Unicorn Overlord is like polish incarnate. Strategy RPGs get a lot of bad rep because at the end of the day, it’s an Excel game. While triple-A is all about chasing l’expérience cinématique, and action games are chasing the feeling of making hitting buttons feel good, strategy games have to make you sit down and ponder logic. How many ways can a player think about solving a problem, and how many ways do I want it to be correct?
Seriously, it’s hard to understate just how good Unicorn Overlord is at what it does. it ditches the grid-based tactics commonly associated with the genre and instead opts for these row-based autobattles. It’s way more welcoming to players who aren’t entirely fond of spending 10 minutes planning grid placements and checking line of sight like if they were at a Games Workshop.
You’d think removing positioning would be the watering down of the genre but oh no, dear reader. You’re wrong. Instead what Unicorn Overlord does is it front loads your major decisions into the pre-battle. When I say this game is an excel game I don’t mean the Excel you’re talking about when you say “I’m proficient in Excel” on your CV. I mean the kind you record a video about that looks like downright wizardry.
if skill [good], bill [paid]
To put it briefly, every character in this game has a limited number of active and passive skills that they can do in a battle each. Based on their class and skills, they can spend their points on these in a battle as they see fit. But since the fights are automated, how do you know which ones to do? The answer the game gives is simple: you program them yourself. Every skill can have priorities and conditions to be used, such as only using Killing Chain, a skill that rewards you extra turns if it kills, on low-HP enemies .
It’s a system you can absolutely be lost in- by the game’s second region you’ll start unlocking more advanced classes, with skills like getting a free first attack, or lifesteal off big hits. A special shoutout to the Shaman class, designed to do nothing but make you miserable by debuffing anything that so much as twitches in its presence. There’s a lot of fun combinations you can make with the classes you’re given.
And yet, somehow, it’s this openness that will absolutely drive unfamiliar players mad. I’d started running into a hilarious problem of half my units being near-useless: I’d build a squad of archers for dealing with flyers or mages, or attempt to have the Sellsword class synergize with anything, only for them to lose most matchups against enemy squads.
Part of the reason comes from the game’s own class rock-paper-scissors system: it’s not nearly as simple as the game leads you to believe, and many units will simply not have a hard counter, making them feel nigh impossible to fight.
There’s also the prospect of grinding itself- field encounters require you to be able to finish off enemy units in one swoop, and grinding your characters to a point where they can do that is entirely reliant on their ability to produce results naturally. Admittedly, one up-side to grinding being difficult is that you actually get to see how little leveling matters in Unicorn Overlord- aside from unlocking more skills, characters four levels below their enemy can have little trouble as long as you’ve plotted the matchup right.
Obligatory Praise For Vanillaware’s Sprite Work In Unicorn Overlord
So even if you’re not enticed by hours upon hours of position testing, skill programming, etc, what might draw you in to Unicorn Overlord, you ask? Well, the fastest answer is that it’s downright gorgeous.
Vanillaware have knocked it out of the park again, with plenty of banger designs for the game’s myriad of characters and classes. One of the best reasons to not skip the battles themselves is just because of how good these sprites look- just like how one of the reasons to upgrade your big cities is to gaze upon the gorgeous Vanillaware food design.
You really appreciate it in the battle sprites especially- some characters get downright gorgeous animations, like one character having a whole separate animation for her sweeping an enemy squad with her shield, unique to that attack.
One gripe though is just how much overlap some classes have with each other- the mounted cavalry units all look way too much like each other, which can be frustrating because their battlefield roles can be quite different.
It’s not entirely the spritework’s fault but I do wish you could customize them in ways that affected their silhoutte instead of just color- though given the sheer roster of units you can have I can see how much worse it would make the problem at scale since it’s a huge ask for custom cosmetics for three of all the game’s classes.
Due to the more anime-art style it does also run into that same problem that plagues a lot of games in general: an awful lot of the units you end up recruiting tend to be women. I’m glad the world of Unicorn Overlord is fine with women soldiers but it does feel funny riding into battle with my giant harem, especially since Prince Alain can build his rapport with all of them.
The Endless March Of Time
Probably my only real gripe with Unicorn Overlord is the pace itself. Battles can take a long time, being drawn out by units slow movement speeds and the general more chill pace of battles.
Part of this boils down to the fact that if you somehow get it wrong, guess what- you’re going to be redoing those segments again. As someone who plays patiently it’s especially bad if you run out the clock by accident: I’ve had multiple instances of making it to the last fight just as the clock runs out, meaning I had to start the entire encounter all over again.
Still, once you get into the flow of things, Unicorn Overlord battles really nail that feeling of a well-executed plan. What maybe a scramble that sees you narrowly guiding your units to safety can suddenly become a precision military strike, as a squad of onee-san types swoop in and murder every Wyvern Rider and somehow walk away with more health than they started with.
If you like strategy games, you’d be remiss to not check out Unicorn Overlord. It’s beautiful, deep and truly innovative. It’s biggest flaws come down to its uncompromising view on the experience that it wants you to have- one of meticulous detail as you conquer kingdoms with nothing but girl power an a metric ton of extra turns.
Score: 9/10
Game reviewed on PS5. Review copy provided by SEGA.
