It’s not a stretch to say this is one of the most influential games ever. It still possibly has the best gunplay of any third person shooter. The pacing is excellent. There’s tons of variety. It still looks really nice. The story is really fun. This shit is firing on all cylinders. It’s also perfect for when you can’t think of anything else to play. It gets a little weaker at some points on the island, but given how consistently brilliant the village and castle sections are, I can excuse those faults. And the island is still mostly really good, anyhow.

Good game.

I was mixed on Bioshock when I played it back in 2007; this and Gears Of War were the first 2 games I bought with my Xbox 360 as they were the two games that you couldn't escape hearing about in regards to that console. But I found Bioshock a bit frustrating; for some reason I almost felt like I was playing it wrong or something... it just wasn't clicking for me like it seemed to be for everyone else. I think I even gave up during the final stretch of the game as I have no memory of the final boss fight during my initial playthrough.

Coming back 17 years later it smacked me hard over the head like a wrench - this thing aged insanely well. The guns feel great and chunky, and the plasmids encourage you to try different things constantly. It's so so easy to see how this knocked the socks off everyone back then, this is an amazing game for so many reasons.

The plot and all it's mysteries and twists got me engaged all over again, but there's two things I want to mention quickly here that blew me away.

1. The SOUND - my God... playing this with headphones is enough to make you think you're a Rapture citizen gone mad yourself. The noises of each room and location, the vending machines, the insane babbling and screaming, the haunting music playing from old speakers; hearing "How Much Is That Doggy In The Window" playing on a jukebox while a woman cries in another room and a man violently talks to himself in another, and you hear the pounding THUD of the Big Daddies walking around and making that low whale-call type groan they make... it's almost too overwhelming. When chaos erupts and there's several people shouting and bullets flying and shit is on fire and exploding and drones are buzzing around shooting people... pure madness, especially like I mentioned above with headphones on. The game sounds absolutely bonkers all the time.

2. Rapture as a setting has been talked about to death but every room, every hallway, has a purpose here, and it's been planned and structured and detailed to an almost painful level. It all makes sense as a city and doesn't feel video game level-y, if you scrubbed it clean of all the garbage and dead bodies and ruin that it's now in, you can picture it being this perfect idyllic city for capitalistic rich bastards to frolic around in. But my main thing I really noticed here this time is the complete lack of any outdoor area - for obvious reasons, but the fact that it's all big rooms, hallways, confined spaces, really sets it apart from almost every other shooter. There's always a roof over your head and just thinking about that makes you feel claustrophobic even if you aren't.

5 stars for this sucker, this playthrough made me see what everyone else has been saying for years, and I think age has helped it in a weird way. You don't often think of Bioshock when people mention the best horror games, because despite not really being scared at all while playing this, it's also easily one of the scariest games out there. And that's saying something

Unicorn Overlord is sort of the reverse of 13 Sentinels where instead of the strong emphasis on story and weak gameplay, Unicorn emphasizes the gameplay and less elsewhere.

The gameplay loop was quite addicting to me. There's a lot of freedom in being able to go wherever you want unless it's simple gated by a main story battle which isn't all that many. You can pretty much explore entire regions when you first enter assuming you're strong enough to "win" the fights against the wandering enemies in the overworld.

Repairing and developing towns are pretty simple, but oddly satisfying. Being able to see visual changes after you repair them is a nice touch.

The combat is different from typical SRPGs where you're fighting on grids and strictly turn-based. Unicorn has essentially 2 phases during combat. The first is very similar to RTS (with pause) games where selecting locations where to move the units. As they slowly make their way across the map, the battle timer and enemy units will continue to move. Going to the various menu will pause the game however so it's not too stressful.

Once a unit gets into contact with an enemy unit, the screen transitions to the actual combat scene where you'll see the two units duke it out. Their actions are based on the A.I. tactics you set for them. The fight ends when they have depleted all of the Passive and Active points regardless if both sides are still alive.

Most of the strategy during battle involves who to send out and where to send them out. You can adjust tactics and unit formation just before you initiate a fight. A preview of the results is handy to show if you need to make any adjustments. Despite allied unit actions are based on the tactics A.I., the tactics in Unicorn has decent depth to it so that there's a lot of flexibility and control over what the characters can do. It has a similar complexity and depth to FFXII's gambits.

The main victory condition for 99% of the battle is just to claim the enemy base. Along the way, you can claim smaller bases to establish different deployment locations. There's are terrain issues that needs to be considered as well as traps on the ground. Most maps aren't too complex, but are varied enough that I'm pretty satisfied.

A good chunk of the game time is in the preparation stage outside of the battle. Fine tuning tactics and unit formation including equipment is fun, but also takes up a lot of time.

Graphics is standard Vanillaware which is good. The 5 main regions have varied environments and are nice to see.

The soundtrack is similar to Basiscape's other works. They do sound good in-game, but there's only a few that were memorable to me outside of the game.

The story is one of the weakest parts of the game. It's simple, straightforward, predicable and isn't all that special. It kept my attention, but that's pretty much it. It doesn't really get much better after the early hours. Disappointing, but also expected based on the game structure.

I did enjoy the sidequest stories a little more since they are more character driven, but largely not that remarkable either. Many of the stories get resolved in just one battle and feels very isolated from the main conflict outside of the obvious connections.

The character bloat has left me with mixed feelings. I like nearly all of them, but they have little depth or character development. Rapport side conversations between the characters does help flesh them out more, but not enough for me. It's very much the quantity over quality when it comes to the character.

Despite my issues with the game, it is very fun and the emphasis on unit and character setups over complex battles is something I enjoy.

It's a pretty long game too since it took me 70 hours on Expert to clear every quest in the game.

For those wondering, the demo that covers the first 7 hours of the game is a very good indicator of what to expect for the remaining game. From the gameplay mechanics to the story beats.

I expected to enjoy this game but ended up being absolutely blown away by it. The core gameplay loop of traversing the world in an order mostly left up to your own choosing while slowing amassing an army full of colorful characters was incredibly satisfying and I never got tired of it. The battle system itself though is really what holds the whole experience together, it is incredibly unique and accessible while still concealing a labyrinthian amount of depth if you choose to embrace it. The variable amount of stage lengths really added a nice variety as well, as you usually don't feel stuck doing one thing for too long unless it's one of the more important moments in the story in which case I'll happily spend 45 minutes to an hour in a slugfest against an enemy army as this tends to be when your units are really put to the test and is also when your micromanagement done before the battle can really make a difference over the course of the stage.

Speaking of which, I generally would not consider myself a fan of micromanagement within video games but Unicorn Overlord really managed to enthrall me with it's sheer amount of class variety and items, both of which make a significant impact as to how a unit performs. Every few hours, I would pause what I was doing and restructure my unit layout from scratch just out of sheer curiosity as to how different units would synergize with one another. While this was often a bit time consuming it just made it that much more satisfying when those units managed to shine in the next battle. I think anyone who just uses the Optimize function to customize their units for the whole game would really be missing out on how good it feels to individually program a unit in a way where it suddenly performs significantly better with only a few tweaks.

As far as the game's presentation, it's Vanillaware, so it looks and sounds amazing. I'll always be a huge fan of their commitment to beautiful 2D backgrounds and character models both for the artistry and because it results in games that are pretty lightweight and snappy (I played the entire game on a 7 year old Nintendo Switch and it ran smooth as butter the entire time). I especially loved some of the animated battle backgrounds as they really immersed me within the experience and managed to give a grandiose scale to the encounters that isn't always evident when moving units around the battle map. The user experience also felt consistently fantastic and I really have no complaints other than that I wish you could 'Optimize' your equipment without resetting all of your Skills as well but you can work around this pretty easily using the tactics templates so it's not a big deal.

If there was a place to nitpick with Unicorn Overlord, it would definitely be with it's story, and I can agree that it feels pretty by the numbers a majority of the time but I honestly appreciate how much it respects your time by not constantly beating you over the head with the same plot details over and over again like a lot of JRPGs have the bad habit of doing. I also found it to do a great job of worldbuilding by establishing the world through the characters you meet along your journey. While these characters may seem to lack depth on first meeting, spending time with them and utilizing the journal to learn more about their background can really bring them to life in a stellar way. If there was something within the story that I felt was missing, it would've been a few more encounters with the central villains though I did enjoy the air of mystery that surrounds them throughout most of the game as is.

I did a complete 180 on this game, and I'm glad that I gave it the chance. I went from absolutely hating the way it looked in all of the trailers, to mildly interested when the reviews came out, to hooked and 100% completing the game on Expert mode. I have put like 55 hours into my initial playthrough, and did everything you can do on the initial playthrough, save for maxing out all of my units or grinding every rapport conversation. Here's my thoughts after my first run of the game.

I'm going to get the unpleasant comments out of the way first; I don't think this game's story or OST are its' strong suits. I think that the story is serviceable, and a nice homage to Fire Emblem 1 in a lot of ways, but honestly I think the overarching plot of this game is very not good. There are some decent moment-to-moment scenes in the chapters themselves, but I found myself pretty much over the story by the end, as the twists it throws at you are just piss poor. The music is inoffensive on the other hand; but only a few tracks really stand out to me as something spectacular. They don't really carry any emotional weight to them, but sound neat sometimes.

That's the other negative I have; I don't feel like this game handles its emotional core very well. Any and all moments that should feel extremely emotional resulted in characters acting like water being poured into more water. I feel like a lot of the time the game is more telling me how characters are feeling rather than letting me see them behave in a certain way on screen. Granted, some of this might be limitations of the presentation, but if that's the case, then why go with that presentation at all? I know it's kind of VanillaWare's thing after 13 Sentinels but idk I feel like sacrificing the emotional core for aesthetic is a bad choice. I'm merely speculating about that though, I have no clue as to why the game actually is like that.

Getting to what I liked about this game; I was addicted to the combat as soon as the tutorial ended. Getting to mess around with the gambit system and trying to maximize damage with a certain squad is so enjoyable to me. There was at least four points in the game where I just completely nuked all of my units and rebuilt them from the ground up because I unlocked a new character/class and wanted to see how they'd work. There is a great level of customization, even down to a super granular level, and I liked that a lot about this game. You could even change the color scheme of any character you want, as well as their stats, even if not by that much. Unicorn Overlord has so many abilities, it's dizzying. I spent hours of my initial playthrough just reading abilities and seeing how they interact with each other in mock battles. Speaking of which, that is another cool feature. The mock battle feature is fucking awesome because you can lab your own created teams against your other teams to see how well they can cover certain things, and I found that extremely cool.

Gameplay aside, the character design is fantastic in this game. I carefully avoided saying that I disliked the presentation earlier when I was talking about the story and music, as I actually quite like the characters and animations. There is a great mix of ages, backgrounds, personalities. I think overall, this game's characters and their rapport conversations are the best thing the writing has to offer. I found a lot of gems in some of the conversations, which shocked me, because it did prove that they know how to write. I was wanting more of that to be in the main story, especially as going and watching all of the rapport conversations got to be a chore with how often I was changing up my teams. I think that is my last little gripe; I wish the gifting system didn't just work for Alain, and that you could give gifts between allies to unlock their rapport convos, as save for a few teams that were pretty consistent throughout my playthrough, I barely got even a quarter of the conversations.

Despite my initial hesitancy towards this game, I'm glad I took a shot on it and ended up playing it. The strategy and teambuilding gameplay was firing on all cylinders, even if the story seemed to take a backseat for most of the game, leaving me to wonder if this was a test run for another game down the line. I really hope that VanillaWare and Atlus try another game in this genre, as even after pouring almost 2 weeks into playing this, I wanted more. I will definitely be keeping an eye on these teams a little closer going forward, as they've definitely piqued my interest with this title.

I just absolutely adored this game and could not put it down. I love tactics games and this unique turned based hybrid real time was just perfect for me.

Lets start with the story. There are some good twists overall but it's a pretty simple fantasy storyline of good vs evil which I really enjoyed. The characters are great and I love how involved with the story most of them are. They also have dedicated support conversations for every characters which fleshes out all the characters nicely. You are able to choose a partner in marriage which plays a big part in the story with a nice fully voiced proposal scene. The support conversations reminded me a lot of Fire Emblem which you can see this game has heavy inspiration from.

The gameplay as I mentioned combines turned based strategy with real time. Throughout the game you will earn honor points which let you upgrade how many units each battalion can hold. You only start out with 2 units per battalion but you will eventually get to twelve units with 5 characters per. This sounds confusing but it all gets introduced slowly and is easy to wrap your head around. You move these battalions in real time but can pause at any time. You setup what characters and what type of moves you want them to do most often or for specific circumstances. There is a ton of customization and it's a lot of fun to experiment. They have a bunch of different difficulty options which give you different levels to find your perfect comfort zone, and it can be changed whenever.

The world map is the biggest and best surprise about this game. It is fully interactive with tons of resources and secrets to find. Each village you build up with increase your honor score and then you can assign a guard which will auto gather resources for you. The graphics are just gorgeous in typical Vanillaware fashion. The characters always look great and the battles are super flashy.

Overall I just adore this game and can't say enough good things about it. Vanillaware you did again!

Unicorn Overlord is an amazing strategy RPG that shines with its gameplay, art style and writing.

The gameplay is the star of this game. You get up to 10 groups with 5 characters each. The units reach from infantry to cavalry - mages and archers - wyvern riders and shamans. The variety is absolutely insane and you can switch and change those up as you want. For each character you can set Gambits - when to use what ability under which condition, for active and passive skills. When attacking an enemy army, those play out in an auto battle form.

The gambit system is so deep and so much fun that you can experiment and change things up for hours. Problems in a fight? Rearrange your units, change the gambits and attacks and the outcome will be in your favour. You also have the Valor system - skills you can use out of battle to increase your attack, your EXP, do damage before the fight or special movement skills like teleport - plus hundreds of items that can be used before a batte starts.

There is an open world that you can travel around in, with multiple towns and cities that you can rebuild to get rewards. Main and side missions are on the map and will be played out on parts of the map. None of the missions are too long, all of them are crafted beautifully and each one offers different ways to tackle it due to the map design.

The art style is absolutely fantastic, every character has so much charm to them and the animations are beautiful. The music is also great and ranges from peaceful overworld tunes to great battle music.

The weakest part is the story. It is not bad, however it clearly is just the frame for the gameplay itself. You play as Alaine, the prince that got robbed of his homeland, trying to claim it back from the evil forces. Very basic, no big twist and turns, straight forward story that is still fun to follow due to the great writing and localization.

Same applies for the characters. In my 70h playthrough I got 50+ characters that all have their small, great stories + bonding events between most of them. But a lot of them fall flat because there are just too many characters for the time you have with them.

Overall Unicorn Overlord has become my favourite SRPG and I highly recommend it for every fan of the genre and anyone who wants to try a SRPG for the first time as it is super beginner friendly aswell!

Vanillaware take a shot at the strategy genre with Unicorn Overlord, a game boasting the “rebirth of the tactical fantasy genre”. A bold claim to make but after managing to get me to enjoy tower defence gameplay with 13 Sentinels, could Vanillaware cook up something that captured my imagination again?

Well on the gameplay front this is a fantastically well put together game. The bulk of the gameplay sees you take on real time strategy battles where you command your units on a map to capture locations and defeat enemies in combat along the way. Each of your units are made up of multiple characters (starting at around 1 or 2 and able to be increased to a maximum of 5) and battles see two units clash going through a set of initiatives and objectives you can set (like what kind of attack to prioritise, when to heal, etc) and whichever unit loses more HP is knocked back and stunned for a set amount of time, allowing you to capitalise or be put in grave danger depending on if you win or lose. Setting up each of your units is immensely satisfying as you unlock more and more characters giving you more and more options to play about with. Which character is your leader can make a huge difference too, with flying units able to fly over terrain and mounted units moving much faster than other units.
Map set ups tend to be quite small and simple for side chapters but the main ones are much larger, seeing you require to take multiple different points and split up your units to effectively progress through each battle. There’s a time limit on each map too, so managing and using your units effectively is a key part of battles. There’s a lot to consider as more mechanics get added to the fold like ballista and catapults, barricades, and even spiked traps to navigate round. The bigger maps are a lot of fun to play through and remind me a lot of how Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War plays with how you need to manage your units effectively on massive sprawling maps, only your units are all moving at the same time in Unicorn Overlord, offering a much more fluid experience.
Another aspect to battles are Valor Points, earned through winning combat and capturing locations. These can be spent to summon more units to battle from your maximum of 10, but their main use is special abilities you can use. For example you can use Arrow Rain to rain arrows on your enemies causing massive damage without engaging in combat or Gravity to slow enemies down. You can only hold up to 10 Valor Points at a time and each action can cost between 1-3 points so you have to manage your use of them effectively and on top of that, enemies can use these moves too so there’s a lot to be aware of.
So yeah, on the battle side of things Unicorn Overlord delivers an immensely satisfying experience that can be a lot to take in and understand but once you’ve wrapped your head around it, Vanillware’s earlier claim starts to make a bit more sense.

The game is structured in a very open way, where you are free to traverse the world map that is the continent of Fevrith and its many nations, taking part in liberating areas as you go. The only thing really preventing you from fully going anywhere is the enemies being much higher levels than you in areas but you can totally stumble upon the final battle very early on if you so choose. Traversing the overworld has a few side quests to take part in like mending bridges or visiting resting areas and each town requires deliveries to fix them up. Doing these and battles will grant you Honors which can be used to unlock more Units, more spaces in your Units and promoting characters. You’re limited on how far you can expand your Units and stuff by your renown which also goes up as you do these tasks. It’s a nice break from the battles but it is mostly busywork. What is cool though is that every battle takes place on this world map which helps make everything feel interconnected and as you explore the map, you’ll uncover it in your map screen which really tickles my brain in a way that made me explore 100% of the map because I wanted to uncover the whole thing.

Surprisingly for me, the weakest aspect of the game was the story and characters which I wasn’t expecting when that was the strongest aspect of 13 Sentinels. What we have here is a very generic fantasy tale where Zenoira has conquered all of Fevrith and now it’s up to our blue-haired lord Alain to build an army and rebel against Zenoiran rule to free the people of Fevrith. There’s clearly an inspiration from Fire Emblem with some of the character archetypes, like Josef being our early pre promote Jagen or Hilda being our red haired Dracoknight Minerva style character. There are a lot of cool unique races too here, with angels, elves, and beasts which is really nice. Ultimately though, the story didn’t really hook me, the characters didn’t do much for me, and everything felt like it was lacking depth, like very little was explored beyond the surface level. Each nation has a few important characters but outside of their relationship with Alain’s nation of Cornia, they don’t really have much of a relationship with each other. So many of the enemies and characters you meet along the way are mind controlled and so don’t really have much motivation for why they’re fighting against you and after the early portion where our main villain Galerius captures Scarlett, he doesn’t really show up again until the finale. I think a large problem with the narrative is the open ended structure of the game as it doesn’t allow for a natural flowing story and instead all you get is a little set up for each battle and a little conclusion and everything feels a bit too loose and disjointed. The localisation does a great job at trying to liven things up with colourful dialogue but ultimately they were given so little to work with and even the supports between the characters couldn’t hook me in enough. My favourite characters tended to be the ones that did well for me in battle like Fran and her group. I will say there’s an interesting reveal towards the end for Galerius’ motivations which was actually pretty good stuff but yeah, aside from that, there’s little here that I can say was memorable for me.

The big problem with the generic story is that the incredible gameplay can only carry the game for so long before it starts to run out of steam and feel a little repetitive. Towards the 25-30 hour mark, after clearing through Elheim and starting Bastorias, the game started to lose its charm for me. My character set ups were pretty much set in stone, I had seen basically every gimmick the maps were using and the story had long since lost my interest. It results in the game feeling like it’s longer than it needs to be. Like 20-30 hours, I think is a good runtime for a game like this, where even if the story isn’t that appealing, the gameplay is generally enough to carry a strategy game like this throughout a 20-30 hour experience. Unicorn Overlord took me around 50 hours to beat. Almost doubling the time where I had felt fatigued with the games loop. Now it did pull me back in towards the end, reaching Albion and getting a bit more interesting story stuff with Scarlett being back home was cool but I still think the game is a bit too long for its own good.

Getting back into the positives, Vanillware really does know how to deliver a beautiful looking game. The 2D artwork is similar to their previous games and everything is well detailed and animated, running well on the Switch (the platform I played it on) with no issues. Some of the female characters are unfortunately a little over animated in some areas which is a shame but outside of that the game looks and runs beautifully. The music is also well done, crafting excellent battle tunes and atmospheric exploration music.

Unicorn Overlord is a fantastic strategy experience held back by a generic story which makes the game feel like it drags on at points. Getting to grips with its in depth gameplay, experimenting with the many different possible unit set ups and engaging in the hour plus long story maps offers a brilliant experience that few games in the genre can match. While it does run out of steam around halfway through, I think if you can push through that then there’s still plenty to enjoy with this one.

Vanillaware i thank you for the meal. They once again did not miss. An excellently crafted SRPG with fun characters, good music, and of course, fantastic visuals. All of this formed to create a game that asked a very bold question: what if Genealogy of the Holy War was good?

Honestly despite the format obviously being different, that's not a joke. This game very much feels like FE4 in some ways and given the devs' obvious love for Fire Emblem (Alain is literally Marth), it makes sense for there to be some interesting similarities. The battles all take place on the overworld itself. The terrain that you see, the areas, that's what you're fighting on. The goal each time is to capture the enemy's main command post while defending your own and capturing outposts in between. It manages to convey that epic warfare feeling and actually gives weight to the whole "liberating" thing. I found myself looking to each battle and i legit started getting a bit disappointed when i knew i was running out of fights. Because it's just so good. The sheer flexibility that's on display here really allows this game to be replayed an endless amount of ways i think.

What i really like about the combat is that the battle forecast tells you exactly what will happen in that instance. It makes sense, given the sheer variety of factors that go into determining an outcome. Because the stages are real time, there's more that goes into the strategy than simply just parking your gigachad unit in a good spot and having enemies suicide on them. While there's normally no permadeath, the game still discourages suicide tactics since stamina limits how many times a squad can attack. Squads with zero stamina can't move, which isn't something you want happen to you in a real-time game. The enemy also plays by these rules though. Honestly, that goes for pretty much the entire game. Save for specific bosses, i don't think there's anything the enemy has that you don't.

Continuing on the gameplay, the classes all rock. Well almost all of them. But even the worst ones still fill their niches quite well and certainly have more versatility than Fire Emblem classes. For example, Armor Knights can actually do things. And the thing that helps all this versatility is that each class has both skills for in and out of combat (that is, map effects). For example, Armor Knights can negate damage taken from out of battle effects. Archers can make arrows rain down for AoE, bypassing enemy defenses because it's on the map. Witches can teleport the whole squad. There's quite a lot.

This write-up honestly doesn't cover all of it. Play the demo to get an idea.

When it comes to writing, there is a bit of a divide here. Is the writing as good as 13 Sentinels? lol no. 13 Sentinels' is still Vanillaware's magnum opus when it comes to storytelling. That said, there's a lot of elements to like here. The cast of characters is great and memorable and i like the game's take on Fire Emblem's Support system more than how Fire Emblem does it. I think Fire Emblem could learn something here, as Unicorn Overlord doesn't force it's Supports to completely stretch each conversation into the full CBA chain. I haven't gone through all the convos yet but i don't think there's a single character i dislike here. I also think the director is incredibly based for allowing every recruitable character to be recruited in one run. The game is inspired by Ogre Battle but not it's cryptic as hell character recruitment methods.

The game also has pretty good worldbuilding. You can get that through the convos, the Side Quests or just reading up the logs. Basically every location, however big or small, gets an entry and it does a good job at making the world feel alive. On the visual aspect, each country is very distinct from each other. I believe that visuals itself can serve as a form of worldbuilding, just look at Xenoblade. All of these elements, in my opinion, help support the main plot. The main plot itself is pretty basic but this is one of those games where you really don't get the full experience if you only stick to the main plot.

I really don't have anything really negative to say about this game. I do have a few minor nitpicks however. The Tactics system, as robust as it is, could've had a bit more specificity to it. And for how much control over things you have, a Path of Radiance-style "commands" system that you can give to AI controlled units would've helped. I also think it's kinda noticeable that the game ran out of money towards the end. In an interview they explained how they kept adding more and more recruitable characters which i feel kinda explains why a lot of the recruits are frontloaded into Cornia and Drakenhold. The Albion arc in particular is very short. Ironically, it's maps are probably the longest.

Vanillaware cooked, just like how they cooked all that delicious food in their games, good God, it's all gorgeous. I'd ask for a sequel to like, iron some stuff out but Vanillaware doesn't even do spiritual sequels so honestly, i'm ok with how this turned out. They spent 10 years on this game, ran out of money in the process, but it's ok because they put out an absolute banger. Want an FE4 remake? Just play this instead.

As a fan of vanillaware games and strategy games I knew I'd enjoy this title. While I found the story to be okay and definitely not as strong as their previous game 13 Sentinels it did well for what it was trying to do.

I think the high point of the game is the gameplay, what starts out very easy ramps up slowly and ultimately gets a bit tricky towards the end was awesome. The gameplay loop of picking units, sending them to battle, and reaping the rewards was such a comforting loop that I kept wanting to play more. Setting units up with their skills and equipment was kinda overwhelming after awhile but the optimize button helps in a pinch for some of the less useful units. Some of the fights were huge and I would have loved to see more of them but honestly I was happy with most of the fights. If you want a game with an addicting loop and not an intensive story then try the demo, you can play up to 7 hours of it.

A wonderful amalgamation of several different tactical genres, Unicorn Overlord is an excellent triumph. Combining elements from Fire Emblem, Suikoden, and Ogre Battle, the game manages to slam those ideas together to form a truly unique experience that I did not think I would see again anytime soon.

Tactical and real-time with the ability to pause at any second, each map consists of several enemy units to defeat, bases to liberate, and characters to sway to your cause. Fine-turning your squads as they grow in size and strength is the bread and butter of the game, and I've never been more enthralled to dig through menus to see it happen. Equipment loadouts, unit positioning, and mastering how the battle system works is a joy that isn't front-loaded with tutorials and endless chatter, but more of a basic explanation and a willingness to try new combinations out to see what works.

Battles take place automatically, based on initiative speeds, and what attacks or buffs each unit preforms. There is a special kind of thrill to be gained from setting up a unit to preform all their best moves and take minimal damage and watching it play out with perfect success.

Like Suikoden before, there are MANY characters in the game that both join your army automatically or have to be persuaded through your actions. All of them are beautifully unique and fully voiced, making building of your battalions even more exciting. The artwork, both on character models during dialog and battles and on the world map, are both stunning and charming. Vanillaware has always been kings of beautiful character designs and it's absolutely no different here.

The main gripe within the game is the story. It's not that it's bad, it's just that it's boring. It falls into many tropes you've seen play out in film and other video games with elves and beast/human hybrids, a super evil bad guy and his second in command super evil wizard, and other less than stellar story beats. Alain, the protagonist, is likely one of the most vanilla leads I've ever seen, just 100% the nicest guy you'll ever meet and never has a bad thing to say about anyone and everyone loves him 24/7 with little to no complaints. It's a thrill to recruit a new member, but sometimes the people that join you would have killed you ten seconds earlier, but Alain said two sentences about helpin' the little guy and saving the country and suddenly all is forgiven.

You can also build relationships with your entire crew, akin to Fire Emblem, which improves their stats in battle and gives you small scenes between each of them when certain benchmarks are hit. It's a nice addition, especially if you share beautifully drawn meals that always look delicious, but a lot of dialog also falls into a repetitive nature, especially if Alain is involved, as he'll just wax poetic about whatever the other person likes and use flowery language to cover up for somewhat stale storytelling. You can romance people as well, but it amounts to very little unfortunately. It's a nice touch and will somewhat change how you need to approach the final battle, but otherwise it's a bit lacking.

Overall, the gameplay, strategy, and tactical prowess of this entry far outstrips the lackluster story. The difficulty on Normal is a pushover, so cranking it up is highly recommended if you want more of a challenge. This is one of the closest things I've seen to Ogre Battle 64, one of my all-time favorite games, so it has a lot going for it when it comes to the gameplay elements. If a sequel or second game in this style is made, all they need to do is improve the story and I'll sing their praises until I die.

I have to admit to having a certain bias towards Unicorn Overlord, and it's not just that I love Vanillaware. They're perfectly capable of putting out mid. (Guess exactly which games I'm talking about! If you're wrong I'll fill your bed with ants.) It's just that this is maybe the hardest Vanillaware has come for me specifically, as a person who loves old-school Fire Emblem. And also they came for me by putting Berengaria in it.

I'm going to be the smartest person on this website and not preface everything positive I say about the game with complaints about the story. Bitches see a simple, sincere fantasy RPG bursting with deliberately old-fashioned charm and be like "why did the developer forget to put in as many weird plot twists as they did in their sci-fi/mystery De Facto Visual Novel? Are they stupid?" The game is extremely effective at creating the ultra-specific vibe and tone that I associate with pre-Awakening Fire Emblem, but I honestly can't do a deep dive into my feelings about that without it becoming a long, terrible, disjointed, off-topic rant on which I've forbidden myself from going here, you're welcome. The point is, the writing (in tandem with overall presentation and particularly excellent voice direction, not that that's a thing Fire Emblem has ever had outside of maybe SoV) is in fact a huge part of why the game is an absolute delight to me. They know exactly what they're doing: feeding a niche that's been starving for years.

That said, none of them involve the words "boring" or "clichéd" but there are more interesting things to critique about the story. It is, in all fairness, a genre staple but UO does go heavier than most on being, just, relentlessly monarchist as a narrative--they're very much channeling Kaga here. (Do not be misled by my enthusiasm for specifically old-school Fire Emblem including a couple of the Kaga games, Shozo Kaga is fucking wack.) All the worldbuilding around Bastorias is also... look, we're gonna keep drawing Fire Emblem comparisons here, this was clearly an attempt at doing Tellius that falls really flat, although not as flat perhaps as a race of bunny people who were almost completely exterminated by the protagonist's own father and the one you recruit doesn't even care about that and it literally never comes up in the plot again outside of the one conversation with her and it only comes up in their supports as setup for a repetitive joke about how they want to breed a lot, get it they're bun[We apologize for this long, terrible, disjointed, off-topic rant about Fire Emblem Awakening. The reviewer has been tranquilized and will resume writing at a later date. Thank you for your patience.]

So the gameplay! Unicorn Overlord is a game with a vast breadth of different experiences you can get out of it based on what you put in. The core mechanics have a level of depth that can trap a certain kind of person on menu screens weighing their options for hours (this is a good thing), but the difficulty settings offer enough variance that you can either autopilot through it without understanding a damn thing or be absolutely required to master the system, to your preference. I didn't bother trying the lowest difficulty setting, but normal mode is already quite easy if you're getting absorbed in the strategy. The highest (starting) difficulty, on the other hand, is a hell of a jump--I think anyone who's complained about the gameplay being basic or too easy definitely didn't try changing settings. I won't pretend I stayed on it for most of the run--I basically 100%ed the game as I went along and ended up spending about 90 hours on it, which makes a challenge level at which you're routinely resetting battles a big ask. The game is also just not overly susceptible to being boring when you are having an easy time, since at least on normal you do still have to put together pretty strong units to keep cruising when you get to the later story maps. But I'm definitely cranking the difficulty up and committing to it when I inevitably replay the game a ways down the line--whenever I did dip my toe in, the tension was fantastic and all the mechanical depth felt heightened by how much more important it was to optimize.

A big reason I spent so long on the game is that even the overworld is honestly pretty great. It's shockingly big and dense. It's also just explorable enough for the process to be really addictive without feeling like a grind or a distraction from the main gameplay loop, and it's rewarding to do a lot of exploration because the economies for both gold and the secondary currency, Honors, are nicely balanced. Even doing basically everything, I never felt rich enough that I could just grab up everything I wanted in a shop without thinking about it, and it took right up until the end of the game before I had maxed out my unit slots with Honors, which freed up the remainder for weapon upgrades.

Oh, I did also really want to talk about the upgrade system! The idea of one in a strategy game sounded dicey to me when I first saw upgrade materials available in a special shop, not having encountered the game's only blacksmith yet, but I actually think it's genius. You don't gain access to the mechanic until the late game, and it accomplishes a lot of interesting things while also being rock simple: no matter which weapon you're forging, the upgrade just makes its stats equal to those of the highest tier of weapons (which can't be forged). This means getting to the smith is a huge explosion of new and powerful options, since you've been collecting weapons with useful secondary effects that fell off in terms of stats throughout the entire game--a thing that the game could do, making new equipment feel constantly exciting and juicy while maintaining an increasing power curve, because they knew the smith was coming and everything would be useful again in the end. Crucially it also rewards players with hoarding instincts, a moment of karmic catharsis that SRPG fans have had coming for decades. It's a relatively small part of the game, but it really stands out to me as a design masterstroke.

Probably the low point of the game is, just, everything related to what I guess I have to call the marriage mechanic. The fact that you can kind of a little maybe if you squint almost have Alain marry another man but not really is an extremely valid critique that I feel somewhat strangely about considering I mostly just think the game would be improved by not having a ludonarrative Marriage Mechanic at all. Sorry for still being salty about Fire Emblem, but I can just about, somewhat charitably, rate Alain average as a Lord. The last thing he needs is to moonlight as a fucking Avatar. And, true to Fire Emblem Avatar romances, even Alain's straight options that are actually explicitly confirmed are perhaps the blandest, most lifeless pieces of romance writing in the developer's catalogue. Still, as much as I'd rather just sidestep the romance, it must be said that I don't think Vanillaware realizes how gay their core audience skews, which is funny for a studio that made its name with a sexy anime opera about doomed romances between people with self-worth issues who can't decide how they should feel about their parents.

That's the heaviest ding I can give it, but I still think Unicorn Overlord is easily top three material from one of my favorite developers. It's a simple, nostalgic aesthetic experience layered on top of a vast, freeform, addictive tactical gameplay loop that can be as accessible or as crunchy as you choose to make it and, I think, will prove incredibly replayable for a game as long as this.

And don't let anyone fool you, this is peak fiction.

Unicorn Overlord

STORY
I feel the story for Unicorn Overlord overall us good. I wouldn't call it experimental or ground breaking in anyway. Liberate the world from the evil people. It's lore and world building is pretty interesting. I liked the things you learn late game.

The story is separated kind of into sections for each country, with Cornia housing the finale inside. But clearing each other country is its own act of the story sort of.

Drakenhold was pretty great. I enjoyed following Gilbert, Berengaria, Virginia etc. And the villains were good.

Elfheim I didn't think was as strong but I still enjoyed. Rosalinde, Eltolinde were fun to follow and the villains were good.

Bestorias I felt was the weakest section easily. Yunifi and Morard are good but following them wasn't particularly interesting. The magic blue plot device I had little interest in. The Tellius style beast people racism felt very unexplored and uninspired. The final villain and last moment were good though.

Albion was pretty great. Waiting this long to follow Scarlett, a character from your starting party was great. Her interactions with the angels and religion of Albion were good. Nigel was great as well.

The finale was good. Nothing too special there but satisfying enough. There's a bad ending apparently I want to check out.

Overall it's a fine story. I'd tier it in good among other SRPGs I've played.




GAMEPLAY
Man, I know this is similar to some SRPGs, tactics ogre I think? But I haven't played aby like it. Interesting playstyle with a real time unir management system instead of a turn based or priority based grid system. Definitely took an adjustment from my Fire Emblem brain. But when it did it really took off.

Managing groups of up to 5 units who all have skills and items and weapons that great different effects in battle, man it's really satisfying. Forming perfect groups of units, changing them up for certain battles, changing their tactics and gear ooh. Tickled my brain all the time. The maps all play well and are good. None I'd say were bad or gimmicky.

Levels were manageable. I never felt there was a sudden level jump. You always had battles to do at your level. And if you didn't the grinding maps and exp item rewards are super easy to do to catch up your units.

Overworld management was a great way to have something to do after battle. Restoring the cities helped gain money, renown and honors. All important resources. There's tons of different shops and quests and systems to obtain different items and unlock new things to do. One issue I'd say is you get like 3 sets of I'll call them "legendary" weapons. But their base damage is kinda all in the same ball park. And while they have different effects they're not big enough to warrant using one or the other. I guess it's fine cause you have so many units but idk. None felt particularly special since they all functioned mostly the same.

I didn't use every unit and every class. But all I used were all fun and had a role. I never thought one was too weak or too strong. I think Berengaria's and Hilda's were my favorites.

I love the mercenary system. Being able to hire generic units to fill roles and gaps in your army is amazing. I love you can customize their growths, color palette, pick a name and voice. It makes them really personal. I had a cav mercenary named Bruce who I kept till the end cause his voice was Kaiji Tang.

Overall amazing gameplay with TONS of stuff to do and explore. Super impressive stuff.



CHARACTERS
While the story may be only good. I enjoyed a lot of the characters a ton. Characters you follow in the story like I mentioned in that section are great. As well as others you get on the side. My stand out favorites would be Josef, Tatiana, Eltolinde, Hodrick, Renault, Gilbert, Scarlett, Primm, Melisandre and Berengaria, who I married. I'll check out everyone's rapports and Romance scenes eventually. But everything I saw of most of the cast was good.


MISCELLANEOUS
The music is great. The visuals are really good. From the colors and lighting of each scene to the character designs. I loved them a lot. A great English voice cast with new voices to me and iconic actors.

Unicorn Overlord was great. A 58 hour journey that really captured me with its gameplay and provided a good enough story and great cast to keep me engaged. I hear the studio is thinking about making a sequel. If that's true I'll happily take more. What a good time.

Deeply satisfying to set up your autobattler-Roombas and agonize over their every maneuver, running the numbers on each encounter ahead of time. The overworld shortcuts and crazy crit builds hint at some really cool speedrun tech I'm excited for.

Plays it disappointingly straight narratively, but you already knew this game had delightful character designs and stunning environments pouring out of every scene. Even the score swept me away sometimes - particularly in the overworld night themes and at the end.

Completed on Expert, and while I had to fight tooth and nail to see credits, I did it!