Unicorn Overlord

[spatular]

This is some sort of tactics game with battles and stuff. In the battles you have groups of units that you can order around, and when they meet an enemy unit theres a fight which plays out automatically, but you can pick units that are strong against the enemy and sort of program their actions beforehand.

 

i thought this looked interesting because of how you sort of program the fight then see how it plays out, but its not all to do with that, seems if you win is more based on rock paper scissors stuff going on between the different unit classes, like im pretty rubbish at this sort of thing but magic is strong against shield units i think, so you can tell your magic guys to prioritise shield baddies, stuff like that. Its quite complicated im still trying to work out what units i need and havent touched the programming much yet (not had the tutorial for it yet).

 

seems pretty good/interesting so far, im enjoying it anyway, about 4 hours in. the graphics and music are good. Not much happened in the story so far. the name is sort of ridiculous but im coming round to liking it.

 

there are options to kill/punish people or free them… spoiler but id advise reading it 

Spoiler

Seems like you always should free them even if they seem super evil, as they usually join you, although im maybe wrong see how it goes i guess. I sent one to prison early on which seems to have been a bad idea.

 

Anyone else playing this/how are you getting on with it?

[Maryokutai]

My CE is stuck in the amazon shipping circle of hell. I hope it doesn't mean they botched their pre-orders and sold more than they got. 

 

Definitely looking forward t it, the demo absolutely blew me away and the reviews scores seem to confirm that it is indeed a fantastic game. Regarding your spoiler, I hope this is a bit more nuanced than it initially appears, otherwise that'd be an odd feature to just include if one options is de facto always better than the other.

[AndyKurosaki]

I absolutely loved the demo, which led to me buying the full game. I’ve only played a little bit, as I was concentrating on finishing off FF7 Rebirth, and felt rough as hell yesterday. But, I’m very impressed with this game so far. 

[spatular]

^ nice one!

 

On 12/03/2024 at 22:05, Maryokutai said:

My CE is stuck in the amazon shipping circle of hell. I hope it doesn't mean they botched their pre-orders and sold more than they got. 

 

Definitely looking forward t it, the demo absolutely blew me away and the reviews scores seem to confirm that it is indeed a fantastic game. Regarding your spoiler, I hope this is a bit more nuanced than it initially appears, otherwise that'd be an odd feature to just include if one options is de facto always better than the other.

is that CE the one with the board/card game or something? hope it arrives!

 

yeah i hope i'm wrong on the spoiler bit too.

 

did a boss battle last night, it was really difficult, only just scraped through, not sure if it's because i was underleveled or maybe my teams were not composed of the right types of units or something, only survived because i had an evasive guy in the front that dodged most attacks and one in the back doing small amount of burn damage to the boss each fight, small combat spoiler

Spoiler

the boss keeps doing attacks that reduce all your units to 1 health but they weren't taking damage as they both only had 1 health in the first place.

 

sort of struggling with tactics around which units to use against which enemies, like all my teams are mixed up to try and combat multiple enemy types but most enemy teams are just 2 different types so maybe need to be switching things round based on who i'm fighting, not sure really.

 

the programming tactics part - some of them i think i have setup ok but it's going to get a lot more complicated when they learn new moves.

 

it's an interesting game i'm compelled to play more but not sure i'm playing it quite right.

 

[spatular]

50 hours or so in and im still not quite sure im playing it right. Theres so many different options it makes me think im a bit stupid. But i am still enjoying it quite a lot. I get the feeling its a very good game if you are good at this sort of thing. Im maybe about half way through. Was really struggling for a bit but unlocked the ability to upgrade the people, upgraded people are very strong so im doing ok now, suspect that might change when i come up against more upgraded baddies. The upgraded ones are so strong because they get double the active/passive move points.

 

i can also now have 5 people in a team but its a big upgrade cost so havent done it yet, been spending the points on upgrading people instead. Seems like there are lots of ways of playing, you can unlock loads more teams so you can have maybe 10 teams on the field at once so can maybe win by having large numbers. Or even less teams but 5 in each. Guess Im in the middle with 5 or so teams with lots of upgraded people.

 

theres so many different things to keep track of im sure im using the wrong words to describe stuff.

 

some good tips here:

https://unicornoverlord.atlus.com/media/pdf/unicorn_overlord_tips.pdf

 

also i had been trying to compile a list of all the strengths/weaknesses of the different classes but its in the game under library -> classes, something like that, but only for classes you have iirc.

[Maryokutai]

Really looking forward to this, but I'm going to finish Banishers first. Don't like playing big games like that in parallel.

 

What difficulty are you playing this on? Considering you feel like you haven't yet grasped the entirety of its mechanics but still seem to be moving along just fine, looks like it's either a very flexible toolset or rather lenient on some difficulties. I'm usually not that great at these games, so that doesn't sound too bad either way to me.

[mfnick]

50 hours and not sure you’re playing it right? That sounds like hell to me. I really want to play this but that puts me right off. 
 

Still yet to try the demo TBF too. 

[spatular]

Im playing on medium and yeah seems pretty well ballanced, have been doing most side missions mind.

 

the not playing it right thing is more how all the different mechanics combine together to decide the outcome of a fight - im finding it difficult to work out good tactics sometimes, although sometimes it goes well too. Id say i understand the mechanics but putting that into practice im finding hard, ive always been quite bad at tactics type games.

[Maryokutai]

Played the first hour of this, can't say much about the game of course but I will point out how much I appreciate that a developer still cares about putting out an extremely polished product on Switch in 2024. This could just as well be a first-party game in the way everything is smooth and clean, and it shows that Vanillaware are perfectionists when going about their craft.

 

As for the game, now that I'm playing the full version and not the demo, and therefore not skipping all the cutscenes, the setup gives me very strong, classic Fire Emblem vibes. Nintendo's series has unfortunately since moved on to being some kind of social sim, so seeing this with its very classic overthrown kingdom and 'heir to the throne roadtrip' setup just scratches an itch I didn't know I had. Gameplay is, of course, absolutely nothing like FE, but it has that same atmosphere that made Path of Radiance such a memorable experience. Really looking forward to the many hours I'm going to spend with this.

[AndyKurosaki]

I’ve not had much chance to play this yet, currently on with Hifi Rush. Not going back to work anytime soon,

so once ive completed that, ill move on to this. 

[Maryokutai]

Got another hour in today, kind of have to stop at the first signs of sleepiness because missing some crucial tutorial info will probably prove fatal ten hours down the line. I can totally see the potential of 'playing it wrong', as spatular mentioned. There's a ton of stuff to keep track of, but at the same time they kind of take their time to introduce everything one by one, so hopefully I can manage to remember the important bits. But it's just a joy to play, even simply going through the menus and looking at all the stuff they put in that isn't technically necessary (like a complete animation glossary for every unit type with customisable backgrounds and weather conditions), but adds to the overall feeling of having something special on you screen.

[spatular]

Yeah does feel like a lot of effort has gone into the game, seems very polished.

 

turns out i was lying, sort of, about playing on normal/medium difficulty, as although i chose that at the start in the demo, apparently the difficulties were re-balanced in the full game and normal in the demo is ‘tactical’ in the full game, so im actually playing on hard mode, but not the hardest as theres one above that. 

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, that's true, I remember posting that in the news topic (and mentioning how it makes the retail version kind of a cool collector's item by default).

 

I picked the 'new' normal and 5-ish hours in it's kind of a walk in the park, almost laughably so. My characters are one-shotting enemies while they do single-digit damage for the most part. But I'm a bit wary of changing it, because you never know with these games. Could just be lulling me into a false sense of security.

[Maryokutai]

Put the difficulty to 'Tactical' today. Normal doesn't really force you to engage with its mechanics at all, you can basically autopilot through everything and that thoughtless approach started to negatively affect my enjoyment. I might switch back and forth if I ever come across a dumb boss or something, but you can tell that Tactical is how they want you to experience it and I'd recommend everyone who's going into this to at least try it on that difficulty first.

[spatular]

^ yeah i agree, glad i was playing on tactical. Think i might have overleveled a bit though as i did nearly all the battles.

 

finished it earlier, overall i think its a really good game. Maybe i didnt get the most out of it as im not great at this type of game. Possibly like dmc or beyonetta, i really enjoy those but am rubbish and sort of half button mash through them.

 

108 hours on the clock its a long game but like i said i did nearly everything, think it maybe would benefit from being shorter, like i sort of want to try it on  a harder difficulty but no chance as its so long.

 

Some of the tactics you can employ are pretty cool, but the best one i came up with on my own was still pretty basic 

Spoiler

Had 2 thieves in the front as theyre really hard to hit but they dont do much damage so had 2 hammer bros in the back with folowup skills so whenever the thief hit anyone theyd follow up doing much more damage.

 

really polished game, can barely think of any annoyances, it was hard to sort through all the items/accessories and thats it.

so yeah good stuff.

[Maryokutai]

Jesus that's long. I scratched the 20 hour mark yesterday, will probably take me until summer to get through at this pace. After the first area I went to the south, thinking I had a choice, but just barely made it through the first battle (by leveling up five times per unit). Went to the east then and am currently just stomping everything because of that. Kind of odd hw they give you a choice here while there's a clear order to proceedings.

 

But I agree, it's hard to really throw any big criticisms at it. It really does everything well it sets out to do. Maybe its focus on allowing the gameplay take place on the map you're running around could mean there are some limitations to map design (no elevations for example), but I guess I'll find out at some point. But I think it's extremely impressive how easy it is to digest all of its complex mechanics. Not saying that this results in me min-maxing it at 100% (far from it), but it never feels like you're looking at something and not understanding it. Mostly it's a case of not thinking about it instead. In that aspect it really is a masterclass of intuitive design combined with a readable presentation.