#anyhow Unicorn Overlord is fantastic and wonderful and I love it so much and can't wait to see what this epilogue has in store

[loregoddess]

finished the final map for Unicorn Overlord (well, not the final final Lv. 45 map in the epilogue section but ah, it's late so I'll do that tomorrow)

the ending was so good, and the final battle sequence was so cool, probably one of the coolest final boss sequences for an srpg that I've yet played (it's hard to get srpg final bosses on the same level of coolness as can be found in jrpg final bosses or just, final boss fights for most other genres of game in general)

Absolutely astonished by how much I loved this game. At first it was a bit baffling that a few people saw the game trailer and came to me like "Hey, this looks like a You game", enough so that I did actually go pick up the game bc I kept hearing good things about it, and then it was a bit embarrassing that not even fifteen minutes in I was like "Ah shit, this is exactly my sort of game" bc I really am just that predictable, but honestly? UO went above and beyond even those first impressions.

Like yes, this is one of the most "things I love in a narrative, and super fun game mechanics that I adore" my type of games I've ever played, but it's also genuinely so well-crafted and fun, and so much more than I imagined it would be from my initial impressions. Absolutely excellent game, excellent gameplay, excellent narrative, excellent characters (maracas are no longer enough, I need to stick these characters in a centrifuge). Can't wait to finish up the epilogue and see the final-final conclusion to everything.

some more thoughts under the cut bc spoilers

as part of my revised attack plan, I had spent a few hours grinding aux battles for gold so I could buy a shitton of healing/revival supplies which I then.......did not use at all. Didn't use a single item, except I think a strengthening serum once, during any phase of the final map.

Apparently? being a couple of levels higher due to those gold-seeking aux battles and rearranging Alain's unit for peak damage output and debuff negation (instead of balanced defense/offense like I had it all game) was enough that when I went to fight Galerius I was uh....able to finish his battle in one go, while only losing like, 20 hp for the entire unit. The same was true for Batlro during the third phase, the unit I had arranged for Galerius was able to one-shot Baltro and his six-party unit in one battle (but damn his special spell had such a cool attack animation).

So alas, I spent all this money and hunted down so many curative items.....for nothing (although maybe not, I have no idea what awaits me in that epilogue map battle).

I had actually seen a spoiler out of context so I knew about Illenia, but it's still really cool that she was alive like, that entirely upends the "dead parent" trope in a really weird way, and given how Not Okay Alain was about missing his mom, it's like, well this is nice actually. Probably a bit awkward, there is a lot of baggage to unpack, but nice. Glad she did not suffer the dead parent fate to its fullest potential.

(Also knew about the two endings beforehand, which was good bc I would have had a minor crisis if I had seen that decision w/out spoiler knowledge, bc until this point choosing the "1" option was always the best outcome, for the entire game except this one decision, where the "1" option actually leads to the bad end and also sounds a bit worse than the "2" option; but yeah I would have been pausing the game and running off to search for a guide if I had gone in entirely blind).

I ended up choosing Scarlett for the rite bc it seemed to fit the story beats the best (my temptation to go for Lex bc he also fit the story beats in a weird way aside), although seeing Scarlett foist the pontifex role onto Sanatio was kinda funny (sure, give the role to this guy who's so guilt-ridden he makes Renault's not-great coping w/ guilt look okay, and not I dunno, Nigel, the guy who was running things for a bit; I unsurprisingly love Sanatio so I say this all in good humor of course bc that was the wildest outcome honestly).

I wasn't unhappy w/ the Scarlett ending though, although now I'm curious about all of Alain's other paired endings since he can marry (or uh, become life partners with) basically every single character including characters he only has one rapport convo w/, which I was not expecting but which is super funny (everyone's a little in love w/ Alain, whether romantically, platonically, or in a familial way).

Gotta say I was not expecting Gilbert to marry Virginia though, that ending card hit me out of left field bc I would have sworn, based on the RCs, that he would have married Leah in absence a paired ending w/ Alain, but eh. All the other endings were either what I was expecting, or if they weren't, something really neat that still fit the character (Hilda becoming an apothecary was not on my bingo card, but damn does it actually fit her so well; thought Clive and Monica might hook back up, but it's cool that they each go on to rule their respective domains each in their own way while still remaining close friends). Really enjoyed all the character endings actually. Totally forgot the coliseum was a thing so I uh, never picked up Amalia, so I dunno what her deal is, but I'm sure I'd like her just as much as I do all the other characters.

Honestly really loved the entire story and all the characters. I'm surprised how well-balanced the narrative feels, since in my experience with other large-cast srpgs, there's usually a bit of narrative imbalance (minor characters only get minor character arcs or minimal extra writing, sometimes worldbuilding gets out of hand and details get lost, etc.), but everything about UO feels like it ties together really nicely, there weren't any loose ends or glaring ???s I had about anything regarding either the main storyline, the lore and worldbuilding, or even the side-stories and character arcs for the playable characters who weren't part of the main cast. (Although I do definitely want to review some of the exposition stuff from the endgame, bc hot damn that was interesting and tied into the story well, but it was a lot, and I'm still not over the nuclear unicorn).

(Okay there were some questions I had but they're uh, useless questions like, "Do angels have hollow bones and larger lungs to be able to fly so high?" or "How the fresh hell does bestral anatomy work?" or "Why are there human NPCs who are very open about wanting to hook up w/ the elves, but none who want to hook up with the bestrals or angels? bc I KNOW there would be humans who would want to" and not like, questions relevant to the main narrative).

Even when things were more hinted at then outright stated (i.e. Lex being in everyone's business bc he shows up as a guest in so many random RCs that are not his own), it felt organic in a "yeah well, they're all part of the same army so makes sense they'd show up in each other's RCs even if they're not directly involved" way. Even the late-game recruits who have the fewest RCs feel well-written and fleshed out.

And honestly, what a cast of characters. Usually w/ larger character casts I end up kinda indifferent towards like, 25-50% of the characters, but the UO cast gets the writing right in just such a way that I surprised myself by enjoying basically every single playable character in some way or another, and all the non-playable ones as well (the villains, despite starting off seeming generic, ended up being really cool from a narrative perspective, and I love that Baltro is the actual final boss bc like, he should be! fucked up scientist-mages doing unethical experiments are untapped potential for final bosses).

Loved the game so much, will be thinking about it for a long while yet I'm sure.