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Imagine taking on the guise of a master tactician, pulling strings on a gorgeously painted board, and leading armies at multiple points of the battlefield as high-octane music guides your decisions – that essentially sums up Unicorn Overlord gloriously. With a narrative all about warfare and conquest, Unicorn Overlord is a game that wears its tactical RPG genre extremely proudly, boasting a gameplay loop that would boggle your mind until everything somehow fits in place like a puzzle in satisfying ways.
Unicorn Overlord is just straight up a beautifully crafted game, quickly getting me engrossed in its world right at the opening hours. There were expectations going in knowing that this title is by the makers of Odin Sphere, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and Dragon’s Crown. Yet, I was not expecting to have my breath taken away the moment the opening scene played out. It was cinematic. Vanillaware’s signature artstyle is even more polished this time around – lighting shines on characters in noticeably eye-catching ways, accompanied by richly detailed background with lush foliage swaying along the wind.
It was truly mesmerizing to watch the painterly illustrations in 4K resolution on a large TV and it was not only the cutscenes given extra care, as every bit of the game is crafted with equal passion and decorated with fantastical medieval flair.
Restoring Honor
Speaking of the opening prologue, the story follows Prince Alain on a journey to reclaim his reign a decade after his mother, Queen Ilenia witnessed a rebellion and was usurped by the treacherous General Valmore. The plot, while a bit cliche, serves as a fitting backdrop to the war-focused gameplay.
Complete with a full suite of amazing English and Japanese voice acting from talents who clearly have put their all into their roles, the story gets elevated, becoming ever more engaging as you wonder who Alain would recruit throughout his adventures. On the topic of voice-over, unfortunately, the dialogue text is synced up with the voices so if you are playing with Japanese voice combined with English subtitles, some text would disappear quicker than you could finish reading it.
Audio is definitely one of Unicorn Overlord’s biggest highlights, because aside from great voice acting, the game sports a fantastic soundtrack that got me falling in love almost immediately. Oscillating between epic orchestral melodies and medieval choruses, the score would definitely get your blood pumping, invoking a sense of awe and valor. If you are already a Vanillaware fan, the soundtrack may sound familiar as it is scored by Basiscape and Mitsuhiro Kaneda – the guys behind the music of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, which indeed also has a beloved soundtrack.
Fevrith, You Shall Rule
Even though Unicorn Overlord falls under the same umbrella, it does things rather differently compared to its peers in the tactical RPG genre. You see, the gameplay is divided into two sequences, an exploration part and the battle stages. Aligning with the story, your quest is to bring lands under your rule, whether by means of waging war against rogue militias or aiding villagers in need.
The exploration portion would have Alain travel around the vast reaches of Fevrith, the overworld of the game. Slowly but surely, you would be expanding your territories, building up various facilities that would expand your army. Doing so requires Honor points and Renown ranks, which are earned through quests, delivering certain materials to towns, and more importantly, battle stages.
Battle stages, as the name suggests, act as the game’s combat portion. These are fields of combat where battles would take place in a sweeping stretch of land with a timer counting down, demanding you take the initiative to clear the main objective with a sound strategy without timing out.
The combat of Unicorn Overlord plays out like this. First, you have some starting Valor points and a main Command Post. Valor points are important resources that can be earned by defeating enemies and liberating enemy-controlled structures around the battlefield. You assign squads of a maximum of 6 characters to move in a single unit, positioned in a 3-by-2 grid which consists of a frontline and backline. The squad formation in the unit plays an importance in combat, but to summarize, generally, your durable tanks would be favorable to take up the frontline while support or highly offensive combatants stay at the back.
To deploy a unit onto the battlefield, you would need to spend Valor points at a Command Post or forts you have conquered. Each unit would also have a user-designed leader who grants the squad unique movement attributes such as cavalry-led units moving at greater speed or flying commanders allowing troops to fly over obstacles that ground-based units cannot.
Deployed units would then be in your command to move around the battlefield, and combat would be initiated when encountering patrolling enemies. Interestingly, combat happens automatically in Unicorn Overlord, rather than giving you control over your character. At first, the auto-battle design may pull you out of it as it is a rarity in games. However, once the system clicks, the gameplay of Unicorn Overlord works wonders.
Alain’s Art of War
This is where the whole unit formation takes center stage, like puzzle pieces where you try to match certain character classes to synergize together. Unicorn Overlord places a huge emphasis on the rock-paper-scissors dynamic between the diverse classes available. For example, early on in the game, Travis would join you as the Thief class. This is when you quickly learn the amazing evasiveness of Thief, allowing them to take up the frontline and effectively avoid damage almost every time against melee opponents. But then, Archers are introduced with their 100% accuracy ability, making them a direct hard counter to Thieves.
Other dynamics include the shield-trotting Hoplites, who are an absolute tank against physical damage, but Witches and Wizards will toast them like marshmallows with magic damage. Calvary classes are bullies to infantry-type classes but would cry in mercy against flying characters like Gyphon Riders.
Big Brain, Big Tactics
The complexity gets deeper because when combat, characters only have a limited amount of moves available for them, determined by Action Points (AP) and Passive Points (PP). Once the AP is depleted, the combat is over effectively even if no characters are defeated. Even though combat plays out automatically, every character can also be further customized, tweaking the skills from default triggers to only when certain conditions are met. For instance, you could make it so that Cleric only heals an ally when certain HP thresholds are met or have shield-wielding warriors to guard specific allies.
This gives quite a bit of control over your units and with the number of classes and possible formations, there is certainly going to be a ridiculous amount of possible strategies to be discovered even hundreds of hours in. That is not all, as you are moving around in the battle stages, you can also activate Valor Skills by spending the Valor points, granting you access to abilities to use outside of combat, giving you more options to add your tactics.
All of these are still only scratching the surface, as you could even tweak how stats are distributed upon level-up when recruiting non-story soldier characters, or the equipment you could obtain in various means, with some providing special stats. Furthermore, there is also the rapport system, bolstering the strength of your companions via bonding.
Unicorn Overlord is truly a game all about getting your brain working and it certainly brought back many fond memories of classic strategy games for me, albeit with a fresh new take. This is not a game you could brute force your way through, as even higher-level characters would struggle greatly against classes that counter them. Even if you want to brute force, each unit has a stamina that depletes everything you engage in combat in the battle stages, forcing you to be smart in managing your army, or otherwise, they could be in great peril when enemies ambushed them as they recuperate.
Admittedly, I do wish story characters would have a more distinct design especially when placed side-by-side with the generic soldiers, sporting only very minor differences. It also feels weird to see the Chibi character sprites used in the overworld and battle stages as they somehow did not match the appearance of the story characters, especially their hair colors. That said, those are only minor nitpicks of mine and don’t necessarily affect the experience all that much.
Tactics Glory
Illustrated with a timeless look with wonderful rhythms complimenting it, Unicorn Overlord is truly a splendid game for those who love to rise up to the highly strategical gameplay challenges and sink into the sea of theory crafting fun.
Almost every aspect of Unicorn Overlord is masterfully crafted and you can sense the developers’ passion behind the game. No game is perfect, but it is difficult to point out any flaw of Unicorn Overlord that stands out like a sore thumb. At the end of the day, it all boils down to whether you enjoy these sorts of strategic-focused games or not. Admittedly, the story falls short, relying on cliches and predictable tropes to set up a good chunk of the game, which is quite disappointing.
Unicorn Overlord would likely be a highly influential entry in the tactical RPG genre – a pure tactics game that is innovative, deep, and satisfying, and it wants you to think, consider, and strategize, while being enthralled by Vanillaware’s hallmark jaw-dropping aesthetics and a head-bopping soundtrack.
Unicorn Overlord is slated to launch on 8 March 2024 for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Xbox Series X|S.
Unicorn Overlord was reviewed on the PlayStation 4. Review code provided by SEGA.
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Unicorn Overlord
PROS
- A complex rewarding strategic gameplay system with lots of depth and replayability
- Jaw-dropping timeless visuals
- Excellent voice-acting
- An absolutely bopping soundtrack
CONS
- The story plot can feel a little cliche in the early hours
