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. For those who can consider it. One in all them is that I typically 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 typically as as soon as per week to make sure you’re overlaying it appropriately, you typically end up participating ‘work’ mind, moderately than ‘enjoyable’ mind. Pumping 50 hours into CoD in per week will be tough once you additionally want to spend so much of the 9-to-5 enhancing, operating 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 probably the most motivating recreation I’ve performed in years. As soon as I picked it as much as preview, and acquired 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 recreation’ I had gotten into my head, and it made my life higher in consequence.
So, learn how to sum up Unicorn Overlord? It’s like a premium meal at a elaborate restaurant you’ll be able to solely afford to eat at every year; it’s shiny, it’s wealthy, it’s luxurious. It’s a bit off-beat, possibly not the type of factor you’d end up making at residence or consuming in different, lesser-renowned locations. Nevertheless it does what it does effectively; a fusion dish, by some means combining cosy components 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, moderately than precise battling. It takes the most effective bits of the Remaining Fantasy 12 Gambit System, and smushes it along with the most effective bits of the Ways Ogre collection, while liberally nicking concepts from Hearth Emblem.
In reality, it is all very Nineteen Nineties. It even summons whispers of Langrisser and Shining Drive. However Vanillaware, in its now-trademark means, remixes the tropes and expectations you have got for the style and spits out one thing altogether distinctive. I’ve by no means performed a recreation that appears like Unicorn Overlord, actually, and therein lies the attraction
Take the fight circulation, for instance. If you need, you’ll be able to skip each single battle. The stats and the moment-to-moment gameplay is labored out in a spreadsheet, hid from view. You possibly can spend hours min/maxing your characters, deciding on your squads, and sending your allied models into battle, understanding that they’ll trample any idiot that dares come underfoot. However that’s probably not the purpose of the sport, is it?
As an alternative, like in Hearth Emblem, there’s a level of player-directed storytelling in making characters group up and battle. Seeing their interactions and monitoring how their expertise praise or undercut one another is RPG catnip. It’s compelling. Nigh-addictive, even. Enjoying Unicorn Overlord on Change, and making an attempt to ‘good’ sure maps, I missed my cease on the Tube possibly eight occasions in per 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 best engagements like they’re life or loss of life. Play it on more durable difficulties, and you will want to summon an intimate understanding of your complete military (you recognize, identical to an actual commander) if you wish to have any likelihood of chiselling your means via the sport.
You already know it’s a great RPG, since you’ll end up mouthing ‘sure!’ to your self for those who 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 complete battle technique for a given skirmish. Vanillaware deftly treads the road between problem and reward, and for those who select to interact with the trivia of the mechanics, you’ll discover it’s one of the crucial dense and mechanically responsive RPG sandboxes in years. Critically.
In a yr packed to the gills with noteworthy RPGs, Unicorn Overlord has been Unicorn Over-looked (sorry). For those who’re searching for one thing actually particular, and actually distinctive, to get your tooth into this festive break, I’d advocate this even over my precise GOTY suggestion. It’s an ideal recreation to reset your mind forward of the yr to come back.
