Unicorn Overlord game review

While this game doesn't get a perfect score across all my usual 5 rating categories, it is holding a special place in my heart for the game being what it is. To me, it's a Strategy Game with RPG and auto battling mechanics. Awesome!

The game brought back memories of playing Civilization 1 and Master of Orion 1, yeah, city management wasn't nearly the same, but the conquering was quite similar to that old Civ game, and the unit construction freedom reminds me of building fleets ... I also think about how this game essentially adds on another battle layer to the gameplay(as if merging the ground combat with the space combat into skirmishes while also shipping a new out of skirmish battle scene which at the time of playing the demo didn't impress me, although it would later on as I continued to play the game). This game mechanically has a lot more in common with other games though without any of the same flavor, namely Teamfight Tactics and FF7 Rebirth (one of the minigames with the blobs vs robots) and is a lot of fun all around for me.

The story takes some inspiration from a variety of places too from what I can tell. Shadowverse is an obvious inclusion, particularly with many shared Voice Actors between the 2 games, but also with the mere existence of Unicorns which while not really a major part of the story of Shadowverse, were an interesting part of some of the expansion sets of the game where there are a lot of imagined things printed that have nothing to do with the story mode lore, but are interesting regardless.

The game seems to have a lot of minor flaws, but it is still a great game in a lot of ways despite that. It does so many things right and does them so well, for example it has the best dating simulator I've seen, it also has the best chat log functionality I've seen yet. I can imagine much better chat logs, don't get me wrong, and this is a feature I always want in my video games, but this is the best implementation of the feature I've seen so far.

It's definitely a game I can see myself playing again and again, because just like many other RPGs that I tend to favor, it doesn't waste your time with such things as long and unskippable cutscenes or obnoxiously long travel times.

The main form of combat is you moving units around the battlefield and fighting other units, you need to take over enemy command posts while not losing your own. When a unit vs unit skirmish happens, the results of the battle will happen without your input. It is up to you to anticipate skirmishes and prepare for them either before or during battle, or both. I found myself using up probably too much time in the menu preparing, but I still had some fun with it, even if it probably wouldn't have been the most exciting thing to watch. In hindsight, I wasn't aware of how much flexibility you have during a battle before skirmishes which is something I probably should have figured out sooner. Regardless, it was a lot of fun compared to something like Teamfight Tactics where the AI of my automatically fighting units is completely outside of my control. Here, while I can't exactly manipulate the orders as well as I'd like to, I'm still given a large measure of control, enough that it's an intriguing experience to modify the orders.

Since most people are going to regard it as a RPG even though I consider it to be more of a strategy game with minor RPG elements, I will rate it according to my typical RPG categories.

Exploration: 5/5
Story: 5/5
Progression: 5/5
Art: 3/5
Battle: 5/5

The art suffers in part due to many small errors that are relatively insignificant and the music getting old sooner or later, in particular the common songs. There is a volume bar though, so it's not a major problem in continuing to enjoy the game. The digging also had an unnecessarily loud clanging sound effect, but there really is no need to hear what you're doing anyway during those moments, plus the digging game is easy, so that's also not a real issue.

I uploaded a video on my YT channel so you can see me completing the 'defeat all enemies' personal challenge;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5FHBosVo_Y
//end of review