#she uni on my corn until I overload

[supergenial]

Unicorn Overlord: It’s good

Well you already know I like to talk about games sometimes and if you have ever read me you already know what gets me writing: When I think a game is really good but also tremendously disappointing in one or two relatively unimportant aspects. So let’s dive into my thoughts on the latest game by Vanillaware: Unicorn Overlord.

First off, nearly every attack animation in this game is a delight both graphically and sonically. The attacks truly feel like they have WEIGHT to them, like someone’s getting fucked up for sure. Of course halfway into the game I started skipping animations quite a lot but the reason I skipped is because fights are a bit hypnotic to look at, and seeing Every Single Fight would make the game last an additional 10 hours or so.

Beyond that, the fact that the game makes you a programmer is just cool, you get to set several conditions to decide if and when attacks will be used in skirmishes. This opens up a tremendous timesink to anyone who cares about optimizing their teams. And hey, if a fight doesn’t seem like it’ll work, just move the characters around a bit, or their skills, or turn the assists off and on again, the rng is seemingly static so you can try any number of combinations before combat, and the battle preview is perfectly accurate so any prediction you see is guaranteed to happen.

Ok but is it too easy?

Surely enough, you’d think any game with that much player freedom is bound to be either too easily beaten by skilled players or too hard for casuals and my surveying seems to indicate: both, but mostly the first one. Upon release date I had to read a plethora of people complaining that the game was Too Easy, even on expert and True Zenoiran difficulties (true zenoiran being the difficulty you unlock upon clearing the game).

Honestly though I think the difficulty should be fine for most players, the problem here is that obviously most of the people buying day one are seasoned srpg veterans who will obviously utilize the system to it’s greatest extents. It’s no wonder that I saw spoilers for The Worst ending (which requires beating the final mission extremely early into the game) before I ever saw spoilers for the midgame or even the actual finale. People playing this day 0 were freaks desperate for a new srpg.

So rather than complaining that the game is too easy, I’d rather say that the issue is that it is Too Rewarding. This is a game where doing stuff gets you stuff, if you make a well thought out unit that steamrolls your enemies it is no surprise that it actually works out and it successfully steamrolls your enemies.

It reminds a bit of the time Breath of the Wild was released. If upon clearing the Great Plateau you go straight to hyrule castle, you will have a fight against Ganon at this maximum possible difficulty. If instead you choose to actually do the game’s content, the divine beasts will let you skip the first few phases of the fight, resulting in an easier fight against Ganon not only because your Link is stronger thanks to the hearts, equipment, energy and techniques acquired through the journey, but also because Ganon simply has less hp. To a lot of people this was an issue, they wanted the fight to be hard, but clearing most of the game actually made it significantly easier.

As far as I’m concerned though I don’t really mind it! Obviously if you prepare for a fight the fight will be easier. This is a complaint that while I do understand, I don’t really share at all.

In the same breath that I praise it for being too rewarding I will however also admonish it for not having enough content for these types of players. Surely enough a casual like me feels like freaking Einstein for beating a boss while taking no damage but it’s fair to say more content or more interesting content needed to be there to fully satisfy those who love the struggle.

Not to say vanillaware didn’t try. You have the Coliseum where your units face off against actually well thought out teams, leading to an epic fight with a beautiful gigantic woman who will join your army only if you defeat her. And once you do defeat her there’s even more well thought out teams waiting for you in further arena levels.

This however begs the question: if you can make better enemy teams in this mode, why didn’t you do that for the main game too. Not only that but challenging coliseum levels will net you very powerful rewards that will make your army even stronger and the main game even easier. Hell, you can get all the way to Amalia early on and have a lvl40 behemoth among your lvl20 main army.

To make matters worse, Amalia’s fight is easily cheesed by the thieve, one of the very first classes you acquire. The fight will count as a victory as long as you lose less percentual hp than she does, which is way too lenient. For her final form at least they should’ve made it so you can only win by actually getting her hp to 0.

This highlights the issue we talked about earlier that I will spell out once again: the game truly rewards everything you do, however it doesn’t offer any further challenge for the rewards it gives you. To be fair with Vanillaware, they reportedly ran out of money while working on the game so it’s no surprise there’s no real post-game or whatnot.

The point is: you can show you understand team building and get Amalia early but this will make the following chapters extremely easy. Hell the game won’t force you to go to any place even though there’s obviously an intended order but if you skip ahead and go to the harder places, your reward will be having an abysmal time going back to easy low level content if you want to just enjoy the story. And oh boy, let’s talk about to the story, but first

The marketing

Can't recall if official sources actually said “From the creators of 13 Sentinels” or not but I'm still blaming the fans for spreading this one because no it’s not. Why would you ever say this. Different writer, different character designer and different game director. Blud_thinks_he’s_on_the_team.jpg. Yes it’s the same company and they have a similar style in the 2D segments but that’s it. If 13 Sentinels was an actually popular game (lol) do you have any idea how detrimental this would be to unicorn overlord?

These are completely different games. One is basically a visual novel with a gripping story that will have you hooked all the way to the end, which also happens to have some gameplay, while the other is an srpg with captivating gameplay, which also happens to have some story. These are two insanely different games, why even bring it up. Haven’t felt this mad since Zanki Zero said it was by the creators of Danganronpa. Bitch one of them is a cool, dark story taking place at the very end of humanity where some kids are humanity’s last remnants of hope, and the other is danganronpa. Don’t bring that shit up. They’re totally different games. Also before going on to the story:

The Characters

Auch is the coolest boy ever. He's my little blorbo or whatever tumblr people say these days.

Honestly, it’s a cool cast, for the most part. Some person said on twitter that the game really gets the essence of just throwing Guys at you and they could not be any more correct. “Hey guys I’m Lex and I climb trees”. What more could you possibly want from a character? One of them even has the balls to, in his epilogue, invent democracy in a story where there’s only kingdoms and empires, hell dude you helped a king rise to power. What the hell. You get an old witch that reverted back into being young and instead of looking like a 9 year old she looks like a regular grown woman. For a japanese company to do that it must have taken So Much restraint.  There’s also a half-elf that’s discriminated against by full-elves, epic dungeon meshi reference, amirite. Hell there’s even a catgirl that’s just a human with no cat features, she simply used to be a cat.

Aight you got me, the characters are quite simple for the most part but I assure you they are endearing precisely because of that. My favorites gotta be Melissandre (been a sucker for swordmasters for over a decade now, plus her rapport with Scarlet is really cute), Aramis (his poses are so extra, love him), Auch (not only is everything about him hilarious but his epilogue goes HARD) and of course my most beloved: generic female elven fencer, for no one has ever breasted quite as boobily as she has.

The Story

Alright so, the story, now we’re heading into spoilers. That’s right, spoilers for King’s Ranking and Dangan Ronpa, and also Unicorn Overlord to a lesser degree.

You know how in Ousama Ranking we see how despicable it is when the previous generation clings on to life and their so called glory so desperately that they would rather supplant or ruin the lives of their children who insist on being their own person as opposed to merely vessels of their will, an impending global issue happening right now as our planet slowly rots away to it’s demise because 80 year old politicians outright despise the newer generations so much they’d rather burn the world as opposed to letting them have it. Ok. what if we used that theme but like, uninteresting?

Don’t get me wrong, I had fun with the story. At first I was supremely pissed off when there was mind control like 5 minutes into the story but the game eventually reveals there is no mind control and when it does, it kinda doesn’t fix the issue? Surely enough this is better than just a generic mind control scheme, the type of bullshit danganronpa 3 the animation despair side (aired in 2016) would pull off, but it’s still not stellar.

Turns out all these mind controlled people are actually possessed by souls from a bygone kingdom from olden days. The unicorn ring doesn’t dispel mind control, it exorcises the souls possessing the body, so that the original owner can retake control. So that’s pretty ominous and dark for sure but fundamentally doesn’t solve the issue brought up by mind control.

When Super Dangan Ronpa 2 reveals that it’s cast used to be supervillains prior to having their memory wiped all the way back to the time when they were still innocent, for a moment it raises a lot of questions. Going further beyond the issue of forgiveness for those who repent their crimes: Should we forgive those who don’t even remember their crimes? Who commited crimes against their will? A man burns down your house, your family still in it, but he was brainwashed, would you want him jailed? This is a fun thing to think about before it is revealed (in the anime) that they weren’t actually evil, they were simply brainwashed by brainwashing tech. Their acts of evil did not stem from bad choices made at bad times, they were simply forced into doing evil. This reveal of course retroactively ruins a large part of danganronpa and most of what it ever meant to me.

Unicorn Overlord, in trailers, fancied itself a game with Tough Choices, I vividly remember the trailer showing the protagonist next to a defeated enemy and the options Recruit and Spare being shown. So I for one thought that perhaps recruiting a bad guy would make it so I can’t recruit a good guy later on, or some other shortcoming. Like maybe executing someone would result in a drastic change in the narrative. But this isn’t the case.

Gameplay-wise there is no particular downside to recruiting any character in the entire game. Everyone recruitable is a Certified Good Person, who was either possesed or Doing It For A Very Good Reason. Ultimately it’s just the age old question: would you rather spare a poor man’s life and hang out with him, or gain +1 movement?

Hell, there’s only two recruitable guys I actually wanted to kill. One survives anyway, you face him off again later on and he lives again and is spared without your input. He’s not even possessed but still did something questionable, I wanted him in jail but he just lives on like nothing.

The other guy I would’ve killed is immediately spared without player input. He also wasn’t possessed but still cooperated with the bad guys, in a nation high enough in levels to possibly be able to resist the forces of evil. Tough Choices my ass.

Even if there’s no changes to the story though, the ethical question would by itself be worthy of note. I forgave this guy who aided evil but did he really have a choice? Was he right in that it would protect the people if he cooperated or is there something inherently insidious about allowing evil to be in power? Unicorn Overlord says: Who cares. He was just possessed bro. Or his ends justify his means. Stop having moral conundrums we’re trying to have fun over here. 

Point is that it doesn’t matter if they’re mind controlled or possessed, ultimately it just absolves criminals and takes away any moral question to be had about their forgiveness. No one has to be a bad guy because the zenoiran empire are the bad guys.

I guess a more interesting question would be: What if the zenoirans were good guys? Or at least decent guys. What if they only possessed bad guys, and once in control they just chilled and formed a secret society instead of trying to take over the world. Would their robbery of people’s lives and free will be so inherently wrong that it fundamentally makes them evil even if they’re improving other people’s lives? Is it ok to let people lose their free will as long as they’re shitty people? If there was some kind of evil guy, a king who’s a molester and abused everyone around him, but he turned good once he lost his free will or was possessed by an ancient relatively chill guy, would that make it ok? If you think those are decent moral conundrums know that you’re indirectly praising Persona 5, a game were The Good Guys go inside people’s minds to take away their free will.

Anyway, I shouldn’t be complaining, I’m the type that for a while has been on the side of just wanting simpler villains, any time we get something with even a little bit of nuance to it you get the most annoying people online consistently arguing about it for… I guess 5 years now?

They did put plenty of effort into this possession stuff, particularly notable in The Worst Ending. If you sequence break in a tremendously unnatural way and clear the final mission before saving Scarlet (the main love interest who is kidnapped at the beginning of the game) you get the worst ending in which you face off against her possesed body (which is implied to have undergone tremendous suffering and agony before finally giving up to the possession). After beating her and the final bad guy, Galerius possesses the protagonist and we see an ending featuring all the good guys in black armor led by Galerius, implying they’ve all been possessed too.

What’s really cute about this ending is that the credits show Galerius and his buddy Baltro first in the credits, that shit is hilarious for something that so few players will actually get, showing the final boss first in the credits like he’s the protagonist.

Well, aside from that, all the stuff with the sanctuaries that tell the lore of each continent near the end of the game, that’s really cool. Angels aren’t heavenly, they’re a failed experiment that can breed. Furries aren’t a different species, they’re elves that adapted to the environment using magic, whereas elves from the south had no need to evolve like this because their environment is so different. Honestly, that stuff was cool, I liked it. Really cool world building.

Anyway, by the end of the story the game spells out even louder for everyone that judging is bad and forgiveness is good, as it gives you the option to either kill or cleanse Galerius, with the choice to kill Galerius leading into the bad end. So if you’re ever in a situation in which you can kill Hitler remember: Unicorn Overlord wants you to spare him, he’s just a little baby boy who’s probably doing it for very good reasons.

Jesus christ dude just stop talking and tell me if the game is good or not

It’s a good game. 8/10 at the very least. Elven fencer my beloved I will follow your tits and ass to any game you’re featured in. Also play 13 Sentinels, not because it’s related in any way but because it’s freaking 13 Sentinels, if you haven’t played it then you really should