The dark horse of tactics game and the best JRPG of the year so far.
I had low expectation towards the game. But, that eventually paid off and rewarding with the fun, unique and addicitng tactical gameplay and the heavy customization and management gambit setup for the 60 recruitable characters. The story might not be the most groundbreaking one. it may be a basic plot, but it doesn't take away the fun of lore-building with its "good vs evil force" scenario. it was a pretty well-executed plot with a satisfying conclusion through the endgame.

Here we are with another very clear labour of love and passion from Vanillaware, the studio known for their distinct, charming artstyle and refusal to settle on any one genre of video game. Unicorn Overlord is an RTS-with-pause type of game where battles take place on sections of the overworld map you run around on. You have Valor Points which you can use to dispatch units or use special abilities, and you must direct them around to take over key points of interest and eventually the enemy Command Post while protecting your own. Each unit is comprised of up to five members on a 3x2 grid, and the further you progress into the game, the more soldiers you have to pick from - and boy are there a lot of them.

It starts off following the general premise of Fire Emblem RPS with an FF12 gambit system on each member of a unit to determine who will do what and when. Someone take damage? Have your cleric target the lowest % HP member, but only if they are below 75% if you want to be more conservative with your healing. Or what if an enemy unit has wyverns and knights? Make sure your archer's arrow attacks prioritize the wyverns for maximum damage. There are a ton of conditions to choose from, and thankfully the game will pick out some typical logic for you when a new soldier or ability is unlocked, but those with the know-how and strategical mind could really break things open even on harder difficulties. Most units will have a weapon slot and a couple accessory slots, and maybe a shield plus something extra when you promote them. Of course, most of the good equipment will also come with bonuses to number of actions you can take, or new abilities, or just stat bonuses so there's a lot to think about in that regard too. There's something like 60 named characters in the game to recruit, as well as generic units you can hire and customize at forts as well so there's plenty of room for flexibility in how you want to play. There are definitely some foibles to the combat like manipulating RNG being both trivial and baffling, but as the difficulty curve started to ramp up I found myself completely tearing down my formations to remake them a couple of times throughout the game. Ultimately RNG can screw you over less so long as you make a good unit and put it in the right situation. As someone who is experienced with tactical games but not a genius, I felt like the second hardest difficulty gave me just the right experience.

Outside of combat on the world map, you will find yourself running around from town to town, doing side quests, collecting resources, and restoring towns in your efforts to build up your army. Restoring a town will let you access all of their facilities and station a guard there, and after every battle a stationed guard will collect resources from the region. Some cities will feature boats you can take to secluded shores, as well as taverns where you can feed your soldiers and build up rapport with them for special scenes (think Fire Emblem's support system). Most characters will have 1 or 2 partners who they will have scenes with besides the main character Alain, and Alain has 2-3 scenes with most other characters so there are a LOT to unlock if you want to see them all. In general, I feel like it's been quite some time since I've seen a new larger budget game come out where you are controlling a little guy running around the overworld a la early RPGs like Final Fantasy 1-9. It's charming, and really makes me feel like this was made by people who were really fond of that era.

The overall plot is.. okay. I guess it's partially on me for going in with certain preconceptions of recent stuff I have played, but for the most part, the central conflict is not a tale of political intrigue. The direction of the story is revealed fairly early on, but I would not go into this expecting something like Triangle Strategy, Tactics Ogre, or perhaps even Fire Emblem. I would say the main plot is honestly closer to Dragon Quest than any of those, where you're travelling around the land defeating evil with the ultimate goal in mind of defeating the big bad antagonist. It's totally fine, and admittedly a fair number of side quests do have some meat to them in that respect, it just wasn't really what I was expecting. Still, I will hand it to them for how many characters there are in the game, a whole lot of them are memorable from the charming Knight of the Rose Miriam, to the obsessive Melisandre, to the complicated Tatiana, they really did make a good effort to have most characters feel distinct. I felt bad that I didn't get to have them all deployed in my army at a time. The english dub/dialogue was quite good too, with care put into the distinct styles of speech and demeanour in each country you visit.

Still, for all the plot's shortcomings, it genuinely concludes wonderfully and there's plenty to do outside of it. My platinum trophy clocked in at around 95 hours, and it was just the nice slow burn, evenly paced game that I needed. For fans of tactical games such as those I mentioned previously (or even Valkyria Chronicles), I highly recommend you not overlook Unicorn Overlord.