Rating of
4.5/5
Spiritually Successful
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/30/24
“Unicorn Overlord” is the latest High Fantasy effort to come out of Japanese Indie studio, Vanillaware, following on the successful releases of titles such as the PlayStation exclusive “Dragon’s Crown” and “Odin Sphere.” However, in the years since Vanillaware got its start as a niche developer of niche PlayStation exclusives, the entire concept of ‘PlayStation exclusives’ – and, indeed, exclusives in general – has become a bitter pill to swallow, limiting a given game’s potential audience and relegating titles to a limbo state of planned obsolescence, with Sony deigning to order up remasters (or re-remasters) from underlings at its whim.
Instead, starting with their previous game, “13 Sentinels,” Vanillaware has become a bit more proactive, releasing that title on a Nintendo platform for the first time. Apparently that experiment went well for the studio, as they chose to expand their reach even further, with “Unicorn Overlord” coming to PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox consoles… still, sadly missing a coveted Steam release.
I have loved Vanillaware ever since the PlayStation 2 era, where I took delight in their whimsical Fantasy worldbuilding and bodacious female character designs in equal measure. Though, occasionally, I chafed at less-than-ideal gameplay mechanics that, while never actually ruining the overall experience, prevented most of Vanillaware’s game releases from reaching the highest levels of perfection. Thankfully, in spite of Kotaku’s best efforts to shame the studio out of Western releases and Modern Audience trend-chasing taking games in the entirely wrong direction, studio founder, George Kamitani, has picked an excellent successor in neophyte project director Noma Takafumi, who shepherded an entirely original game to market in exactly the way George would.
Presentation
Vanillaware made its reputation based almost entirely on the incredible hand-painted visuals in their games. Every Vanillaware title is almost entirely 2D and sprite-based, even this far into the 9th Generation, employing numerous layers of stacked 2D assets to create an unparalleled sense of lifelike movement, both in characters and environmental backgrounds. The studio’s other claim to fame is the cast of gorgeous people (of both sexes) who populate their game worlds, with at least one female character sporting head-sized chest-melons, another with a dumptruck booty, and another with a perfect hourglass figure (along with svelte prettyboys and chiseled beefcakes on the men’s side). “Unicorn Overlord” doesn’t deviate from Vanillaware tradition, and does an excellent job of reassuring those of us who are troubled by modern Industrial Gaming character design methodologies that, yes, there are still artists working in gaming who know that sex sells and who can (and will) paints attractive people to populate Fantasy worlds.
Audio in “Unicorn Overlord” isn’t quite as impressive as the visuals, but is, nevertheless, well done. The soundtrack wasn’t done by Vanillaware in-house, but was instead outsourced to another Japanese Indie studio, Basiscape, which does nothing but videogame music. Like most of Vanillaware’s past efforts, “Unicorn Overlord” is fully voiced by a cast of non-celebrity dubbers. My one nitpick about the game’s voiceacting is that so many of the female characters sound so similar that I was shocked to see that they were all performed by different actresses in the end credits.
Technically, “Unicorn Overlord” is incredibly solid. Of course, it’s a console game with no PC version, so it has better damned well be solid! Unfortunately, it isn’t perfect, as I did experience one weird glitch where the sound became corrupted and I could only hear static instead of the soundtrack. A simple quit to the Switch main menu and relaunching the game fixed the issue of course… but this is a console game that I was forced to buy on a console cartridge, so any issues are more noticeable and less forgivable. Other than that one hiccup, I can’t complain, as the game is complete and playable offline, without patches, and has no major DLC or add-ons to drive up the final cost.
Story
“Unicorn Overlord” is set in a fairly generic High Fantasy world based loosely on medieval Europe. There are elves, dragons, and beast-men (called ‘bestials’) inhabiting the world alongside humans, but no dwarves or other common Fantasy races.
The game opens with a scene in which the player directly witnesses the fall of the Kingdom of Cornea to the leader of the Zenoiran Empire. Our hero, Prince Alain, is but a child at the time, and is spirited away by a trusted servant of the crown, only to grow up in exile, always knowing that it is his fate to strike back against the ever-spreading Zenoira conquest and free his homeland.
Flash-forward 7 years, and teenage Alain is well into his chivalrous and knightly training. However, he and his allies are forced into action when a fleet of Zenoiran soldiers docks at the last safe place in the world, threatening the prince’s safety. After a quick battle with the leader of these Zenoirans – a man who once served the Cornean crown faithfully – Alain discovers that a mysterious unicorn-shaped ring, which he thought was a mere keepsake from his mother, the queen, has the power to break the fowl enchantments that the Emperor uses to turn comrades against each other. Armed with this knowledge and with his hideaway compromised, Alain is forced to launch the Cornean Liberation Army… which ultimately ends up being a global liberation movement, since the Empire controls the entire known world.
Unfortunately, while the narrative in “Unicorn Overlord” is well structured and features moments of amusing character development between members of the notably large cast of recruitable characters, its very genre betrays it. “Unicorn Overlord” is, ultimately, just another iteration on the High Fantasy war story pioneered by J.R.R. Tolkien, and more recently iterated upon by George R.R. Martin. There are very few shocking or surprising moments in “Unicorn Overlord” for anyone who is even passingly familiar with the genre, and while there is a dedicated system to track the relational affinity between ALL of the main characters, even these more intimate or personal interactions feel stale and limited by the game’s overall narrative scope.
Because there are so many characters in “Unicorn Overlord” and it’s possible to recruit a huge number of former foes simply by showing clemency, the overall narrative thread that runs through the game reminds me a lot of the typical storytelling style in the ‘Suikoden’ games… only with less running around looking for recruits, since an operation with a footprint as large as a Liberation Army simply draws important people into its orbit.
It took me around 65 hours to experience everything “Unicorn Overlord” has to offer, which I felt was a good playtime, if only slightly padded with a handful of repetitive side activities.
Gameplay
“Unicorn Overlord” is a Tactical RPG… but it’s a weird Tactical RPG that incorporates a handful of real-time elements. Furthermore, instead of doing things like a typical TRPG where the player directs a handful of individual single-character units across a grid map, in “Unicorn Overlord” the player directs units consisting of up to 5 characters across fully analog maps in real time, with terrain playing a significant part in where units can move and how quickly.
When a unit controlled by the player and an enemy unit come in contact, the player has a few options at their disposal before initiating the battle. It’s possible to use consumable items right before a battle, rearrange the player’s unit formation, or – if another friendly unit is close enough – swap two units’ positions for a more favorable outcome. Once a battle between two units actually starts… that’s it. The player has no direct input on what characters do in battle, and battles will always play out the same way based on how the units are setup. The upside of this hands-off approach to combat is that it’s possible (and preferable) to skip over the hand-animated characters duking it out and just get the pre-determined results. The downside is that it’s entirely possible that moving characters around on their 2x3 unit formation grid will drastically shift the outcome of the battle – in either direction – while giving the player very little clearly laid-out explanation of why such changes will lead to different outcomes.
Building units in “Unicorn Overlord” is about mixing Active and Passive skills. Each character starts with 2 AP (active points) and 2 PP (on your smock), and can have a maximum of 4 of each type of point, with increased point capacity coming entirely from equipment. Characters also have around 10 skill slots that work a bit like the Gambit system in “Final Fantasy 12,” where higher skills on the list take priority over lower skills, but each skill can have up to two conditional modifiers applied to it that might make it take a lower or higher priority based on the situation. While every character gains a set of skills as they level up based on their class, other skills are attached to equipment, and are added to a character’s loadout when that given piece of gear is worn.
Each character class has strengths and weaknesses to other character classes in a kind of lopsided and wonky take on Rock-Paper-Scissors. However, because there are no rules about mixing and matching characters of different classes within a given unit, it’s possible to cover class shortcomings with other class strengths. It is rarely desirable to have a unit staffed by a single class (or two), but that’s primarily how enemy units are structured.
In addition to their functions within a unit in combat, each class provides a unique passive skill to its unit if a member of that class is made the unit leader. Likewise, each class can contribute a Leadership Skill, which can be deployed at will on the battle map by spending two Leadership Points. These same points are also used to deploy units from any friendly rally point, making them an essential component in any strategy. Passive leader skills cannot be underestimated, as they can allow units to do amazing things, such as ranged units’ ability to lend fire support during nearby battles they otherwise wouldn’t be involved in, and flying units’ ability to ignore even the worst difficult terrain and make a beeline for the primary objective.
Overall, “Unicorn Overlord’s” mechanical systems have a lot of moving parts, some of which are cumbersome to use and others of which are difficult to understand. Still, these systems manage to be intuitive enough to prevent the game’s “normal” difficulty from being overwhelming or frustrating, while also allowing for experimentation and figuring things out on the fly. However, for those who just can’t wrap their heads around the mechanics, there is a super-easy “story” difficulty, and for those who hate themselves, there’s a “hard” difficulty, and a “harder” difficulty that is unlocked upon clearing the game.
Overall
Ultimately, “Unicorn Overlord” feels like a spiritual successor to two of my favorite classic franchises that are now sadly dead – ‘Suikoden’ and ‘Dragon Force’ – as well as a tempered and balanced take on the “Ogre Battle” formula. The result is one of the finest TRPGs or Strategy games I’ve played in a hot minute, with its only significant failing coming in the form of a fairly rote narrative. Anyone who hearkens back fondly to the games I just name-dropped owes it to themselves to get their hands on this one. And anyone who is completely unfamiliar with “Unicorn Overlord’s” obvious inspirations, but enjoys High Fantasy and thoughtful gameplay, will almost definitely enjoy it too.
Presentation: 5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
