It’s not very often we get a strategy role-playing game, or rather, just a game like Unicorn Overlord. I’m a big fan of management sims and role-playing games so getting to mix them together is a cocktail I rather enjoy. So I knew I’d have a good time regardless of how good Unicorn Overlord actually ended up. I was hooked from the beginning, as expected, and was surprised that the game kept me engaged through the end. There are a lot of little things about Unicorn Overlord that make it a fully fleshed out game and worthy of being released here in the first half of 2024, which is when an incredible amount of top-tier RPGs are coming out this year. Unicorn Overlord is great but does it stand with the rest of the titans?
Unicorn Overlord
Developer: Vanillaware
Price: $60 USD
Platform: PS4/5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with Playstation 5 code for review
Alain is taken from his mother at an early age after their castle in Cornia is overrun by the Zenorian enemy forces. Alain lives in hiding until he is of age to begin marching against Zenoria and reclaim his throne as the rightful king of Cornia. Unfortunately for him, that time comes a bit prematurely as his hiding location is discovered and the Zenorian forces descend on him. Facing his foes head on, Alain discovers that Zenoria’s forces are bolstered, not by willing participants, but by the former subjects of Cornia thanks to a mind-controlling spell. A spell that can only be broken by the ring of the unicorn, a ring that Alain just happens to have.
The narrative is kind of all over the place. Sometimes Zenoria has some of the most truly evil bastards working for them and other times dudes are just going along with things to save their loved ones. It’s even more apparent when you find your first enemy that’s not under Zenorian mind control and Alain has to choose whether or not to execute or recruit the person. I went through and recruited everyone but the entire time I kept wondering how much more interesting the game would be if I executed everyone that got in my way. Especially considering I couldn’t leave the difficult questions up to Vanillaware. While the primary narrative is interesting, one of dark forces controlling things beyond your scope and some fun twists and turns towards the end I won’t spoil for you, the tough questions simply aren’t asked.
This is why I consider Unicorn Overlord’s narrative to be pretty fun. I want to ask the tough questions sometimes, would Alain be welcomed as the new king if he slaughtered everyone in his path? Would he not simply be as evil as Galerius, one of the primary antagonists? Vanillaware isn’t interested in telling that story. Rather, they want to tell a story of good and evil, and maybe for the first time in a long time, I’m embracing that. What is nuance if we don’t have anything that isn’t nuanced to weigh it against? Unicorn Overlord has it’s pure evil, Alain is almost nauseously good, and many who are evil are evil against their will. Primarily, Unicorn Overlord is about forgiveness.
Though the focus on the narrative is key, at least for me, it’s the armies and battles that are so exquisite. One of the reasons to be excited about Unicorn Overlord is because Vanillaware’s art style is so unbelievably gorgeous. Beautiful hand-painted docks, meadows, and deathly mountain passes are all being fought over by two opposing armies. And so like the vistas behind them, the armies themselves are beautifully crafted so that even something as dismal and heartbreaking as war is beautiful. Everything in Unicorn Overlord is gorgeous. In particular, though, many of the units are simply crafted to perfection with the freedom to make your armies as uniform or disorderly as you want.
Army creation and configuration were both vexing as well as rewarding. It didn’t matter where I was in the game, at one point I always had one unit that just did not work for the battle I was in. Either the unit wasn’t high enough level, was working in the previous province but not in this one, didn’t have enough people in the unit, whatever, it was tough and fun. I spent a lot of time tweaking my armies to perfection. And at some points, I walked the battlefield as a god. There were several people who were just simply powerful. Our hero Alain was quite powerful but it was up to me to make him overpowered. I paired him with Scarlett, and two breakers, and for most of the game, he absolutely rolled over everyone.
The problem with this is that since I have an ace in the hole, there’s really no fear of losing a battle or going in too early. Which I imagine is a measured approach for Vanillaware considering the linearity of the battles. For most of the game, you’re either liberating a town or region or going to the next story-mission. Even doing just about everything resulted in there being a level jump at the mid-way point of the game. Fortunately, this was not insurmountable. In fact, it was a welcome challenge considering how much of the game I had been walking through.
Unicorn Overlord is an easy game but beating it once unlocks a special super-hard difficulty that should satiate fans who are looking to be challenged. You can also increase the challenge on yourself by simply avoiding a lot of the extra stuff to do because there’s a lot of extra stuff to do. At the beginning of the game, you’ll run into all sorts of things that just end up being question marks on your map. As you move through the story, you’ll meet people who can help you unlock the power of those special places. This results in exceptionally good gear and items that’ll make your characters even bigger beefcastles than they already are.
Likewise, there are a couple of minigames that are quite fun too. Primarily, the mining minigame which not only gets you regional resources but also treasure maps to find goodies and rare resources. The music for the mining minigame is hilariously on-point as well, a very jaunty tune pairing very well with the mining. You’ll also come across people in every region who have lost their chickens and rely on the future king who is waging a war against an extremely powerful enemy to take time out of his day to find said chickens. Carvings litter the map that must be touched in order to grand great gear, the amount of side-content feels very at home in Unicorn Overlord.
The map is split up into 5 primary regions, each of which seems to have its own primary race of people. You’ve got your desert country, your elf country, your beast-person country, and your angel country. Impressively, each country has its own classes that are hybrids of the base ones you’ve acquired from running around your homeland. Humans have Hoplites wielding great shields to protect the backline and Warriors wielding big hammers to break those with heavy armor. As you make your way north you run across Werebears which wield both greatshields and big hammers to give them the defense of a Hoplite but the anti-armor capabilities of a Warrior. The unique units gave so many possibilities when it came to army creation.
Very early on in the game, Unicorn Overlord introduces the idea of evasion tanking. Putting someone with very high evasion out on the frontline and damage dealers behind them so the tank isn’t soaking damage because the enemy can’t land damage onto the tank. Not a novel concept, but unusual for this type of game. Especially considering the medieval influence on the art, one would expect you’d just keep the big bulky guys out front. I had an exceptionally good time mixing and matching classes to put in each unit.
Once you liberate a town you’ll notice it’s all beat up and broken. Most towns require a group of deliveries to repair the town before you’re able to use its facilities beyond the provisioner for items and the armorer for weapons and gear. Some towns have taverns that allow you to eat with your comrades-in-arms to bolster their rapport. And yes, you get to see the food your characters eat and it looks amazing. Other towns have ships you can board to take you to secluded items to gain access to side content. One town even has a colosseum, allowing you to participate in ranked battles to unlock a new hero for your liberation army.
The music and character barks are outstanding. Perhaps it was because I was constantly changing my armies but I never tired of hearing one of the characters call for battle or tell me how they thought the battle would fare. Likewise, Basiscape and Mitsuhiro Kaneda did an incredible job with the music. Each province has its own music, along with battles, side-content, and cut scenes but it all plays so well into the areas that you’re traversing. Wandering the forests of Cornia has a tentative strings arrangement that makes you feel like you’re skirting a bigger foe in a copse of trees. And as you make your way north to Bastorias the flute fades out and drums kick in with a light tap, to prepare you for the cold and arduous journey ahead.
And though I absolutely adored this game, it’s not without its failings. The rapport system didn’t feel fully fleshed out. While it exists and has some very fun conversations that can really help you understand the characters better, it doesn’t do anything. There’s no benefit, other than learning a bit about the relationship between two characters, to building rapport between people. There’s not even a nice cutscene accompanying them as they all take place on the overworld map with the little chibi versions of the characters. This was actually pretty disappointing.
Likewise, there were some peculiarities with the combat. For example, there are two items that can assist during battle called empowering or defensive draughts. You can pair them together and the defensive draught is meant to improve your unit’s defensive capabilities for a single battle with the empowering meant to improve the offensive capabilities. You get to see the outcome of a battle before you go in, and sometimes improving my unit’s defense would get them to take more damage rather than less. I thought this was a bug at first, how could that be? After watching and understanding the battle system more I realized that improving my defense gave the enemy more time to wail on me. And unfortunately, at that point, you can’t remove the defensive draught! A well learned lesson, thank you Unicorn Overlord.
While not the perfect game, Unicorn Overlord is an exceptional one. Like many of Vanillaware’s titles, Unicorn Overlord was crafted with care and it shows in almost every way. From the graphics and art direction to battle design and army creation, Unicorn Overlord exceeded my expectations.
The Final Word
Hot off of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, I was hoping for something a little more narratively deep but even with the story’s simplicity, I really enjoyed my time. More importantly, there’s a new strategy RPG on the market, and one that’s approachable enough to bring in new fans to the genre to hopefully bolster it. Unicorn Overlord does so much right, I feel grateful for having experienced it.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
