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Vanillaware makes great games, from GrimGrimoire to Odin Sphere to Dragon’s Crown. However, it wasn’t until their 2019 release, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, that the developer’s name became synonymous with “you should play this team’s games.” It’s hard to say what, exactly, made 13 Sentinels the flagship title for Vanillaware, shipping over 1 million copies worldwide as of August last year, making it the best-selling title of the study. The easy answer is probably its beloved story, both in terms of how it unfolds and how it’s incorporated into the game’s real-time strategy combat mechanics.
Publisher Atlus and Vanillaware released it in 2019, so when the team announced its latest title, Unicorn Overlord, last September, it was easy to conclude that this was the studio’s next big focus. And it is, but oddly enough, I learned in an exclusive preview of the game that Vanillaware conceived during the development of 13 Sentinels, with its creation run parallel to that game, albeit with a different team and director.
“[It] it wasn’t a genre change, but rather a team effort to create a worldview that was originally based on a fantasy premise,” game designer Wataru Nakanishi told me via email after seeing about an hour of live gameplay of Unicorn Overlord It’s worth noting that the game isn’t a modern sci-fi action response to 13 Sentinels as I’d hoped, the team wanted to make another fantasy game, which checks out considering that’s where its roots lie, dating back to its debut game, 2007’s GrimGrimoire. If we look at Vanillaware’s history, it’s 13 Sentinels that stand out as the odd fit, with most games from the study falling into the field of fantasy.
Nakanishi says Unicorn Overlord is Vanillaware’s twist on the tactical fantasy RPG, and that’s immediately clear upon opening. The protagonist Alain is about 10 years old in the prologue, when he and the Cornish queen, Ilenia, witness a rebellion at the hands of one of their trusted generals. Worried about the kingdom’s fate and bloodline, his most trusted knight, Josef, is tasked with bringing the prince to safety. The story of the main game picks up 10 years later; Crown Prince Alain is in his early 20s and lives on the island of Palevia, where he has grown up since the rebellion. As he fights with his friend Lex, a ship in Zenoiran colors sails into port and it’s clear they don’t mean anything.
I’m immediately enamored with the score, which oscillates between medieval choirs and an orchestral mix of horns, winds and other genre-specific instruments. Nakanishi tells me that independent music group Basiscape, who sang 13 Sentinels under the direction of composer Hitoshi Sakimoto, are returning to create the musical soundscape for Unicorn Overlord, this time with Mitsuhiro Kaneda, who also worked on the score. of 13 Sentinels. Nakanishi says that Kaneda’s score has a “newness that lives up to the name, ‘Tactical Fantasy RPG Revival,'” which is something the team mentions several times when talking about the game. The claim is bold and, taken at first glance, almost arrogant. But Nakanishi humbly clears it up.
“[That statement] it reflects the fact that this is a challenging title created in the tactical RPG genre, which we’ve always loved, with new challenges, and that we want to convey that to our players in a direct and correct way,” he says. “We’re doing several efforts to make the game accessible to people who have never played this genre.”
After my hour of play, that’s a bit of a tall order. The genre is historically one of the most complex to get into, and my initial impression of Unicorn Overlord is that newcomers may find it overwhelming, perhaps even strange at first. You don’t necessarily control the individual fights that occur in combat encounters, but you determine where you want to move on the “tactical battle map”. Encountering an enemy makes battle inevitable, but before that battle takes place, you can basically look into the future to see how it plays out by checking your units’ formation, what abilities they’ve set, and more.
After you’ve made all the checks, and after checking with a stat measure that tells you how fair they might be in battle in a Fire Emblem-like fashion, the battle begins; you don’t participate, but watch what happens. Success comes from active skills, which use points regenerated between skirmishes, and passive skills, which are activated in combat when certain conditions are met. For example, a passive ability I see heals a unit’s character at the end of a battle, a critical tool since health doesn’t regenerate between combats.
Back on the beautifully illustrated tactical battle map, I see how a full battle stage plays out, complete with its own victory and defeat conditions. The player first interacts with the controller, where they deploy units based on the value points they have available to spend. Vanillaware tells me that liberating cities and fortresses and defeating enemies earns more. You can also spend these points on special abilities of value, which apply unique benefits in and out of combat. From there, Unicorn Overlord plays almost like a board game, where you have to tactically place your various units on the map, each consisting of different characters and companions with their own use case, and move them around accordingly.
Admittedly, it’s all pretty confusing since I’m thrown right into the mix, but I see a lot of tutorial messages and screens that I jump through to pass the time. Nakanishi assures me that Unicorn Overlord has a lot of in-game support, including “tutorials, recommended build examples, auto-teams, strategy settings, and difficulty level changes so that as many people as possible can enjoy the most exciting parts of the game. […] without being overwhelmed.”
Once an encounter begins, either by your own unit touching an enemy or vice versa, an initiative order determines when combatants attack, and the entire battle continues until the enemy (or you) is defeated or all fighters run out of action points. In the latter scenario, the side with the most remaining health claims victory. The more I watch it, the more I appreciate its cinematic approach: I, the player, put the pieces on the board and then watch the strategic planning (or chaos) pay off, hopefully with a victory. Nakanishi says the appeal of this type of game is immersion.
“[In] the case of tactical role-playing games, the combination of a strategy element, where you have a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield and make precise moves, step by step, and the role-playing element, in which you become attached to the characters. living in the world and fighting alongside it, is a genre of games that offers the greatest sense of immersion,” he says. “That’s the main attraction, and the team places a lot of importance on that kind of gaming experience.”
After some fights in this preliminary phase early in the opening hours of the game, we liberate a Palevian city under Zenoira, changing it from a red flag to our blue flag and collecting two Valor points in the process . This newly liberated city is now a base from which we can deploy units. We advance across the stage, using Josef to cover additional ground as movement occurs in real-time, and he moves faster, while swapping allies in and out of various units once two units are within range. a special green circle in the tactic. battle map Vanillaware says it’s essential to take advantage of this feature, as damaged allies may have to fall back while more skilled ones, such as a teammate using magic (or mage as it’s called in-game), or another with high resistance indicated by the number . on a shield on the screen, head to the front of the pack of a unit.
Within each unit is also a player-created class composition, which can determine how you advance them on the tactical battle map. Mounted cavalry is excellent against infantry, a standard soldier, as are knights. With their large shield, the hoplite classes offer high defense. They are suitable for protecting an area or unit, so countering with a high agility class is very important when facing one.
Outside of fights, players can use items to heal or upgrade teammates, change gear and equipment, and more. And all of that, Unicorn Overlord combat, is only half the experience, the other being exploration.
“All over the world, the big goals are always clearly presented and the players decide for themselves how to achieve them,” says Nakanishi. “Facilities such as cities and forts around the world are controlled by the main enemy called the New Zenoiran Empire, and as you explore the overworld, you can recruit allies, acquire equipment and items, and gear up as you liberate cities. In Various missions and events will occur along the way, but it is the player’s responsibility to decide in what order and how to complete them, so depending on the situation of the troops. […]you may have to avoid or postpone them at times.”
On that note, Vanillaware expects players to get credits at 50 hours, but finishers can expect more than 100.
I’m not completely sold on the combat and exploration, but that’s because I haven’t played it myself yet. It looks interesting from a mechanical point of view and is definitely unique. If Vanillaware has made one thing clear in its portfolio, it’s that the studio has little regard for trends; it marches to the beat of its own drum within familiar, albeit niche, genres.
“The games that we find interesting from the bottom of our hearts tend to be in genres that are considered niche,” says Nakanishi. “So rather than choosing these genres intentionally, it’s because we like them. However, regardless of genre, there’s no point if the customers who buy it don’t find it interesting, so we always focus on ensuring that the game we’re producing is understandable and enjoyable to play.
Niche or not, Unicorn Overlord is a feast for the eyes. Classic SNES RPGs of yesteryear are inspiring Vanillaware this time around, Nakanishi tells me, and the studio wants Unicorn Overlord to feel like one of those games, but on a modern platform, with a full suite of English voiceovers or japanese The artistic design, born from a single piece of conceptual art, aims to evoke the games of that time, between retro and pictorial. This artwork is also the game’s title screen. “From this illustration, the character designs for the battle were decided, the battle backgrounds were drawn, and the overall art style came together,” he adds.
All of this only scratches the surface of what I saw in that first hour of playing Unicorn Overlord. There’s a ton of story crammed in – a story that’s not worth spoiling here, as the storytelling is a big draw for many Vanillaware fans, and a wealth of menus RPG fans will surely love to delve into in the details. There are over 60 companions to freely recruit throughout the campaign, depending on how you approach the more open-ended nature of the game’s progression, and plenty of great music and visuals to go along with it if what I’ve already heard and seen is a indication Bottom line, there’s still a lot of gameplay to discover in Unicorn Overlord, and even after an hour and a long interview, I feel like I’ve barely wrapped my head around this RPG experience of tactical fantasy With little time until its release next month, I’m excited to see what Vanillaware can do with its return to the fantasy genre, where its story began nearly two decades ago.
This article originally appeared in Game Informer issue #363
Source: gameinformer.com