TL;DR – You should try out the Unicorn Overlord demo.
Right. So. I know that it’s about that time and I should probably be a bit more on top of some other stuff [Footnote 1], but my mind has been captured by Unicorn Overlord. Not, I mean, to the extent that it interferes with my work [Footnote 2], but to the point that I went from zero to ten on the hype train in about half an hour of demo time. And with all that in mind, I really, really want this game to succeed because I would love to see more like it. And I can spin a bit that relates to storytelling theory anyway, so something something something. But before we get to that, let’s address the first question in the room. What is Unicorn Overlord? It’s an upcoming SRPG [Footnote 3] from the developer Vanillaware. Now that might mean something to some people — if I’m being honest, if you know who Vanillaware is, you probably already know about Unicorn Overlord — but I’ll come right out the gate and admit I’ve never played a single one of their games before this. As I know from my sources on JRPGs, they’re most famous for Odin Sphere and GrimGrimoire, but both of those are PS2 games and I’ve been a Nintendo guy since the Gamecube, so [Footnote 4]. Their previous game before Unicorn Overlord — one 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim — also got good buzz, to my knowledge, but is still out of my scope. I just don’t know. Anyway, the main premise of Unicorn Overlord is that you play as the exiled prince of a kingdom whose greatest general betrayed it and proceeded to take over the continent. Now it’s up to you to overthrow his evil empire and reclaim your birthright [Footnote 5]. Gameplay takes place in two stages — combat and exploration. For the latter, you get to wander around the world map collecting resources, talking to NPCs for sidequests and information, and interacting with towns — whether that mean buying items, delivering supplies to restore them to their former glory, or enhancing your army’s abilities. For the former, you’re given a combat map (usually of a space that you can explore on the world map after combat) and a command post. From that command post, you deploy units consisting of several characters which you can direct across the battlefield in a Real-time(ish) system. Then when one of your units encounters an enemy unit, they fight according to automated logic. You try to capture enemy command posts and keep yours from falling. There’s the gist.
So. To start, why is this so great? Well, there’s a lot that I could praise, but we’ll start with the unit diversity. If you’re familiar with SRPGs, you’ll expect the game to have several classes which fill different niches in the army; have different strengths and weaknesses. This game is no different, but it shines in the way that each class feels unique and worthwhile. For example, the first thing to come to mind is the tank-style classes. From the beginning (more or less), you have access to three designated tanks: the Lord, a Hoplite, and a Thief. They all fill the same function of standing on the front line and focusing enemy fire, but survive it in entirely different ways. The Hoplite class simply has high defense and a high guard rate to enhance that; it can just take (nonmagical) hits better than any other class. The Lord, on the other hand, isn’t quite as bulky, but makes up for it by healing every time it takes an attack to recover what damage it does take. Then the Thief class combines a naturally high evasion rate with a passive skill to grant an auto-dodge if that fails and an attack which steals additional charges of that dodge from enemies; rather than take less damage, they simply avoid damage all together. And it just goes from there. Every class has its niche. Need to deal with high defense? You can try a Wizard or a Witch. The former have more raw power and can inflict damage over time, but the latter can buff one of your allies to also deal magical damage on top of freezing targets so they can’t act. Need to deal with cavalry? Try a Griffin Knight. A lot of low HP enemies? Your own Cavalier [Footnote 6] can mow them down with an attack that grants another hit if it kills an enemy. Enemy Thieves? Archers have a guaranteed hit, so their evasion is useless.
But that’s not all. With such a wide variety of classes each providing their own benefits, you have to think about how you combine them into units — usually three to a unit in the early game. A Hoplite is good on the frontline, but it’s slow, so you might want to put it with a Griffin Knight to give it more mobility and to protect the Griffin Knight from arrows. But given the Griffin Knight’s natural recovery abilities, you might say it can handle itself and opt for more damage instead by throwing a pair of Cavaliers behind them. Then you can put that Hoplite in front of some Archers or Wizards to protect them while they follow other units to support them with their ability to bombard units. Stuff like that. And the game has a mechanic as well through which you can recruit mercenaries to your army. They aren’t really characters like the rest an don’t get any development through the story or interactions with each other, but you can customize their growths and choose what classes you want to fill out your army however you’d like. For instance, one of my favorite characters thus far is my mercenary Griffin Knight Ingrid [Footnote 7]. I picked her up because I was pending too long side-questing and couldn’t naturally pick up the plot-relevant Griffin Knight and wanted to check out the class, but found that it’s just really , really useful. Especially since I specced her out for evasion and she can tank most things very well by dodging and then swing back to wipe out entire rows of cavalry. All that in a character I got to chose for myself.
If that weren’t enough, the actual combat logic is super fun too. Because it’s based in a system like Final Fantasy XII‘s gambit system [Footnote 8]. For those of you who have no idea what that means, every character has active and passive skills — some they come by naturally through their class, some come from equipment. In addition to equipping items, you can shift around the conditions under which a skill triggers, up to ten or so slots (I didn’t look too closely, I was on a clock). For example, say you have your Priestess kitted with a light spell and a healing spell. If your unit is at high health, you’d only want her to use the light spell and not waste an action healing off scratch damage. So you can assign the condition of ‘target under 50% health’ to the healing spell and it won’t trigger unless that’s the case. And you can do that for every skill, or just let it follow natural priority. That’s how you can influence the otherwise automatic combat logic when your units actually fight. But since equipment can give skills too, it adds another twist to the strategy of outfitting your units. Do you use the sword with higher stats, or the one that lets them use a magic attack? Or do you give your Lord the sword with a magic attack knowing you’ll have to change his gambits so that he can still heal off Lean Edge? You gave your Thief a poison sword, but when do you want him to use its poison attack and when do you want him to focus on getting more charges of dodge? All told, it’s less a game about choosing which attacks to make and more about setting up your strategy and watching it play out. It might sound overwhelming, but it comes across very intuitively and just feels like you can find your own playstyle rather than trying to discover the ‘right’ one.
Beyond combat, another thing I have to praise is the choice given to you as the player. Every now and again, you’ll be faced with a decision and you have to decide what the right thing to do is. You’ve captured a bandit raiding a town and he says he only did it to get money for his sick sister. Do you trust him and let him go, or send him to prison. You capture a bandit who attacked a church and he gives the same excuse. Do you execute him or trust him and let him go? You have an enemy commander under the blade and while they’ve given you no reason for mercy, they’re the only Wizard you’ve seen so far. Do you offer them a place in your army or execute them? Every single one of them (at least so far) is a simple binary like that, but that gives all the more weight to the choice. I don’t know that there’s a single choice I haven’t felt a little uncertain about [Footnote 9] because they all have that little bit of ambiguity to them. Especially when compared to other games in which I found myself frustrated by how little my choices felt like they mattered despite the options given, it’s already got me wanting to play the game a second time so I can try things out differently. And I’ve only played the demo.
Now as for the last and most apropos to my demesne, the story. Good gracious, the story. Quite frankly, it doesn’t seem all that special on the face of it. Exiled prince reclaiming his kingdom is hardly a new plot. But this is a case where the way its put across matters far, far more than the concept. And don’t get me wrong. I love the concept, even if it is a bit generic. I mean, I’m (probably) a Romantic, so of course I like old forms done well. That first half an hour that sold me on the game? I spent it thinking the game felt just Like Shadow Dragon in the best way possible [Footnote 10]. The game does a good job of feeling like you’re going around and liberating an oppressed kingdom with each town you save having its own problem. Sometimes its bandits, sometimes its poor governance, and sometimes its just the imperial army up to no good. Yet each one feels like it has its own flavor to the encounter. And that’s what I think is almost the shining moment — the signature scene — of the demo. At least as far as I got. I… Did not get much plot progression done because of how much sidequesting I did and I don’t know if that’s normal. But my point is thus: if you do play the demo, I think the battle in which you help Adel fight Gaston does the best job of showing what the game can be like. Not only does it give you a map so sprawling that I’ve never seen it’s like in any of the SRPGs I’ve played before where you’ll likely have to pincer-movement the enemy, but Gaston manages to be a rather interesting one-off villain. He’s introduced as a very one-note character with his one quirk that’s so in-your-face it’s almost goof. But then as you reclaim forts and towns and talk to townsfolk and enemy soldiers, you’re given different perspectives on that quirk. By the end, even though he’s still fundamentally that same one-note character, he feels more nuanced because you’ve seen how different people view his actions and what drove him to act as he did. It’s really interesting and a very well done way of fleshing out simple characters.
Yet to me what’s most important is that whole bit I mentioned when I called myself a Romantic — that the story tells a simple tale in a compelling manner. I find that so many things these days try to hard to either focus on being new and original or being complex and deep. And don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing (necessarily) wrong with that. A good story is a good story. But a lot of times, those stories can lose sight of why that’s what they’re seeking out in the first place. Originality for its own sake isn’t a good thing; you’re better off telling a competent story through tired tropes and tools than a never before seen one incompetently. Complexity for it’s own sake isn’t a good thing — and I mean, that’s a lesson I had to learn myself. I originally envisioned EKI as a story with the political intrigue of Wheel of Time before I realized I’m abysmal at writing political intrigue. So there’s something incredibly refreshing about a story that is just the old heroic saga of the return of the rightful, righteous ruler [Footnote 11]. Unicorn Overlord’s plot thus far has felt serious — bad things can happen and the characters are at war — but not oppressively dark. It isn’t (caveating with barring future plot developments) the kind of story that feels the need to punish the ideals of the protagonist to prove its ‘realism’, kill characters simply for the sake of establishing stakes, or thrusting the characters into impossible situations to show how out of their depth they are. The situation is established as overwhelming from the beginning — the setting itself proves the severity of the plot. But that just gives it room to grow and allow the virtue of its characters to make things better. It’s far more liberating of an experience for fantasy. A story that uplifts you through its telling. I look forward to seeing how it resolves itself and hope it continues to have the same general tone throughout. I really, really hope it won’t feel the need to throw a twist at us and in the effort of making things darker.
All told, if it keeps up as it has, I think Unicorn Overlord might end up my favorite (distinguishing between favorite and best) SRPG I’ve played… Maybe since ever. I can’t recommend enough at least looking into the demo and giving it a try. The demo has plenty of playtime in it and, well, it’s free. You have nothing to lose.
Footnote 1: ‘Oh? Like the fact that your first year bookiversary passed and you completely forgot?’ — the Twisted Jerk
Footnote 1A: Hey. You. Quiet. If you don’t point it out, people might not notice.
Footnote 1B: ‘Like you aren’t about to make another post which does exactly that.’
Footnote 1C: Look, man! I thought it was the 23rd! I’m bad at these thing!
Footnote 2: ‘Stare‘ — the Twisted Jerk
Footnote 2A: Second verse; same as the first.
Footnote 3: Strategy RPG, to the uninitiated. Also called TRPGs sometimes for ‘Tactical’, but as someone that plays a lot of TTRPGs (DnD, for example), that gets a bit annoying to deal with.
Footnote 4: Yes, there were remasters, but Odin Sphere is still PS-locked and I was rather occupied with other games when GrimGrimoire got it’s remaster. At this point I feel somewhat ambivalent anyway. If I get to it, I’ll get to it.
Footnote 5: At least that’s how it seems from the first bit I played in the demo. I… wouldn’t be surprised if things took a shift at some point, but that… Well, we’ll get there.
Footnote 6: If I’m being honest, I don’t actually remember the name of this class. Horse-boys.
Footnote 7: ‘You think you’re so~o clever…’ — the Twisted Jerk
Footnote 7A: Yes. We’ve established this. I know that I’m nowhere near as clever as I think I am, but I can’t help it. And if I’m not clever, how come no one else seems to have noticed that Ingrid’s design seems like it was lifted exactly from one of the concept drawings for Cavalier in Awakening? Hmm? What about that?
Footnote 7B: ‘Sigh. It’s past 1 in the morning. I can’t deal with this.’
Footnote 8: Which was awesome! I’ll hear no bad things about XII. Basch lives!
Footnote 9: ‘Recruiting Yahna?’ — the Twisted Jerk
Footnote 9A: Shut up.
Footnote 10: And oh, the things I could say about Shadow Dragon. I’ll go to the mat for the Archanea Saga’s story.
Footnote 11: And, as something I’ve talked about a lot with Final Fantasy Friend [Footnote 11A], I really appreciate that the church in the setting seems to be just good. I really, really hope that doesn’t change because it’s a little bit draining to see every single fantasy church be secretly evil or actually lying to their faithful or just outright corrupt. I know I’m biased, but it’s just nice to have genuinely good and idealistic clergy.
Footnote 11A: I don’t think I’ve mentioned him before, but yes. Final Fantasy Friend. I play FFXIV with him and two others. FF Friend is also into storytelling and I think he’s been doing some writing of his own. If he does release anything — provided I have his permission — I’ll make sure to recommend it to you guys.
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