone would make the combat and team building aspect of this game amazing, however, we haven't mentioned the Tactics system yet. For those who played FF12 ZA, this is basically the gambit system (i.e control how each character's AI works), which feels so natural with the auto-battle aspect of the game. If you know how to program your unit's actions correctly, it enables a lot of creativity and creates a great deal of fun through fine-tuning each team before they're sent off to battle. Now admittedly, this aspect of the game can be overwhelming, it certainly took me a bit to properly learn and how to make efficient teams (hell, even still have a lot to learn still now), but for some, that too is part of the fun for this game through trial and error before you find your favorite team set ups. Then once you see those set ups in action and see them work splendidly, it creates a nice rewarding feeling that never gets old.
Making this better is the game having plenty of great battles/maps to release these teams onto. In general, a lot of the map design for Unicorn Overlord is quite fun. Sure there's some stinkers I'll rant about if you give me the chance to if asked, but in general, the map design for this game is great. There's many rememberable battles in this one with some fun twists, cool stage gimmicks, and includes one of my new favorite maps in the form of "The Two Princes" in ANY SRPG. In addition to the teams you can deploy, there are Valor skills you can use tied to each class that opens up MANY ways to engage with each fight. Some are kind of broken and utterly cheese some maps, but it's fun figuring out how best to use the Valor skills to your advantage. Like-wise with the items you can use mid-battle as this game greatly encourages using your items rather than hoarding them away, which helps to open up another avenue of strategy for you (though they are kind of broken if you're playing below Expert as you don't have an item limit there). All of this, plus the unit variety, flexible team building, AND tactics system make for one hell of an amazing gameplay loop.
That said, there's another aspect of the loop that helps UO really stand out; The (mostly) open world nature of the game. Besides needing to beat the first main story mission to explore the other nations of Fevrith, this game is open world and you can move around in any order. In a lesser game, I could see this bothering me, especially since I'm not exactly a fan of the open world formula, but Unicorn Overlord handles its open world aspect extremely well. Rather than having large open areas with some bits of stuff to do scattered about, this game is tightly designed to find stuff wherever you go. Usually it comes in the form of another battle/mission, but that's what makes it work so well; You rarely go without the combat for a long time/denying you of stuff to do for the sake of being "open." Once you do one fight and maybe screwed around in the area you liberated for a bit or adjusted your teams after getting a new character, it's onto the next one. Besides the finding new fights, each victory usually liberates a town on the world map, giving you more stuff to buy, maybe some extra quests to check out, and the ability to rebuild these towns after the oppression they endured. Not to mention there's items to find on the map and if you want to certainly places, you can run past enemies too. There's rarely a shortage of things to do in Unicorn Overlord, making it one of the few open world that I actively enjoy.
For those who do enjoy open world stuff and worried they might be too restrained with Unicorn Overlord, don't worry; If you know how to win certain battles/best make used of you teams, you can easily sequence break into the higher leveled areas and mess around there. You can even do the final battle incredibly early if you know what you're doing. The open ended nature of this game makes it even more suitable for repeat runs on top of the team building and combat (which in themselves opens up so many ways to mess around with the game).
While I have glowing praise for this game, I do have some complaints/nitpicks for the gameplay. First is how, while generally being content rich, how much the game runs out of some gas in the later areas. There's still enough to do, but Bastoria and the Orthodoxy have a lot less fights and story in them sadly. On one hand, this does open up to some bigger scale battles since I think there are maybe a bit too many shorter fights in this game, but on the other it does suck there's less fights at certain points of the game where the player really gets to make some very fun teams. I'm also kind of agree with the crowd that wished there was some more post game content/NG+ since there's a lot given to you at the end you also don't get enough time to enjoy.
Another issue I have is also for those more end game areas, there are two VERY annoying enemy types that can really ruin your time without specific checks; Featherbows and Quick Cast Sorceresses. The former has a passive that blinds all your units in a row if one of them tries to attack, which can really draw out fights. As for the latter, they basically get a free chance to freeze an entire row of your units, which can be absolutely devastating. I don't mind the specific challenge against these enemies, but you see them a lot in the end, which in turn becomes very grating and sometimes screws over some fun teams that you've built.
Also while I love the unit variety in this game, I do kind of wished we got monster units like Ogre Battle/Tactics (stuff like Dragons, Hellhounds, the Undead, Fairies, Octopuses, etc. That kind of more unusual units).
My last issue with the game is that it kind of starts off slow. I get them not wanting to overwhelm the player like the Ogre Battle games, especially with team building stuff (Ex. OB 64 throws five teams of roughly 15-20ish units total for you organize ASAP, even more once you throw in the soldier groups you need to throw in to get more generic units, which in itself is another story of complexity), but sometimes UO feels slow at first with 2-3 sized units with only one Action Point (i.e one move per fight basically). At least combat gets fast quickly and some early teams do offer a lot of variety, but I wished we got to use larger squads a bit faster. Even with these flaws, the gameplay is just fantastic and is overall amazing provided you like screwing around with stuff and finding new exciting things to try out.
Next up is the story. The story itself isn't going to be winning any rewards as it's fairly basic as you've might of heard, but this game is very much a "case of simple doesn't mean bad." It's a standard tale of a Prince reclaiming his fallen kingdom while freeing other nations, a common story especially for those that have played Fire Emblem, but I think generally it's told, or rather executed well enough. The game doesn't try to be too goofy or overly serious with its tone or how it portrays this narrative, which is honestly very refreshing. It's pretty much hearing a classical story once again, it might not be the most revolutionary thing, but it's going to be a fun enough story to enjoy. Plus given the open ended nature of the game, it feels fine to have a more basic story to prevent things from getting overly complicated (especially given all the scene variations depending on your order of play; More on that later). And in spite of its more simple nature, I do think the story still has some nice highs in certain spots and it does throw some curveballs for some of the more easily predictable stuff that I will give the game credit for.
Helping it to be a simple but effective are the characters. Again, you aren't going to be getting some ground breaking characters, but I feel the cast isn't as bare bones as many claim. Though it's in an odd spot; It feels like they're in a middle of triple circle Venn diagram where it has aspects of FE1 characters (a lot who don't get many lines, but still many characters who still stand out), the early GBA FE characters/supports (actually get more characterization, albeit kind of limited), and FE Tellius where characters get scenes beyond their join map/supports (i.e getting to see non-main characters get some extra screen time, including some main story scenes, even if it's just a minuscule bit). Hope that kind weird explanation made sense, but basically despite the seeming shallow or basic at first, there is some surprising depth. I do wish more was done (we'll get to that soon enough), but I ended up endeared to a good number of characters as well as found a few scenes and rapports that legitimately impressed me.
Also one other thing that impressed me was the variance in some scenes and story bits depending on the order you play the game. Thanks to the open world nature, there's some neat details if you do certain things in order. For example in Drakenhold, if you complete the main story quest in it without recruiting a certain character, when you do recruit them their recruitment scene changes slightly to adjust to a possible story reveal if you did it. Or how early if you reach the midway point with another minor character recruited, they are better addressed in a story scene. But some of the more interesting stuff is if you rush to the final boss super early on and see some very dark, but morbidly interesting changes that happen that kind of deconstruct the idea of the hero rushing to the end early that people typically have. The fact there's so much variance in an overall simple plot is honestly really cool and shows there was a lot of care placed into the writing for a seemingly basic tale.
While not strictly story related, I do also want to give a shoutout to the Archives in this game. It's basically this game's version of the Hugo's/Warren's Reports in the Ogre Battle/Tactics games. Granted not as in depth as those glossaries, but it gives a lot of fun extra material to read into for those who care about the lore of the game. Not only that, but it basically has something akin to Golden Sun Dark Dawn's Red Word system where if there's another important term (and you found it), it actually takes you there so you can read up on it. More games with a decent amount of lore need to do that more often.
Now for the story negatives. Besides the story being more basic (which I don't find a problem), I have two main gripes. The first is that while I like the story and find it good, it does feel like a multiple points where it's obviously missing something to go from "just good" to better (and perhaps to something great). There's a few villains, namely two arc villains for certain nations, who I'd feel like would be a lot more interesting if they just had one or two more elements better explained/explored about them. As is, they're fine enough, but you can plainly see how they're close to being something a lot better and were missing one final push to make them truly standout. My other issue is how near the end of the game, there's a lot of honestly really cool lore dumps about the world and exact nature of the villains, but I REALLY wished we got more hints/build up to it. Thankfully we weren't completely without some hints and most of these lore dumps do feel like a natural continuation, but there's some information that would have been very nice to learn BEFORE you're that late into the game.
I do have one issue with the characters as well; So this game has rapports, or basically FE supports, and they're some of the best source of characterization for a lot of characters and get to give the cast more life. The problem is that there's A LOT of rapport chains, instead of having the usual three talks, only have two or even one. Now, I fully understand writing for a playable cast of like 60ish characters is a lot and I'm thankfully for what we have (again, these rapports are great and show why this cast isn't flat as many claim), but there's so many cases where some rapports should have gotten the full three talks. It feels like it's sort of the opposite problem of FE6 where instead of it taking forever to unlock really good supports, it's easy to unlock rapports and find some you'll love to only then find out it was the only one between certain characters.
That all said and done, while the story and characters won't be the greatest amongst SRPGs, I think it gets at least a respectable and enjoyable place among them, even if more could have been done.
For some remaining areas before we close off...
The music for this game is excellent. I do think that it does start off more tame, but once you get deeper into the game, it REALLY picks up. Especially for the boss battle themes as they're easily the highlights of this game's OST.
The presentation for this game is also fantastic and another highlight for this game. The art is great, especially for the character designs and the numerous backgrounds they created, making this one of the nicest looking games I've seen in a bit. Battles also flow nice enough (though I wish the speed up was the default speed for some animations to give them some extra oomph). The voice acting is also pretty great and some VA have some AMAZING line reads for certain spots. Also the food looks absurdly good, which seems to be a Vanillaware Staple that was fun to learn about.
In conclusion, Unicorn Overlord is a fantastic game. Granted, I do feel like it requires the right mindset given how different it is to other SRPGs most are used to, but it's truly a worthy game to check out. If you're unsure, on the game, there's a decently large demo that you can check out that I highly recommend. Unless something drastic happens with the games I play this year, this might be my favorite game in 2024.
Unicorn Overlord
Finished 5/4/24
As a fan of the tactics genre I sometimes have to face an unfortunate truth. I'm not really that smart. Denoting the tactics genre as something of an 'intelligent' genre isn't super productive or entirely all that honest but I think most people like to equate it as requiring a bit more patience and caution to every detail. The game of chess throughout history used as a paradigm of teaching tactical strategy, morality, higher thinking and the likes- unfortunately, in our middle school's gifted enrichment class I had the proud honor of being the 2nd worst chess player in our class ranking. I don't know, something about my planning functions just don't activate in the middle of a TRPG, sometimes becoming an issue in these tactical games. FFT, Capsule Monster Coliseum, Tactics Ogre- at least Fire Emblem's archetypal builds and borderline gambling chances have carved a niche in my brain as to how I proceed through those battlefields. It's a weird conflict of interest for me but one I enjoy wracking my brain with as the systems often take creative liberties to allow several different variables in handling their given puzzles. Leave it to Vanillaware to both alleviate on and twist the knife on this predicament.
Unicorn Overlord is a magnificent addition to the genre's canon, and would make a pretty good entry into the genre as of late, as Fire Emblem I feel has cornered itself in weird conflicting philosophies, in my opinion and other tactics franchises are mostly juggling through remakes at the moment. Ironic to recommend it as such given how much this game borrows from the canon wholesale, the gameplay is very much Ogre Battle 64, the world map and many plot beats reek of 16-bit Fire Emblem yet the later addition of Feather classes and Bestrals feel more akin to the Tellius titles. This is fairly typical for Vanillaware: Dragon's Crown, 13 Sentinels, Odin Sphere usually display their inspiration on their sleeve, although this still feels a bit more ‘prime’ for expansion but I'll elaborate later.
Props to Vanillaware having some of my favorite 'feel' in games. It's incredibly easy and satisfying going through VW interfaces. Something like 13 Sentinels being 90% narrative doesn't give you much to navigate, game-wise but even in a title such as that- it just feels smooth going through menus to find what you want. It should be a given that Vanillaware's attention to its art, its interfacing and music is top notch, just some of the best in the industry.
The world map is incredibly fun to explore, with the first nation providing a ton of features to interact with. Treasure maps, unmarked houses that give hidden items, different types of quests abound and town restorations to boost your renown, there’s a lot to clear out throughout Fevrith. I do wish later areas had more unique things to distinguish them, Drakengard gets a distinct coliseum but past that the latter nations feel a bit rinse and repeat. It's still fun to run around the new areas and there's some neat distinctions in later areas, Bastorias has a lot more harbors, Albion has goats? There's at least enough throughout the continent to explore and go back to once you acquire new units that can interact with certain markers, which freshens things up a little.
/////INTERMISSION///////
Selvie is best wife.
/////END INTERMISSION//////
I was worried the introduction of so many characters at once would have been an issue, and while it does front load you with several, several characters on the front end it more or less resembles a larger Fire Emblem title at around 70 characters (Radiant Dawn, Fates: Revelation and New Mystery range around 70-high 80s). It's still quite a lot, and not every character is an immediate winner but they've got some fun interactions and the amount of units you can use in battle allows for better expression of their character. This opposes certain titles like New Mystery of the Emblem, a game with several, several units at your disposal but only about 10 slots by the end game, 6 of which are pretty locked in, either for Marth/Kris or good ending requirements. Here, UO gives plenty of opportunity for you to build out self-sufficient teams as you unlock and expand your unit sizes and test them out in the main, side and liberation quests.
If Fire Emblem is a JRPG given a tactical playing field, Unicorn Overlord is a tactics programming game (apologies though, I have no experience with actual programming video games). Quite often I run into a situation where I throw a unit out into the battlefield, meet some friction and only halfway through a battle remember the spaghettified loadout I hadn't changed back from a previous battle. While the game has so many options and ways to customize your moveset, it only makes it easier to be bogged down by the potential of every variable rather than a clear solution. I do wish I utilized the loadouts more often, just to preserve a 'main' loadout and shift to certain other builds depending on the situation- didn't because I just, well, forgot…The game isn’t all that hard, not when you really get down into the meat of it all, but I admittedly felt pretty stupid at a lot of points trying to organize certain skills together only for the main issue to be something like character placement in a unit. Thankfully Vanillaware's ethos of providing a lot of items and secondary abilities somewhat mitigates sticky situations- it just kinda feels sillier when resorting to certain items for beating hordes of units when the outlook of a fight doesn't look favorable. The perfect result forecast is a godsend of a feature though, giving no hang ups as to how a battle might go but letting you know completely if you’ll get a good outcome in a fight. The only issue being its not precise in letting you know what damage or healing goes where, the results mostly act as a total ‘healing’ or damage so it pays to pay attention because too often i saw i was getting healed, went into battle only for a unit to take 16 damage and die but someone else to be healed 32 HP for a result of 16 healing, very perplexing.
At the very least this differs from my frustrations with FE: Engage, where I would often struggle with an in-game currency as to whether certain builds would be a waste of both time and experience. Here, it was more so just a confusion on smart, optimal, loadouts for certain units I probably didn't need battling certain other enemies in the first place. It admittedly took me a while to remember how exactly best to counter Wyvern Riders...
I do give props for the game utilizing various cliques/design elements from Fire Emblem's classes, although some of the same pitfalls apply as well. Bulkier, defensive units like Hoplites don't feel nearly as useful as Cavalier or Flying units- hell Cavelier units are certainly the best of the bunch here. Most every class is pretty alright though, I was able to make one of my units using Bruno despite seeing a lot of pushback on Gladiators, which might speak to how malleable and gameable the systems are here.
This feels like an odd inverse to Vanillaware's previous opus, 13 Sentinels, a title I honor in its densely layered, memetic entanglement of a narrative, but somewhat spartan in its tactical, wave management mode (fantastic music at least). Unicorn Overlord, despite its immense equipment-moveset-placement management and its abundance of items for tactical deployment has a fairly milquetoast narrative. It works, although I wouldn't say it strikes me as hard as some of my more favorite Fire Emblem titles or most of what I've played of FF Tactics. It's a bit hard to place as the game's heavy reliance on other games in the genre made it harder to really place my head separate from the parallels. Additionally, while I enjoy the methodical pace of going country by country to liberate Fevrith, many of the quests and fights began feeling pretty cut and dry rather than having a living, dynamic narrative that felt impacted by the progress of your crusade. You make a good chunk of progress through the mainland of Cornia, approximately freeing a quarter of the continent yet even with this massive chunk it feels a bit silly that there's still 4 major countries propping up these major occupants in the other nations. I guess there's mind-control-curse type shenanigans to fall back on for why you still need to go to each of the nations but it's funny when looking at the big picture. There’s a big lore drop around the last single digit percent of the game, and granted it's a neat explanation as to why the events have unfolded, it just feels too little for too late.
The main thing I want to impart is that this game is quite excellent on most fronts- it's perhaps a nation and a half too long though. The novels of the world, all the classes, the battling, the equipment swapping gets to be pretty redundant once you hit Bastorias. By then, a lot of the classes introduced start to feel like repeats of prior classes, a reskin of thieves, two reskins of archers, a hoplite reskin, etc. Looking closer these do have their distinct differences of course, some of which have better synergy than their compatriot but it feels harder at first glance to determine how to fit in these newer classes and playstyles, often I figure it best to just lump all of one region's new characters into their own unit and call it a day.
It is a shame, I doubt this'll see a sequel or follow up of any sort given that usually Vanillaware deals in one and done titles. While I don't necessarily want something on the same length, I think there's a lot that could be done to iron out some of the kinks of the unit/inventory management while expanding upon the way this interacts in the narrative. Nothing feels quite as good as changing that one variable in a loadout and making a battle go from a close shave to a complete trample, although by the third act much of the time it feels more like you’re plodding through useless trinkets for the specific battle while on the grand scheme of the game the fighting has stalled in narrative momentum.
I mentioned earlier VW's penchant to have games wear a patchwork sweater of references, and while UO isn't innocent of this I feel as though it not as ‘contained’ as something like a 13 Sentinels- a narrative that feels more open and closed by that game’s finale. I could earnestly see something at least in the same universe or style to Unicorn Overlord, although i don't know if they’d need to go through the same hoops as each FE continuity needing a ‘Fire Emblem’. Perhaps it's just that I felt left wanting a bit more on the narrative end, but I could go for another tactics title from Vanillaware, it checks a lot of things I’ve been wanting from Fire Emblem for a while.
Unicorn Overlord is a massive ordeal in tactical thinking, allowing for the customization of several cogs to trample armies, somewhat undermined by the ease of having so many options that forego needing to engage with the usual risks in the genre and running low on steam by the last continent.
Finished 5/4/24
As a fan of the tactics genre I sometimes have to face an unfortunate truth. I'm not really that smart. Denoting the tactics genre as something of an 'intelligent' genre isn't super productive or entirely all that honest but I think most people like to equate it as requiring a bit more patience and caution to every detail. The game of chess throughout history used as a paradigm of teaching tactical strategy, morality, higher thinking and the likes- unfortunately, in our middle school's gifted enrichment class I had the proud honor of being the 2nd worst chess player in our class ranking. I don't know, something about my planning functions just don't activate in the middle of a TRPG, sometimes becoming an issue in these tactical games. FFT, Capsule Monster Coliseum, Tactics Ogre- at least Fire Emblem's archetypal builds and borderline gambling chances have carved a niche in my brain as to how I proceed through those battlefields. It's a weird conflict of interest for me but one I enjoy wracking my brain with as the systems often take creative liberties to allow several different variables in handling their given puzzles. Leave it to Vanillaware to both alleviate on and twist the knife on this predicament.
Unicorn Overlord is a magnificent addition to the genre's canon, and would make a pretty good entry into the genre as of late, as Fire Emblem I feel has cornered itself in weird conflicting philosophies, in my opinion and other tactics franchises are mostly juggling through remakes at the moment. Ironic to recommend it as such given how much this game borrows from the canon wholesale, the gameplay is very much Ogre Battle 64, the world map and many plot beats reek of 16-bit Fire Emblem yet the later addition of Feather classes and Bestrals feel more akin to the Tellius titles. This is fairly typical for Vanillaware: Dragon's Crown, 13 Sentinels, Odin Sphere usually display their inspiration on their sleeve, although this still feels a bit more ‘prime’ for expansion but I'll elaborate later.
Props to Vanillaware having some of my favorite 'feel' in games. It's incredibly easy and satisfying going through VW interfaces. Something like 13 Sentinels being 90% narrative doesn't give you much to navigate, game-wise but even in a title such as that- it just feels smooth going through menus to find what you want. It should be a given that Vanillaware's attention to its art, its interfacing and music is top notch, just some of the best in the industry.
The world map is incredibly fun to explore, with the first nation providing a ton of features to interact with. Treasure maps, unmarked houses that give hidden items, different types of quests abound and town restorations to boost your renown, there’s a lot to clear out throughout Fevrith. I do wish later areas had more unique things to distinguish them, Drakengard gets a distinct coliseum but past that the latter nations feel a bit rinse and repeat. It's still fun to run around the new areas and there's some neat distinctions in later areas, Bastorias has a lot more harbors, Albion has goats? There's at least enough throughout the continent to explore and go back to once you acquire new units that can interact with certain markers, which freshens things up a little.
/////INTERMISSION///////
Selvie is best wife.
/////END INTERMISSION//////
I was worried the introduction of so many characters at once would have been an issue, and while it does front load you with several, several characters on the front end it more or less resembles a larger Fire Emblem title at around 70 characters (Radiant Dawn, Fates: Revelation and New Mystery range around 70-high 80s). It's still quite a lot, and not every character is an immediate winner but they've got some fun interactions and the amount of units you can use in battle allows for better expression of their character. This opposes certain titles like New Mystery of the Emblem, a game with several, several units at your disposal but only about 10 slots by the end game, 6 of which are pretty locked in, either for Marth/Kris or good ending requirements. Here, UO gives plenty of opportunity for you to build out self-sufficient teams as you unlock and expand your unit sizes and test them out in the main, side and liberation quests.
If Fire Emblem is a JRPG given a tactical playing field, Unicorn Overlord is a tactics programming game (apologies though, I have no experience with actual programming video games). Quite often I run into a situation where I throw a unit out into the battlefield, meet some friction and only halfway through a battle remember the spaghettified loadout I hadn't changed back from a previous battle. While the game has so many options and ways to customize your moveset, it only makes it easier to be bogged down by the potential of every variable rather than a clear solution. I do wish I utilized the loadouts more often, just to preserve a 'main' loadout and shift to certain other builds depending on the situation- didn't because I just, well, forgot…The game isn’t all that hard, not when you really get down into the meat of it all, but I admittedly felt pretty stupid at a lot of points trying to organize certain skills together only for the main issue to be something like character placement in a unit. Thankfully Vanillaware's ethos of providing a lot of items and secondary abilities somewhat mitigates sticky situations- it just kinda feels sillier when resorting to certain items for beating hordes of units when the outlook of a fight doesn't look favorable. The perfect result forecast is a godsend of a feature though, giving no hang ups as to how a battle might go but letting you know completely if you’ll get a good outcome in a fight. The only issue being its not precise in letting you know what damage or healing goes where, the results mostly act as a total ‘healing’ or damage so it pays to pay attention because too often i saw i was getting healed, went into battle only for a unit to take 16 damage and die but someone else to be healed 32 HP for a result of 16 healing, very perplexing.
At the very least this differs from my frustrations with FE: Engage, where I would often struggle with an in-game currency as to whether certain builds would be a waste of both time and experience. Here, it was more so just a confusion on smart, optimal, loadouts for certain units I probably didn't need battling certain other enemies in the first place. It admittedly took me a while to remember how exactly best to counter Wyvern Riders...
I do give props for the game utilizing various cliques/design elements from Fire Emblem's classes, although some of the same pitfalls apply as well. Bulkier, defensive units like Hoplites don't feel nearly as useful as Cavalier or Flying units- hell Cavelier units are certainly the best of the bunch here. Most every class is pretty alright though, I was able to make one of my units using Bruno despite seeing a lot of pushback on Gladiators, which might speak to how malleable and gameable the systems are here.
This feels like an odd inverse to Vanillaware's previous opus, 13 Sentinels, a title I honor in its densely layered, memetic entanglement of a narrative, but somewhat spartan in its tactical, wave management mode (fantastic music at least). Unicorn Overlord, despite its immense equipment-moveset-placement management and its abundance of items for tactical deployment has a fairly milquetoast narrative. It works, although I wouldn't say it strikes me as hard as some of my more favorite Fire Emblem titles or most of what I've played of FF Tactics. It's a bit hard to place as the game's heavy reliance on other games in the genre made it harder to really place my head separate from the parallels. Additionally, while I enjoy the methodical pace of going country by country to liberate Fevrith, many of the quests and fights began feeling pretty cut and dry rather than having a living, dynamic narrative that felt impacted by the progress of your crusade. You make a good chunk of progress through the mainland of Cornia, approximately freeing a quarter of the continent yet even with this massive chunk it feels a bit silly that there's still 4 major countries propping up these major occupants in the other nations. I guess there's mind-control-curse type shenanigans to fall back on for why you still need to go to each of the nations but it's funny when looking at the big picture. There’s a big lore drop around the last single digit percent of the game, and granted it's a neat explanation as to why the events have unfolded, it just feels too little for too late.
The main thing I want to impart is that this game is quite excellent on most fronts- it's perhaps a nation and a half too long though. The novels of the world, all the classes, the battling, the equipment swapping gets to be pretty redundant once you hit Bastorias. By then, a lot of the classes introduced start to feel like repeats of prior classes, a reskin of thieves, two reskins of archers, a hoplite reskin, etc. Looking closer these do have their distinct differences of course, some of which have better synergy than their compatriot but it feels harder at first glance to determine how to fit in these newer classes and playstyles, often I figure it best to just lump all of one region's new characters into their own unit and call it a day.
It is a shame, I doubt this'll see a sequel or follow up of any sort given that usually Vanillaware deals in one and done titles. While I don't necessarily want something on the same length, I think there's a lot that could be done to iron out some of the kinks of the unit/inventory management while expanding upon the way this interacts in the narrative. Nothing feels quite as good as changing that one variable in a loadout and making a battle go from a close shave to a complete trample, although by the third act much of the time it feels more like you’re plodding through useless trinkets for the specific battle while on the grand scheme of the game the fighting has stalled in narrative momentum.
I mentioned earlier VW's penchant to have games wear a patchwork sweater of references, and while UO isn't innocent of this I feel as though it not as ‘contained’ as something like a 13 Sentinels- a narrative that feels more open and closed by that game’s finale. I could earnestly see something at least in the same universe or style to Unicorn Overlord, although i don't know if they’d need to go through the same hoops as each FE continuity needing a ‘Fire Emblem’. Perhaps it's just that I felt left wanting a bit more on the narrative end, but I could go for another tactics title from Vanillaware, it checks a lot of things I’ve been wanting from Fire Emblem for a while.
Unicorn Overlord is a massive ordeal in tactical thinking, allowing for the customization of several cogs to trample armies, somewhat undermined by the ease of having so many options that forego needing to engage with the usual risks in the genre and running low on steam by the last continent.
Amazing game with a lot of combat depth. On lower difficulties, the game doesn't really force you to go TOO in-depth, but even on the standard difficulty the game definitely slowed down a LOT for me once I got past the first 3 areas just because there was so much to do with my units to organize and customize them as they got more skills and more AP/PP to use them. Unfortunately, you can kinda tell where they ran out of money (because Vanillaware) starting in the last main area, and the unfortunate lack of post-game shows it. But, at least there's some online PvP, even if you can only fight so many times per day.
That said, 2 legit flaws
1. While the character-writing is solid and way-less obnoxiously trope-y than Fire Emblem, especially the modern FE, the main character and his closest friends are utter cardboard. You can kinda forget how boring they are and get absorbed in the game, but come endgame the story sequences drag, being generic and predictable as possible.
2. Cavaliers not being the leaders of most of your units is almost always a mistake. Even when facing units that counter Cavs, they're still strong characters, and as leaders they're just twice as fast as any other unit. Which you can make up for with a skill that boosts movement speed, that makes the Cavs even just that much faster than the units that are on-foot. You don't really need to do this, but it's such a stupid advantage (especially with how it removes the time limit from ever being something you have to consider) and navigating the battle maps ends up feeling so slow without them. This removes a lot of the interesting decision-making around which character leads your units.
That said, 2 legit flaws
1. While the character-writing is solid and way-less obnoxiously trope-y than Fire Emblem, especially the modern FE, the main character and his closest friends are utter cardboard. You can kinda forget how boring they are and get absorbed in the game, but come endgame the story sequences drag, being generic and predictable as possible.
2. Cavaliers not being the leaders of most of your units is almost always a mistake. Even when facing units that counter Cavs, they're still strong characters, and as leaders they're just twice as fast as any other unit. Which you can make up for with a skill that boosts movement speed, that makes the Cavs even just that much faster than the units that are on-foot. You don't really need to do this, but it's such a stupid advantage (especially with how it removes the time limit from ever being something you have to consider) and navigating the battle maps ends up feeling so slow without them. This removes a lot of the interesting decision-making around which character leads your units.
game of the year 2024 contender so far for me personally
The game is fun; however, there is a big problem, the difficulty. The beginning up till the middle was amazing. It gave new classes that had new synergistic skills working with each other unit to make your own customizable kill squad, but eventually you lose interest altogether as you steam roll mobs and bosses with little effort.
The story was enjoyable but suffered from too many differing characters from each continent, that it made it more of an episodic game rather than an overall cohesive narrative.
The story was enjoyable but suffered from too many differing characters from each continent, that it made it more of an episodic game rather than an overall cohesive narrative.
Excelente en casi todos sus aspectos. Sobresaliente en la gestión de personajes/escuadrones, música y arte.
Por ponerle una pega, quizás el juego sea un pelín largo para mi gusto. Aunque me encantó, la zona final se me hizo larga y repetitiva.
Por ponerle una pega, quizás el juego sea un pelín largo para mi gusto. Aunque me encantó, la zona final se me hizo larga y repetitiva.
Great game but not the deepest game on some levels but amazing on so many levels, recommended for strategy rpg enjoyers
A beautiful RTS game, It feels like a game with a story similar to Fire Emblem but with a different concept. I really loved the world they built, and the map is wonderful. OST was great, the combat is predetermined so, sometimes, I found myself skipping battles instead of watching the amazing animations. I enjoyed the large amount of characters and their own stories, tough the main story is lacking until the end imho.
I kinda wished this game had a meatier story to it, but even with the tiny bit of story this actually has it took me over 70 hours to beat so maybe this was for the best. I suppose the team spent all of their energy working on the gameplay and didn't concern themselves with the story too much.
The gameplay is actually really good. It can be very satisfying and fun trying to figure out team compositions that won't end up with your guys just getting slaughtered. Figuring it out can be pretty difficult at times, but once you have some good teams the battles become very entertaining.
I did feel the game was getting to be a little too long at around the 60hr mark, and with the way every section of the game more or less feels like going through several "villains of the week" so to speak, in that you just go to a place, beat up bad guy and recruit more people, and not much else, well it was getting a little repetitive. But I thought it was all worth it because the last few battles of the game are some of the most entertaining ones.
Also gay marriage.
The gameplay is actually really good. It can be very satisfying and fun trying to figure out team compositions that won't end up with your guys just getting slaughtered. Figuring it out can be pretty difficult at times, but once you have some good teams the battles become very entertaining.
I did feel the game was getting to be a little too long at around the 60hr mark, and with the way every section of the game more or less feels like going through several "villains of the week" so to speak, in that you just go to a place, beat up bad guy and recruit more people, and not much else, well it was getting a little repetitive. But I thought it was all worth it because the last few battles of the game are some of the most entertaining ones.
Also gay marriage.
Another fantastic game by Vanillaware. I fun tactics game with a story similar to Fire Emblem. Really loved the world they built. Even with so many characters, most of them felt fleshed out. OST was great. Combat is predetermined so I found myself skipping battles instead of watching the amazing animations.
So many lovable characters with unique dialogue towards others, you could completely miss out on recruiting people just because you didn’t recruit another one. I was definitely elf pilled lmao. Alain and crew are definitely gonna be remembered, all 60 or so of them.
So many lovable characters with unique dialogue towards others, you could completely miss out on recruiting people just because you didn’t recruit another one. I was definitely elf pilled lmao. Alain and crew are definitely gonna be remembered, all 60 or so of them.
fun gameplay and great art style and animations.
as someone new to tactical rpgs (but not JRPGs) i found that even on "tactical" difficulty the game was a bit too easy - you can just throw units at an enemy until it dies. difficulty isnt really explored in this setting until the very end of the game where the final boss forces you to think a little bit about unit composition.
at the same time it felt a bit too long with too many encounters, many of them being "liberation" encounters which are pretty short battles. I wouldve preferred a smaller shorter game with less encounters , but with longer individual battles and more options within the battles to play with and optimize unit comp.
as someone new to tactical rpgs (but not JRPGs) i found that even on "tactical" difficulty the game was a bit too easy - you can just throw units at an enemy until it dies. difficulty isnt really explored in this setting until the very end of the game where the final boss forces you to think a little bit about unit composition.
at the same time it felt a bit too long with too many encounters, many of them being "liberation" encounters which are pretty short battles. I wouldve preferred a smaller shorter game with less encounters , but with longer individual battles and more options within the battles to play with and optimize unit comp.
Mainly got this to support Vanillaware without knowing anything about the title but ended up getting a very enjoyable game. This is a straight-forward no frills Strategy RPG and has a lot of the standard VW charm you would expect to see if you've played their other titles. The gameplay loop is VERY satisfying, organizing units and planning out team composition is great. Character art is great, music is great, and i love having an old-school 2D-esque overworld. As many others will say - the story is definitely a bit cookie-cutter, so don't expect anything revolutionary and don't pay the price of entry unless you just want to sit down and enjoy a 60-80 hour strategy game as there isn't much else going on in this title (i.e. don't expect something like 13 Sentinels).
Highly recommend for any SRPG fans!
Highly recommend for any SRPG fans!
There are heaps of interesting tactical decisions to make in designing your units to decimate the swordfodder obstacles in the way of you becoming The Nicest King Ever, but at least a quarter of the “skill” i built to play this game was “shuffling around pieces in your unit pre-fight to get a better RNG roll on the battle”. The preview screen holds a death grip on the entire combat experience: the information you are given is neither ‘perfect’ enough to do your own work, nor vague enough to allow improvisation and confidence to be your weapons, and so you ultimately have a black box simulator to press Go on when the numbers are good. I didn’t hate playing it, but from a theory perspective, this thing is not working to its potential.
And while I still have some qualms with 13 Sentinels’ plot despite enjoying it overall – considering its intricacy, I didn’t expect most every beat of Unicorn Overlord to be as complex as a butter sandwich. It is so, so flatly incurious about its characters’ interiority that it’s actually shocking. Every support conversation I saw was like a grey-boxed version of a scene that could be formulaic, but maybe charming too, if it were fleshed out – but they aren’t! The whole reading experience is at a level of cathexis and fidelity similar to a cheap flavored sparkling water.
The art’s execution is unsurprisingly good, though the character designs’ gender dimorphism is offputtingly consistent. Like, listen, I love Yahna’s b-cups, I’m not a joyless dyke, but if the women get to be this flamboyant and cheesecakey then why the hell do the men have no asses and stand like it’s their turn to play the xbox? Like at least give Ithillion some cheeks. It’s right there. Cowards. Anyway the HD2D by way of ‘overworld sprites illustrated like they could be pixelized but are left at full resolution’ is surprisingly good looking as well. also the mining minigame is weirdly satisfying. Overall I just feel worn down by the constant, tectonic level of friction between what the game could be, and what they actually did with it. (played on highest default difficulty, approx 130 hour final time)
And while I still have some qualms with 13 Sentinels’ plot despite enjoying it overall – considering its intricacy, I didn’t expect most every beat of Unicorn Overlord to be as complex as a butter sandwich. It is so, so flatly incurious about its characters’ interiority that it’s actually shocking. Every support conversation I saw was like a grey-boxed version of a scene that could be formulaic, but maybe charming too, if it were fleshed out – but they aren’t! The whole reading experience is at a level of cathexis and fidelity similar to a cheap flavored sparkling water.
The art’s execution is unsurprisingly good, though the character designs’ gender dimorphism is offputtingly consistent. Like, listen, I love Yahna’s b-cups, I’m not a joyless dyke, but if the women get to be this flamboyant and cheesecakey then why the hell do the men have no asses and stand like it’s their turn to play the xbox? Like at least give Ithillion some cheeks. It’s right there. Cowards. Anyway the HD2D by way of ‘overworld sprites illustrated like they could be pixelized but are left at full resolution’ is surprisingly good looking as well. also the mining minigame is weirdly satisfying. Overall I just feel worn down by the constant, tectonic level of friction between what the game could be, and what they actually did with it. (played on highest default difficulty, approx 130 hour final time)
The story is pretty straightforward and kind of cheesy but the game overall still has a lot of charm. Wonderful characters, amazing soundtrack and sidestories and extras that can even pull on your heartstrings. Plus the strategic combat and unit management is top notch. Definitely an incredibly enjoyable game. I would definitely recommend this to any fan of strategy RPGs