If you have any interest in Unicorn Overlord, play the demo. I’m serious, stop reading this right now and just do it. The demo takes roughly 5 to 8 hours to complete, gives a thorough tutorial of the mechanics and allows you to transfer the save data to the full game.
I’m assuming anyone still reading this review has already played the demo. The great news (depending on your interest) is that the full game of Unicorn Overlord will be just like the demo, but with more class types, weapon variety and environmental hazards.
Unicorn Overlord is a strategic masterpiece without equal. Some gamers may mention tactical RPG hits like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre or Fire Emblem, but Unicorn Overlord is a uniquely different beast. The game, in its Expert difficulty mode, is a delightful experience that rewards careful preparation and smart team building. Other tactical RPGs routinely fail in their higher difficulty modes, often forcing players to use trial and error strategies (like the more recent Fire Emblems and their time-rewinding gimmicks) and cheesing encounters to maximize experience gain. Other noteworthy plusses are the fantastic Vanillaware art style and music, which remain as timeless as ever.
The story is the Achilles heel to Unicorn Overlord’s rock solid gameplay. The use of mind control is an overplayed trope. It’s a lazy way of setting up an encounter with a foe and having them join your army afterwards. While you eventually learn that the “mind control” is something completely different, it nonetheless is used too often and robs foes of any agency. The few villains like Baltro that are not “mind controlled” are fantastically written and I wish they had more screen time.
The main cast is uninteresting. Alain from beginning to end, remains a generic, bland, cardboard cut-out hero that always does and says the right things. But wait!, you might refute that in the demo Alain can choose to make tough decisions like executing a foe or letting them escape. SPOILER ALERT… these decisions don’t affect the main story and in fact you are always better off letting them go or recruiting them into your party. The rewards you get from the alternative are items or resources that can be obtained later.
The game attempts to remedy its poor character building with Rapport events. Rapport events are akin to the Fire Emblem bonds where characters who fight on the same team or share a meal together gain points, which grants them higher stats when paired together. Unfortunately these Rapport events are generic Anime tropey scenes like a girl who is a terrible cook or a guy who can’t read the room and is oblivious to another’s romantic advances.
There are a handful of mechanics that don’t quite gel with the rest of the game. One way to increase Rapport is by having Alain give gifts to characters stationed in a town. Alain is the only one who can do this and he can give gifts to any character regardless of gender. Each team can consist of a maximum of 5 characters, so after Alain has maxed out his Rapport with the other 4 teammates in his squad, there isn’t much incentive to continue gifting (unless you change Alain’s squad frequently). Another SPOILER ALERT… Alain can give a unique ring to a character he has max Rapport with, whether the bond is romantic or not. So that makes for 5 possible members that Alain should be gifting to; anything more would be for completionist’s sake.
I was also not a fan of the other things outside of combat. Collecting resources is a time sink with little payoff. Liberating towns is fun, but there are too many of them to station them with guards. The way I got around this is to recruit a ton of low-level grunts, but the act of doing so feels like it ruins the suspension of disbelief, e.g,. recruiting a level 1 Soldier to be stationed in front of Drakenhold Castle. There is also a mining mini-game in each region which can reward a total of 5 treasure maps, but the drop rates for these treasure maps are random. I think I spent a total of 3 hours just to get them all. Lastly after each cutscene the game diligently records the events and what happened to each character in the Appendix which is extremely generous of the developers but I barely glanced at it in my ~70 hour playthrough.
If you can look past the mediocre plot and the bland protagonist, Unicorn Overlord is a beautiful strategic experience. From the beginning to the very end, I was constantly learning and experimenting with team compositions and their equipment. Just when I thought I had the perfect team setup, I discover a fatal flaw or something that can be optimized. Players looking for greater challenges can compete in the coliseum which pits your team against other players online. To keep things fresh, the game wisely restricts players from using the same lineup by banning certain classes and items on a regular schedule. Just thinking about the game makes me want to jump back in on its True Zenorian mode (which unlocks on the game’s completion) and experiment with classes that I didn’t heavily use in my first playthrough. Unicorn Overlord is the type of game that will keep the strategic part of your brain churning even after credits roll.