LOL wow, no wonder Unicorn Overlord took 10 years to make (I forget if it actually took that long or if Iām exaggerating)
It wouldāve been neat if this is how they prototyped the game before starting development. Though I bet itās actually the brain child of someone on staff during dev and then everyone was like, āhey thatās neat, yeah letās make it a full thingā and then they stuck it on as a bonus good to the LE.
It does look like a game that took ten years to make. The amount of unique art and animation alone is astounding. Even the generic units look different when you hire them in different regions (and you get to customize them on top of that).
And the little details, such as the arbalist winding the arbalest.
Iāve reached the point where the game no longer feels too easy. I find myself having to approach battles carefully. I could probably just repeat the training ones to become over-leveled but I like it this way. Iāve had some scenarios (with the posted level well above my own) that Iāve just barely won. But even when the game has felt too easy Iāve consistently had fun with it.
I meant for the card game
I find the one-on-one fights strangely hard, the little units just waiting outside a fort with the yellow exclamation mark over their heads. Itās really time consuming to just swap out one member to test the difference of small changes to get a guaranteed defeat.
Enjoying the pace and vibe of the game so far though. I feel suitably challenged even in Cornia. This is gonna be my comfort game for a lot of the year, I can feel it.
does this game run at 4k on SeXbox/PS5? i assume some/all of the art is native lower res?
Iāve been playing on Switch, am far enough in that itās too late for me to restart anyway, and I donāt even own a SeXbox/PS5ā¦and yet I am curious.
Dragonās Dogma 2 has kept me from completing the very last part of this game, but I got to play the physical card game for the first time last night with members of a local board game club.
With the help of a player aid I wrote myself, I taught it to and played it with three others who not only had never heard of the video game (understandably) but also had little experience with video games at all. Which I think is kind of funny.
I mentioned that they might have heard of a game called Final Fantasy Tactics, and one of them said theyād heard the name āFinal Fantasyā a few times before in one context or another but didnāt really know what it was. The other two didnāt even seem to be able to say that.
The card game went pretty well. I like the mechanics of it, and itās not nearly as confrontational as Iād expected it to be. The only direct āattacksā feel tamer than those in Dominion. Iām not sure Iām entirely sold on the all-or-nothing round scoring mechanism (though I have to admit that it does feel somewhat analogous to the video game battle results), but I will have to play one or two times more to really form an opinion.
Iāve been playing this.
It reminds me of Heros of Might and Magic
Iām sad it doesnāt have a subtitle thatās a queen song
Unicorn Overlord: Man on the Prowl
I spent roughly the first 20 hours or so on tactical mode before I cranked it down to normal. Vanillware understands that part of the appeal of the genre is fiddling with menus, but at higher levels it was beginning to be a little too much for me personally.
āMaybe Iāll switch this character to the front row instead of the back?ā
āHmm, looks like I have to restart this stage and make a stronger group with a Gryphon Knight?ā
I kinda knew eventually that the fiddle-y-ness would catch up to me, and of course, you can bypass all of it by just grinding your team to get OP, but thatās not that much fun either. The most Iām willing to do is switch out groups and manage the clock during the battle stages.
You realize, of course, that weāre going to have to play the official Unicorn Overlord card game at some future SB meetup.
This was my attitude as well. I carefully constructed my units and their interacting triggers but didnāt use the template function or otherwise change them up for specific battles (other than the last part of the coliseum). It was just a question of which units to use in which situations. And that was enough to keep the game engaging for me.
Finally broke through the first area/landmass and donāt feel as starved for good unit combos. The real Unicorn starts here 
30 hours in and I think Iām about 75% done with this game (got the reward for 75% map completion not long ago). Itās my video game comfort food. I usually donāt like real time tactics in my Simulation RPG but this makes me wonder if Iāve missed out. This makes me want to play all other RTT SRPGs. (Or is it real time with pause RTWPSRPG?)
What are there, let me quickly think of some:
Ogre Battle + 64 (obviously) + Gaiden
Generation of Chaos - Pandoraās Reflection
Yggdra Unison (on DS, not Union)
DioField Chronicle
Hiouden SFC?
Grim Grimoire?
Front Mission Alternative?
ā¦there must be more?
I never really played them, now I want to.
Overload of Unicorns is a long game. Fuck thereās so much content, but many missions are really quick thereās lots of filler. But itās not that filling it gives me those āone more battleā cravings. Iām playing on the middle difficulty, was it called ātacticsā? My tactic is to use two cavalry groups to kill everything. They move the fastest and hit so hard. I have a gryphon girl commander flying around sometimes too, but sheās mostly there to be spawned at base camp or closer to the frontline to prevent captured outposts from being, well re-captured. So far this has worked. On every map with minimal adjustments. Use of items helps in case of a slight mismatch. I wish there were no items. Feels like cheating. At least the vendors have limited supplies but they seem to restock? I really hope they donāt restock, that would be awesome.
Itās a bit brainless, not gonna lie. Itās my video game junk food. It comforts me. I wouldāve hoped that I wouldnāt be in a situation again where thatād sound appealing. But here I am and I enjoy it a lot.
I consent to this.
so i have rescued Scarlett and in some ways it feels like āthe true Unicorn Overlord starts hereā etc.
i mean this in the sense that i am finally starting to feel some challenge - maybe iām just bad at the game!
that said, my main issue right now is that the meta has not really sunk in, yet. i feel like with every mission i accomplish, they introduce new units. there are so many kinds of units! how am i supposed to remember who all of them are weak to? i feel like i need a strategy guide or a spreadsheet, as it goes beyond the rock-paper-scissors of most other games in this genre to something much more specific.
yeah thatās one of the main problems with this game. there are like 50 classes and the game literally never stops giving you free units, which means that in addition to not remembering what half of them do ā nevermind what they synergize with ā you have no incentive to recruit mercs to try to create more specialized or lopsided formations. youāre just constantly trying to fit in The New Guy. itās also why the game is easy, itās so ridiculously wide that if they asked you to really drill into its depth as well, things would become very unmanageable for most players.
yeah in the beginning i was hiring mercs because iām used to stuff like FFT and i like the idea of getting attached to customized non-specific PCs, but now iām just replacing them with the much-better main characters i keep receiving. i also feel like the cap on the amount of unit formations is counter intuitive because there are so many characters. literally every enemy i defeat (ok except for like 3) wants to join me because of how strong or hot i am. even characters i assumed would die off (for story reasons) within 2 missions because they were overpowered are still with me, at this point.
anyway, surely someone out there has made a spreadsheetā¦
I recommend frequent checking of the ingame library recommendations about class strengths and weaknesses as I was getting similarly lost for a while.
The biggest issue to me is the prep phase never fucking ends when equipping each person with their shit. Then making their shit work for the unit theyāre in. At least you donāt have to do it often.
yeah there is something very time consuming about the menus in this game and not all pertinent info is shared between them. for example - if i want to check if a unit is already in formation, i can only see this (afaik) in the unit formation menu, and nowhere else. itās indicated by a little checkerboard icon next to the unit, but this is not known anywhere else, and sometimes itās hard to remember who is with who or who i am using or not using.
itās possible iām overthinking this and should just go with the flow because the game is āeasyā enough, but i would like to have a deeper understanding of how classes interact with each other. i guess part of what makes it tough is units can vary based on who is in them, and classes act differently depending on this, too.
I think one problem is that some classes are hard counters whereas others are kinda OK or can have their RPS totally diluted by having someone in the same party who just fucks the turn order (unless you play with gambits or radically rework unit composition). This is, I guess, the meat of the game, but it makes it hard to hold counters stably in your mental model for the early game.
The game doesnāt really suggest this but some characters are basically hero units and are just better in every way. You should spread them out if possible. If you group them together they become effectively unstoppable and depriving a unit of them makes their potential comparatively impoverished. When you luck out on a good combination though itās very satisfying
