Review – Unicorn Overlord

Few developers can claim to have cornered the market on an entire visual style, yet you’ll struggle to mistake a Vanillaware game for anything else. Be it the backgrounds, the characters, or the famously mouthwatering food; you know their work when you see it.

The Switch has hosted a few of their games already in the form of magical school RTS Grimgrimoire and storydriven sci-fi ensemble epic 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. Both are singular as experiences – I struggle to think of anything quite like them, beyond the common ground of their creator.

Unicorn Overlord can’t really compare with its siblings when it comes to narrative prowess or unique setups for its gameplay. I’d even dare to say this one can be generic at times in its adherence to “ousted noble reclaims their homeland” high fantasy concepts. Yet those basic bones manage to carry delicious gameplay meat on them that marbalize two main influences into dozens of flavorful hours.

Yes, this game owes quite a bit to both Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle, in particular their Super Nintendo entries. If you’ve a fondness for early 90’s SRPGs you can just stop reading and buy Unicorn Overlord already, because it’s the love letter that niche never knew it longed for. Everyone else, do stay with me but you might want to have your wallets ready too.

The real time tactics at play across these maps is fast-paced and does an exceptional job at easing you into stimulating gauntlets of decision making. Mobility and decision making are at play here, but it’s your freedom in the planning you put into your squadrons that makes this one something special. Every character you deploy is essentially programmable, allowing you to set priorities and parameters for all their available actions. You have no direct control once a battle begins, with your ability to comprehend both logic and circumstance being essential to success. This can feel intimidating due to the sheer volume of options, but the way it all clicks together over time delivers more than just exceptional player freedom – you naturally become a better general of your ever-growing army.

Credit where due, I really enjoyed Unicorn Overlord’s handling of its overworld. Like a lot of the game it isn’t exactly unique, but it offers up just enough exploration and palette cleansing to ease you out of the tension of its combat maps. Ostensibly optional skirmishes provide experience for your units but also access to towns holding armor, weapons, and other services – be sure to visit Taverns! As you clear more of these and support towns across the map you’ll increase your renown, gaining access to more and better services. You’ll need them too in order to bring out your recruits’ full potential.

Your forces are filled by a mix of generic hired swords and what felt like an endless flood of more fleshed out faces. We may not reach Suikoden levels of staffing, but certainly enough to give most Fire Emblems a run for their bullions. I wish I could say their characterizations ran as deep as their numbers, but more often than not they came across as singular even with their optional Rapport conversations.

Generally speaking you’ll encounter potential newcomers in a pre-battle cutscene that gives you the full scale of their personality, be they an ally-to-be in need of assistance or an enemy you can win over to your cause. That’s not to say they can’t be entertaining, and as the game goes on you’ll come across more unique recruits (Elves! Angels! Owls!) but it’s through its roster’s shortcomings that Unicorn Overlord’s greatest strength and truth comes to light.

Simply put, this is a game that’s greater than the sum of its parts due to its mastery of them. The team at Vanillaware clearly loves this genre. We saw this when Dragon’s Crown gave us one of the greatest beat-em ups ever made due to that reverence. So too does Unicorn Overlord present a case for being one of the greatest strategy RPGs ever.

Where that mission statement somewhat falters is that beat-em ups were a fairly static genre – Dragon’s Crown had a lower bar to clear, whereas the strategy genre has persevered and grown. The Switch alone has plenty of offerings, from Nintendo or otherwise; big budget and indie. Is there a place for Unicorn Overlord, in its time capsule-like reverence, among those more varied contemporaries?

I’m inclined to say yes; or perhaps “Verily so.” The aforementioned exceptional art direction does a lot to carry the genre mastery but just as integral is the writing and voice acting at work here. It’s flowery, with a blending of localization-specific terminology and olde fantasy turns of phrases carrying the experience from start to finish. The size of its cast does occasionally slot certain characters into narrow characterizations (“I need my mother’s approval. I’ll show her. Mother will finally notice me. Mother…”) but I enjoyed seeing how the team handled those constraints along the way.

While it never reached the heights of some of the developer’s past works, Unicorn Overlord is a worthy addition to Vanillaware’s legacy and something strategy fans need to play. Though it has its clear inspirations, there’s nothing quite like it on Switch with respect to how thoroughly and confidently it melds its progenitors. It may “play itself” by design, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more in control and capable of leading an army to victory in a strategy game as I have with this.
 

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