For Your Consideration: Unicorn Overlord
Alright.
Before I go on about how great Unicorn Overlord is, let me just get this out of the way.
The game has a demo. It’s got a limit of 5 hours. The clock stops ticking when you’re in the game’s menu. You spend a lot of time in UO thumbing through the party menu changing strategies, inventory, equipment, etc so in reality the demo is about 10 hours if you’re especially analytical about stats.
Any progress you make in the demo carries over to the main game. Unicorn Overlord is available on PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox. Unfortunately as of writing there is no PC version.
Go play the demo. Dedicate yourself a good two or so hours. Really hang out with it. When you’re done hanging out, come back here.
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You’re back? Welcome back.
There’s no doubt about it. Vanillaware has got the sauce.
Towards the end of 2023 I finally played 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. By the end of the 28 hours with the game I was sobbing ugly, gross tears. It’s now one of my favorite games of all time. That night as I was scrambling in the kitchen for a bottle of water to re-hydrate after a good 20 minutes of crying I decided that I was a Vanillaware fan for life. I’ll buy whatever they put out. Now a good four or so months later Unicorn Overlord hits shelves and yeah, I bought it day one. I got two sentences into the demo and nodded sagely at the game’s dialog.
“Yeah…this rules.”
Apparently loud annoying people on the internet don’t like flowery dialog? They just want a 1:1 direct translation? I mean I guess that’s fine but as long as both scripts hit the same story beats I don’t care if the English version gets a little colorful with it. Maybe just sit down with a thesaurus and whip it out (the thesaurus) each time you read a word that you somehow can’t understand through context? Personally I don’t need a sparknotes tab open every time I play a tactical RPG. I played Tactics Ogre.
…and you know what? I didn’t like Tactics Ogre, but I love Unicorn Overlord. What does that say about me? I’m not sure. I loved TO’s writing but the gameplay was too much to bare. UO has this snappy flow that keeps me going way longer than I would with any other titles of the same flavor. The last time I enjoyed a Tactics RPG this much was all the way back in 2013 with Fire Emblem Awakening. Fates and Three Houses just didn’t do it for me, and sadly I never got a chance to play Echoes.
It feels great to play a game as thought out and fast as Unicorn Overlord. I love going through the map collecting doodads and racking up sidequests, then dedicating an extended session just to clearing out said quests. By the time I hit the second main story quest I was already 10 hours deep into the game. I estimate that I’ll be close to 100 hours before I finish the game. It’s worth noting that when I play big RPGs I speed through the main story and then do the side content afterwards, but with Unicorn Overlord the side content is intricately woven into the core game loop in such a way that I genuinely don’t want this game to end.
-PA
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