"What game are you playing?"
The sweat begins to bead upon my brow. My throat gets taut. It shouldn't be a difficult question to answer and yet... here we are.
This is one of those moments where it's tough to reply with a straight face. Especially when the one asking the question is one of your old Marine buddies. Ultimately, I decide to go for it. Double-down, too. Act as if this is the most normal and masculine answer that could even be given. Who needs Ghost Recon when you have Unicorn Overlord?
"Unicorn Overlord. It's actually pretty bad@ss, bro."
The Good
First off, let's just put it out there that Unicorn Overlord is not some lame game that I'm doubling down on to justify playing something with such a ridiculous sounding name. It truly is incredible. But to fully grasp that you'll need a bit of a background.
The game starts off with a revolution where the main character, Alain, is whisked away to safety at 7 years old while his mother, the queen, goes head to head against some of the villains trying to usurp her throne. The game then fast-forwards 10 years to where Alain has been training day in and day out in order to one day topple the insurgency-turned-empire that has completely dominated the continent. Through Alain's good-natured interactions, combat prowess, and tactical moves, we are able to build up a Liberation Army of mercenaries, formerly loyal soldiers free from their brainwashing, and other political heads. You also get to ride a wondrous unicorn across a rainbow... okay, I'm kidding about that last part.
Unicorn Overlord does an amazing job of introducing literally dozens upon dozens of characters. While few of them are as truly fleshed out as some characters that you'll see in more party-focused RPGs, they all have some kind of gimmick that makes them stand apart. Chloe is a loyal soldier who loves to cook. Yahna is a sorceress who is just as obsessed with her youthful looks and buxom body as she is with her propensity to rain destruction on the enemy. Aubin is a mercenary who just wants to take his money and spread some good around the sandy sh!thole he grew up in. They all have their thing, and if you share some meals with them and engage in the rapport conversations too, you can learn quite a bit about their lore. This also plays into the tactical component as you set up your units with those who play well together will generally work well together. So maybe they're not 3-dimensional characters. More like 2-dimensional, but that's fine. It goes well with the art style of the game.
The art is beautiful. Anime-style imagery with a bit of Vanillaware's flair covers every major interaction. The game studio is infamous for its "jiggle physics" and Unicorn Overlord is not pushing against the mould of what their fans have come to expect. Nearly every woman in the game, unless fully kitted out in a suit of armor, is well endowed and Vanillaware is not ashamed to show it. Even Selvie, the druid who is more obsessed with experiments and science than she is with liberating the continent, is basically pouring out of her ill-fitting robes the entire game. Now I realize that some people aren't going to like this dynamic, but there is plenty to look at besides the animated cleavage. The fact remains that Vanillaware's attention to detail in rendering each background, from desert to forest or tundra to plateaus, is done with love and intricacy. Hand drawn locales are displayed in character interactions as well as every act of combat throughout the plot.
The combat takes a bit of getting used to, but it's unique and fun to watch. You cannot control every little move your characters make, and if that's a problem for you then it might take a few battles to fully grasp the necessity of this move by Vanillaware. First of all, there are literally dozens of full-scale battles in the game. In those full-scale brouhahas, there are also a smattering of little battles that will be carried out by your units. Multiply them together and you have hundreds of little battles in Unicorn Overlord. That's not an exaggeration. There are hundreds. Luckily, you don't have to sit through each one. You can fast-forward the battles if you're keen to actually watch them and see what mistakes you've done with your individual line-ups, or just "skip" the battles entirely with a predetermined outcome given to you on the screen. That does not mean you're going to win every time. You'll find times where you've clearly bit off more than you can chew, but you're just going to have to suck it up and take the hit. It helps to have assisting units led by healers or archers to offset your main team charging forth.
The Bad
Hot d@mn I spent so much time on the good it feels like we're basically out of time here for the bad. I'm kidding, of course. There are some things that could be tweaked, but not many.
Like I pointed out with the "jiggle physics," there are going to be some players who are put off by Vanillaware's style. I just wanted to mention that aspect in The Bad, as I had in The Good, because it's subjective. I will say, however, that for those who don't like it... change your units to house members who are kitted out in full armor. Problem solved. If it is a problem.
The only other thing I want to include in here is perhaps the story. It is a little trite. It is a little derivative. But it is not bad, per se. Could it be better? Sure. But it serves its purpose well enough and the draw is mainly going to be garnering together all these characters from around the map to engage in the liberation story that Vanillaware has created.
The Epicness
How dare the spell check underline epicness!? If it's on wiktionary then it must be a real word... right? After all, it sums up my feelings regarding Unicorn Overlord pretty perfectly.
Vanillaware's latest entry truly is an epic one. It is also, in my opinion, their best work to date. From the character development to the art style, they have surpassed all previous works and created something truly impactful here. While Alain is a bit of a goody-two-shoes for my liking and the story could be spiced up just a tad, Unicorn Overlord kept me enthralled for 62 hours and did not overstay its welcome in the slightest. If you're into JRPGs or SRPGs at all, give this a try and let yourself get lost in the lore and the world that Vanillaware so lovingly constructed.
9/10
Epic.
