Like Tactics Ogre Reborn, the game was perfectly balanced until the last boss fight, where the boss was immune to every strategy that had worked up until then. I had to create a whole new squad based on YouTube guides that can cheat its way to victory, giving the boss poison, stun and burn debuffs so that it died on its own, since no fair fighter stood a chance. Other than that disgraceful ending to the game the gameplay was perfect. This game's gameplay is the best part, it's truly specialized as a game. Unlike FF7 Rebirth which is almost a movie or visual novel, this is purely a game intent on tactics and strategy. As a result the characters, plot and setting aren't as memorable, but the gameplay is incredibly addictive. You can fiddle with your squad organization and equipment for hours. Seriously, just messing around on your menu screen is incredibly fun and fulfilling.
I've already played the game for over 100 hours, the mark of a truly great game, but there's still some epilogue content I can still do. Lots of games have post-game content these days but most games aren't interesting enough to keep playing after the plot is over. But Unicorn Overlord is fun regardless of plot, so the postgame content should be as good as the real game's content. Defeating the game led to the opening up of a new higher difficulty tier, so I must just replay the whole game from the beginning.
Between Unicorn Overlord and March Madness I haven't had time for anything else. The new spring anime season, for instance, will have to wait. I haven't had much time to eat or sleep.
Luckily the game didn't boast any truly moving music. My music gallery is full to bursting and there's no way I could fit in another game soundtrack. It's great as background music as I focus on strategy, but that's all. The speed of action in the fight cutscenes is too slow, I end up having to fast-forward it all with R2 or skip it entirely with the menu button, which is a shame. If they had just sped it up to, say, twice speed, it would be tolerable, but it feels like the regular pace of the game is in slow motion jelly. I do love watching my beautiful characters fight, but not at the speed of shambling zombies.
The art is incredibly beautiful, as expected of the team behind 13 Sentinels. The elves especially are glorious. The angels aren't bad either. . . Of course the backgrounds are as beautiful as the characters. The land of Elheim is amazing.
Overall I'd rate Unicorn Overlord as my 11th favorite game franchise of all time, just behind Ogre Battle. The reason it loses to Ogre Battle is it's only one game, whereas Ogre Battle's franchise is three games long. Also because Ogre Battle had more memorable characters/plot/setting, and Ogre Battle's music is transcendent. But even with all that it's a close run thing, because Unicorn Overlord has better art and gameplay by far. To make room I kicked out Star Fox from the rankings entirely. I didn't much enjoy Star Fox's normal gameplay, I really only liked it for the player vs. player dogfight function in Star Fox 64. That part was really fun and could be played endlessly. But a minor minigame isn't really worthy of a video game hall of fame, so out it goes.
Eiyuden Chronicle is coming soon so the months of gaming aren't going to stop. What a great year for games.
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