Divine Shards are a form of currency in . It can be used to purchase powerful late-game items, including some equipment. It also is a requirement to recruit a few people into your army.
26.02.2024 - 22:33 / destructoid.com
When I bring up the “tactics RPG,” it feels like there is a certain image that comes to mind: grid-based, turn-based, isometric, or top-down, with units hopping up and down terrain to bonk each other on the head with swords and magic. The sheer popularity of games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and Fire Emblem have cemented as much.
Maybe this is my own biases speaking, but hearing “(insert name here) Tactics” immediately brings that image to mind, and it’s held true for several variations of tactical spin-offs. After playing the demo for Unicorn Overlord, Vanillaware’s latest, it is clearly falling in the strategy side of the genre; rather than another Tactics, it’s hearkening back to a different branch of the Ogre series: Ogre Battle.
It’s a really interesting approach to see Vanillaware take. While Ogre Battle had a huge impact on the industry, Tactics Ogre and FFT felt like they eclipsed it. But in seeing this team tackle those ideas, systems, and even the framing of the story, Unicorn Overlord feels like a spiritual successor, years later.
To start, Unicorn Overlord is a strategy RPG. In the demo—out now on Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox Series X|S—the game basically starts at the beginning, giving you a brief prologue and a few tutorials before dumping you out into the main continent of Cornia.
You are Prince Alain, the heir to the throne of Cornia, living in exile after a former general broke ranks and overthrew your mother, establishing the Zenoiran empire. Years later, the entire world has slowly fallen to Zenoira. Alain, his trusty advisor Josef, and a slew of friends and companions now make up the Liberation Army, seeking to wrest Cornia back for its rightful ruler.
Already, we’re into some fairly standard ideas. And if I have anything to nitpick about the demo, it’s that the main plot is what you’d expect: knights and warriors fighting to regain control from the evil, mind-controlling empire.
The appeal of the early areas are in their open approach. After a friend is taken hostage, Josef warns Alain that the Liberation force is not up to the task of a rescue just yet. Instead, he should venture around the continent, establishing a foothold and recruiting allies, eventually building a force strong enough to forge ahead.
So you run around the world in real-time. All around Alain, NPCs wander around, waiting to gossip or provide helpful tips; different resource nodes provide lumber or ore, to turn in for reconstruction efforts in war-torn towns you’ve liberated; and even some treasure waits to be discovered, deep in ruins or graveyards.
There’s a sense of place here that already sets it apart from other games. While I miss the intricate, detailed battle maps of a tactics
Divine Shards are a form of currency in . It can be used to purchase powerful late-game items, including some equipment. It also is a requirement to recruit a few people into your army.
Promptly after Unicorn Overlord’s launch, the game’s physical copies had sold out in Japan, prompting publisher Atlus to apologize for the supply shortages. Unsurprisingly, then, as per Famitsu’s latest weekly charts for hardware and physical software sales in Japan, Unicorn Overlord was the best-selling game in the region last week.
Of all the choices players must make in , one of them will be whether to free or execute Gammel. This particular choice does not really have a long-lasting effect on the rest of the campaign, but it does impact the rewards you receive and certainly affects Gammel’s fate. You can consider both outcomes before you pick, looking at the pros and cons to determine what might be the best choice.
The director of Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre has once again rejected revival demands, suggesting fans simply play Unicorn Overlord instead.
Atlus has apologised to players in Japan after physical copies of its tactical RPG Unicorn Overload sold out.
For whatever reason, romance and marriage have become one of the most essential parts of tactics games such as Unicorn Overlord. Just like combat, however, each game handles the relationship system a little bit differently. It might seem straightforward here, but there is an extra step or two needed to fully commit and marry one of your companions. Aside from just building a strong bond with your favorite character, there are a lot of benefits to improving your relationships. Here’s a full tactical rundown of how romance works here so you can form an everlasting bond.
Unicorn Overlord launched worldwide last week, and especially in Japan, the Vanillaware-developed fantasy tactics RPG seems to have got off to a solid start- better than publisher Atlus might have anticipated, in fact.
The recently launched tactical RPG Unicorn Overlord is so popular in Japan that its publisher, Atlus, has issued an official apology for stock shortages.
New release WWE 2K24 was the best-selling physical game in the UK last week, knocking Final Fantasy VII Rebirth into second. The PS5 JRPG registered an 89 per cent drop in sales compared to its launch week while 2K's newest wrestling entry has debuted better than last year's instalment, with purchases up 26 per cent.
Unicorn Overlord, the new strategy RPG from Dragon's Crown and 13 Sentinels developer Vanillaware, is out now on PS5 and PS4. While it certainly isn't the highest profile release of 2024 so far, there's simply no doubting the talents of the Japanese studio behind it.
Vanillaware doesn't miss. We've been spouting that line for ages, but with the arrival of Unicorn Overlord, it rings truer than ever before. Following up on the superb 13 Sentinels was never going to be easy, but the Japanese studio has somehow manged to produce an equally excellent game three years later — and it's not even in the same genre.
Unicorn Overlord MSRP $59.99 Score Details DT Recommended Product Pros