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Episode 16: Unicorn Overlord
70 Plays10 months ago
Poly & Kj play a brand new IP called Unicorn Overlord. It is their first Vanillaware game and they were super excited to dive in. Come see if it lived up to the hype!
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Transcript
Introduction and Game Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, everybody. So welcome to the next episode of Turn Based Tangents. We are going to be reviewing Unicorn Overlord, a new game that came out, dev by Vanellaware, produced by Atlas. We're pretty hyped to talk about this. A pretty new game, which isn't something we always do.
Initial Impressions and Demo Experience
00:00:21
Speaker
Usually we're playing games that are a little bit more on the retro side, but
00:00:26
Speaker
Yeah, we had to with this one. We had to. When we saw... Go ahead.
00:00:35
Speaker
We had to, we had to when we saw the trailer. You say that, but you were skeptical. I was. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to like, I'm always skeptical with tactics games. And cause I was all in. I was like, this game's going to be dope. Like I was hyping this game up. Like I was so excited. And it is actually a really good point. This game was in production for like 10 years. So this is kind of slightly retro in that regard. But I was hyped for this game as soon as we saw it.
00:01:03
Speaker
Yeah. And for me, I'm like a baby tactics streamer or streamer gamer. Oh my God. Words are hard today. I'm a baby tactics gamer. And so I've played, I've played two tactics game ever. So I was like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this. So when I was really excited that this game came with the demo and it was a fantastic demo, I might add. And the reason why I say fantastic is because
00:01:28
Speaker
they gave you an in-game timer to be like, okay, you have seven hours to play of this game to try it out. After that, you can load your save when you get the actual game, but you're cut off at that point.
Podcast Format and Review Plans
00:01:41
Speaker
I thought that was really smart because you got to play the start of the game. I wish more companies would learn from that and do that, where the demo is the start of the game and for RPGs to push it a little longer,
00:01:56
Speaker
because sometimes you don't get out of the intro plot within a couple hours, like make it a little longer, which this game had. So we both tried the demo. We both ended up liking it and jumping in. And yeah, this is one of the rare brand new games that we that will review. But I'm, I'm super excited to talk about it. And for those of you who are
00:02:20
Speaker
just tune in for the first time potentially. KJ and I run this podcast, Turn Based Tangents, where we play an RPG game off stream, once a month, sometimes it's like two months combined, depending on how our work schedules are going, or life
00:02:36
Speaker
life things are going. And we play our RPG game off stream, all that sort of stuff together, and then we review it. And for this one, we did it March and April combined, because KJ and I were at PAX East in March, and we had a bunch of stuff
Development Challenges and Gameplay Uniqueness
00:02:53
Speaker
going on in March. So we wanted to give ourselves enough time to be able to beat it. And the fun fact is, both of us almost
00:03:00
Speaker
beat it in the same month. He did. He beat it. He beat it before. He beat it during PAX, but I was really close. But if you saw our copies we showed off, Polly was on console that was not mobile.
00:03:19
Speaker
And that's one thing, vanillaware, vanillaware does not put out games on PC, really, which I know some people were pretty upset about. And they also fun fact, like.
00:03:32
Speaker
pushed themselves financially to the edge making this game. There were reports that came out that said like they were almost bankrupt or like this game was a lot. So they put a lot into making sure that this was a success. And you're gonna hear about if we think it was. So yeah. You're about to hear it.
00:03:52
Speaker
I think the first thing to kind of dive into, so the game itself is sort of like nothing I've ever played. So I've played a lot of tactics games, like whether it's finished them or played them just like in some fashion. And honestly, this had
00:04:16
Speaker
the look and makeup of a tactics game, but it was an RTS. So that was really, really interesting. Like I wasn't expecting that, like, especially seeing the gameplay. And for me, I don't really have a ton of experience with RTS. So my, honestly, my biggest experience with an RTS is a mini game from one of the sweet coding games.
00:04:40
Speaker
And I mean, it's a prevalent minigame in terms of like, you have to do it to progress in story and stuff like that. But I was not really expecting it to be like this. And I know a lot of people kind of compared it to Fire Emblem and stuff like that, and especially in the appearance and like how how things were. But really, it just kind of.
00:05:06
Speaker
destroyed those comparisons very early on, at least for me, because again, it was very much an RTS where you're like, really, you're putting units, like you're building units and you're putting units down and you're like sending them in a direction, but it's like, they're just automatically moving and continuing on to wherever you sent them. Like it was very much the RTS. If I had to classify it as one genre, I would say RTS, but it definitely had a lot of tactics elements where it was like kind of hybrid almost in a sense. And I thought that was really cool.
00:05:36
Speaker
Yeah. And like and I was like the opposite. So I don't have very much experience with tactics games at all. I've played two and one of them we reviewed on this. And so but with RTS is I have a lot of experience. Like I've played Command and Conqueror. I've played my and like one of the big things that jumped out at me is this game reminded me of Heroes of Might Magic 3 for those who remember that game.
00:06:03
Speaker
That's another rts kind of rpg sort of hybrid and nothing so i've played those kind of games play lord of the realms to stuff like that like i like rts and stuff so that when i was playing the demo really jumped out at me is like oh.
00:06:21
Speaker
Oh, OK. And like there was a lot of tactics elements in it as well, as well as RPG stuff as well. So like I still got to experience more tactics stuff out of this game, but it's a really fun hybrid of the three genres.
Gameplay Mechanics and Comparison
00:06:35
Speaker
It's very much an RTS tactics and RPG game, kind of like all meshed in one, which is kind of neat. Not I can't even think of off the top of my head a game doing this.
00:06:47
Speaker
I mean, I think there's a couple I think talking to a few people I think there's and I know there's some some folks in the chat that have played this a game called Dragon Force on the Saturn which is actually a game I recently picked up I heard there's some similarity and how it's sort of
00:07:06
Speaker
blends the genres in that way. So it's not a game I've played yet. It is a game I do plan on playing, but that was one that I heard at least some similarity in that regard, but I'd have to play to really figure out if that is true.
00:07:25
Speaker
I do think it was really interesting because you touched on the RPG aspect of more of the, I don't know, more of a turn-based-ish RPG, but something that came to mind, and it's not even a game I've played, I've only seen it, was they kind of perfected the Gambit system. That was something that was really, really interesting. So the Gambit system from Final Fantasy XII, again, not something I have a ton of experience with. No, I see it, I see it, yeah.
00:07:55
Speaker
it was one of those things where on top of the fact that you have an RTS and you have this sort of like tactics elements for your characters, all within each of the units that you're building, you can set up Gambit. So it's essentially like you're setting these different abilities and whether it's a passive ability or a like attack ability, like an active ability, and then you're assigning various different
00:08:23
Speaker
conditions to when those would happen. So it's like, if you were hitting 50% HP, like if if that character or if that unit hits 50% HP, heal them. If like, if there's a cavalry unit, then use this attack. If there's a flying unit hit this, use this attack, stuff like that. That is
00:08:43
Speaker
It made it very, very easy, especially with my programmer brain. I was like, oh, this is cake. All of this logic here, I'm just cruising with this. So that was something I was very happy to see and I think really sort of pushed that further.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah. And like with, I have experienced a final fantasy 12, I've, I've played it several times, always get to the like end dungeon of the game and then get distracted by another shiny game and never beat it. But with the gamut system, this is like, it definitely, it definitely was like, Oh, that's neat. We're, we're gonna, we're, we're gonna perfect this.
00:09:22
Speaker
So I very much like playing Final Fantasy 12 would be like a step backwards if you play it after Unicorn Overlord especially with that system because while it was it was there this one flushes it out a little bit more and also gives you a more
00:09:41
Speaker
a little bit more control over things and a little bit more fluidity with things. And I really, really like that with that aspect because it did remind me a lot of 12.
00:09:54
Speaker
I think this just gameplay just is such an interesting blend all in one. And when we dive more into the gameplay aspects of it and stuff, yeah, this was neat. This is neat. And with Final Fantasy 12, the game and system stuff is a great comparison. But I do think Unicorn Overload took maybe some inspiration from it and went like, OK, let's really grind this down.
00:10:21
Speaker
And I think it works better in a tactics or a sort of RTS system because I'm thinking about it and it's like that system. I mean, I guess it kind of works if your characters are kind of like in an auto battle type of situation in an in like an action RPG or even like a turn based RPG. But like with a.
00:10:47
Speaker
system where it's like a lot of it is going to be you're commanding characters to go from one place to another and then they're getting into fights with other units and there's tons of other characters or I shouldn't say tons there's up to five other characters in that unit then you're gonna be in a place where that is that is pretty pretty helpful right
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah. And something that was like really interesting in this one was, um, that was different than 12 was that the weapons added abilities that then added gambit abilities. Like it was, it's, it was just such a neat, like they took this thing and they like really deep dived into it, uh, figured out what worked. It didn't work and like put it together really well because you have a certain amount of units you can have.
00:11:38
Speaker
And then the enemy units can be set up different ways. And it's like, it's very much a kind of like, sometimes you're going to go against stuff that you're weak against. But if you have the right tactics set up for what your character does per like, if they encounter those kinds of things.
00:11:57
Speaker
you can actually end up winning the battles of things that you're technically weak against or your units are weak against. So it's such a creative way of really allowing you as a user and a player to customize how your people fight and who they fight and all that sort of stuff really, really well to the point where
00:12:22
Speaker
Cajun, I played this game at the same time all the way through, but him and I had very different units we preferred.
Art Style, Music, and Presentation
00:12:31
Speaker
We didn't end up with even the same main unit. We did different things with different units.
00:12:38
Speaker
it gives you that ability to do that. There's just so many different ways to play this game and mesh the battle system to your liking and to the characters you like and make it work that I think it's fantastic for anybody just coming into, even into if you don't have very much experience with RTS or tactics or RPGs, it's an interesting game to lead you in there because it gives you pieces of all of it.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that. Like I think this definitely inspired me to go look into more RTS games in general. Just like, I mean, I played, I've played, again, I've played, I've played at least one game from like every major tactics franchise, barring like outside of like,
00:13:25
Speaker
This Gaia and like front mission. But yeah, this definitely made me think like, oh, I really need to jump into some RTS. Like I picked up like a Romance of the Three Kingdoms game and I'm like, okay, this should be really interesting. Seeing just how this works and kind of going from there. So yeah, I'm looking forward to kind of diving into more RTS because of this.
00:13:49
Speaker
I think it's a great intro and a retro one that I think you would like us here as a might magic three and things like that because like I feel like yeah it's a it's a nice introduction for three different like for those genres right and for me it was just another step of
00:14:07
Speaker
I actually really liked that. I think I really liked tactics games. Like this is the third one that has tactics elements in it. Um, and, and stuff like that, that I'm, I'm starting to learn that I think this is a genre for me. And I knew I liked RTS is so it's interesting that we had like the same opinion of wanting to go explore more things in a genre, but it was like the opposite genres because this game is like a hybrid of them. Um,
00:14:33
Speaker
But but yeah, to talk about the art style. So this attracted me right away. I think this is super cool and really unique, where they had basically your characters battling and the cut scenes and everything are all 2D animated with like with some portions being like a bit of like
00:14:55
Speaker
a bit of like 2.5D almost but like 2D animated anime kind of style and everything looked really cool but then when you were on the world map it was more like a chibi pixel kind of but more like a new age chibi pixel style of game that I was like okay this is super cool because they blended both of that together and I
00:15:24
Speaker
at first I was like oh these are two very different art styles how is this going to come together and within the first hour of like playing the demo I I was like oh no they're they're they're doing a good job with this like the whole and it's good that they have that because the top down
00:15:43
Speaker
Like Chibi kind of stuff really helped with the RTS side of stuff. Whereas when you would get engaged with an enemy, you could actually like zoom in if you wanted to. You didn't always have to. You could literally say, skip battle and not look at it. But I always like to zoom in on it because it helped you learn if your strategies were right. So you zoom in on it.
00:16:05
Speaker
But as soon as I had enough units where I was like, okay, this is how I want everything to be, I was skipping battles. I'm like, I don't care. I was just like, all right, this is gonna, I'm gonna obliterate this. I was just like, I'm gonna look at my character's attack and see. So I loved the 2D battle animations and the team did a really good job of making these super-fluid,
00:16:31
Speaker
like animations and stuff like I just found myself diving into it more and that's more my like artistic side like coming out where I wanted to see those battles more which was really cool so you'd like deep dive into it or you could just stay out of it and just see the pixel stuff and then just only see the anime cutscenes when you went into or anime stuff like the 2D or the side scroll anime style when you were in cutscenes which is totally fine like again this game is so
00:17:02
Speaker
Interesting that it lets you play how you want to play. If you want to skip battles and just see the top down and stuff and just see, you know, it just ends up with cut scenes that you see. Great. You can do that. If you want to skip the cut scenes, great. You'd skip those like there. It's so like, do you want to like focus more on the RTS? Do you want to focus more on the tactics side? Like there's so much here that lets you just take this game and play it how you want to play it.
00:17:28
Speaker
And I have a I have one question or one question one I guess question to everybody but also I'm gonna announce this as a problem So like you could skip battles. That's fine. If you're skipping cutscenes, that's a problem If you've played to get through the game before
00:17:48
Speaker
If you're actively skipping cutscenes, we got beef. If you are actively skipping cutscenes, that is a problem you shouldn't be playing. Yeah, we won't talk about Enno and how he likes to skip cutscenes. Anyway. That triggered something in my head that was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're skipping cutscenes? That
Social Links and Narrative Choices
00:18:13
Speaker
isn't okay.
00:18:13
Speaker
heard of players playing this game where they skip the cut seeds just to play like the RTS elements of the game and still get through it and I'm like you're missing.
00:18:22
Speaker
Well, I guess, okay, so I guess it depends. If you're skipping cutscenes, if you're, okay, yeah, there's a couple of different things. So there was a very good point made in the chat as well. If you're skipping the social link cutscenes, I'm gonna be real with you. I watched very few of those. I did not care about the social link cutscenes, but the story cutscenes, you needed those. Like you definitely needed the story cutscenes.
00:18:51
Speaker
the social link cutscenes, meh, just get the social link stuff to get whatever bonuses or whatever. I'm all set. Don't don't like I don't care about that stuff. Although I will say, even though the social link stuff was there, it was very, very light. And I think it was very easy. And it was easy enough to like you didn't have to do it if you didn't want to, which I think is fantastic. And that is something with like, for example, the persona series.
00:19:17
Speaker
A lot of the times if you don't do those social links your party members do not level up things well and it actually becomes a bit detrimental to you if you don't because you level up different like personas and stuff like that based on your social links. Whereas with unicorn overlord they had that element in it but it wasn't
00:19:40
Speaker
forced on you if you didn't want to do it. It wasn't like, whereas Persona, it's like part of the game and it's part of the experience and the part of the Persona experience is that where Unicorn Overlord's like, okay, we want to give you a little bit more like, we want this game. It was like Unicorn Overlord, it was like they wanted this game to have so many things in it where you can really play this how you want and appeal to so many different people. And I feel like
00:20:06
Speaker
That is another element of it because I did the social links, KJ didn't. And we both- I did them because they helped with- Well, I did them, but I skipped them. I did them because they helped me- Oh, that's what you did. Yeah, so you did the social links, but you skipped the dialogue and the part of it. Yeah, I skipped all the dialogue and cutscenes of the social links. I did them because they do help with your stats in your unit. Yeah, they do help with your and how your units relate to each other.
00:20:32
Speaker
If it's something for the actual, if it's going to help me in the game, and it's something that is gonna help with strategies and stuff like that, I'm gonna do it, but I'm not gonna watch it. I don't care about social links. Yes, so that's more what I was leading into, is you did it because some of the stat bonuses and stuff was great, but you didn't watch any of the story stuff. Where I watched the story stuff, I was very invested in certain characters and how they interacted with each other.
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah, why don't you tell everybody how many times you did all of the like romance plot things to try to see all the different character endings?
00:21:11
Speaker
listen listen we're gonna get there we're gonna get there when we start talking about the spoilers okay we're already talking about the social it was 27 but listen to me listen there's a lot of characters i found interesting okay and i just 27 there's like there's like 70 characters in the game 27
00:21:31
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Why do you think I had a 62 hour timestamp? No. Why do you think I had six hours more than you? That doesn't count the fact that you were reloading to do all of that.
00:21:49
Speaker
Okay, okay, we'll talk about that a little later because that's like diving into like spoiler stuff. You'd call me out. So to wrap up like the art style and everything. Yeah, I think it was really kind of fantastic. And it was this anime style that I like the rendering of the anime style that I really like and I would love to learn how to do that myself because it's one of those things where it's like anime but it's not
00:22:14
Speaker
um super massive like eyes or it's not like old style anime it's more like getting more into like video game anime style where um the rendering is really nice and and clean and everything and i mean yeah some of the characters are definitely fan servicey um you know it happens um on both sides by the way on both sides there was fan service on both sides
00:22:42
Speaker
You can imagine a lot of those fan-servicey characters sat at the bench for me. Or I didn't pay attention to their social links, so I didn't know they were fan-servicey in that regard. Well, I mean, Scarlet, sort of. Just right away, first thing you're like, oh. I guess I can see that.
00:23:05
Speaker
Oh, okay. Um, but like, there's certain things like that. Um, that, yeah, but it was, it was just an interesting style. And then the music, holy crap. The music was really good. Oh,
00:23:20
Speaker
Like every, I did not find at any time during this game where I found the music didn't suit what you were doing, which I find sometimes with RPGs, sometimes when we play these RPGs, there's like certain tracks that just don't
00:23:39
Speaker
hit with the rest of the soundtracks and stuff. Sorry, Chrono Cross and the main battle music theme. Stuff like that where it's just like, it just feels disconnected and everything. But this, wow, every time it switched music, anytime it switched music for different areas of the continent that you went to and everything, it all just felt like it matched where you were or matched what you were doing.
00:24:06
Speaker
Really really well and the soundtrack I I don't think they could have done any better because the nice thing is is the soundtracks on the overworld so like a lot of the times you be in a Like country's area and you'd be in there for a while. So you'd be hearing the same track over and over again But it was it wasn't like annoying bad
00:24:28
Speaker
it was it was never like oh this is going to be a high piece like violin solo portion where you're like this gets grading after like long times of listening to it um with like the high pitch or anything no it was just it was just nice well done overworld uh tracks of all the different areas that never felt super jarring i mean by the end i mean i could definitely understand if people were like okay i'm just like i just want to get through it or whatever because it isn't like
00:24:56
Speaker
It is a long game. It is a long game if you do a lot of stuff in it and and everything. But like I I love the soundtrack the whole time. It was good. It was good. Yeah, no, it was I had enough. You pretty much nailed it. I have nothing else to say about the soundtrack. It was it was very good. It fit everything that it wanted to like everything that you wanted it to do in the respective areas. It fit. So I can't. I cannot complain at all.
00:25:26
Speaker
Exactly. And I'm with you with there too. It was great. And the art style, honestly, at first, I thought it was going to be jarring going between the two very different art styles. But no, they did a great job of blending it in. And I'm glad that it wasn't all one way or the other. I think that would have taken away from it if it was trying to be like the 2D side scrolling the entire time or the overworld the entire time.
00:25:54
Speaker
I think like having the like cutscenes and stuff and diving more into the character scene how the characters look seeing how they interact with each other and stuff in those cutscenes or of the social links that if you did. And the neat thing about the social links to that KJ talked about how he skipped them. None of them were voices like.
00:26:16
Speaker
a lot of them weren't really voice acted. Um, so it was a scenario where you could skip them if you did, if you want to do, it was just extra, it was more or less just extra lore about the characters and their, their relationships and stuff like that with either your main character or with each other. Um, but otherwise it's like, yeah, you could have just hit like, okay. And then you get the points. You're like, okay, I got the points with doing these characters now. And you just kind of move on.
Gameplay Flexibility and Challenges
00:26:41
Speaker
Um, which I thought originally those styles and those mix between it would have been maybe a thing that would feel like I was being disconnected, but no, no, they did a really good job blending the two.
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, I totally agree. OK, so I think it'll be really interesting. I'm I'm very curious to start talking about. I'm very excited to start talking about the game. Yes. And the gameplay and stuff like that. I know I know your engineer brain is just like itching to talk about it. So well, I think what I want to talk about first is the things I didn't like about the game because I go for it. There's a little it might be a little nitpicky, but
00:27:20
Speaker
I do think there were some things that stood out as like, I wish they would have done this a little differently. And I think the biggest thing is the fact that they kind of baited us a little bit with the unit size. That actually made me really mad. I know it wasn't really
00:27:43
Speaker
It was, again, me assuming and reading into it, but why even... You give us six squares, we can only use five units. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, okay. That really annoyed me. Again, it was nitpicking, I know, but that really annoyed me. I was so excited. I was by, I don't know, the second area, I was already planning out my basically three or four units of six.
00:28:11
Speaker
I had like three or four powerhouse units all squared away. And the thing was, I felt like I was moving pretty fast through the ranking because I was doing so many deliveries and all those things. And I had maxed out like three of the areas before I'd even unlocked some of the other areas.
00:28:32
Speaker
So I felt like I was pretty far along and by the, what, there were five areas, the center one, I think there were five areas total. By the time I got to the fourth one, I think I was just about maxed out in, maxed out in like the renowned rank or whatever. So I had like all the different things cause with the different renowned. So some of this is going to be a little bit spoiler, sorry. I'm just giving that like based on how the renown stuff works.
00:29:01
Speaker
Um, but like by the time you got to like be rank renowned, you unlocked like promotions. So I felt like I had promoted my units kind of early. And then by the time I was the max rank, it was like, okay, when I got five people in this unit, like this is kind of broken to the point where I'd even went to, I was like level 20.
00:29:25
Speaker
I think and I went the 27 or like 29 or something like that and went to an area where they were like level 32 and just Mopped the floor with them and I was like, oh, this is bad like because then my units Shot up and then I started steamrolling level 36 is and then all of a sudden I was almost level 40 and I still had like half the game or not half the game But like I still had like a third of the game to go and I was like, oh, this is bad I just broke the I just broke the level curve on accident and
00:29:56
Speaker
Mr. Engineer broke the game early on So yeah, it was like one of those situations where I was I was really disappointed that I couldn't use like I I ended up doing that with quite a few units So I had like I had like six units that I used and they were all in by the end of the game They were all mid 40s to
00:30:22
Speaker
50. They were all pretty stacked. But yeah, like like was said in chat, like a good good tactics definitely triumphed over the numbers. And I definitely found that that was the case for me. And that really kind of made things difficult. It's difficult for me to like, not break the game in that regard. But I think
00:30:52
Speaker
to kind of build on that a little bit, I would have been okay with using more units, like using all 10 or whatever.
00:31:00
Speaker
if they didn't have so many similar classes, I felt like there were a lot of, like in the beginning, I was like, there are so many unique classes, this is awesome. And that's partially because I had missed some stuff in the very beginning. So I didn't get some of the doubled up classes. But then once I went back and got those doubled up classes, like, oh, okay. And I don't think in the end, I ended up using any of the same classes in like any of my units other than like,
00:31:29
Speaker
the healer like the bishop class i think that was the only like that was like the only one that i know griffin master that's what the griffin master and bishop those are the only two duplicates that i had in my units other than that anytime i got a duplicate unit i just benched them instantly so like i only really used like two of the elf classes for example because i was just like
00:31:54
Speaker
This is this isn't like this isn't what I want. Like I don't want the same classes over and over again. So I do think that like it would have been really interesting to kind of try to differentiate that or at the very least not give us as many playable characters, because I think in all three areas after you get out of the desert area, they give you units that are all kind of samey. And I was not a big fan of those. Like that was that was kind of
00:32:24
Speaker
Those are kind of my big complaints of the game.
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah. And for me, like I'm coming in baby tactics gamer and more artsy than Matthew, Matthew, uh, kind of brain and stuff. So I felt this game was really great for like intro level, like figuring things out, but then I started figuring things out too. And I was realizing that tactics really kind of mastering tactics and mastering your unit's tactic system.
00:32:57
Speaker
like was better than their level. So if you figured out their tactic system and really figure out how to fight the other units and stuff like that, the unit types that you had to, you didn't have to worry as much about your level being close to them.
00:33:13
Speaker
which I think was very interesting. I'm not sure if other tactics games kind of have that or not. I'm still sort of new to the genre, but I thought that was really interesting that it was like more focused on rewarding you if you figured out the tactics and figured out really like the attacks to use against certain enemy types than it was to just level people up.
00:33:39
Speaker
and level people up and get people up to a certain level. If you didn't have your tactics well done, you could be level 50 fighting level 30s and get wiped. And that's just because your tactics aren't good enough to stop or deflect or deal with those units, even if they're weaker than you. And I feel like about halfway through the game, the game decides to go, oh,
00:34:06
Speaker
we're going to start being a little bit more creative with our tactic sets. So you had to always stay one step ahead. However, if you figured that out long before it started having that difficulty spike, you suddenly were in your late 20s or early 30s and levels mopping the floor with late 30s enemies and stuff like that.
00:34:28
Speaker
like that. The last two areas have level 30 and level 40. Like, oh, sorry, level 30 and level late 30. The last two areas have those things leading you up because they're leading you up to the level 40 of the end stuff. Um, yeah, I think you could
00:34:47
Speaker
I'd break it early. You could break the game early on. You could break the game really early on. You could break the game midway on. Um, and so I even had to, cause I figured out stuff earlier, um, because I was just like, I was having a blast playing around with different units, but KJ is right. When you got about halfway through the game, you started getting the same unit types a lot. And now for me, who never hired anybody,
00:35:12
Speaker
I was okay with it in some instances because I was like, come on, give me another Knight, or come on, give me another this character type so that I could build this team this way. Here, give me another thief. I want another thief because I wanna do the two thieves kind of battle sequence thing and stuff like that. Sometimes I was, or another one was, what was Hodrick's class?
00:35:38
Speaker
I remember his his promotion, but I forget what he was a hospite. Something like that. Yeah, something like that. I remember instantly. I remember that version, which is Legionnaire, but I was like, oh, shit. Yeah. Hodrick, I was begging for another Hodrick for so long that.
00:36:02
Speaker
Like, ah, it took forever to actually get another one like him. So I was just like, I used him and that was it. Like, I didn't want like, yeah, I didn't use it like.
00:36:16
Speaker
I used him and that was it, like he was in one class. Yeah, so I realized because I kept waiting for these duplicates of characters and I didn't want to buy in any of the hired people because I was like, no, I want named personality storyline characters. I was like, no, I want this. And so I wouldn't hire anything. And so I started to realize that I started to mess around with units more with what I had.
00:36:42
Speaker
And I started figuring out more tactics, figuring out more tactics. And then really, really early on, I was like, this game feels too easy. So I went from normal to tactical, which generally, Polly is an easy or normal at most gamer when it comes to like,
00:36:59
Speaker
RPGs and stuff like I'm not somebody who like feels like I need to prove myself in the hard or extra expert or on the flip side somebody who needs the challenge more to play these games I don't I don't generally need that except for survival horror games generally those ones I do need but with like RPGs and stuff I don't um but I went up to tactical and then I went up to the fourth difficulty
00:37:23
Speaker
and got my ass handed to me and went back to tactical. Like there's a few, there's a few like things where I like legitimately was about to lose. So I was like, Oh God. So I went back to back to tactical. So I stayed a tactical the whole time, which I ended up beating the game on tactical felt like I felt accomplished it. Like I felt like I was like, yeah, I'm a pro tactics gamer. What? What?
00:37:50
Speaker
I probably should have went up in difficulty because apparently there was a there was like an item restriction on expert. I played the entire game. I wasn't really there's an item restriction. You only get to you only get to use like 10 items in battle.
00:38:09
Speaker
Oh, I never actually used items that much in battle. I never ran into an item restriction. Oh my god. I didn't know that yeah, and then in the There's a new game plus or I don't know if it's actually new game plus I think you just start a new game because I actually did it before
00:38:26
Speaker
Before we started, the true Zenorian difficulty only allows you to use five items. And if a unit dies in battle, then they're I don't know if they are dead for good, but at the very least, they can't be like revived and redeployed. So oh, I definitely plan on doing other play through with that, because that's definitely that's up my alley, because again, I didn't like I won't say I found the game easy, but I definitely think that
00:38:57
Speaker
there were times that I needed more of a challenge. And I think I was reluctant to go up in difficulty just because I always was thinking, okay, it'll get more difficult. It'll definitely get more difficult. And then it didn't. And then you get to the end and you're like, wait.
00:39:13
Speaker
Which I think, I think that's a great point to make during this podcast is I think this game is fantastic for intro level people and expert are like seasoned people. But I definitely agree with KJ that I think if you're a seasoned tactics gamer,
00:39:30
Speaker
or RTS or both, I think you should play on either tactical or expert right off the bat. And honestly hearing now that expert has more restrictions makes things a lot harder and like the AI is a heck of a lot smarter.
00:39:46
Speaker
have figured out their units before you get those units, like kind of ideas.
Optional Features and Replayability
00:39:51
Speaker
So they're way, they're way harder. I think to give yourself like a little bit more challenge, even just jump on expert right away, see how long you can last and then go down to tactical.
00:40:02
Speaker
um if you have to um to just give yourself that challenge if you were more of a seasoned tactics RTS or more tactics if you're more seasoned tactics gamer um and for people like me who's more seasoned RTS and less tactics um
00:40:18
Speaker
being around the normal sitting at there seeing how it is and if you find it too easy go up um is the better avenue and it's very it's a very good intro into things where like you can really play all the three this through this game on the easiest difficulty if you wanted to if you just wanted to do this story and have fun or if you wanted to start like like upping the difficulty a little bit to keep giving you challenges there's so much room to
00:40:43
Speaker
do that in like going from really easy to normal to tactical to expert are all different varying degrees and like you can find that sweet spot for yourself of where you like to sit and for me i tried like a couple rounds of expert it was just way too hard for me uh so i went to tactical and that was my sweet spot
00:41:02
Speaker
it was challenging in some fights and it was you know I steamrolled in some fights so like it was a good balance for me and it was it allowed me to learn more about setting up my units better um and the tactical side of things and like figuring out like the little gambit tactics system and figuring out the different moves sometimes I would have weaker weapons on but they would have an ability on them that was far better than the stronger weapons
00:41:30
Speaker
ability and stuff so I was really learning that kind of stuff and I felt for somebody who's very inexperienced with that I had more fun figuring things out and then playing around with the difficulty to find that sweet spot for me to give me a challenge but also not make me like rage quit the game or be really upset with the game
00:41:51
Speaker
or anything like that I'm like it's so good at the difficulty rankings of the game and yeah I definitely think somebody like you KJ I think would have benefited a little bit more if you played it on expert but hey
00:42:04
Speaker
playing it through again and playing it on expert is also a good plan, too. I might actually try that. I felt confident by the end that I figured things out. When I play it again, it's going to be a whole different game because I'm going to play on the new game plus like super hard mode, which apparently so cool, which apparently does you. It's basically like you have permadeath, which is kind of wild. Oh, there is. Thank you. Oh, it'll also make you like.
00:42:30
Speaker
have to recruit characters more like I like that. So that's definitely my plan for when I do eventually replay this. I heard that's a staple for like Fire Emblem games is the permadeath thing. So the fact that they let you go through the game and then they give you like the new game plus where you can have the permadeath. I think that's really cool because that makes it for for the for the the tactics gamers who want to replay this again. That gives replay value. And I think that's really neat. Even if the story might not change.
00:42:58
Speaker
And I think it's really, it was really interesting because I think it was clear to me that the difficulty curve was a little, like the difficulty and like leveling didn't matter as much as like how you set your units up with the Colosseum, right? Because with the Colosseum, so I beat the Colosseum, I think at level 25 or 26. And like it goes to level 40.
00:43:23
Speaker
And I was just like, oh, OK. And I was able to get through that. And even like I had made it like halfway through the call. You get you unlock the Coliseum when you're like level 18 or something like that. And I was able to make it through more than half of the Coliseum just with my current units as is. And then like I shuffled one thing around and it just like absolutely broke things. And I was like, oh, that's really busted.
00:43:48
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I think in general, that's kind of, that kind of opened my eyes to like, Oh, okay. I don't really have to care about the levels anymore.
00:43:57
Speaker
For those of you who might not know, the Coliseum is a portion of the game that you open up in the second area. And it's a fun little portion of the game, which I think was just yet another nice thing that they added into the game, where it's optional. You don't have to do it, but if you want to do it and you do really well in it, you get special Coliseum coins that you can use in the Coliseum store to buy really rare items or items you can't get anywhere else in the game.
00:44:25
Speaker
which I think is really cool. So it allows you to basically you start at like the lowest, the lowest of like the bottom, and you have to challenge everybody above you. And it's like you get to pick the unit out of your units that you've set up to battle the AI's unit.
00:44:45
Speaker
which was really cool so you work your way up it. The issue is once you get closer to the top it's really easy to cheese some of those battles with like one or two characters if you have their tactics system set up and that's why for KJ and I when we did the Coliseum he beat it like entirely the first level of it in his 20s and I beat it like I think it was like
00:45:11
Speaker
2930 or something like that is when I when I finally went through because I was very motivated to to get the character you can unlock by doing it and like I ended up chasing the end sequence with like two characters because of the way their tactics were set up and then once you do that you do that you get an optional you get an extra character doing that but after that you can then do it again and they're harder and they go up to level 50 and
00:45:40
Speaker
Um, and they have a lot more units that are AI units that are a little bit more strategic. Um, so you could go all the way through that. And I found going all the way through that, I had to really like play around with things, level things up a little bit and like switch around the tactics a little bit to really do. Um, but then by the end of that, I found I was like beating them all like mid thirties.
00:46:04
Speaker
that I wasn't I don't think I think one of my units ended up being like one or two characters for level 40 and did all of that and then once you do all that you're completed except that you could just do one offs to get more coins or you can play online against other people who have played this game and oh my god I got this
00:46:27
Speaker
destroyed by people's units. I was like, what the hell? And like, I had to really think about it. And I found myself just having fun building units to destroy online players to write myself up for a little while. And then I was like, okay, I need to stop this because I'm gonna get super distracted this I gotta go back to like, getting through this game because I got
00:46:48
Speaker
I mean, I still had the last area to do and I still had a bunch of like things left to do and I wanted to get all because I played on PlayStation, so it had the achievement system. And so I wanted to get all the achievements for this game. And so I went back to doing all that. But that is also an aspect which offers replayability. If you really want to like flex your best units online, you can go up against other people playing this game with their best units.
00:47:17
Speaker
Uh, and get rewarded by coins and all that sort of stuff from beating them and ranking up in the actual overall system, which I thought was super deep that they like slid that in there. So there's no like, there's no like co-op or when I think, but there is an online portion of this game. And I knew they said there was an online portion. I was like, how are they going to do that? And this is how they did it. And I thought that was kind of neat where you're like, you could really like go your unit up against like people online's unit. And of course,
00:47:44
Speaker
everybody's on online units are all level 50 and everything except I fought a couple of them with like level 40 characters and I was like okay what are you doing with this and like they they beat against me and then I figured out the strategy beat them but I was like clever you're clever you like figured out this unit or a well like
00:48:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's awesome. I do think that as even though I won't do the online stuff, probably because I just don't care. It was still interesting that they offered that. And I do think like I know some people that went ham on that and it's cool. It's really cool. Yeah, it's a cool aspect of the game that you don't need to play because it's an optional thing. Like it's entirely the whole Coliseum secret is entirely optional. You don't have to do it at all. And so it's like the mini game that they had, the mining mini game, which
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's basically behind cold just with mining. That's basically it. Yeah, it was cool. It was cool, but it was also very optional. And it was like you if you did it, you could get maps that then like.
00:48:53
Speaker
would show you treasure and allow you to kind of jump into a random area and then like get this special treasure or whatever. And it was some like unique item, right? Yeah.
00:49:09
Speaker
It was never, the nice thing about the optional minigames of this game is it was never forced on you that you had to do it, which I think is a great way to do minigames is that sometimes people just don't want to do the minigames in games and that's totally fine. Sometimes minigames are just jarring and you, you might like some, you might not like others. Like I like the Chocobo Hot and Cold in Final Fantasy IX, which is what the mining minigame in this game was very similar, basically identical of.
00:49:39
Speaker
Um, and, uh, oh, KJ, you disappeared. I think we lost KJ.
00:49:52
Speaker
I'm here. Nope. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. I was worried about that for a second. So, uh, back to what I was saying, is that like with the mini game and everything you could, uh, um, you could, it was entirely optional. And yeah, if you played the mini game, you got maps to get you treasures that got you different items and stuff, but it also helped with the achievement system. So if you want to get the achievements or max out all the achievements, you had to do the mini game, but otherwise you could just completely avoid it. And it wasn't like,
00:50:23
Speaker
pushed on you as like a, you had to do it, which I find where games where they make you do the mini game or make you do the mini game multiple times and you're just not driving with it. I find that really difficult. And that takes me out of these RPG games when a game forces you into mini games. And especially when a game has way too many mini games. And it just feels like one of, that's like one of the worst things ever. Like if you, if you gate progress behind a mini game, yep.
00:50:50
Speaker
more than once in a game, I've immediately checked out. Like once it's fine, like, OK, you got to you introduce you to the mini game. It is what it is. Like you got to do it once. It should be a side quest that you can just optionally do. But if you get progress behind it, whatever, I have to do it once. Once you start doing it consistently, that is a problem. Yeah.
00:51:10
Speaker
And I have a big frustration with that because I don't always jive with minigames. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I feel like I tend to play a little bit more minigames than some other people who play RPGs. But generally, I'm still very much like, OK, if it's something enjoyable or something easy or whatever, I'll do it. But when you put story progress or the actual ending,
00:51:37
Speaker
tied between having to do a minigame you don't like is very, very, very frustrating to shove your players into that where Unicorn Overlord doesn't do that to you. The Coliseum is optional. I think you have to go to the Coliseum, but you don't actually have to fight any matches and then come back out and you did the quest or whatever.
00:51:57
Speaker
But and with the mining and stuff like that, they're they're both optional. You could do them if you want to, but you're not forced to do them. You could just play the game normally, which is fantastic. It's the same with the social links. You are not forced to do them. You can do them to boost up stats and boost up units, compatibility with each other and unlock little mini cut scenes that are not voice acted, but
00:52:22
Speaker
text dialogue only, little mini cutscenes and stuff like that between characters and stuff. And it also leads to adjusting how the end of the game is going to go for you, but it is not necessary to do them. It might adjust the ending a little bit for that character, but it's not necessary to do any of that either. So it's like,
00:52:48
Speaker
I like games that give you the option to choose so what you like you can do extra of and what you don't like you could say fuck this I'm out and I'm just gonna do the things I do like and I wish more RPGs had that and if other game devs are listening please
00:53:05
Speaker
Like, if you're gonna introduce it, that's one thing. Unicorn Overlord doesn't even do that to you. Like, it is completely optional. You can just go do it. Like, just do it, try it. Yeah, you don't even actually have to. Yeah, you could completely skip the Chocobo Hot and Cold mining game and the Colosseum and, like, never even know about them.
00:53:25
Speaker
Exactly. Like, it doesn't actually even force you, which I like that. But let's say I understand RPGs that put it into the game to make sure you know that it's there. Fine. Whatever. But after that point, do not force that game down my throat. Do not make me do that game again unless I want to, because it's always a game for a reason. Polly is having flashbacks to having to roll dice since we couldn't.
00:53:53
Speaker
roll dice, it's good in or do the stupid fishing or fishing mini game and see if stars that I didn't like the fishing mini game. I hate that fishing mini game so much.
00:54:08
Speaker
I forgot about that. Yeah. I think like, I don't know. It's a, it's a common RPG thing to have should be adjusted. It's a common RPG mini evening. You can't even say anything. You will love breath of fire three and that game is
00:54:23
Speaker
Outside of Final Fantasy 7, Breath of Fire 3 has, like, that is the worst when it comes to gating progress behind a minigame. I can go off on an hour tangent, but I'll talk to Fire 3. It's absolute bullshit with its minigame.
00:54:39
Speaker
That is breadth of fire 3 is the abs like there are like seven mini games in that game that they gate Progress in the big gate story progress behind. Oh my goodness
00:54:56
Speaker
And then there's me who didn't mind any of the any of the any of the minigames I was like I'm cool with this and all the way through and never had an issue with it but like later on I start playing games and I find like minigames where I just have an issue and I'm like no like the stupid dice game it's sweet yeah we can't continue to broadcast unless you mop the floor for 30 seconds or yeah
00:55:19
Speaker
in 30 seconds or less yeah that's the kind of that's the kind of stuff that they do in Breath of Fire 3 and see in sweet coding it's like yes there are a lot of mini games but it's like i wouldn't consider like for instance the
00:55:34
Speaker
different battles or different things like that. I wouldn't consider those minigames because those are literally like alternate forms of combat. Whereas like minigames are like the dice rolling minigame or like one of the sweet coating games has like Beyblades apparently. Like there's different things. I mean, yeah, different things.
00:55:56
Speaker
Now, there's different things that they have that are like mini games that you can do. And it's like, usually they'll end up in a spot where like, you have to do one mini game, but then it's like, okay, now you're just like, you don't have to, you don't have to do anything else. You don't have to do anything else with the mini games.
00:56:18
Speaker
Breath of Fire 3 was like next level. It was awful. And the funny thing is, the one that has Beyblades, I didn't even find the Beyblades. Like, I didn't find that minigame in any of those. I did not find that minigame when I played. Oh, I know you're purposely not saying because you want to see if I can find them or not.
00:56:36
Speaker
Oh, I'm just not saying, because I'm not going to tell you guys what minigame it's in. The people that know, if you know, you know. There's some people in chat that I know, know. There's probably some listeners that will know. But yeah, no, there is, yeah. Probably about to play all the sweet good of games back, back, back, just to figure out which minigame has the wave lights in it. Maybe. But yeah, so like, Unicorn Overlord does this really well. And this is what I feel like
00:57:03
Speaker
Things can maybe get away with nostalgia, like older games and being put behind that with like retro games and stuff like that. It was a common trope for quite a while for JRPGs to have many games. Some of them put them behind where you forcible story content, some of them didn't.
00:57:19
Speaker
And I feel like a lot of RPGs kind of learn from each other of that stuff. But then I'm still finding we are in 2024 and we're still getting brand new RPG games being made where they do lock you behind the mini games. They do lock you behind those things. And they haven't like learned their lesson with that yet. And Unicorn Overload definitely is like, we've heard this feedback and we're going to make these entirely optional.
00:57:46
Speaker
And I like that because it allows you to enjoy it if you want to enjoy it. And it gives me more that I actually wanted to play them because they were optional and were not forced on me. I was like, I'm going to check out the mining game. And then I had a lot of fun with it. And I was, oh, I'll check out the Coliseum if they think because I wanted to. I wanted to explore more of the game.
00:58:07
Speaker
but if i didn't want to do those i didn't have to do those and that's the way i think going forward more of these rpg games that are coming out that are brand new and that are not just remasters of the older games or they're bringing them up and they're trying to keep them true um
00:58:23
Speaker
really should learn that, like having minigames stuck behind like you can't progress the story without doing them is frustrating. And then having to do them multiple times before you could progress is downright infuriating for like a large portion of
00:58:42
Speaker
RPG gamers, it's just a matter of like, we suck it up to have our RPG games to go
Sales, Story, and Player Interaction
00:58:47
Speaker
through it. But like, it is incredibly infuriating that new games are being made now today, where it's like mini game after mini game after mini game after mini game, and it forces you through it all before you can actually get through it all. Or, you know, it's just one of those things where it's like, I like that these guys, it really feels like the developers vanilla, where for this game, seem to have taken so many like,
00:59:11
Speaker
criticisms of other sort of genres of other games in their genre, and like went, okay, okay, okay, and like took notes basically, and then tried to build a game that was like, more appeasing to a wider range of people, which is unfortunate, because it feels like a lot of people
00:59:37
Speaker
This game has just flown onto the radar entirely. Like I think a lot of people didn't even and stuff and they don't even know exists. And I was like, well, there are a good amount of people. There are a good amount of people that since played this and loved this game that didn't even know this game was coming out, which is kind of wild because it was on like multiple like Nintendo showcases and Nintendo Directs and all that stuff. But I do think it's just one of those games that kind of fell under the radar. And it did sell pretty well.
01:00:07
Speaker
all things considered, I believe. Like I know there were there were some numbers that were released and it looked like it sold pretty well. But yeah, I think more people definitely needed to needed to play. So I can agree with that. Yeah, especially when I'm like, even just talking to some RPG friends or whatever, I'm like, hey, have you played this? And they're like, what? What is that game? And like, even when I said I was unicorn overlord was a podcast game and I was like, what? Like he was just confused by the name, even of it. He's like,
01:00:37
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Where is the overlord of the unicorns? I was like, it's actually plays into the plot. Like it actually plays into the story and everything, which is cool. But like, yeah, a lot of a lot of people I find is still missing it, but a lot of people did support it, which is great. And the sales and stuff like that has been really nice to see like them achieving these milestones and stuff of the game, because I mean, like it is it is done like the story, the this the gameplay and everything.
01:01:03
Speaker
The one thing I will touch on is the story is very... It doesn't really throw a whole lot of curveballs. Yeah, it's very predictable. The story is very predictable. Until a certain point, there was one thing that was really surprising. Not going to mention when it is or what it is, obviously. We both freaked out. He freaked out a lot. Okay, picture this.
01:01:32
Speaker
P stone was beside me KJ P stone were in the back of the same uber P stones to my right who has played a lot less than I have he's like early game there's me who's like pretty well at endgame and then there's KJ doing endgame but I was literally in the final like the switch like I could not look over if I was in the final like sequences I wasn't gonna say
01:02:03
Speaker
He reacts and then he literally moves the switch like this instinctively. So I can't see what he's reacting to.
01:02:12
Speaker
And then when I got home and I got through, I got through that, I got through that stuff, I literally all cats DM'd KJ. And he was like, yup, this is me in the Uber when I could not actually full on react because you, Peastone, were nowhere near, or Peastone was nowhere near, and I hadn't done it yet.
01:02:35
Speaker
And it was so funny, but yeah, there, there are a few, like, there's that major thing. Um, and there was one other little thing that I was like, huh. But it was part of the stuff that, uh, KJ skipped, uh, cut scenes of that. It was the, um, what you may call it, um, the, the social link side portion of things where you could like bond with your characters. There was, there was an interaction between a couple of characters where I was like,
01:03:03
Speaker
Huh? What? I didn't realize they even knew each other. But again, it's not anything. That part was not even necessarily part of the story or whatever. So it was very predictable story. Oh, yeah. No, it was very predictable cookie cutter. Like, yeah, it wasn't bad. It was it was predictable and it was predictable and cookie cutter in the same way that something like a in the same way that something like a lunar is.
01:03:30
Speaker
Yes, like if you put it up RPGs, you know where this is going. Yeah. And you can kind of see like, OK, this is this is what you expect. And yeah, there wasn't a lot of twists and turns like a lot of things were very, very cookie cutter. And that even some of the like character stories were good, but they were expected. Right. Like a lot of it was expected like it wasn't. So I think the story was
01:04:00
Speaker
one of the weaker, if not the weakest thing of the game. It wasn't bad, but it was very predictable. Like I do think the story, if they would have thrown some more twists and like maybe take some taking some more chances, that would have been good. But I think they did enough with so many other things in the game that it was fine.
01:04:19
Speaker
That was the big thing for me with this game and this game very much painted the picture for me that I don't always need a super mind-blowing story to really enjoy a game. Sometimes I just need a good game and Unicorn Overlord did so well with so many other aspects of this game
01:04:41
Speaker
that the story being cookie cutter, kind of linear, or kind of predictable, that sort of stuff, especially for seasoned RPG fans, and everything with a couple little to a couple things that might shock you, but otherwise, it's pretty, pretty, pretty, like, you're pretty gonna figure it out.
01:05:00
Speaker
Um, I can forgive it because for me, there was so much more to this game than just the story. Um, there was so many aspects and layers to it that they did really well, even just like the overworld map where you could run around and grab stuff on the map. That was cool. That was definitely a cool addition.
01:05:20
Speaker
And that felt like a throw to like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 because Heroes of Might and Magic 3 had that where you could go on the map and like grab stuff that would do different things or get new units or that sort of stuff. And then on top of that, you could like rebuild all the towns. And if you did, you could like station one of your party members.
01:05:40
Speaker
at that town and they would collect a bunch of the items in the area so you didn't have to keep going back to farm those areas for items and stuff. And you would get money and loot and all that sort of stuff as you kind of progress in the game, which all these things like you're rebuilding these towns, you're finding new things on the map, you're finding hidden things on the map, you could play mini game to get even more hidden things on the map.
01:06:00
Speaker
uh you could build your units how you want you could do the tactics how you want you could set up like all your different things you could promote all your units um you can buy equipment and all these items and all this stuff there's so many layers to this game that i'm okay with them taking a bit of a backseat on the story and not making it a super wow oh my god
01:06:21
Speaker
like story, blow my mind sort of story. Like I can completely forgive that because so many other aspects of this game just connected well into each other that were just enjoyable to play. I found myself that I could pick up this game and play it for an hour and put it back down and go to bed. And it was so perfect for me because I'm busy and stuff like that, that I found myself
01:06:48
Speaker
thinking about this game and driving myself to get stuff done in my day so that I could play this game again for a couple more hours tonight, a couple more hours, a couple more hours, a couple more hours, because I enjoyed just doing things in the game. Like I just enjoyed
01:07:04
Speaker
the game like it and it's nice for me that like for my own personal thing sometimes I always felt like do I like RPGs just for the story and this game definitely changed my perspective of no sometimes I like the RPGs just because the entire game is just fun to play and it's just enjoyable like
01:07:23
Speaker
I did not have to, I did not feel like I had to sit down and be forced to play this game because we were doing it for the podcast. I legitimately- That's a direct shot at Grandia 3 and I'm here for it.
01:07:35
Speaker
That is a direct shot at Grandia 3. That game sucked. We might be referencing another episode. Go watch the Grandia 3 one. Grandia 3 sucked. That game was bad. I felt so... If you want to hear more in depth, we got you. We want to be true to the... We want to try to get and beat the game when we play these games off stream. At Grandia 3, I just felt so much like I had to do it. It was such a chore. You're not the only one. I feel that. Whereas this game...
01:08:05
Speaker
I we were both shocked because of how busy we both were. We were really busy. And then we had packs for a week and then and stuff. And he beat it like before we like before I even left for him. Like, yeah, I finished the game in like two or three weeks. But I was it was definitely I mean,
01:08:29
Speaker
It was fun, it was a lot of fun. And I do, I agree. There was mention in chat from Noel that it's nice that the story wasn't bad because there are definitely quite a few games where they try, there's like, oh, the gameplay might be fun. They try to do something with the story and it ends up being terrible. And like, that wasn't the case with this. Like, yeah, it was a generic-ish story. And I don't even wanna say generic, like it was generic-ish.
01:08:55
Speaker
And again, the story definitely was predictable. You could see where it was going. You could see where they were going with the story. You could see the different things that were coming. And it was like, oh, OK, that makes a lot more sense. And all right, so this is where we're at.
01:09:13
Speaker
And honestly, like I was OK with that, right? Like I was OK with that. I was OK with doing that. But if the story sucked, it definitely would have been difficult as well. And I think that's a great point because like Grandia three had a bad story. And so even though some of the gameplay elements and stuff are enjoyable, it sucked the fun out of that because the story was bad.
01:09:34
Speaker
With Unicorn Overlord, the story isn't bad, and I want to make that clear. With us saying it's predictable, linear, that sort of stuff, we're not saying those are bad things. It flows well. The voice acting was great. All the characters were voiced really well and really true to how I would picture the character to sound or behave, depending on their different personality traits and stuff like that.
01:09:59
Speaker
And like, it was like, oh, yeah, this happened. Oh, this happened and this happened and this happened. And it was like, you know, it wasn't a bad thing to be.
01:10:08
Speaker
linear and predictable. It was still enjoyable to do the story, especially when you did get those few moments where you were surprised. It very much felt like, oh, shit, kind of moments, right? And I respected that a little bit more with the gameplay. If this game had a bad story,
01:10:31
Speaker
I think it would have been fun to maybe do the elements of the game, but it would have been hard for me to push through the plot line of the story, which was already an issue because they give you so much to do with like side quests and stuff that so many people I've heard talk about this game are like, I've been doing like 10 hours of side quests and I haven't touched the main storyline and they're like making faces. I got ahead of level wise. I was ahead of the main story for most of the actually.
01:11:01
Speaker
Yes. Level wise, you were like ahead of the main storyline and stuff. And it was so funny because I was like, Oh yeah, I did this story. Whatever. I can't just like, Oh dude, side quests. And the fun thing is, is like so many people already did that, that if it was also a bad story, people would just never do the actual storyline thing unless they absolutely had to, which I think would have made it feel longer and made it feel like less enjoyable that way. So
01:11:31
Speaker
The fact that the story was still good, even though it was predictable and linear, is such a huge plus, because if it was real bad, and that's why I'm glad they played it safe. The big thing is they played it safe with the story, and I'm glad that they did, because sometimes when you get those stories that try to do that big, unique thing, and it just doesn't work well, it can drag the entire game down. And because they had poured their heart into this game for so long to make it good with everything else,
01:11:59
Speaker
I definitely understand why they played it safe. No, I agree. It was the smartest decision for them. Okay. So I guess.
01:12:09
Speaker
I do want to talk about something spoilery a little bit that KJ didn't do too, too much on like story wise, but it is something that is very spoiler heavy because it will reveal a component of the game that you might not. You wouldn't know until you got to that point and like near the end of the game to have very, very interesting, very interested to what you're referring to.
01:12:31
Speaker
So we talked, so that's your warning for anybody who doesn't want to hear like some end game stuff or almost end game stuff. So we talked a bit about the social links of this game and they had it kind of set up where if you took your people to food, so you could like pay for your party members that you've picked up to eat. If you put certain characters together and have them eat together, they might unlock
01:12:59
Speaker
of little story things between those two characters throughout the map. I mean, it also was the case where you keep them in units in battle. That also leveled up the story. The thing you didn't have exactly if you pair people together.
01:13:15
Speaker
You don't have to use the cooking thing at all. You can avoid the cooking thing entirely. I kept getting free meal tickets, so I used it sometimes to build it up a little bit quicker. And for example, what I ended up doing, which KJ was picking on me earlier in this podcast for, was that I sat there. Because I had done it so much throughout the game, I didn't have to do too, too much of it at the end. But when I realized there was a part in the game,
01:13:43
Speaker
where you can change the ending of the game, not only for your individual characters on what comes up at the end, but who your main character basically bonds with in the end, a.k.a. Mary, in the end, you get to pick that for them. And at first, I thought it was like, oh, it's only going to be a couple of your characters. No, no, no, no. You have 70, I think almost 70 playable characters, and it's all of them.
01:14:11
Speaker
You can literally in this game, which I find incredibly progressive, you could marry a gay, like put your main character together with anyone. You can pair them up with the guys in your party, the women in your parties, the damn lion.
01:14:28
Speaker
in your party. You can, you can pair him up with the lion. Um, and I thought that was so great of them to add that in, uh, while it's not super important and it wouldn't have been like a knock to them. Not, I thought that was fantastic because it made me somebody who really likes trying different endings and tried different parents and stuff. I sat there with a save file just before picking and I went around, I took like my favorite characters. So there was like, yes, there was 27 in the end.
01:14:56
Speaker
that I was like, oh, I could see maybe my main character with these 27 different characters. So I built it all up so that I saw all the cutscenes, all the things, built it all up so that they were in the ability to choose them for marriage, saved it just before, and went through them one by one until I found the one I liked the most.
01:15:17
Speaker
That is wild. That is that is a lot. I was committed to the relationship part of this game, even though it was such a higher portion of this game. It's such a tiny little thing that is not at all important that you need to do. This is the classic Polly thing of latching on to something that is so small in the game and like spending like six hours on it, at least like that is it was definitely like six hours. Yeah, absolutely absurd. Yeah.
01:15:47
Speaker
I went through and I was like, oh, I have maxed out things with all these people. Cool. I'm just going to do the cannon one and I'm going to be done with it. Like, I was just like, this would be cool to like see some of these things. Maybe I'll YouTube it at some point, but like.
01:16:04
Speaker
I'm cool, I'm just gonna go with the cannon ending, or the cannon pairing. Especially because they were in the same thing anyway, and I wanted them to have, like, you got the special item, so it was like, once you got the special item, it made that unit broken. Because I had maxed out resources at that point with Elaine and Scarlet, so I was like, all right, cool, this unit's broken. Like, I don't need to do anything else.
01:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, and like the default they kind of push towards you since the plot line of the game is Scarlet. And me being the person who finds the default, I was like, no, that's just too easy. I want to challenge myself and see. It was really cool because you got these two items and whoever you gave it to, aka proposed to, to marry.
01:16:49
Speaker
Um, got that item too. So they, if they were in your unit, it became overpowered. But some of the characters that I was playing around with weren't in my unit. So I had to throw them in the unit in the end. So that was also part of my decision. But yeah, I went through 27 of them, looking at them all. Some of them were pure humor. You could go through one of them with Virginia.
01:17:12
Speaker
You sent me a screenshot of you picking Virgin, that's weird. Okay, so I, that was the humor one, so. Virginia was one of, if not my favorite character, but that's weird, they're cousins. Yeah, okay, so let me lead into this, because I think this is like the funniest part of the game that I ended up doing. When I found out I could do that, I was like, is it every character? No, it's not every character. So I went through the plot line,
01:17:39
Speaker
for Virginia to see if she was because in the entire scope of this game, she's your cousin, first of all, she's she looks like your mother, like your your your mother in this game. And she's like ends up being super protective over you like a sibling. So all of that together, you're like, no, they wouldn't have done this, right?
01:18:06
Speaker
wrong you can marry your sister cousin who looks like your mother and i was like no so weird and i had to at that point i was like curiosity has me now i need to know then i want to try science because i wanted to see not only kj's reaction to be doing it but also everybody else who i knew was further than me or had already beat the game like dark i had to send it to them to like
01:18:34
Speaker
be like oh my god and it was so cringy the whole time like the whole sequence she comes up and she's like i knew you would pick me and i was like oh this is fucking gross like why why would you know and then she's like so give me the ring already and he's like oh okay and like the whole time your main character elaine is just like okay and then
01:18:56
Speaker
honest to goodness she is the only one out of 27 that they lean into kiss and it blacks it turns to it fades to black the only one out of 27 some of them yeah like even with scarlet they like get close and snuggly but they don't lean into kiss
01:19:16
Speaker
Literally, I tried 27 different characters in the sequence. I wish I didn't know that. And the sister cousin is the only one where they look like they're about to kiss before it fades to black. I wish I didn't know that. That's uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable. And I feel like the devs slipped that in there as like a joke. I hope it's a joke. I'm hoping it's a joke. Would you do this joke?
01:19:40
Speaker
Exactly. So it's like a reward of like, what are you doing? This is the most cringes. And I was like, Oh, you actually progressed the story with. So I'm going to let you guess once. Just guess once. Who do you think? And it's not scarlet, obviously, because I said I didn't pick freaking Amelia or whatever her name is.
01:20:05
Speaker
okay you know what's funny she was my first choice in this 27 to pick and it's so funny their romance is Amelia walks up and she's like why are you calling me here and he's like oh you know like he goes through his little speech and she goes
01:20:24
Speaker
She like, she literally her eyes pan down and up and she's like, fight me. And he's like, what? And she's like, fight me. No man is ever gonna get this hand unless they fight me and beat me in a battle. Literally your whole sequence with her is you beat her.
01:20:44
Speaker
you beat her in a battle like it's like a one-on-one they fight and he wins and he's like you will marry me and she's like she blushes and she's like no man no one has ever conquered me i would be honored to marry you and i was like what the hell and then at the end she's he's she's like oh and by the way if you ever get weak and i end up beating you this is over and he's like don't worry that'll never happen and i was like
01:21:16
Speaker
I felt I as much as I liked her as a character. I was like, there's my mountain. I was like No, I can't I can't I can't marry my mountain I can't not with that not with that sequence The one I ended up actually going with was Travis
01:21:35
Speaker
interesting so travis was my favorite character for pretty well the beginning since the beginning of the game i tried like i even did the bromance i did the bromance where it was lex and elaine and that was hilarious by the way lex makes it an entire joke the whole time and it's fucking funny um i tried the i tried the clive and that was just
01:21:58
Speaker
No, I'm trying to lie. If I'm going to if I'm going to ship any bromance, it's Elaine and Clive. They were in my they were in the same unit for me for the entire game. They were OP as fuck for the entire game.
01:22:14
Speaker
Oh yeah. Clive was like in my main unit the entire time too. So I thought it'd be funny for them to go together, but Clive, when you start, when you do all the like sequences to get Clive as an option, he talks about like wanting to go away and, and, and help his people and help his, all the hometown and all this stuff. So, and he kinda alludes to that in the thing. So I was like, well, I don't want to take him away from his like dreams. This seems weird. Like I feel like I'm forcing the
01:22:41
Speaker
got to marry me and it feels weird. I tried like Unifi, which is the ice queen girl or whatever from the ice place. And she was very much like, oh, she made me laugh because she goes. So they're like, okay, when they go through the marriage sequence, she's like, I'm so glad that you chose me. I never had a family before. And I'm so I'm so excited to start one with you. And he's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, the two of us together will be great. She's like, not what I meant.
01:23:09
Speaker
and he goes red and it fades and i'd lost it i was like oh my god she yeah you probably way more into this and stuff so i tried these i even tried the lion and it's so funny because you do the lion he's like what did you call me here for he's like i want to do that he's like
01:23:27
Speaker
I'm a damn lion, man. And he's like, yeah, but we just have this bond. He's like, I am a lion. And he like forces that thing. And then they kind of like he then Elaine goes through the reason. He's like, okay, I could kind of see your reason for this. So they do the whole thing. And Elaine's like, I really hope that I'll have your strength beside my side. He's like, yeah, you better since you're marrying a lion.
01:23:52
Speaker
And I was like, okay, this one was almost the one I chose. But the Travis one was so wholesome that I actually got emotional over it. And Travis likes books. So first of all, you call Travis up and he's like,
01:24:08
Speaker
what's going on? What do you mean? And he's like, Oh, I want to I want to I want to do this with you. And he's like, Do I look like a damn maiden to you? And it's like, well, no, I look at it as more as like, not looking at the like the main like the appearance of it, but you were you were more than that to me. And he like kind of goes off and, and Travis was like,
01:24:28
Speaker
Oh, and Travis like blushes and everything too during the sequence. He's like, oh, OK. And you you go through the sequence and and he's like, I like books. Can we can we maybe build a library? And Elaine's like, absolutely. When this is over, let's build a library together. And their whole story at the end is they build the biggest library in all the kingdom and they end up
01:24:54
Speaker
sitting side by side reading books together and enjoying the peace and quiet in their new library that they built for each other. And it's so sweet and wholesome. I'm like, I did not expect this at all from the scene.
01:25:11
Speaker
the group. I did not just expect this. And every other one that I went through, I was just like, no, that's the most wholesome one where it was like, he's just like, Oh, I really like that. And I would really like a light thing. And they end up this library together sitting side by side, reading books together and like being all cute and everything together. And it's so goddamn sweet that I was like, nah, this is the one I picked. This is the one I
01:25:31
Speaker
I would have never seen that because I didn't really care for Travis all that much after the beginning of the game. In the beginning of the game, I was like, oh, Travis is a cool character. And then he kind of fell off in combat. And I was like, OK, Travis is OK. And then he ended up on one of the units that I was using.
01:25:51
Speaker
But he was just like in a kind of just in that unit because I needed another character. He wasn't really one of the characters that I that I used.
01:26:04
Speaker
Yeah. And for me with Travis, I was like the opposite. I had Travis. He kind of was my broken unit right at the beginning. And then as things got harder, he wasn't. But I started to like change him around with different units and stuff. And I found another broken team and he ended up being a part of my one of three teams that were like super broken.
01:26:24
Speaker
And then when I paired him up with Elaine at the end, because he had the ring of the maiden, so I had to put them together. Holy shit, the team was unstoppable. They were absolutely unstoppable with the tactics and stuff I set up. And I ended up enjoying him. And he was one of those characters which caught me off guard with his
01:26:42
Speaker
story and everything and his personality are very much not like the thief rogue that I was used to. Like Gamel, one of the thief rogues you get was very much on point. But like with Travis, it was very like out there. And then when he was talking about reading and you like gift him books and stuff like that, and it ups his thing a lot, if you gave Travis books, he like shot up.
01:27:04
Speaker
And then you started to learn more and more about him in his little thing to make him a character that you can marry. And then going through all the sequences of all the characters in the end, he's not with a sister and he ends up with you like he stays with you.
01:27:19
Speaker
at the end and he's standing there with them and they're like they're like leaning in and then it like fades to black of talking about like they built the world's biggest library and helped the education system of the kingdom and they could be seen often together side by side reading books like leaning on each other and I was like
01:27:38
Speaker
So I was like, I was dying and I didn't expect that from him at all, like at
Character Strategies and Endings
01:27:42
Speaker
all. And I'm like, okay. The entire time, like him and his sister were together. Actually, I took screenshots of my units. So like, just so that I would have it for a reference because it's been so long. And yeah, I did like I used him. He actually had his own unit and I did end up kind of using them later on.
01:28:01
Speaker
but I was he was the he was the person in that unit because like the the head of that unit because of the quick rest time
01:28:09
Speaker
Oh, yes, I love that. Yeah, like I was. So it was definitely one that I didn't necessarily. Force too much until I ended up moving the druid to that unit, then it was broken. Druid is like super broke up in the game. Oddly enough, the druid was not fun to romance.
01:28:33
Speaker
And that doesn't surprise me. Cause she was just like, I'm a curious person. This is curious. This sounds great. And then you get through it and she's just like, I'm going to go on an adventure and she doesn't stay with you. And I was like, okay, bye. Like, all right. All right. I'm good.
01:28:48
Speaker
But yeah, like the druid in this game is super broken, the shaman, the shaman character, and super, super powerful. One of my strongest units in the game was her part of the party. And yeah, it originally that unit was like Travis, his sister, the druid, one of the Griffin Rider Celeste, I think.
01:29:16
Speaker
Oh, and one of the elven, one of the elven ladies and the only difference is that the only difference is that I had, um, I had one of the mage elven units and I had, instead of a flying unit, I had a Rolf.
01:29:35
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I had, she wasn't mage, but she was like one of the pole arm ones. And she had both healing and really big magic attacks, which I liked the balance of it. So I put her there and then yeah, I had Celeste instead of Rolf, but that unit ended up like mopping the floor with everything. If Elaine's unit couldn't handle it, that unit could. And I put the flying unit Celeste as the main, as the leader. So they could just like,
01:30:00
Speaker
go to the end of the map and just wipe everything out. It was great. Until the end of the game when I picked Travis as the thing, then I had to put Travis in my main party. So I had to like rearrange things a little bit. So I changed that unit a bit. It was still super OP, but I had to change it around a little bit.
01:30:17
Speaker
But, so for your end unit, what was your end, like your end Elaine unit in the end? My end Elaine unit was Elaine Clive, Berenice, Scarlett, and Yana.
01:30:31
Speaker
like the being able to like Alain and Clive pretty much could handle everything themselves. And the only things they couldn't handle were like things that were weak to magic. So once I was able to like enchant their weapons with magic, and then it was over. Yeah. Also have like scarlet to heal and then baronies to just do other like big damage with like counters and shit. It was over.
01:30:57
Speaker
And when I did need a little bit extra, I would swap Berenice out for the druid. So that way the druid would basically just make it so that everything missed because I had like the sandstorm or whatever ability. Everything missed. I set her up so that she always went first.
01:31:17
Speaker
Yeah. And then always went first. She had high initiative and then she did that sandstorm and it was over for the event. And then yeah, cliving Elaine, just unless you were fighting another shaman doing a similar strat, then it's like, Oh shit. But like even then, um, yeah, for me with Elaine, we had identical Elaine units except for my fifth member, um, ended up being Travis like for the end end thing because I had to have him there.
01:31:41
Speaker
But up until that point, I kept having the fifth character kind of float around because I kept trying different characters. But I ended up settling on the wing Reneres. Reneres? Reneas? Yeah, that person's at the bench for me.
01:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So by the time you get her in the game, totally understand why she's at the bench for you. I was using the other feather sword the entire time. Okay. Yeah, that's why. By the time you get that unit, it was too late. Yeah, the other one was where I didn't use that other feather sword at all. I hardly ever used them. And then when that one came out, when they had like, uh,
01:32:16
Speaker
a few extra things. I changed around their tactics a bit and I threw them in there. But yeah, I had Yana in there, Scarlett, Clive. Clive and Elaine never separated. I did have Chloe in there for a while, but then I moved Chloe with Lex. I had Chloe with Lex as well.
01:32:31
Speaker
I just, I liked their relationship with each other, their friendship. So I was like, I'll put them, and they were just really good together as units. Um, so I put them together, but yeah, uh, one thing I really loved about this game with the characters is all the characters personalities and stuff were all little unique from all of each other. And they did a really good job at like making them all a little unique between each other, like to have 70 playable characters and to have them all.
01:32:59
Speaker
different from each other, um, is, is difficult. And even unit types for who were the same were different. Like I even tried, like I even, uh, one of the marriage things that I did was Celeste, the Griffin rider. And she, her whole thing is she's always, she always dreamed to be a princess. So like, Elena's like, now you will be. And she like, gets so blushy and she's like, Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. She's like, can we, can I bring my Griffin? Can my Griffin be a part of this? And I was like, what?
01:33:25
Speaker
And at first I went to the thing, but she met as like, can I keep my Griffin pet? And I was like, oh, okay. I thought it was going in a very weird direction at first. And I was like, oh God, but no, no, no, no. It ended up being fine or whatever, but yeah, it was...
01:33:43
Speaker
It was so cool, like how many like the storylines and stuff like that of the characters were and they were all like different from each other and they were all really unique. But good lord, I did not like the I did it for the lulls, but then Virginia. Like, I don't know if any of the other characters I don't know anybody else who's played who's in chat currently right now. Do is there any other character that leans in for a kiss and then it fades to black? Because the only one I found was Virginia and that was really freaking weird.
01:34:12
Speaker
So I think you did more of these than any of us. That's my guess. I did 27, but there's still 70 characters. Yeah, but doing 20 reload saving and reloading 27 times is a lot. I was mad because the game after you beat it lets you do that easier. And I was like, Son of I should have waited until I beat the game to do it. But that's fine. That's my goodness.
01:34:40
Speaker
But the end of the game allows you to do that easier so that you could get the different endings easier. And I didn't realize that. So I did that all before it, like I beat the game. So I wasted so much extra time doing that, but that's okay.
01:34:55
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, I know. It wasn't even something that crossed my mind. I was like, I'm going to do the canon ending and we're good. I knew you would. That's the thing. I knew you would. So I also wanted to add a little bit to it, but also I like this kind of stuff. Like I like figuring this out. This is fun for me. And I had a blast and Edo just kept laughing at me because I kept being like,
01:35:15
Speaker
Oh my god, this is cute. Oh my god, this is so cringy. And then literally when I was doing the Virginia one, he's like, and I was like, don't say it, don't say it. And he just had this like, his usual shitty and grin on his face. And I was like, I know what you're thinking, but don't say it. And I literally said that to dark and dark said what I knew and I was thinking, I was like, damn it, the two of you are too still. But yeah, um,
01:35:41
Speaker
Honestly, yeah, it was it was a fun portion of the game, but that was more of a me. I do. I knew you weren't going to do it. And I knew a lot of the people playing probably wouldn't. It was one of those things where I was like, this is the cannon. This is what they want you to do. And like they definitely push you to Scarlett. Yeah.
01:35:57
Speaker
And so everything about it, it's like that's the cannon and my favorite character was Virginia. So I wasn't doing that. Like the only time I would ever know the cannon would be to do it with my like to have my favorite character as part of it. And that wasn't happening. So I was like, no, OK, we're good. Like let's move on. And the funny thing is when you pick like so Scarlett's like leading up being like, I don't know if I'm going to be the pontiff or whatever. So when you don't pick her, I figured she'd go back and be the pontiff. Right.
01:36:27
Speaker
No, she doesn't. She just ends up back out of the solitary island and be like a priestess alone. And I was like, this is actually really depressing for Scarlett's like end story to not be with Elaine. Like it's it's actually like like sadder when you don't pick her because it's like she just goes to this like back to that island. And she's like, I'm a priest this year and like gave up the pontiff or whatever to the guy she wants to do. Then that's fine.
01:36:53
Speaker
Yeah, I know. But it just so it's like it was just she's just like like there alone. And it just it just felt like, oh, you're all alone. Like nobody's here with you. Like it just felt a little bit like very much. This game was set up that wants you to pick her for sure. I mean, they always have like what they want the cannon option to be. So that's yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I knew I knew you were going to pick it unless you wanted your favorite character or something like that. But like I actually didn't know your favorite character was Virginia foot back.
01:37:22
Speaker
I'm, I'm all set with that. No, like the sister cousin was very, very disturbing. Anyway. Um, yeah. Uh, I think we've talked a lot about the game. Do we want to talk about, so I'm going to ask you, what would you rate this game out of 10? Um, this game was like a solid,
01:37:42
Speaker
a solid nine. I think it, I think it did a lot of things I wanted it to do. Like it definitely hit expectations for me. I, I was very, I think of like the general community and like the general RPG community that we're a part of and all of that. Like I feel like I was kind of like beating the drum about this game the loudest. Um, I was very excited about this game and I know a lot of people weren't very
01:38:07
Speaker
Well, they were more interested, but they were definitely like unsure about this and like not not really not like it seemed like a lot of people were worried. A lot of people were worried and like not sure if they really wanted it. And I know I was like.
01:38:27
Speaker
I'm getting this game. I'm not gonna get the special edition. I don't get special editions usually. So I was like, I'm getting the game. I'm super excited about it. And I had
Overall Reception and Future Plans
01:38:35
Speaker
said, even if you didn't like it, and we didn't do it for the podcast, I was still gonna play it before whatever we replaced it with. So I was like, that is definitely gonna be the case. I am playing this game regardless. I'm super excited for this game. And so I think in that regard, I kind of... Again, it checked all the boxes it needed for me.
01:38:57
Speaker
Yeah, I can't I can't complain. I think I've said my complaints. Yeah, I feel like the few things that I had with it are super nitpicky in the end. Little things, little things. And I think I think this game really benefits like because it's a new IP and people are people are more hesitant with their money when they're spending full game. We've been burned so many times as consumer gamers and stuff.
01:39:20
Speaker
where games just do not live up to the hype or anything like that, so I can understand people being skeptical and stuff. But one thing that this game does really well, which I wish more games would do, is give a demo that lets you really feel out the game before you purchase it. I feel like a lot of games are starting to do. Like, I feel like it's starting to become more that common-sake, and it's good because it's like, with...
01:39:45
Speaker
Nowadays, it's like you just don't know if you're going to like and spending $90 on a game is a lot of money. So like that is $90 Canadian. We do have to be.
01:39:55
Speaker
Oh, sorry. Yeah. Sorry. $90 Canadian on a game. Not $90 USD just in case people are like, this is a $60 USD game. Okay. Yeah. This is a $60 USD game, which is roughly 85, $90 Canadian. And so, yes, thank you for correcting that because I would have just scared a lot of people off. Yeah, you would.
01:40:17
Speaker
But I think, as such, it's like these kind of games and stuff like that. And especially new IPs. When game companies are trying new IPs and stuff, a demo is super important. And a demo to at least let you really experience the game. Enough of it to make a decision on whether to buy it or not.
01:40:35
Speaker
Um, I think unicorn overload does that really well. And, um, and yeah, I think, um, I'm glad that more games are starting to do that more. I definitely think RPGs really need to start doing that more. Um, like, I mean, I know the octopath games, for example, like, I think that's a good example too. They did a two differences that this game allowed you to really move.
01:40:59
Speaker
like carry over your save, which I actually didn't end up doing. I ended up restarting and continuing on even past, like I didn't carry over my save from when I'd started it.
01:41:09
Speaker
But in general, I think this game, that's the piece of it with the demo that I think is really important. Because we used to have demos all the time. Now we don't really have as many demos, although bigger games are definitely starting to bring demos back in and incorporate demos. But I think in general, having the ability to do
01:41:29
Speaker
Like, this is a long game. So having the ability to play a demo for like five hours, really get a taste of the game, and then be able to carry over everything that you did into the main story is really exciting. And I think that's something that really needs to be sort of reimplemented for a lot of games.
01:41:51
Speaker
Yeah. And I fully agree with you. I fully agree with you 100% on that. And yeah, I agree. And I think it should be more mainstream going forward because this game really did it well. And I'm right there with you the same score. I had the exact same score. I have it literally written down right here. I had a 9 out of 10 as well. I think it's a...
01:42:14
Speaker
For me, it might be a little bit more closer to 9.5, but I think I'm going to stick at the 9. And I think it's super great. I think it's such a great blend. I think it was really refreshing of a game to play being such a good blend between RTS and Tactics with a little bit of the RPG elements in there as well. I liked a lot of the characters, even though there were 70 of them. I like that they each have a little bit of their own little thing going on.
01:42:43
Speaker
I like that there's new game plus for more challenging aspects of the game. I like that there's literally you start off with like four levels of difficulty, which I think is great. And that just appeases to like everybody from the beginner player who's never played RPG before.
01:43:00
Speaker
to the more expert tactics or RTS players or more tactics, more tactics players and stuff that are more experienced being in the expert and everybody in between. Like it's a game that it pieces to everyone, which you can't always say that about RPGs. Sometimes they're they're just not super like jump in user friendly, especially some older RPGs. And so, yeah, definitely nine out of 10. This game was fantastic. I had a lot of fun with it. And I will definitely replay it again.
01:43:29
Speaker
Um, maybe get the other 42 characters I did get. I'm shaking my head. I can see, I can see you right now that you're shaking your head. You're like, no, no, no.
01:43:48
Speaker
Pretty much. Yeah, that it's just it's a force to do. That is. You know what? If you're enjoying it, do your thing. But it's going to be me now. 70 endings hard pass. Even if I do know, you're going to go with the perma death of units. And I'm going to do the masochist run. And like, yeah, that's going to definitely be something I do at some point. OK, so yeah, I think we're good on this game.
01:44:18
Speaker
Just to mention it, just a very, very small teaser. The next game we're doing is Breath of Fire 2. We might have another episode coming up. We're not entirely sure yet. So Breath of Fire 2 episode is going to be actually airing in June. But we don't want to... This was a long time off in between doing the Last Story podcast episode and then doing this one basically two months later.
01:44:47
Speaker
We're thinking we might throw something in for May. That'll be a little bit of a little bit. Yeah. So, yeah, Brother Fire, too. So I will be playing the Game Boy Advance version. Polly, I don't know. Are you playing the SNES version or are you playing the Game Boy Advance version? I'm probably going to play the.
01:45:10
Speaker
I'm kind of torn between it, but I think I'm leaning on playing the Game Boy Advance version as well. It seems like we're both going to play the Game Boy Advance version. I have the physical copy of the Game Boy Advance version. And if I were to play this next one, it would be through the Switch thing. So it's like, I'm kind of leaning more on the GBA.
01:45:29
Speaker
Yeah. And the reason why, so breath of fire two doesn't sound like it's like we've seen it. It's like about a 40 ish hour game. It's not that it's going to take two months. It's just, uh, with KJ and I is like, um, schedules and stuff like that.
01:45:45
Speaker
Uh, we had to break up the next, so the three in a row. So we have breath or fire two is going to be like, we're going to do it in June. Um, we might have a special episode of may, if our schedules work or if scheduling works out, we're going to have a special episode. And then, and then July and August is, um,
01:46:04
Speaker
uh, golden sun, the dark dawn. Again, it's not a game we think will take that long. It's because then I get super busy and he has more, uh, his schedule is really super busy, especially in July. I'm really super busy in August. So, uh, and then July leading up to August, cause it'll be con prepping and stuff. So it just ended up being like, it was just a little bit easier for our schedules to like do that. Um, and we're going to see if we can have it like a special episode in July and the May, but again, it all depends on.
01:46:34
Speaker
how things work, but yes, Breath of the Fire 2 is the next game. For those of you who want to join us in playing that off-stream, you'll have two months to play it with us. And there's different versions you can play, like there's a Super Nintendo version on the Switch, if you have the Switch Online, pay for the Switch Online for the Super Nintendo pack, it is there.
01:46:58
Speaker
Or if you want to collect it, there's the Super Nintendo version or the GBA version, which is we both have the GBA version. So actual physical copy, so probably be the ones that we play. Yeah, so that's that gives you a good idea of sort of what's to come. That'll be the next episode. So I guess without further ado,
01:47:22
Speaker
We're good to go here, so thank you everybody for tuning in, and we'll catch y'all for the next one. Yeah, it's still so weird not to write out.