One of the best ubisoft open-world games ever made, funnily enough. And yet.
Unicorn Overlord starts strong--it doesn't waste your time jumping into the meat of the game, putting you in the world and basically telling you "go ham" on liberating the nations from the Evil Empire. This ends up playing out like those Ubisoft games I mentioned--the various towns you liberate are 30 second long puzzle fights that are actually quite endearing, which act as towers that mostly unlock the surrounding area. You have a set of pretty tedious things to collect in each region just like that, it ends up being very checklist gaming.
And this works for a while, but the difficulty tuning is just way off. I played on the hardest difficulty before NG+ and it was trivial to do content 20+ levels above me because the power scaling goes crazy if you actually try even a little to do content.
This is also hampered by an actually atrocious story. It's somehow both overwritten and underwritten at the same time, using a thousand words to say something that has the content of ten. I was actually shocked by how literally every plot and subplot is like, the lamest most overly-played out trope of whatever that plot is. There is not a shred of intrigue to be found in the moment to moment writing nor the grand narrative at play, and yet the cutscenes just take it so seriously and feel like they want you to.
It honestly made me hate it all the more. I'm serious, if this game completely removed the narrative and made it play out more like Total War or X-Com or something where you have a vague objective, it'd be significantly better.
The saving grace is of course, the actual game. It's an interesting mix of Super Auto Pets-style trigger setting to create a doom machine with Fire Emblem as an RTS that has infinite amounts of space for clever players to work with. Of course, the issue as I mentioned before is the game doesn't really utilize it. I am by no means a "clever player", I'm a fucking ape in these sorts of games, but even my monkey brain "well if i put three of the cavalry guys who get a 'all cavalry get +50% strength' skill in a party surely its good" was able to literally blitz through the game.
It's good enough that I played through the rest of the game just to see what it was doing. What I'd really like to see is a Unicorn Overlord 2 where they actually push the battle system harder, make you think a little. And maybe actually try and write a story, its not like we don't know Vanillaware can't--13 Sentinels was literally their last game!
Unicorn Overlord starts strong--it doesn't waste your time jumping into the meat of the game, putting you in the world and basically telling you "go ham" on liberating the nations from the Evil Empire. This ends up playing out like those Ubisoft games I mentioned--the various towns you liberate are 30 second long puzzle fights that are actually quite endearing, which act as towers that mostly unlock the surrounding area. You have a set of pretty tedious things to collect in each region just like that, it ends up being very checklist gaming.
And this works for a while, but the difficulty tuning is just way off. I played on the hardest difficulty before NG+ and it was trivial to do content 20+ levels above me because the power scaling goes crazy if you actually try even a little to do content.
This is also hampered by an actually atrocious story. It's somehow both overwritten and underwritten at the same time, using a thousand words to say something that has the content of ten. I was actually shocked by how literally every plot and subplot is like, the lamest most overly-played out trope of whatever that plot is. There is not a shred of intrigue to be found in the moment to moment writing nor the grand narrative at play, and yet the cutscenes just take it so seriously and feel like they want you to.
It honestly made me hate it all the more. I'm serious, if this game completely removed the narrative and made it play out more like Total War or X-Com or something where you have a vague objective, it'd be significantly better.
The saving grace is of course, the actual game. It's an interesting mix of Super Auto Pets-style trigger setting to create a doom machine with Fire Emblem as an RTS that has infinite amounts of space for clever players to work with. Of course, the issue as I mentioned before is the game doesn't really utilize it. I am by no means a "clever player", I'm a fucking ape in these sorts of games, but even my monkey brain "well if i put three of the cavalry guys who get a 'all cavalry get +50% strength' skill in a party surely its good" was able to literally blitz through the game.
It's good enough that I played through the rest of the game just to see what it was doing. What I'd really like to see is a Unicorn Overlord 2 where they actually push the battle system harder, make you think a little. And maybe actually try and write a story, its not like we don't know Vanillaware can't--13 Sentinels was literally their last game!
stovetop
1 month ago