I expected to enjoy this game but ended up being blown away by it. The core gameplay loop of traversing the world in an order mostly left up to your own choosing while slowing amassing an army full of colorful characters was incredibly satisfying and I never got tired of it. The battle system itself though is really what holds the whole experience together, it is incredibly unique and accessible while still concealing a labyrinthian amount of depth if you choose to embrace it. The variable amount of stage lengths really added a nice variety as well, as you usually don't feel stuck doing one thing for too long unless it's one of the more important moments in the story in which case I'll happily spend 45 minutes to an hour in a slugfest against an enemy army as this tends to be when your units are really put to the test and is also when your micromanagement done before the battle can really make a difference over the course of the stage.
Speaking of which, I generally would not consider myself a fan of micromanagement within video games but Unicorn Overlord really managed to enthrall me with it's sheer amount of class variety and items, both of which make a significant impact as to how a unit performs. Every few hours, I would pause what I was doing and restructure my unit layout from scratch just out of sheer curiosity as to how different units would synergize with one another. While this was often a bit time consuming it just made it that much more satisfying when those units managed to shine in the next battle. I think anyone who just uses the Optimize function to customize their units for the whole game would really be missing out on how good it feels to individually program a unit in a way where it suddenly performs significantly better with only a few tweaks.
As far as the game's presentation, it's Vanillaware, so it looks and sounds amazing. I'll always be a huge fan of their commitment to beautiful 2D backgrounds and character models both for the artistry and because it results in games that are pretty lightweight and snappy (I played the entire game on a 7 year old Nintendo Switch and it ran smooth as butter the entire time). I especially loved some of the animated battle backgrounds as they really immersed me within the experience and managed to give a grandiose scale to the encounters that isn't always evident when moving units around the battle map. The user experience also felt consistently fantastic and I really have no complaints other than that I wish you could 'Optimize' your equipment without resetting all of your Skills as well but you can work around this pretty easily using the tactics templates so it's not a big deal.
If there was a place to nitpick with Unicorn Overlord, it would definitely be with it's story, and I can agree that it feels pretty by the numbers a majority of the time but I honestly appreciate how much it respects your time by not constantly beating you over the head with the same plot details over and over again like a lot of JRPGs have the bad habit of doing. I also found it to do a great job of worldbuilding by establishing the world through the characters you meet along your journey. While these characters may seem to lack depth on first meeting, spending time with them and utilizing the journal to learn more about their background can really bring them to life in a stellar way. If there was something within the story that I felt was missing, it would've been a few more encounters with the central villains though I did enjoy the air of mystery that surrounds them throughout most of the game as is.
Speaking of which, I generally would not consider myself a fan of micromanagement within video games but Unicorn Overlord really managed to enthrall me with it's sheer amount of class variety and items, both of which make a significant impact as to how a unit performs. Every few hours, I would pause what I was doing and restructure my unit layout from scratch just out of sheer curiosity as to how different units would synergize with one another. While this was often a bit time consuming it just made it that much more satisfying when those units managed to shine in the next battle. I think anyone who just uses the Optimize function to customize their units for the whole game would really be missing out on how good it feels to individually program a unit in a way where it suddenly performs significantly better with only a few tweaks.
As far as the game's presentation, it's Vanillaware, so it looks and sounds amazing. I'll always be a huge fan of their commitment to beautiful 2D backgrounds and character models both for the artistry and because it results in games that are pretty lightweight and snappy (I played the entire game on a 7 year old Nintendo Switch and it ran smooth as butter the entire time). I especially loved some of the animated battle backgrounds as they really immersed me within the experience and managed to give a grandiose scale to the encounters that isn't always evident when moving units around the battle map. The user experience also felt consistently fantastic and I really have no complaints other than that I wish you could 'Optimize' your equipment without resetting all of your Skills as well but you can work around this pretty easily using the tactics templates so it's not a big deal.
If there was a place to nitpick with Unicorn Overlord, it would definitely be with it's story, and I can agree that it feels pretty by the numbers a majority of the time but I honestly appreciate how much it respects your time by not constantly beating you over the head with the same plot details over and over again like a lot of JRPGs have the bad habit of doing. I also found it to do a great job of worldbuilding by establishing the world through the characters you meet along your journey. While these characters may seem to lack depth on first meeting, spending time with them and utilizing the journal to learn more about their background can really bring them to life in a stellar way. If there was something within the story that I felt was missing, it would've been a few more encounters with the central villains though I did enjoy the air of mystery that surrounds them throughout most of the game as is.