I write about video games for a residing (fortunate me, proper?) and as a lot of a dream as that’s, it has some downsides. In the event you can imagine it. One in every of them is that I usually don’t discover video games very stimulating or motivating. When it’s worthwhile to play one thing that’s not precisely to your style as usually as as soon as every week to make sure you’re masking it appropriately, you usually end up partaking ‘work’ mind, relatively than ‘enjoyable’ mind. Pumping 50 hours into CoD in every week will be tough if you additionally want to spend so much of the 9-to-5 modifying, working conferences, producing reviews, or yelling to colleagues about Google’s baffling new Core Replace.
Unicorn Overlord, which launched again in March this yr, felt like a balm. It’s maybe essentially the most motivating sport I’ve performed in years. As soon as I picked it as much as preview, and obtained my evaluation copy shortly after, I simply dumped 100 hours into it inside two weeks. I performed it in mattress, I performed it on my travels, I performed it while ready in line for a gig. It broke the curse of ‘the so-so work sport’ I had gotten into my head, and it made my life higher in consequence.
So, sum up Unicorn Overlord? It’s like a premium meal at a elaborate restaurant you may solely afford to eat at every year; it’s shiny, it’s wealthy, it’s luxurious. It’s a bit off-beat, perhaps not the form of factor you’d end up making at dwelling or consuming in different, lesser-renowned locations. However it does what it does properly; a fusion dish, in some way combining cosy parts with uncommon flavours that simply sing on the palette.
It’s a tactical RPG that may sorta ‘play itself’. It makes you’re feeling like a correct commander of a small military; the onus is extra on recruitment, administration, and deployment, relatively than precise battling. It takes the perfect bits of the Remaining Fantasy 12 Gambit System, and smushes it along with the perfect bits of the Ways Ogre collection, while liberally nicking concepts from Fireplace Emblem.
In reality, it is all very Nineties. It even summons whispers of Langrisser and Shining Power. However Vanillaware, in its now-trademark means, remixes the tropes and expectations you will have for the style and spits out one thing altogether distinctive. I’ve by no means performed a sport that seems like Unicorn Overlord, actually, and therein lies the appeal
Take the fight movement, for instance. In order for you, you may skip each single battle. The stats and the moment-to-moment gameplay is labored out in a spreadsheet, hid from view. You’ll be able to spend hours min/maxing your characters, deciding on your squads, and sending your allied items into battle, understanding that they will trample any idiot that dares come underfoot. However that’s probably not the purpose of the sport, is it?
As an alternative, like in Fireplace Emblem, there’s a level of player-directed storytelling in making characters crew up and combat. Seeing their interactions and monitoring how their abilities praise or undercut one another is RPG catnip. It’s compelling. Nigh-addictive, even. Taking part in Unicorn Overlord on Swap, and making an attempt to ‘excellent’ sure maps, I missed my cease on the Tube perhaps eight instances in every week. It is consuming, actually.
The enjoyment – and the distinctive draw, for my cash – of Unicorn Overlord is the best way it makes you consider even the simplest engagements like they’re life or demise. Play it on tougher difficulties, and you will have to summon an intimate understanding of your entire military (you recognize, identical to an actual commander) if you wish to have any probability of chiselling your means by way of the sport.
it’s a very good RPG, since you’ll end up mouthing ‘sure!’ to your self in case you handle to up your flying squad’s injury output by a paltry 5%. You’ll end up muttering ‘bastard’ if a 95% accuracy assault fails and it’s worthwhile to rethink, actually, your entire battle technique for a given skirmish. Vanillaware deftly treads the road between problem and reward, and in case you select to interact with the trivia of the mechanics, you’ll discover it’s one of the vital dense and mechanically responsive RPG sandboxes in years. Severely.
In a yr packed to the gills with noteworthy RPGs, Unicorn Overlord has been Unicorn Over-looked (sorry). In the event you’re on the lookout for one thing actually particular, and actually distinctive, to get your enamel into this festive break, I’d suggest this even over my precise GOTY suggestion. It’s an ideal sport to reset your mind forward of the yr to come back.
