If someone told me there's an upcoming tactics RPG full of anime-inspired characters, I would immediately respond, "Hell yeah, give it to me" and fully expect it to be a new Fire Emblem. Or I'd hope for another Valkyria Chronicles. Instead, what's filling that void is Unicorn Overlord, the next joint from Japanese developer Vanillaware. While it's best known for the cult side-scrolling action-RPGs Odin Sphere and Dragon's Crown, and most recently the mind-bending story-driven 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, it touched on the strategy genre with GrimGrimoire. However, Unicorn Overlord is breaking ground for the studio with a newfound emphasis on tactics within an extensive RPG foundation.
After playing through a four-hour preview demo, I came away impressed with its deep, interconnected systems and challenging battles, but also because it's different. It's a fairly fresh take on a tactics RPG, blending real-time strategy elements with the mechanics of a turn-based auto battler. On the battlefield, you control singular units that consist of up to six party members within and direct multiple units in real time. And when they encounter an enemy unit, they engage in a predetermined combat sequence that plays out based on each individual's class, skills, and tactical presets. At the heart of the strategy is how you construct these units and how they match up against enemies they encounter. It seems simple enough at the start, but even just in the opening hours, the tactical layers continuously revealed themselves, giving me so much to chew on.
With a mix of knights, cavalry, heavy defenders, mages, Pegasus-riding warriors, and almost any other fantasy-based combatant you can think of, there's much more than a rock-paper-scissors weapon triangle to consider. Support units with heavy shields on the frontline can jump in front of enemy attacks to soak damage, clerics in the back can restore HP to keep an ally alive mid-sequence, and nimble thieves can draw enemy attention to then dodge their hard-hitting attacks. Some classes and weapon types are of course effective against certain others, but you must also consider factors like positioning within the unit or the specific abilities equipped on individual soldiers since it all affects how they behave in battle. Coming out victorious in an encounter depends on who takes the most damage, so fights are just as much about killing enemy units as they are about winning the war of attrition, leaving them immobile on the field for a brief moment and vulnerable to follow-up encounters.
At a certain point in my demo, I could set specific parameters and logic sequences for what the individual units do based on the conditions of the fight. For example, I set one of my knights to prioritize using an attack skill that restores HP upon a kill, but they'd only use it if they're able to target an enemy below 50% health. Or I can set my priestess to prioritize attack spells and only cast heals if an ally is below 25% health. Extrapolating that concept across the multitude of classes and the complex dynamic of how your units and enemy units are constructed makes my head spin, but in a way that has me eager to unravel its nuances.
Although the layers piled on in just the opening four hours, it rarely felt overwhelming thanks to the way it ramps up in doling out new mechanics. It doesn't just explain things to you in tutorial popups, but in making you engage with the very systems and tactics it's introducing to you, the complexities of its gameplay become digestible. I might take something like that for granted, but considering how much you have to juggle and how difficult battles can get, those who may not be as in-tune with tactics games won't be left behind. The other aspect to figuring out what works and doesn't work is seeing it actually unfold in battle. Watching your units in action offers the kind of feedback that helps you visualize the tactics you put together in menus, giving you ideas for when you go back to the drawing board.
Watching battles play out is part of the joy of Unicorn Overlord, too. Vanillaware's signature painterly art style was an aspect of 13 Sentinels that elevated its storytelling, and here, those visual qualities have matured to give its characters and setting a distinct look that help Unicorn Overlord be more than a typical fantasy world. It's also in the expressive animations in combat that liven up your units to complement their charming and/or grizzly looks--and like any good tactics game, I started to form attachments to certain characters and unit formations based on my experiences with using them in battle, as if to form my own headcanon outside of the story itself.
As for the actual story, the campaign starts with the overthrowing of a queen named Ilenia. But she herself is a fierce warrior with a loyal band of knights--and so, this is the setup for teaching you the basics of combat while showcasing what powerful units are capable of, and letting you play through a coup to tee up the rest of the story in the process. After fighting a losing battle and ordering survivors to flee, Ilenia entrusts the mysterious Unicorn Ring to her most trusted Knight named Josef and has him take her son to safety. The game flashes forward 10 years and that son, Alain, is now recruiting allies across the continent, leading an uprising to take back the throne. So, what seems like standard fare for a fantasy story is carried by the great character designs, endearing art style, and solid voice performances, although I do expect some twists and turns to keep its projected 50-hour campaign interesting.
If it sounds like Unicorn Overlord leans heavily into the gameplay experience, well, that's because it does. That's not to say there isn't a story worth exploring, it's just a game with different priorities than Vanillaware's previous one. While I can't get too detailed on narrative elements quite yet, it offers just enough intrigue to provide an interesting context to seek out the next battle and explore its sprawling overworld; that latter of which will occupy a significant chunk of the lengthy runtime.
Outside of story cutscenes and commanding troops in hard-fought battles, you'll explore the overworld to manage towns, take on side quests, and navigate hostile zones on the way to your next objective. Perks like items, currency, and resources to upgrade your units' capabilities all incentivize you to engage with things outside the critical path, and these had a noticeable impact on combat effectiveness--just being able to expand the soldier capacity of your units is essential for staying afloat in the main story's fights. Along the way, you can also rebuild outposts or drive bandits away to help villagers and recruit them to the cause. It also seems that most of the game's combat encounters take place on the very overworld you move in, so there's a seamlessness in the core tactics gameplay and the spaces you explore, which also speaks to how expansive the full game may be.
I'm willing to bet strategy diehards are going to feast on Unicorn Overlord, especially because it's trying something new with its tactics gameplay and revitalizing the classic Ogre Battle foundation for a new generation. I love me a good tactics RPG as well, but Vanillaware's aesthetic is just as striking as it's ever been, and the melding of those two aspects seems like a winning combo to me. We'll see how it all comes together when Unicorn Overlord releases on March 8 for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
