Unicorn Overlord Is A Frustrating Let-Down

[@drackyslime]

When I was playing the game one of my friends came over and saw me playing and said “this game definitely starts off with a ‘kingdom of blahblahblah’ gets invaded by a bad guy and you play as a prince or something to stop the bad guy” and I laughed and told him he was pretty much 100% correct. I liked the game quite a bit and appreciated and enjoyed the clear inspirations behind it but it definitely is about as bland as they come in a story front I have a soft spot for really simple stories, and I really appreciated the non linearity presented in virtually every aspect of the game- but it’s definitely far from one I’ll be thinking about too often. I think my biggest issue is Alain is just boring. My *favorite* Fire Emblem lord is Marth, who shares a very similar experience to Alain as you and I both noticed, but Marth feels like a real guy where Alain feels like an ideology of noble righteousness. He just isn’t compelling aside from being a player avatar and it makes the game in the entirely a lot less compelling When the game worked for me it was when I was tackling continents out of order, fine tuning teams to beat the arena early, exploring the towns and finding side missions, and seeing my army expand. There are high highs, incredibly middling middles, and unfortunately also very sluggish and dull lows. It gets a solid “yeah it’s pretty good” from me and embodies the type of “yeah you might like this game you can borrow my copy if you want” style recommendation I’d give to those who ask me about it- but when I think of this genre it’s not even in the same ballpark as something like Fire Emblem 4 or Final Fantasy Tactics

[@Ianbits]

Yeah it's a good game to have a big demo for, it's something I would have recommended as a rent if renting games was still a thing

[@zenithdragon]

Oh boy a new Ianbits video about a game I liked. *sees title* Oh no... One thing I disliked a lot was how you need to hire a bunch of mercenaries just to have a guard stationed at each town so you could harvest materials and get passive gold. I felt like I was wasting honors that could go towards a squad upgrade. It was easy enough toward the end to grind out honors if you have to though. I really liked the combat system. I found it fun trying to reorganize the squad in order to optimize damage or turn a loss into a win. Also, like you said, the game is pretty easy. I found the more challenging fights were ones I went into underleveled like when I ended up going to Elheim first instead of Drakengard. I have been debating starting the game again on True Zenoiran difficulty to see if it actually gets tough. Also, the balance for some units seemed off during my playthrough, the angels just seemed like straight up the best as squad leaders for example. I find that the gameplay makes up for the at best mediocre story but as an isekai enjoyer I am used to bad storylines and plot so my bar there is very low. I found that the better aspects of the story were the small backgrounds given to each character that you get from the rapport cutscenes. I think the problem, like you said, is that most of them are tropes and not fleshed out at all. I think they could have benefitted from having fewer characters and maybe relied on the mercenary system more for building out your squads. Also, Alain is the most broken unit. It is insane how much better he is than every other option.

[@Ianbits]

Yeah the angels are nuts, Ochlys comes in early pre-promoted, the angel healer is just like flat better than the stupid owl healer, and the angel archers were the most annoying unit to fight because of the accuracy debuff.

[@zenithdragon]

@@Ianbits I thought the owl was awful but maybe I just had her with units that weren't very compatible since I thought it would be fun to just have a full bestral squad with one of each race.

[@jrpgaddict7726]

Agreed! also the difficulty on TZ was so easy, what a waste.

[@Brassrain0su]

a video to help me put a game firmly in the middle of my backlog

[@Ianbits]

Always worth giving the demo a try before you pick it up.

[@mikeroe7943]

The point that you make onscreen at 9:40 is a pretty good one worth talking about as well. I loved Soul Nomad, but there was something lost when I realized the game had gotten so easy that I had switched the game to simplified quick battle mode. I knew I would win and just wanted XP grinding, and hardly ever needed to watch individual battles closely ever again. Fights I was meant to enjoy were just too long and I didn't want my time wasted. This game seems to really want you to enjoy the art, so a slow system that makes you sick of looking at it alarms me. Feeling that it's necessary to swap to 2x battle speed just to get it over with is a bad sign, and reminds me of P2W gacha games where you can pay money to unlock amazing speed boosts... like 4x battle speed! Woo! In the back of my mind, I keep remembering my experience with Epic 7, when battles just got too tedious to watch. It was even worse because one of your first mainstay characters had an attack bark that was basically "UGH, THIS IS SO BORING!" and you just couldn't help but agree with her. But the art was gorgeous...

[@Ianbits]

This is a really good point I hadn't considered. I definitely just started skipping battles towards the end which is a shame because of how pretty they look. Part of it is there's no randomness, the RNG is locked in before the battle starts and included in the forecast, so I never have to actually watch to see any of the outcomes.

[@mikeroe7943]

Part of the fun of the Fire Emblem game I played was the risky hope that Ike would start flipping his sword in the air and doing a critical attack with it's own animation. Ogre Battle allowed fights to get really weird and interesting when you nailed a flank or back attack, making you want to watch back line enemies get torn up because they're now in the front line. This game doesn't seem to offer that kind of stuff to hold your interest.

[@arkadiuszkrzos2999]

I love this game, however i feel a lot of it is wasted potential. Graphics, customization and variety is awesome. Voice acting is great, but the story is boring as hell. Also scenarios waste potential to make more interesting mechanics included. I hope they make part 2 and improve the weak parts!

[@emeraldweapondrinksbeer176]

The entire sandstorm mechanic in Drakeng...err, Drakenhold was silly, and is a microcosm of why I disliked the game as a whole. All it did was block your LOS - it didn't hamper support attacks from mages and archers (how the hell can they see where they're shooting?) and flying units had no issues flapping around in it. It was nonsensical and really showed me the level of 'strategy' required by the game. Also, timers. Nonsensical method of artificially increasing difficulty when there isn't even a need to do so - you're almost always on the offensive, trying to dislodge enemies from highly defended positions. Why the hell do you need to stick a timer on it? The developers probably realized how ridiculously easy the game so they dumped that on top of it. Lazy and disappointing.

[@Saitamacz34]

I very much agree, I tried the demo but could not connect with the game. Too slow, lacking in story drive, I got bored quickly while reviews were praising it. I thought sth was wrong with me :). Still, I saluate the attempt and creativity.

[@CodyMcGaming]

Great video brother! Keep it up!

[@Ianbits]

Thanks!

[@austinlevert624]

Always enjoy your vids. Also thanks for making me cringe remembering the Tidus/Yuna laughing scene

[@alejandrobarajas6078]

This video is exactly one of the reasons I've subscribed to it in the first place. Everyone has been praising the hell out of this game, but this review feels actually genuine and not fanboyish cause it's Vanillaware. I can actually trust what you say when you comment on games, which is becoming increasingly harder to do nowadays.

[@Ianbits]

Appreciate it!

[@qubix8327]

nice discussion, thanks!

[@Ianbits]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@TheTigmex]

Great Video! Whats the song in the Outro? Sounds like Trails

[@Ianbits]

Edith - Old Town from Trails Through Daybreak kzbin.info/www/bejne/gXa2ZWOMmaqnh8k

[@agent7142]

I guess it's time to play Ogre Battle 64 again instead lol

[@louismartin7608]

Finally someone constructively criticizing this game ! I really don't understand how this game got so many positive reviews, the game is flawed on so many aspects. I totally agree with everything you say. For me this game is a huge disappointment, I liked the demo, but as the game introduced new mechanics, more units, more everything, it became a giant mess of mechanics to me. Way too many elements to take into account to be able to create a really optimized strat. But given how numingly easy the game is, I was constantly crushing the enemy, so why bother trying to optimize more. I really believe that units should have had a maximum of 3 characters in them. This would have forced players to create very different units tailored to the enermy you're going to engage. Here because you have so many character in a unit, the best thing to do is to create polyvalent unit which can tackle 95% of enemy unit. In the end you're just crushing all enemy unit with more or less any unit you have. You add in top of that all the ridiculously broken and OP valor skills you can activate and all the ridiculously broken and OP object you can use and the game just becomes completely boring and uninteresting. It's a huge disappointment for me and I'm quite angry because I read so many very positive reviews about this game before purchasing it and nobody raised any of those issues.

[@keroclow9059]

I did the demo. Am not sure but it just didnt connect with. But i really enjoyed 13 sentinel alot.

[@raulrojas9253]

Vanilla ware peaked with Dragon Crown that game is fun as hell but very ahem DISTRACTING Unicorn have the style but again the gameplay is....eh Another critical acclaimed game 13 the sentinel has a similar issue but in the opposite direction, people praise the story but my god the gameplay is so boring an unapealing it looks awful, in contrast Unicorn looks incredible but I have been skipping animation and just reached level 10, rescued the girl which name I cant even remember and ....I don't want to play more. Masterpiece my ass.

[@celestialarmor695]

Try front mission do.a review on that

[@shiina4826]

i absolutely adored unicorn overlord, i think for me the gameplay just maintained extremely fun for me with how much customization and freedom was present (both in the combat and also the exploration) and the story wasn't as big a deal for me as i can just really enjoy simple stories and overlook flaws, above all I think Vanillaware's games as a whole just have a lot of heart to them that makes me adore them.

[@auto_kailani]

Ianbits videos on JRPGs are weird. They hold much more importance then in other videos but at the same time they can be too amazing even against the same types of videos. Ianbits best videos on JRPGs have zero flaws and are always a banger. But it's tough to manage a perfect comment on each video because there are too many strong moments in the videos. Also, I always repeat the beginning of what is said in the beginning of the video, so I'm constantly pausing and rewinding. Idk where I'm going with this but like the damn video.

[@Ianbits]

Thank you whale friend

[@Crowlivia32]

This video pretty much exactly mirrors my experience with unicorn overlord. I was really excited for something to scratch that same itch that fire emblem does, but very quickly I realized this game, while made with passion, lacks any sort of narrative or writing substance. It's grindy, it's dull, and the gameplay, while very novel, isn't strong enough to carry the rest of it

[@rumel45]

The battle system is so bad and I cannot understand how people like this game. It's so so bad. I want to play a game not tell it how to play itself.

[@seanburns9105]

The strategy part does look like a ton of fun. I'm betting mods will come out to fix the difficulty issues and it could be a gem. I agree the story would hurt it, but its worth keeping an eye on IMO.

[@Garl_Vinland]

I thought the plot was going to pick up when we got to the racist forest elves, but nope, it’s just casual racism. Casual slavery. Casual killing. “Isn’t war fun guys when you’re a blue haired himbo?” What nimrod pushed this as an Ogre Battle tribute in the early reviews, seriously?