⏰ In a rush? Don't worry, I gotchu'! ⏰

What Works:
✅ Gorgeous Art Style: Stunning visuals reminiscent of Vanillaware's previous hits.
✅ Deep Strategy: Addictive gameplay with customizable squads and tactics.
✅ Meaningful Choices: Decisions impact the story and character relationships.
✅ Replayability: Multiple paths and consequences keep things fresh.
✅ Accessibility Features: Difficulty options, battle speed control, and story summaries.

What Doesn't:
❌ Generic Plot: Familiar story for RPG veterans.
❌ Repetitive Battles: Combat visuals can become monotonous.
❌ Overwhelming Mechanics: Steep learning curve with a lot to absorb.
❌ Cluttered Interface: Menus can be confusing with numerous features.

🎮 Vanillaware Strikes Again

Vanillaware, company responsible for hits like 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and Dragon's Crown, is back dueling for our wallets, and surprising absolutely no one, fires another shot across the bow of the video game industry. It's astonishing how the team's quality and mastery in game design shines through title after title, with this latest one drawing heavy inspiration from Fire Emblem and, even more blatantly, Ogre Battle. Unicorn Overlord injects a drop-dead gorgeous art style, already considered the company's trademark, popularized since Odin Sphere.

👑 Journey of Prince Alain

With that said, Unicorn Overlord explores the journey of Prince Alain, heir to the kingdom of Cornia and leader of the Liberation Army, in a world under the tyrannical control of the Zenoira Empire, led by Emperor Galerius. While I won't spoil any surprises, despite the plot delivering a generic and familiar rhythm for fans of the genre, it unfolds progressively, battle by strategic battle, with dialogue choices and moral dilemmas taking center stage during intense narrative moments, resulting in unlikely alliances, well-written betrayals and mysteries, and phenomenal voice acting.

💬 Impactful Choices and Consequences

For example, in one of the first dilemmas, Alain has the power to decide a character's fate. After making a choice and facing the consequences, I hopped online (thanks, internet!) to see the outcome of the opposite option, and the result couldn't have been more different! However, what truly enriches Alain's main quest, which is a bit weak in comparison and focused on weakening Galerius' dominion, are the characters and companions that make it up, each with their own motivations, desires, and personal story, just like the decisive moments exemplified above.

⚔️ Immersive Gameplay Experience

Although the plot holds our interest to a certain extent, the real draw of Unicorn Overlord lies in its gameplay, where its progression cycle satisfies from start to finish. After the first few hours, we freely explore the world surrounding Alain and company, completing minor side quests, liberating towns, and using various resources to enhance gameplay mechanics, such as increasing the number of units in a formation or the number of available squads.

This, along with the plot, pushes us from objective to objective, making Unicorn Overlord's progression system robust and rewarding, with ample opportunities in each battle to increase the strategic intensity, meticulously preparing the appropriate tactics to face each challenge. I understand this might sound like marketing speak, but the truth is that every choice, whether it's for the narrative or the gameplay, has (almost) always an impact.

🛡️ Master the Tactical Squad System

Inherent to the gameplay, both in the overworld and in battles, is the aforementioned expansive and experimental squad system with two rows, each composed of up to five units. The beginning of the adventure limits the quantity to ease the player into this system. That being said, all members of the Liberation Army have a class associated with them, like Thief, Knight, or Soldier (among others), loaded with strengths and weaknesses, passive or active abilities, and thanks to this mechanic, the possibility of adopting a personal playstyle becomes a reality. Of course, like all tactical RPGs, there's always one unit or another within a class that's more capable than another.

Having said that, I mentioned earlier that the plot is enriched by the cast that composes it, and that is due to its Fire Emblem influences. When building a squad, it's important to consider who to pair the units with. This is because as units fight or have meals together, a relationship grows between them, where each milestone can unlock a special event between them or increase their passive battle stats when together.

📚 Learning Curve and Accessibility

However, this whole web of mechanics, exposed right from the beginning of the game, can be intimidating even for the most experienced players in the genre, with tutorials frequently bombarding players with the sheer number of concepts to consider. This carries an inevitable consequence: too many concepts and mechanics are introduced, and the video game, even with various difficulty options available, ceases to be accessible, especially for those who enjoy taking long breaks between sessions. Nevertheless, on the other hand, Unicorn Overlord tries to mitigate the experience and learning curve with a gradual introduction of these issues, finding success to a certain point.

🌌 Dynamic and Visually Stunning Battles

On the other hand, while the battles are impressive eye-candy for the first few dozen times, they become repetitions of visually monotonous spectacles. However, their usefulness shines when the outcome goes south, and as these battles occur in a specific order, dependent on the initiative (the most important stat) of each unit, it's always worth paying close attention to the flow of troops to understand where, strategically, the approach can be improved. It's also noteworthy to mention that any unit can be customized with a list of actions à la Gambit from Final Fantasy XII, here called Tactics.

⚙️ Accessible Gameplay Options

Thankfully, Unicorn Overlord also introduces some accessibility options regarding gameplay. For example, not only is the overall difficulty adjustable between four options, but you can also speed up the battle pace or skip them entirely before they even happen, useful when you already know the outcome. Other menus, like a history of the dialogue that occurred, an archive that reminds you of previous events, as well as a section that covers various elements of the world, are invaluable aids for those who easily lose track of the narrative.

🦄 A Must-Play for Tactical RPG Fans

It's a herculean task not to recommend this title to all tactical RPG fans, especially those who adore Ogre Battle, Fire Emblem, and Vanillaware. Sure, at the end of the day, Unicorn Overlord isn't perfect. The main story is a generic, well-chewed trope, and the battles, despite being visually impressive, quickly cause eye strain. Additionally, the user interface can be confusing and cluttered with the (almost) abnormal amount of mechanics constantly on display. However, these complaints, in the grand scheme of things, are practically insignificant, overshadowed by the deep strategic element at play, composed of the squads and classes of each unit. The overworld is interesting to explore, with an addictive gameplay loop and well-written side stories, not to mention the visual and auditory feast it presents. Thankfully, this Unicorn exists and is easy to acquire, unlike its mythical namesake.

🌟 M I S C 🌟

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◻️ 📝 Original review published on March 22nd, 2024.
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◻️ ✍️ Reviewed in European Portuguese, translated with A.I.
◻️ 📜 Review Number 148.

✨ F I N ✨

⏰ In a rush? Don't worry, I gotchu'! ⏰

What Works:
✅ Unique Karakuri Mechanic: Building structures for combat and exploration adds a new dimension to the monster-hunting genre.
✅ Compelling Monster Design: Kemonos are interesting fusions of real animals and nature elements.
✅ Streamlined Monster Hunting: Focuses on the core hunt without pre-hunt rituals.
✅ Variety of Weapons: Offers multiple weapons with distinct learning curves, with the wagasa being a standout.
✅ Beautiful World: Azuma provides a diverse and visually appealing world to explore.
✅ Fun Gameplay Loop: Crafting gear and weapons from defeated kemonos fuels the gameplay loop.
✅ Strong Monster Hunter Inspiration: Provides a familiar experience for veterans while offering a fresh alternative.

What Doesn't Work:
❌ Abysmal Performance: Inconsistent frame rate and blurry visuals make for an unpleasant experience.
❌ Confusing Upgrade System: Unclear weapon upgrade paths can be frustrating to navigate.
❌ Limited Monster Variety: May feel repetitive after encountering a limited pool of kemonos.

🌿 A New Monster-Hunting Adventure

Wild Hearts storms onto the scene, offering a monster-hunting experience that blends formulaic familiarity with refreshing innovation. Priced at a premium $79.99, this title by Koei Tecmo, published under the EA Originals label, promises a thrilling adventure. However, despite its captivating potential, my experience on the Xbox Series S was a crushing disappointment.

🎮 A Disappointing Experience on Xbox Series S

Here's the truth: Wild Hearts, on the Xbox Series S, feels like a magnificent bird with clipped wings. Despite numerous attempts, I couldn't bring myself to finish the game, let alone invest enough hours for a thorough analysis. The allure of diving into the world and carving my path as a monster hunter simply wasn't there, shrouded in the haze of underwhelming performance. This is a harsh reality, especially considering my well-documented love for both video games and a good bowl of soup (seriously, who doesn't?). In fact, Monster Hunter, Capcom's monstrous success (pun intended), holds a special place in my gaming heart.

🌌 Drawing Inspiration, Forging Its Path

Wild Hearts, however, manages to carve its own niche while drawing clear inspiration from its predecessor. It avoids blatant imitation, presenting a compelling alternative within the monster-hunting genre. Here's where things get interesting – at least on the Xbox Series S, where the true potential of Wild Hearts remains frustratingly blurred. Theoretically, Wild Hearts has everything to keep me hooked for hours on end. Stunning visuals, a world teeming with ferocious beasts (kemonos), and a satisfying gameplay loop fueled by crafting and exploration – all the ingredients for a monster-hunting masterpiece. Unfortunately, the reality on this platform falls short.

The pain lies in the performance. Here's the deal: Wild Hearts is a genuinely good game. You can practically feel the Monster Hunter influence coursing through its veins. From the rhythmic hunts against intriguing kemonos, where dismembering body parts yields rewards and alters their behavior, to the meticulous progression system centered on crafting weapons and armor from these very monsters and the fantastical world of Azuma, everything evokes a sense of familiarity. Even the plot, a simple tale of a nameless hunter defending a village against the fury of the kemonos, feels comfortably familiar.

⚔️ Combat and Strategy

The Monster Hunter DNA is evident, but Koei Tecmo wisely avoids a simple copy-and-paste job. For instance, Wild Hearts offers complete control over camp placement. Here, you can rest, embark on missions, craft gear, and essentially set up your personal hunting haven. This freedom adds a layer of personalization to the experience, allowing you to tailor gameplay to your preferences. However, this system is tied to a resource management mechanic and the aptly named Dragon Pit, creating a somewhat intricate web of dependencies.

🌟 Exploring Azuma

While Azuma isn't a true open world, it borrows the Monster Hunter approach. Think of it as a collection of diverse biomes, each a sprawling and vertical playground filled with resources and secrets. Fans of the genre will find the combat in Wild Hearts instantly recognizable. Facing off against colossal kemonos demands a measured and tactical approach, relying on well-timed dodges and defensive maneuvers. Mastering not only your weapon of choice but also the kemonos' attack patterns becomes paramount, as certain attacks can leave you vulnerable and open to devastating counter-offensives.

Wild Hearts simplifies the genre's formula to a degree, making it a more approachable entry point compared to its inspiration. Gone are the elaborate pre-hunt rituals involving meal preparation and meticulous item selection. The focus here is purely on the hunt itself, with monsters exhibiting no signs of fatigue or capture mechanics. While I never found the kemonos themselves boring, their battle strategies felt somewhat predictable and monotonous.

On the other hand, the eight available weapons offer a satisfying learning curve. The katana, the first weapon you encounter, serves as the centerpiece of the Wild Hearts experience. However, the real showstopper is the wagasa – a multi-bladed umbrella that demands exceptional timing and mastery in parrying kemonos attacks.

🔧 Karakuri Constructions

And that's exactly what sets Wild Hearts apart in the genre. These karakuri constructions bring a Fortnite-like feel that fits very well into combat, allowing you to build boxes, trampolines, gliders, or torches to complement the gaps in your weapons. The inherent strategy of this mechanic can be both simple and deep. For instance, a box allows for a quick jump, which even helps with traversing the world, but building a trampoline on top of a box already covers much more distance and verticality.

Fusion Karakuri, however, are special contraptions unlocked during battles against specific kemonos. These serve more specific purposes, such as the Bulwark, built by piling six boxes together. When used at the right moment, like the charge of a Kingtusk (a giant boar), it allows it to be repelled and knocked down, open to a quick and efficient counterattack. There are many other variations, and they all enrich the gameplay, making it very fun. But this mechanic isn't only valued in combat. Dragon Karakuri, directly correlated with the Dragon Pit and the aforementioned resource management, are persistent devices (similar to structures in Death Stranding) with a number of passive uses, such as traversing long distances through a cable car line, or searching for scouting kemonos with a wooden radio tower. Karakuri is also cleverly integrated into the narrative, with its presence well justified both in the plot and in the presentation of Wild Hearts.

🔨 Crafting and Progression

Still referring to karakuri, this system features an upgrade tree and other unlockables like aesthetic elements: benches, signs, and others. However, the vast majority are quite useful, such as a box that stores all food items, a wind vortex to propel the hunter high in the air, and even a structure with shell-shaped paddles to collect fish, important ingredients in cooking or to sell for more money.

🎣 Encountering Kemonos

I haven't discussed the kemonos much, but the truth is that these creatures are a fantastic mix of real animals, such as boars or monkeys, each with a fantastic aesthetic, with various elements of nature like vines or moss. Each one fights in its own way, and, similar to Monster Hunter, each one has vulnerable weak points to various types of damage. Although I haven't reached the end of the game, from what I understood, the variety of monsters ends quickly, but this could also just be a bad habit of the other franchise mentioned here, one that has been around for several years.

After defeating a kemono or completing a demand, two options are given: return to the camp on the map to continue exploration or return to Minato, the main city and central hub of Wild Hearts. Here you are free to talk to the villagers, accept secondary demands, shop among general items and accessories, or, more importantly, visit the blacksmith (also available at a camp via Dragon Karakuri) to build equipment, weapons, or armor based on the kemonos you've been defeating and their parts.

🛠️ Armor and Weapon Crafting

This was the system I struggled with the most. When creating armor, something essential for facing stronger monsters, it's possible to forge two varieties, human or kemono, of some pieces: notwithstanding the visual difference between each, the armor of the human variant, for example, focuses on defensive-oriented abilities, with the kemono variant focusing on an aggressive style.

Weapons, however, are not easy and are more complicated to understand. Unlike the linear system used by Monster Hunter, dividing creations by categories (monsters), in Wild Hearts, each weapon follows a non-linear path, inheriting the abilities of the previous option in conjunction with the new ones acquired. In theory, it seems simple, but in practice, you battle against a giant diagram, going from one side of the screen to the other trying to understand what might be better or not. I want to believe that over time this system becomes a simpler subject to tackle, but although it's a bit frustrating, I admit that planning both the armor and the next weapon upgrade has become a focal point of the experience, and a goal always to pursue to improve the combat style that reflects the weapon used. Despite everything else, each armor was always visually more appealing than the previous one.

❌ Performance Woes on Xbox Series S

Let's address the elephant in the room, although I don't want to dwell on it. Wild Hearts on the Xbox Series S is not recommended. On other platforms, like the Series X, yes. However, on the Series S, you face inconsistent thirty frames per second performance with atrocious visual appearance. I often had to rub and blink my eyes because it's a blurry and unfocused experience, almost like those demanding third-party titles on a Nintendo Switch. It's sad to admit it, but that's the reality.

👍 A Promising Future

It saddens me that a game as competent and fun as Wild Hearts is corrupted by mediocre visual appearance (on the Series S) and such poor performance. However, enjoyed on a platform with strong performance, Wild Hearts firmly believes that the title will capture your heart, with plenty of fun things here.

The combat is crisp and challenging, with the karakuri constructions introducing a freshness rarely felt in the genre. The loop between hunting kemonos and developing new equipment is addictive (despite the slightly confusing progression), and the Asian aesthetic is very appealing and atmospheric. The Monster Hunter formula takes a few bumps in favor of originality and also simplicity, making Wild Hearts more accessible for newcomers.

🌟 M I S C 🌟

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◻️ 📝 Website link published on March 28th, 2023.
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◻️ ✍️ Reviewed in European Portuguese, translated with A.I.
◻️ 📜 Review Number 124.

✨ F I N ✨

⏰ In a rush? Don't worry, I gotchu'! ⏰

What Works:
✅ Ambitious Narrative: Amnesia: Rebirth delves into themes of colonialism, mental health, and motherhood, offering a sophisticated and thought-provoking story.
✅ Chilling Environments and Sounds: The game creates a palpable sense of fear through its atmospheric environments and sound design.
✅ Initial Fear Factor: The fear of the unknown lurking in the darkness contributes to a tense and immersive experience.

What Doesn't Work:
❌ Puzzles Lack Intuitiveness: Some puzzles are not intuitive, leading to moments of frustration and confusion.
❌ Unclear Objectives: At times, the objectives of the adventure can be ambiguous, detracting from the overall experience.

👻 Evolving Horror Experience

The terrors and nightmares crafted by Frictional Games in Amnesia: Rebirth deliver a more sophisticated and complete adventure when compared to previous titles. This time, the team's expertise emphasizes narrative and plot; an ambitious story that delves into various themes of colonialism, mental health, and even motherhood.

This, along with chilling environments and sounds, and, at least in the beginning, a great fear of what lies beyond the darkness, made the journey to the end challenging (in a good way). However, I felt that some puzzles were not very intuitive, and at times, the objectives of the adventure were unclear.

Nonetheless, that doesn't stop me from recommending this title to horror genre enthusiasts.

🌟 M I S C 🌟

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◻️ 📝 Instagram post published on October 24th, 2023.
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◻️ ✍️ Reviewed in European Portuguese, translated with A.I.
◻️ 📜 Review Number 136."

✨ F I N ✨