I’m not a huge fan of tactical RPGs, so I was pretty taken back by how much I enjoyed this game. I was drawn to the art style and decided pretty quickly after trying the demo that I wanted to give the full game a shot.

The visuals in typical Vanillaware fashion are stunning and make watching battles and traversing the map a great time. The characters are wonderfully designed and it makes building your army and viewing their interactions a real treat to behold. The 2D style combined with the detailed environments and settings make the game feel both classic and modern simultaneously which is pretty impressive.

The combat is set up in a way that your units and their formations are the key. Each squad designates a leader and can hold up to 5 units by the endgame, and each of these units interact with one another by utilizing various classes each with their own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, you have plenty of your standard archetypes like soldiers, cavalry, archers, mages, clerics, etc. as well as some more advanced ones like flying units, shamans, beasts, and plenty others. The battles play out when squads come in contact with those of your enemies, and the outcome is decided before the fight begins allowing you to strategize which of your squads you send to which locations depending on what you’re facing. It’s very intricate and there’s a lot I won’t go into, but just know it’s a good time and there is a lot of room for skill expression and team building that keep things interesting.

It’s a story about liberation and camaraderie with Alain, a prince setting out to free the kingdoms from an opposing force. You’ll visit a bunch of areas and recruit characters from these nations to join your cause and ultimately face the threat, so the story is pretty bog standard as far as that goes. It’s fun and the characters are mostly well written and keep things moving, but it’s not really the biggest strength here if I’m being honest.

If you enjoy RPGs and beautiful visuals I urge you to give this one a shot, even if you’re like me and generally don’t gravitate toward strategic gameplay. It’s accessible enough to where you shouldn’t have a hard time and features difficulty settings you can switch between at any given time.

Vanillaware rarely disappoints and this entry on their catalog is no different - this is a great strategy / tactics game with beautifully hand-drawn graphics, solid OST and interesting game design choices & feedback loop.

For anyone who haven't played it or want to try a tactics game, this game is a must, a solid entry that scratches the itch left by classics such as FFT and Fire emblem.

This game will keep you hooked for most part of it, however there are a couple of things to note:

Pros:
- Exceptionally beautiful graphics.
- Solid soundtrack, with a few bangers that really stand out.
- Good gameplay loop, you'll be hooked to come back and keep expanding.
- If you enjoy min/maxing equipments and strategies of your units, this game is for you. You'll probably spend more time in menus rather than in-battle (which is a good thing if you like those things, that's why I'm listing it as pro).
- Fully voice acted.
- Interesting character stories and development through rapports and epilogues.
- A LOT of love and affection put in this game through development, you can see on every detail, graphic and decision they made. Which make this stand out as a product in a sea of modern garbage.
- Relatively easy (also a con).
- Solid tutorials.
- Expands on the tactics/strategy formula with a couple of new ideas that are interesting and work well.
- Interesting equipment and accessories which quickly let you experiment with different builds.
- Options to free/absolve or execute a captured enemy leader and recruiting him/her on your side.
- Lots of side quests to expand and improve your choices and characters.
- Creating and combining units, min/maxing them is fun.

Cons:
- Each continent you are required to clear becomes quickly very formulaic, they repeat the same patterns and challenges with different skins. This leaves the game feeling a bit shallow and uninspired. After a couple of hours you already know what to expect from each continent and there are very very few twists along the way.
- The battle system is good but as soon as you get the grasp on how unit combinations work, you rarely "watch" the battles again because there's no real incentive to do so unless you want it for fun or to learn what's going wrong on your strategy/composition.
- The stages are 80% similar with few twists or having the IA surprising you with a different strategy rather than rushing head-on against you. The major stages (related to main quests) are a bit of exception on this.
- Sometimes you'll have to grind materials a bit if you want to liberate every town or complete all bridge-quests. This is not a real issue but the grind becomes old easily.
- The story is not exceptional, it's very basic and straightforward. The game tries to build a intricate politic system and different conflicts but fails to really develop them more than the obvious.
- VERY formulaic in some other aspects rather than the continents as I mentioned before. Examples: many many scenes where a soldier/scout warns the military enemy leader that you are coming and the enemy leader going "heh, I was waiting for this...let them come". Which becomes old and uninspired quickly.
- The normal/hard difficulty aren't that challenging. I haven't played on NG+ though.
- Some units combination suggestions are made through NPC dialogue at the overworld map, however it would be nice to have an in-menu game chart or something simplifying their synergy.
- Enemies and bosses in general don't pose a challenge (with the exception of the final boss and the final battle in the coliseum, which if you know a bit of some mechanics you can cheese through it).
- Pacing drags a bit, Vanillaware's games suffer from this notoriously - you'll always will be tasked to go through a series of probations and things you need to collect which gatekeep you from accessing the big bad. In this sense, this game sometimes feels tiresome and you'll be thinking "Oh God I enjoy this game but I want it to end already".

Great game nonethless, one of the heavy hitters of 2024 if you like jRPGs.

One of the best japanese SRPGs I've ever played. While it may not be the best in terms of challenge, as a whole package it's phenomenal. The combat is a culmination of multiple games brought together and then refined to a phenomenal degree. The amount of classes and skills you can unlock as well as the multiple accessories and gear on top of multiple side quests throughout the world makes the flow of the game almost perfect. There was never a moment when I was thinking of what to do since there was almost something to do at any moment. Completing every quest and getting all the side content weapons didn't even feel like a choir, it just felt natural. For me at least what puts this above most other Japanese SRPG's is the level of customization. From the gear to appearance and party compositions, I just love having a bunch of options.

Alain is a fucking chad. Obviously, the theme of the game means death is a must but it's so refreshing having an MC who is nice and virtuous but won't hesitate to kill if/when it needs to be done. Him being stoic yet vocal makes him feel more "real" than plenty of other J/SRPG protagonists. He fits the role of a king despite his young age and that almost solely has to do with Josef. The story is pretty generic and filled with plenty of fantasy troupes but the massive roster of characters makes it to where a lot of the troupes are irrelevant.

This is definitely sitting among the best SRPG's made and having few expectations made the experience all the better. The gameplay, music, and art are just so good and fun.

Also,
1. Berengaria
2. Berengaria
3. Berengaria

Over the couple weeks I spent playing this game I could not stop thinking about it. It's a mindworm. You lie in bed trying to sleep, but all your brain does is think about unit composition and synergising your tactics.

The art is great, the voice acting is good, the story is serviceable. But the gameplay, the systems, the progression... It's all perfect.
The drip-feed of new units, items, and enemies keeps you on your toes and encourages constant innovation. The details of how each character's traits and synergies interact with one another makes this the most complex game of rock-paper-scissors I've ever experienced.

My only gripe with this game is I wish there was more of it, like an endgame gigadungeon or something along those lines that could keep escalating the challenge and continue the drip-feed of new ways to minmax my army.
Not a bad complaint for a 70 hour game which unlocks a meaningfully harder difficulty after beating it. I've already started my second playthrough.

Very addicting battle system, beautiful design all around.

Story is the age old lost prince trying to reclaim his birthright, but it is very well done. The writing, although Alain's choices are not up to you most of the time, is well written in terms of motivations for all characters - you may not agree with them, but you are able to see their perspective (also why Alain would deal with them as he does - again, most of the time).

The little choice the game has results in you failing to recruit some people, but that does not change the story is any meaningful way. What does change it is your choice in whom to marry, and although it is a nice touch with different epilogues for the chosen romance, it is overall lackluster.

The rapport system seems to have been abandoned halfway through, since a fair amount of the characters have only 1 conversation out of the possible three, and even less with other characters. That becomes even more of an issue when you propose to someone that has barely any romantic interactions with you (most have none at all).

In terms of the overarching story that is also an issue, albeit a minor one - the map is divided in 5 different regions, and the first three are well written. However, Bastoria (to the north) feels like a gigantic sidequest with little relation to the plot or to why you're even there. And Albion, to the west, has a somewhat disappointing ending with a forced recruitment of a villain.

The ending of the game is VERY much copied from fullmetal alchemist, which is not a bad thing, but it is what it is. There is a nice roaming event after the ending in which you talk to all of your companions too.

To sum it up, Unicorn Overlord is a very good game that could have had maybe another year to polish mainly the story and rapport aspects of its final regions. But, even without that, it stands as a flagbearer of its genre and a landmark for future titles.

Completed Unicorn Overlord, 43 hours in, on normal difficulty, finished post-game side quests, explored 100% of the map, and somehow managed to recruit the missable character at the end.

The developer seems to be a fan of Ogre Battle and pondered how to bring Ogre Battle gameplay into the modern world. They sped up the gameplay, improved the quality of life, and added more anime girls. No wonder Yasumi Matsuno (the creator of Ogre Battle) invited people on Twitter to buy the game, hoping Square Enix would realize there's a market for this genre and remake Ogre Battle (SNES) and Ogre Battle 64.

I slowly grew to like the character designs, and the gameplay loop got me hooked. The preparation feels like tuning a car in a racing game, constantly swapping components to fit the situation of the arena and opponents, from formations to unit roles, weapons, and accessories with additional skills, even setting up gambit-like strategies for skill usage that can drastically turn a losing situation into a victory. The game itself is quite easy, especially with the universal item access and lack of delay in item usage, which I find quite broken (additional note: formations can be adjusted when withdrawing, which helps when NPCs become part of the crew, and weapons can be changed mid-game!). And what I liked the most in this game is that grinding is easy; trials can be spammed, exp books are given, and grinding during battles feels satisfying in terms of progress, although I feel there's a level cap.

The rest, in my opinion, is average. The story and writing are below standard, with many unexplored potentials here and there, which is surprising considering how amazing 13 Sentinels was (and apparently, they were developed in parallel, so it seems they had different writing teams). The music isn't memorable, although there are some good OSTs during the prologue/final boss stages. It's funny because Hitoshi Sakimoto (Ogre series, FFT & 12) was the lead composer in 13 Sentinels, but not here (although it's still Basiscape, Hitoshi's company, that's handling it). For a war game, I feel the enemies are too passive, watching us snowballing until the end. And this passiveness is also felt in the game, as when we can station guards in towns, it turns out to be just for collecting resources around the town without any resistance/invasion from enemies. As for resources, they're mostly for delivery, and the only resource I find worth collecting is Fevrite, which makes all weapons in the game relevant in the late game.

I think a big minus is also the choices that are too black and white, kill or mercy? If you kill, you sometimes get a reward, but with mercy, you definitely get a unit. So, mercy it is! This is without any interesting consequences to the story, etc., something I was really hoping for when I first played the demo.

Despite the drawbacks, this game is full of charm, and I truly got addicted to playing it nonstop until I finished it during the holidays, which rarely happens. My score: 8/10.

Using the ashes of Grand Knights History to fashion their own take on the Fire Emblem genre, Unicorn Overlord is by far and away Vanillawares most robust and conventional game to date. But in attempting to make a grander, more traditional game it feels like they left alot of their unique charm and patented storytelling on the cutting room floor. Its quietly upsetting that the monkey paw curls for every game Vanillaware makes.

For me personally, I think this “big world” thing was generic as hell and I would have rather had this really cool combat system implemented into something more linear, so that the quality could be maximized in both sides of the game. Their unorthodox storytelling wasnt something they needed to change, and it feels like this endeavor might have been a large waste of their limited resources.

Resident Evil 2 Remake marks my first proper foray into the Resident Evil franchise ever since I'd given Outbreak a couple minutes of my time back when I was a kid and I must say: RE2 blew my aged expectations out of the water.

Coming from predominantly 'mow-them-down' zombie games like Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Dead Island, Dying Light, and other games of the like: I was expecting a similar style of game where I'd go from location to location mowing down zombies and getting the occasional jump-scare; but upon my first excursion into RE2's Racoon City, it was immediately clear that this was not that type of game.

Met with zombies whose heads took more than a fair share of bullets to put down, an immersive atmosphere and sound design that kept me on feet, and great level design that encouraged and rewarded exploration -it was made abundantly clear to me that this was nothing like the zombie games I'd played before.

Resident Evil 2 is first and foremost a game of choices. Not the type of choices you'd make in a Telltale game, but the kind of choices you make in a survival game. Resources are sparse (especially if you play Hardcore like me) and how you use those resources will affect your experience.

Do you mow down every enemy you see as soon as you can? Well I sure hope you won't need that ammo any time soon. Okay you're not killing those zombies over in Hallway B to save ammo but what's this: you're suddenly being chased by a monster you can't kill and your only escape is Hallway B... what a predicament.

Oh you've found some wooden boards? Well those would be helpful to cover up the broken windows. Oh you don't have enough boards to cover up all the windows? I wonder how you'll decide where you should use them.

And for me it is these choices that made Resident Evil 2 so enjoyable. I couldn't just run around mindlessly gunning down everything I saw, running from location to location, solving puzzle after puzzle. I had to understand the area, understand my surroundings, and properly think out routes to ensure I was never put into a bad situation. It got to the point where I felt like I understood the area just as well as Leon or Claire would- like I was learning alongside them.

Speaking of Leon and Claire brings me to probably my only negative point about this excellent game, and no the issue isn't the characters or their respective stories. My main issue with Resident Evil 2 is easily how it handles its dual-campaign. While I thought it was awesome in theory, it was ultimately a disappointing execution.

The dual-campaigns lack story cohesion, are filled with numerous plot-holes, lack interactivity between the protagonists, and I think it ends up being more of a detriment than a positive addition to the game. I personally enjoyed their respective exclusive content, but the areas that are 're-treaded upon' between playthroughs are logically inconsistent and wholly a missed opportunity.

I wish they either would've had one campaign where you simply swapped between Leon and Claire over the course of the story, or that they would've allowed for your first playthrough's actions to have effects on the second run. Like if my Leon decided to not burn through all his ammo and left it in the item box, then Claire should be able to use those resources. Likewise if my Leon ransacked the whole area and used all the loot, it should end up being harder on my Claire who now has less resources to play with.

Ultimately I think that the plot holes, story contrivances, and gameplay limitations in the dual-campaign make it more of a negative than a positive -even if I still had a good time. I think that there was a lot of potential there that was unmet and that the game would've been a lot better off if it was just one campaign with protagonist swap-overs. This would've made the overall story more cohesive and would've potentially allowed for more interaction between Leon and Claire -something I think was sorely lacking in RE2.

However despite my gripes about the dual-campaign, RE2 was a really fun and interesting introduction to the world of Resident Evil and has definitely made a fan out of me. If the idea of a slower paced horror exploration zombie game is in any way interesting to you, I'd highly recommend trying out Resident Evil 2. It's damn good.

4/5

Very dated but I still enjoyed it a fair amount. For some reason I can pretty easily play mediocre PS2/3 era games and have a lot of fun with them.

The first thing you notice about this game is how hard it's trying to be PlayStation's answer to Halo. The gunplay is functional, sure, but the health regen is awful and the difficulty is pretty all over the place throughout. Some levels feel like slogs where checkpoints are few and far between, and some levels take about 5 minutes. None of the guns are particularly interesting for a sci-fi game, but the weird setting is still kind of cool.

I found it pretty enjoyable that this game took place in a set of British towns and cities you never really see in games. It was a bit strange to do a Halo warthog mission at Cheddar Gorge. The level design was pretty cool, visually, but the gameplay is just nothing to write home about.