I haven’t heard of Unicorn Overlord until a friend told me about it when I discussed my dilemma to get the Final Fantasy Tactics remake. I can’t see myself playing it as I played the original and the remake on PSP to death already. So, this will be just spending money for collecting (and collecting dust). That’s when she told me about this game, and saying I might really like it.
So, after the conversation I looked it up online and found out that it was actually on 50% discount, so I thought why not?
First impression, Unicorn Overlord looks like a hybrid of a Strategic Role Playing Game (SRPG) and a Tactical Role Playing Game (TRPG). You manage an army of different unit formation on a large battle field presetting how each member in each unit behaves and give them on the fly commands on the field until they clash with the enemies or occupy vantage points, like garrisons for you. The battle is finished under several situations: you got wiped out; you wiped out the enemies or the boss on the field; or you fulfil all the conditions, e.g. forced a retreat, saving a non-playable army unit or occupy important ports and stations related to the story. All in all, it is like a mix of XCOM with Soul Nomad plus Fire Emblem.
The description might sound simple yet complicated enough, but once you understood the mechanics and foundation, it became straightforward enough to follow. The intriguing parts will be decking out your unit formation, training individual members of the unit and deciding how each and everyone of them behave inside the battles. There are so many different general jobs plus unique jobs available that it can easily become a PhD thesis if you really dig into it. With that and throw in opportunities to promote each job to a higher job, weapons and equipment that come with different perks and effects, ways to expand each unit etc., all of them consuming valuable hard-earned resources, that’s a lot of decisions to make along the way.
And for me, that’s why it is addictive. Because all these created so many variables and opportunities that once you noticed your army formation and unit formation are no longer fit for purpose for certain battles, it forced you to reform your army and skills so they becoming more complimenting, be it having more archers on the field against flying enemies, or having more mages on the field against armoured units or having higher guarding units to provide protection along the way. Further, the environment of the battle field also plays an important role – with the ticking down of the clock, you sometimes need to send out flying units to get to short cuts while having other units to wipe out watch towers against the flying units. Or at times you need to deploy tactical items to avoid geographical hazards or setting up barricades or garrisons to slow down enemies while recovering your wounded units.
Unicorn Overlord for me is really a game that keeps making me to do one more battle simply because I made certain changes to my army or unit formation to see how things will play out. For example, you would think that keeping mages and healers in the back row with knight protection at the front will be safer, but then you would encounter groups of other heavy knights that prioritised against column formation that got to your low HP characters immediately. So, you will need to change the formation on the fly to move these characters out of column formation so they will not be targeted. And for me, if I have a few low magic defence units in the formation, I will make sure all the quick units to prioritize mages in the enemy camps so the melee units with low magic defence can take the enemies down with minimal magic damage. Also, there were times that I needed to summon neutral units on the field wear out bosses first, so my actual units can make short work of them when they arrive.
There are so many possibilities in Unicorn Overlord that I was completely addicted to it, as my friend had predicted. And, within a few days, I already clocked up around 50 hours in my spare time for the game, and I am not even halfway through.
Story-wise, Unicorn Overlord is quite straightforward, but it is the different things they planted along the way either in the overworld or in cities or even among NPCs that keeps the game from being completely monotonous. You could be doing delivery quests for all the cities and towns you liberated to improve the items they sell, station your unit members to help guard these places so they can produce more items for you, or you can practice and level up you new lower level units in phantom stages so they can catch up with the rest of the army, or you can participate in the Coliseum to duke out your heart out for exclusive items not available anywhere else, and even investigate interesting spots on the world map to unlock other quests and secrets for special items. There are so much to do that should you want to wander away from your liberation campaign for a moment, you will not be bored.
It's been some time since I got so invested in a game, and my friend, who always has an eye for games that I like, was right on the money again this time round.
If you are interested in tactical or strategic RPGs, I would highly recommend Unicorn Overlord. But of course, you need to be able to endure that anime painting art style first. For me lucky that there are not a lot of high-pitched girls in the game, or I don’t think I could carry on for that long.
But for now, I need to dive back into commanding my heavily invested army for the liberation of this war-torn land.
