Unicorn Overlord review: This unicorn has some ogre in it

Vanillaware is a pretty incredible studio. Between Odin Sphere, Dragon’s Crown, and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, the developer clearly isn’t afraid to explore genres with its beautiful trademark art style, and Unicorn Overlord might very well be the best of them I’ve played yet. Why? Because this is Vanillaware’s take on Ogre Battle, plain and simple, and it’s an extraordinarily high-quality one at that. If you liked those games, or you just want a meaty and highly-customizable fantasy-fiction tactics JRPG, you couldn’t ask for much better than what Unicorn Overlord offers.

Reclaim what’s yours

In a world governed by several kingdoms, Cornia sits in the center of one continent, but its fortunes have folded. A general by the name of Valmore stages a coup against the royal family he serves and uses mysterious powers to turn Cornia’s armies against it, whether they want to or not. Cornia’s queen makes one gambit to make sure her son, Alain, and rightful heir to the Cornian throne, manages to escape so that he might one day reclaim his kingdom. Unfortunately, while young Alain grows up and trains, Valmore takes on the name of Galerius and overcomes the rest of the kingdoms, taking over the world and establishing his reign as Emperor of the Zenoiran Empire. It makes for an immediately compelling setting and a long adventure as you take up Alain’s blade, gather friends and allies, and lead a rebellion to bring justice to Galerius.

Unicorn Overlord is easily the most beautiful Vanillaware game yet, and that’s saying something considering their characters and worlds have always looked beautiful. The game is filled to the brim with character classes that do all sorts of different things and their voices and animations are thoroughly high quality as well. It’s assisted heavily by an awesome soundtrack that stayed with me inside and outside of battle (not to mention had me wanting the deluxe edition with the included soundtrack).

There were only a handful of times where things sounded or looked off considering there are so many characters being voiced in this game. The Armorer shops in particular got on my nerves when selling things. Get used to hearing "Careful. You walk out and it's gone forever." in your sleep because you'll hear it a lot. I will also say that Vanillaware has a long history of being unnecessarily horny with some of its character designs and that’s true in Unicorn Overlord, too. I won’t spoil too much, but I feel Unicorn Overlord’s has the sluttiest-looking witches I’ve ever seen, and I have seen some slutty witches.

The narrative of Unicorn Overlord is one that invites multiple experiences. Throughout the game, and as you finish major battles, you’ll be tasked with certain pivotal choices. For instance, early on, a thief terrorizes the countryside and kills its protectors so they can freely loot the place. However, when you defeat him, he claims it was all to collect money for a cure for his sick sister. Do you sympathize and take mercy on him, gaining an unlikely ally or send him to prison, risking the development of a bitter enemy? That’s for you to decide, although I will say some choices are far easier than others and I can’t imagine why you’d choose not to take certain characters along when they ask, though you still have the choice.

Unicorn Battle?

As I said before, Unicorn Overlord’s gameplay is unabashedly just like Ogre Battle with some sensible cleaning up and augmentation. As you travel through the game, you’ll engage in tactical battles to take control of regions. Taking place from an overworld view, you deploy units out of a starting base and attempt to maneuver them to fight and defeat enemies and seize occupied strongholds, towns, watchtowers, and forts.

When an actual fight between units happens, it sort of plays like a random encounter, but you don’t have direct control over it. Instead, outside of the actual battles, you organize your collected characters into units, with a frontline of three spaces and a backline of three spaces. Your unit caps start at two with two overall units available, but as your army grows, so will your available unit capacity and the maximum characters you can put in one unit. Generally speaking, it’s good to put defensive or evasive characters like knights up front so they can soak up damage while you put strong offense like magic users and archers in the back ranks.

I loved collecting characters and character classes in Unicorn Overlord. Each new one gave me new ideas on how to mix and match my squads to minimize their weaknesses and bolster their strengths. That said, I will admit that you get so much to work with that it can occasionally be overwhelming as you sort them out. What’s more, many of the main characters have relationship meters with other characters that will grow as those characters fight in the same squad. Not only can they become stronger by being the same unit, but you can also unlock special conversations with them, so the game does a great job of offering incentives to experiment with your unit compositions if you want to get the best out of them both functionally and narratively.

Based on the way you arrange your units, when a battle happens, both your characters and enemy characters will take their turns automatically attacking and using passive abilities based on how you arranged and equipped them. I have to point out that while you can skip these fights, I barely did because the battles play out beautifully and are almost always satisfying to watch. You will win battles through numerous conditions, but mostly by defeating an enemy boss character or seizing the enemy’s main fort.

Outside of battle, you can wander the world freely and even fast travel between forts and towns that you’ve saved. You can even scour the map for item pickups, resources, and special event locations. If you can gather the right amount of certain resources, you can bring them back to towns and use them to upgrade any given town’s restoration, bringing new items to its weapon and item shops and often allowing you to take part in other bonuses, like the tavern boosting your characters’ experience.

If the wide variety of characters wasn’t good enough, the vast array of equipment also adds to Unicorn Overlord’s fun. Every character has a weapon class they can equip and two accessory slots. You can give them special gear that has all kinds of effects. One of my favorites was a flame staff I gave to a wizard. If he made an enemy burn and then hit them with a follow-up fire spell, that spells damage would explode to the rest of their unit, making it a great squad clearer. Simply put, there’s a staggering amount of customization, equipping, organizing, and arranging you can do in Unicorn Overlord, and it just keeps growing as you advance through the game, rewarding you with new and exciting options.

For the crown

Unicorn Overlord might be my favorite game so far this year. I loved Ogre Battle back in the day. March of the Black Queen is one of my favorite old-school games. I never would have expected Vanillaware to capture that feeling so thoroughly and even add its own twists to make it all the better, but here we are. You get from this game what you give, and it constantly rewards you handsomely for overcoming its challenges. Between great tactical gameplay, a massive and robust cast of voiced characters, a beautiful soundtrack and art style, and a great story, this is a game no fan of tactics RPGs should skip.

This review is based on a PlayStation 5 digital copy of the game supplied by the publisher. Unicorn Overlord comes out on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.