What is it that draws people to the strategy genre? Is it planning ahead? Is it puzzling over the best course of action? Is it the orderly nature of grids and linear movement? Or, going off the Fire Emblem series, is it helping an unlikely group of sellswords and mercenaries become super best friends? Whatever it might be, Unicorn Overlord has ‘it’, an X-factor that ensures that it’s an early entry for strategy game of the year.
The kingdom of Cornia is at war, though it’s a war started in that most dastardly of fashions – duplicity and deception. Queen Ilenia is betrayed by her trusted adviser, General Valmore, who kills her and drives out her young son Alain before embarking on a conquest of Cornia and its neighbouring kingdoms. Unicorn Overlord truly begins when Alain comes of age, with the prince returning to Cornia and building an army that might free his homeland from the clutches of tyranny.
If medieval fantasy is your thing, Unicorn Overlord’s narrative will wrap you up as well as any book by Tad Williams or George R.R. Martin. The push and pull of dramatic events are perfectly weighted, and the steady stream of encounters and battles then meaningfully move the story along. Besides that, there’s a heap of side quests, character interactions and interesting asides that are well past being footnotes in the central tale. I haven’t enjoyed a strategy RPG as much as this in a long time, and fans of Fire Emblem, Triangle Strategy and Final Fantasy Tactics will find much to adore in its twisting tale.
That story would be for nought if the tactical action didn’t match up to it, and Vanillaware have crafted something that feels genuinely unique amongst the current crop of strategy RPGs. To be clear, my initial impressions weren’t all that positive, and it almost runs the risk of turning players off thanks to the simplicity of the opening action. Thankfully, just before you lose interest, it grabs hold of you and then doesn’t let go for the next fifty hours. This is a game that I’m going to sleep thinking about, planning out the next steps in my masterful obliteration of Galerius.
Part of the opening simplicity is that Unicorn Overlord is part auto-battler and part RTS, with your selected units being manoeuvred around the battlefield before coming into contact with an enemy and starting combat. You then have no direct control over that combat, simply watching the beautiful visuals move in a deadly dance of swords, axes and bows. It’s at this point that you ask, “is this it?” Thankfully the answer is a resounding “no.”
In essence, you take on the role of commander and tactician, preparing your troops and training them to respond in exactly the way you’d expect. It’s a riff on Final Fantasy XII’s Gambit system – the best Final Fantasy game, by the way – and you can set each combatant to focus on a particular enemy type, target the one with the lowest health, perform a support move or a host of other specifics.
You then have to consider the layout of that team, with each unit comprised of six slots that open up as you progress. This miniature grid adds a further level of tactics to each encounter, and where you position your units dictates how they respond in battle, with the front row protecting those behind, or making it difficult for the enemy to make contact. However, some attack types target a whole vertical or horizontal row, so you really have to think about what the perfect layout is, and how that unit will respond to the unit they’re facing up to.
You’re juggling all that, while moving your units around like an RTS, capturing bases, grabbing siege weapons, and keeping an eye on your units’ limited stamina and the ever-ticking stage timer. It’s beguiling, and just when you think it’s time to stop you find yourself playing for another two hours.
I might be gushing, and I might be this game’s perfect target audience as someone who loves both Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy XII, but there’s just so much to love about the game. The 2D-HD style of the world map is also beautifully put together, and you can spend your downtime exploring, digging, helping to restore villages and towns, finding hidden treasures and evading enemy units as you make forays into captured territory. I probably spent almost as much time trying to find bits of wood to repair towns as I did in combat, and it’s a decision I’ll readily stand by.
Putting their own spin on the 2D-HD aesthetic pioneered by Octopath Traveler, the overworld and battle scenarios match surprisingly well with the painterly visuals of the combat sections and cutscenes, and the design of the central characters and additional units means that they’re both instantly recognisable and endearing. The only mild annoyance to the whole experience is how heavily some characters lean on faux-medieval language, but the longer you play the less it becomes a problem – the excellent voice acting makes up for it.
