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This strategy RPG follows the story of a blue-haired sword-wielding prince of a fallen kingdom who leaves the idyllic island he was raised on with five followers to his name to strike back against the evil empire ruling the continent with an iron fist. No, I'm not talking about Marth Fire Emblem or about any game from the Fire Emblem series. We will instead be playing Vanillaware's Unicorn Overlord (NSW/PS4/PS5/XBox). Released in March of 2024, UO is Vanillaware's take on a SRPG. For a veteran Fire Emblem player, it will ring many bells and scratch many itches, being an anime game with a large cast from the same genre that has more than a few passing similarities. It has a heavy focus on the strategy part, with the cast being more than interesting enough to make you care about at least a few of them as characters in addition to whatever sick kill count they can rack up over the course of the game. If you like Fire Emblem, you'll probably also like Unicorn Overlord. Dare I say it, I might even like Unicorn Overlord's plot better than I like that of your baseline Fire Emblem. Enough about the plot. Gameplaywise, how does Unicorn Overlord differ from Fire Emblem? You have a map with objectives and enemies, and recruit playable characters who have not just classes and skills, but their own distinct places in and relationships with the setting (hirable generics aside). Aside from that, Unicorn Overlord tosses the grid-based map gameplay and permadeath out. Battles are waged with units of up to five characters, and your management of unit formations and characters' skills and equipment can—alongside the whims of the RNG—make a hell of a difference in outcomes. Every map plays out in semi-live time* and has a time limit for you to complete the map objective. The game also has an overworld where you can buy weapons and wares, see As for how all this poo poo works? Bear with me, I'll do my damndest to explain it to the best of my ability. *you can hit the pause button and deliberate as many times as you want and as long as you want, so in practice you'll be taking far longer than one, two, three minutes to finish a map What opportunities for reader interaction will there be? After an inflection point there will be more characters on my roster than there will be slots available for them, and you will be able to pick who gets cut for each map. Aside from that, the game has plenty of "Kill/Spare" choices and I'll outsource these decisions to you as they come. Spoilers? please don't, or at least keep it behind spoiler tags if you really have to pop off about it THAT HAVING BEEN SAID a lot of the aforementioned choices have story and gameplay ramifications long or even immediately after you make them, so make of that what you will Table of Contents Prologue: The Fall of Fevrith The Unicorn Ring A Call to Action: Part 1 | Part 2 Intermission 1: The Overworld A Solitary Resistance: Part 1 |  Part 2
Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 01:24
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reserved
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Apr 11, 2024 01:24
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Prologue: The Fall of Fevrith Opening Cinematic  Now let’s begin the cycle anew…   The Fall of Fevrith …and go straight out of the frying pan and into the fire.   Onto a castle besieged…    Pay attention to that blue ring. It’s no mere trinket; you’ll see plenty of it by the time this is all over and done with.   *Ilenia doesn’t answer that one.*      And with that, time for some actual gameplay! Four separate characters move to Ilenia’s space on the map; that is to say, the unit assembles, with Ilenia as its leader, and we will be briefly in control of her five-man unit. Only very rarely will you see a solo character as its own standalone unit in this game.  You select your unit and then a destination for said unit, whether it’s an empty, directly-adjacent piece of dirt or an enemy unit all the way on the other side of the map. The game will automatically map out your unit’s path and you will have a chance to confirm. In this case, the path mapped out will take Ilenia’s unit to Valmore’s, to the south, via the west.   Your units will be detected by any enemy unit(s) whose range you enter, and will have to fight any enemy units they come across en route to their target. Now, Ilenia has a full unit of 5 and is engaging an enemy unit of 3. Now for the first battle of the game…          As you just saw in painstaking detail, battles in UO are a back-and-forth between two units until one of two outcomes occurs: either has been annihilated, or both have exhausted their Action Points (the red diamonds) and Passive Points (the blue diamonds). So each individual battle would require a ton of screens to fully document, and doing so would make every update unreadably long once we get to large maps with high enemy density and wherein both the player and the enemy have 5 characters per unit, for every unit! Once we’re out of tutorial mode I’ll just be showing particular highlights or what certain characters are capable of, or just general method behind my madness.    After beating that first enemy unit, Ilenia’s unit’s stamina drops from 6 to 5, and she continues on the path to Valmore, effortlessly eviscerating another scrub squad on the way.      And since this is our last opportunity to do so: let’s take in these names, the loyal few who were the last to stand by Ilenia as Cornia fell. The queen herself has a huge death flag hanging over her head, but who knows? Perhaps this isn’t the last we’ll see of the rest of her entourage. Anyway, once Ilenia’s unit reaches Valmore’s…   literally Ilenia:      Whether this outcome was preordained or not, let’s not forget the point of Ilenia’s last stand:  Josef is fleeing, and even though he’s doing so at his queen’s behest, to protect and raise her son, you can already tell that his taking flight will gently caress him up something fierce for the rest of his days.   Ilenia  and that sure is an evil wizard and (knowing my Fire Emblems) probable mastermind we have here         this all seems pretty bad tbh! What will our runaway prince, now in his late teens, do about it? What CAN he do about it? …Follow and find out! Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Apr 13, 2024 |
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Apr 11, 2024 01:26
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I had a lot of fun with the game and I do look forward to seeing how everyone reacts to it.
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Apr 11, 2024 01:33
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The art for this isn't bad, but for some reason whenever I see it, especially in motion, it keeps looking like browser game ad trailers to me. I'm not sure what makes me my brain draw that connection.
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Apr 11, 2024 01:41
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So far this feels like the bastard child of Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle. Very interested to see how the mechanics click together.
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Apr 11, 2024 01:58
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PurpleXVI posted:The art for this isn't bad, but for some reason whenever I see it, especially in motion, it keeps looking like browser game ad trailers to me. I'm not sure what makes me my brain draw that connection. I can recognize some Vanillaware aesthetics but compared to something like Muramasa this combines with Generic Euroesque Fire Emblem to just look like something that youtube seems to think that I want to care about when I'm watching on mobile and they're not trying to get me to invest in crypto.
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Apr 11, 2024 02:02
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I've actually been very on the fence about whether or not I want to get this game so you have perfect timing
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Apr 11, 2024 02:30
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I hear the game's been going on sale fairly often as of late for $40 at Best Buy or whatnot, on both the Switch and PS. I had to wait a good while before I got my copy because physical copies were sold out at the time I'd placed my order. It definitely seems to have pretty broad popular appeal and if you're at all interested and have that SRPG itch to scratch, then by all means shoot your shot.
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Apr 11, 2024 03:22
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Man, this game feels like it should be right up my alley, but I bounced super hard off the demo. I just do not like the gameplay loop at all, so it'll be interesting to see what I missed out on.
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Apr 11, 2024 03:25
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There's a few styles of SRPG's, and the only one I really don't like is the Ogre Battle type. Too much time watching, not enough doing stuff
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Apr 11, 2024 03:25
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I made it a few hours into this one and yeah while gorgeous it felt a little simple on the standard difficulty - the tactics configuration and unit combinations you can put together are beautifully complex, but simple, effective squads are enough for most combats in content I played, which made it a bit dull. Honestly my favorite part remains the spritework, but I also can see it being a great candidate for SSLPing since you can cut out all of the downtime and tedious configuration, so I'll be eagerly following and appreciate your effort in playing through it.
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Apr 11, 2024 06:19
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Yeah, this game is really an Ogre Battle game in different clothes more than Fire Emblem although it does take some elements from FE. It's been a long time since i've played a Ogre Battle though so that's nice.
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Apr 11, 2024 07:27
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Hell yeah, this game is awesome. Super excited to see an LP of it!!!
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Apr 11, 2024 11:58
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This game slaps incredibly, except it's got this thing where, it starts off really good, and then becomes really boring, and takes a while to get good again, but unlike certain other games famous for getting really good after 25 hours, this one starts ratcheting the quality up immediately but does it quite slowly instead of having a big dramatic opening up point. Also the rate at which your options expand is kinda inconsistent depending on where and how you explore so that's fun too, as I'm sure we'll be seeing first hand. Pro tip if you're bored: crank the difficulty up to max. It's Vanillaware, super hard is basically normal. If you have any love at all for Leaning Into Your Bullshit you can have a hilarious time turning hard mode into easy. The gambit system is back, baby. It's good again. Awrouuuu.
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Apr 11, 2024 16:13
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Will likely watch this until the end of the Demo content, where I'm at. Good game, and unlike the Ogre Battle games I played it seems to actually explain its mechanics.
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Apr 11, 2024 17:54
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have not played Ogre Battle but hey, sounds like something for the bucket list once I'm through with this. and yeah I had to think long and hard about the gameplay loop and event pacing, especially pertaining to the overworld and exploration, and how to convey that. anyway, I'm aiming for Sunday at ?? o'clock for the next update. That and recording another chunk of gameplay while I'm getting my joy-con issues worked out.
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Apr 12, 2024 21:28
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looks cool, where are the unicorns tho?
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Apr 13, 2024 02:09
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Fajita Queen posted:looks cool, where are the unicorns tho? There are no actual Unicorns, it's only thematic.
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Apr 13, 2024 02:35
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I keep reading the title as 'Unicorn Overload' and wondering how many unicorns you need to overload on them.
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Apr 13, 2024 12:51
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This game is great and I can already tell i'm going to get whiplash from reading this LP and the Engage LP at the same time.
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Apr 13, 2024 21:42
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Looking forward to seeing your squad setups in the mid game, the diversity of possible loadouts and team compositions is nuts.
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Apr 13, 2024 22:04
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The Lone Badger posted:I keep reading the title as 'Unicorn Overload' and wondering how many unicorns you need to overload on them. For a while, I kept seeing "Unicron Overlord"
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Apr 13, 2024 22:15
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Game rules but it is weird not hearing Revolt play when doing Ogre Battle-like battles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN18vCy9a9E
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Apr 14, 2024 01:36
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Libluini posted:For a while, I kept seeing "Unicron Overlord" Wouldn't that just be SRW with Transformers? 
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Apr 14, 2024 01:39
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CommissarMega posted:Wouldn't that just be SRW with Transformers? it also made the theme of the 80s movie start playing in my head whenever I read the title of this game could you believe how confusing it would be if Hasbro next brings out its cool new SRPG Unicron Overlord, followed by the Atlus-RPG Uni-Cron Overload?
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Apr 14, 2024 10:35
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Is... the queen wearing a buckler on each elbow and swings around a metal board? 
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Apr 14, 2024 12:12
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Obviously.  it's not just for show either, go look at her loadout screen again. She is genuinely dual wielding shields in-game.
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Apr 14, 2024 13:25
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Hell loving yes she is
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Apr 14, 2024 15:38
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 The Unicorn Ring Mk. 1 Whenever you see a screen like this, it means you’re in for a battle. You’ll get one chunk of cutscene before the battle and another after, and I’ll post them in sets of two accordingly.  Let’s fast forward ten years to Palevia, the island where Alain has been living in exile.       The two have a short sparring match, at the end of which…  ehhhhh don’t sell yourself short there Alain  We sure are fortuitous that the imperial army has left this island alone for an entire decade. Still, now that they’re here, the boys have the right idea. Because the bad guys?   They move pretty fast.  Now that’s a familiar face, albeit with a red coat of paint now.      Scarlett drops to her knees after Alain dispatches the intruders, at which point…  Hold the phone, has “the exiled crown prince is living here” even registered for the Zenoiran troops here? It seems they only had eyes for the priestess   drat the past ten years have been rough on Josef   Well I can say this much: only rarely in this playthrough will Alain be unequipping this ring.   And off we go! Our command post is at the cathedral. If an enemy unit reaches our command post, it’s game over. That gauge up in the upper left is Valor. Deploying a unit costs us one full point of valor, and we’ll do just that with Alain’s unit (with Scarlett directly behind him).    The game then prompts us to have Alain’s unit target the enemy mook’s, and the two units meet midway.   Now for a more in-depth explanation of the battle flow now that we have an actual battle instead of just Ilenia and co. stomping on a few hapless saps. Since Alain has the highest Initiative of everyone in the fight, he goes first. He expends his single AP to use his Lean Edge skill, almost taking out the Housecarl in the front line, after which the Housecarl retaliates by expending his single AP to attack Alain. Alain’s passive skill Noble Guard then triggers, reducing the damage he takes and expending his single PP.  Passive skills are reactive and automatic; they activate after a certain condition, or they can trigger either at the very start or end of a battle. Since that’s Scarlett’s one PP, she won’t be able to use Quick Heal again should Alain get hit again in this battle. By the way, she has Quick Heal by dint of her accessory; some equippables come with skills attached.   The enemy Housecarls are both faster than Scarlett but slower than Alain, so the one in the rear guard gets the next action. He misses Alain, and Scarlett uses her 1AP to purge his buddy with Holy Light. But the surviving Housecarl has one PP outstanding…   …and smacks Alain, who procs a guard, with his Parting Blow skill.   All characters in a unit gain Rapport at the conclusion of a battle. If neither unit went down, then the one with a lower percentage of its HP remaining is the loser. In this case, the enemy unit lost one of its guys and Alain was barely scratched, so… yeah. The loser will be knocked back and sent into a waiting state. Units who are waiting are immobile and sitting ducks for…  …a first strike, in which everyone in the attacking unit gets a round robin to uses their first active skill before the target can do anything. And in this case, the enemy’s defeat is fait accompli.  Whenever you win a fight, the valor gauge fills up a bit. It fills up more when you actually eliminate an enemy unit.  You get more valor by capturing enemy garrisons and, to boot, the unit capturing will regain stamina–and it tips Alain’s unit’s stamina back off at 6. Captured garrisons also serve as points you can launch undeployed units from.    Yeah, well, uh, you can tell from the sprites that Lex is currently a one-man unit and the enemy units are all two-man. He only gets in one active skill, which lacks the firepower to straight up kill one of the enemy Housecarls. Both of them will thus get to use their active skill and will get to use Parting Blow at the end of the battle. The outcome is pretty obvious, right?    Josef’s unit moves just so slightly south of where I deployed him. Now, both the enemy Housecarl unit Lex lost to and Josef’s unit will make for Lex’s position.  A unit's movement speed is determined by the characters comprising it, and needless to say, a unit with a horse in it will leave a pure infantry unit in the dust. It’s also affected by terrain type, and both infantry and cavalry units move faster on roads.   Yeah, let’s do what the game is suggesting. Anyway, NOW the game makes us privy to battle forecasts. Their damage calculations account for everything. Whether an attack hits or misses? Whether a character might end the battle with more HP than they had at the start? Whether a critical hit lands? Whether someone guards against a hit and takes less damage than otherwise? Whatever status effects and/or debuffs come into play over the course of the battle? Whether a character goes down prematurely and won’t be inflicting all the damage or doing all the healing they otherwise would have? Hell, any and all chain reactions? Everything. Even your overkill damage numbers as this screen shows. Always use these to inform your decisions.  Josef’s Slice skill gives him an extra point of PP whenever he defeats an enemy, which means drat near always at this stage of the game. Two of his passives, Holy Barrier and Holy Guard, then activate as the surviving Housecarl attacks, negating the -DEF debuff and almost all the damage incurred.  Belated introduction for Chloe, the last member of this childhood friend quartet! She’s a Soldier, positioned behind Josef, and she just attacked with Long Thrust, which would have hit both Housecarls in the middle column had the one in the front survived. But wait, that’s not all!  Josef’s last passive, Pursuit, activates to directly follow up on Chloe’s attack. Since Josef still has one outstanding AP, he’d have thereafter used Slice again had the Housecarl somehow survived.  Chloe’s passive activates at the end of the battle and heals one target. Not that Josef urgently needed it, mind you.  Josef himself may be an eternity out from actually gaining a level, but whoever else is in his unit and benefiting from his combat prowess sure as hell won’t be.  After seeing Josef in action, the two other Housecarl units hightail it outta here and our three units reconsolidate.   Unlike how using an item costs you your action for the turn in FE, in UO you can use as many items as you want on the field, free of any consequence but opportunity cost for someone else using said item. It costs you no stamina and incurs no wait time. You can even use items when you’re staring at a battle forecast screen, on the precipice of a battle, and see how (or if) that changes the outcome. To be fair, anyone not named Josef is a liability as a one-man unit. And even a unit with just Josef in it will be a liability at some point.  In literally any other context, you don’t get to transfer characters between deployed units, and trying to change a deployed unit’s leader will exact a cost. Still, Lex in the front and Chloe in the back have decent enough synergy as a unit. Lex tanks in the front row and gets healed at the end of the battle by Chloe, who can also use Long Thrust to hit any backrow enemies that Lex can’t reach.     Alright, so from now on, we have a time limit. You get a game over if the clock runs out. You win if you beat the main boss(es) in 99% of missions. From time to time there will be other victory/defeat conditions.  Anyway, I send Alain’s unit after the enemy Fighters’ unit, and Lex’s after the enemy Housecarls’. That forecast looks pretty promising, right? Well, Alain’s makes it to their target first, and and after a skirmish…  Alain’s also reaches the enemy Housecarls first, and Lex’s unit is just out of range for me to swap him in. Once Lex’s finally makes it to the target I set for them…  Lex’s unit went from beating the two-man enemy unit in one round to not even being able to put down a single Housecarl knocked into a waiting state in one fight! After every battle, the RNG resets, and the battle forecast updates accordingly. Outcomes can thus swing wildly on a dime. In this case, I would hazard a guess that in the initial forecast Chloe and Lex were both landing critical hits, while now either of them is missing their mark.  Anyway, between the few skills in their arsenal and 1AP/PP to use them, everyone not named Josef lacks killing power and you’ll need multiple bites at the apple to eliminate an enemy unit. Now, remember how I mentioned that Soldiers can attack both units in a column?  Ouch. But it’s ultimately a win, since Scarlett knocks out the frontline Soldier and she healed Alain to have more HP than he did starting the battle.   This time, the enemy Housecarl goes down (and as the play-by-play showed, either Lex or Chloe would have had to whiff a 99% chance to hit for him to have lived). Anyway, we now have our first level-up of the game!  Unlike in FE, stat growths in UO are fixed, only being modified by growth types, which I’ll list along with unit introductions at the end of every update where someone joins. Chloe’s two growth types are Guardian and Lucky, which boost her guard rate and evasion respectively. At level 12, she and a level 12 Soldier with the same growth types would have the same stats, barring any modifiers from their respective equipment. Compared to a level 12 Soldier whose growth types were Offensive and Keen, Chloe would have better guard rate/evasion and worse physical attack/accuracy. Each character also has their stats ranked, from S as the best, A as second-best, and F as the worst. So Chloe’s guard rate is, by virtue of her class, going to be poo poo no matter what, despite the favorable growth type.  Eventually, Alain’s and Lex’s units clean up the mooks, leaving only the boss. You can tell from one glance that Hodrick has very high physical defense, enough that even Josef can’t just delete him. From the forecast damage of 26, one would guess that Josef eliminates the Housecarl in the frontline and does 4 damage to Hodrick. How do we get this outcome?   hoplites dot jpg; Heavy Cover means that Hodrick takes the hit for the target and guards. Case in point, the frontline Housecarl is untouched while Hodrick only took chip damage from Josef’s Slash. But Hodrick only has one PP, and thus when Josef expends his second AP to use Slash on the Housecarl again, Hodrick can’t jump in to save him.  Any unit who attacks a garrisoned unit and doesn't eliminate them will be knocked back some, even if the attacker won the battle. What we’ll actually be doing is chucking Josef at Hodrick until he’s weakened enough for Scarlett to finish the job.  As such. It took a few swings, leaving Josef with only 1 Stamina remaining. But first, a boss conversation!    Next two level-ups for the road.   The game grades you on speed, how many enemy garrisons you captured, and how many enemy units you defeated, and this score is modified by your renown rank (and more softly spoken, by stage size). And yeah, only 11 seconds elapsed on the clock, but in practice between all the battle animations and deliberation you will, in actual time, be taking much longer to finish stages. Hell, I considered “The Longest Minute in Gaming History” for the LP subtitle before taking the low-hanging fruit.  For every 40 points, you get 1 gold added to your coffers; 10k points, 1 Honor; 4k points, 1 Renown. Pay attention to honors in particular; for reasons you’ll see before long, I’d argue that they’re a more important currency than gold in this game.  The Unicorn Ring Mk. II    Sheathing his sword and getting on his knee? Alain is making himself pretty drat vulnerable in this moment. Let’s hope it doesn’t end with him getting run through or knifed. Alain then gets back up, and…  It looks like some sort of exorcism! The ring flashes, you hear a ring, and the screen turns to blue. After which…  If nothing else, Hodrick appears to no longer be hostile. Maybe he might even be contrite? Fade to black, since some explaining is in order.    I mean hey, Alain insisted on mercy to a man who had betrayed his family and country and was more than willing to kill him, too, making himself very vulnerable to do it, and through this act of mercy discovered that his family treasure can undo mind control and who knows what else. That counts for something as to who he is and what he stands for. …the duality of  Now, raise the sails!    Units Joined  Alain Starting Class: Lord (Infantry) LV 1 Growth Type: All-Rounder Equipment slots: 1 Sword, 1 Shield, 1 Accessory Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 31 (B) Phys. ATK - 11 (C) Phys. DEF - 8 (B) Mag. ATK - 11 (C) Mag. DEF - 11 (B) Accuracy - 124 (B) Evasion - 32 (B) Crit. Rate - 10% (C) Guard Rate - 14% (A) Initiative - 18 (B) Much like a standard issue Fire Emblem protagonist, Alain starts off as a sword-wielding infantry character. His mobility is nothing special and his damage output will not be particularly special for a long while. Still, he gets a shield, the Ring of the Unicorn boosts his guard rate some, and considering his Lean Edge active skill, which heals him when he hits or defeats an enemy, meaning he has quite a bit of staying power. He’s perfectly serviceable, if clearly not amazing (yet). Now, when Alain is set as unit leader, everyone in your army will benefit from his Morale Boost leader effect, which boosts the valor gained whenever his unit defeats an enemy. Since you spend valor to deploy units and for a soon-to-be-introduced clutch mechanic, you really can’t get enough of it, ever. Fevrith Archive entry: Crown prince of the fallen kingdom of Cornia, and son of its queen, Ilenia. After losing his mother in Valmore’s rebellion, he was taken to the isle of Palevia by Josef, who taught him sword and strategy until the age of 17.  Lex Starting Class: Fighter (Infantry, Armored) LV 1 Growth Type: Hardy (+HP) / Offensive (+Phys. ATK) Equipment slots: 1 Sword, 1 Shield, 1 Accessory Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 22 (C) Phys. ATK - 11 (C) Phys. DEF - 9 (B) Mag. ATK - 9 (D) Mag. DEF - 5 (E) Accuracy - 118 (C) Evasion - 15 (E) Crit. Rate - 8% (D) Guard Rate - 16% (S) Initiative - 11 (C) Now what, exactly, distinguishes Lex from Alain? Well for one, he’s not from a unique class–he’s a Fighter. His class is slower, oriented more (physically) defensively, and actually counts as armored. Although he doesn’t no-sell all physical attacks the way Hodrick would, he also gets around faster, is faster, and won’t get owned as badly by enemy mages. Like Alain, he’s also meant to be put on the front line, and his default passive lets him take the hit for and thus no-sell enemy archers and myrmidons gunning for your dodgy but fragile units (and against archers in particular, your fliers). As a unit leader, characters in his unit take less damage from ranged assists, which will be seen after we make landfall on the mainland. Fevrith Archive entry: A childhood friend of Alain’s, born and raised on the isle of Palevia to a local fisherman. After studying the sword under Josef’s tutelage, he resolves to join Alain on his quest to liberate Fevrith.  Chloe Starting Class: Soldier (Infantry) LV 1 Growth Type: Guardian (+Guard Rate) / Lucky (+Evasion) Equipment slots: 1 Lance, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 1 / PP - 1 HP - 25 (C) Phys. ATK - 11 (B) Phys. DEF - 8 (C) Mag. ATK - 8 (D) Mag. DEF - 10 (C) Accuracy - 119 (D) Evasion - 29 (C) Crit. Rate - 7% (D) Guard Rate - 9% (E) Initiative - 16 (C) It might be surprising to learn that Chloe has innate healing right out the gate and Scarlett doesn’t! By dint of her class, Chloe’s active skills let her attack entire columns of enemies (and right off the bat her Long Thrust skill has a bonus against enemy cavalry), so while her damage output isn’t special in most cases, that means she can nail squishies hiding in the back row. Speaking of, she herself should be hanging out back there. Her raw base defenses may not be worse than those of our other infantry units, but she can’t equip a shield to boost either of her defenses or her guard rate, the latter of which is pretty bad and will stay bad despite having a favorable growth type. Still, she heals, she can hit fragile units that would normally be positioned in the back row, and she checks enemy cavalry. That counts for a lot. Fevrith Archive entry: Daughter to one of Josef’s closest friends, she learned the ways of war under Josef’s watchful tutelage. As a dear friend to Alain, she often has to remind herself that she serves the prince of Cornia himself.  Josef Starting Class: Paladin (Cavalry) LV 20 Growth Type: Hardy (+HP) / Guardian (+Guard Rate) Equipment slots: 1 Sword, 1 Shield, 2 Accessories Base stats AP - 2 / PP - 2 HP - 54 (B) Phys. ATK - 11 (B) Phys. DEF - 11 (C) Mag. ATK - 16 (B) Mag. DEF - 24 (S) Accuracy - 121 (C) Evasion - 14 (E) Crit. Rate - 8% (D) Guard Rate - 13% (B) Initiative - 19 (C) If you’ve played any Fire Emblem game ever, you have a pretty good idea of Josef’s schtick. He has a massive level advantage over everyone, which he will retain for some time to come. With his Templar Sword and its 15 Phys. ATK he will run roughshod on any unit with poor physical defense at this stage of the game, and hell, I needed him to chip away at Hodrick until Alain and Scarlett could deliver the finishing blow. Moreover, as a pre-promote, he has 2 AP and PP, while everyone else who joined has just 1 of each. Even though he stops looking indomitable once other units start hitting level 20, he never truly “falls off”. And it deffo helps that he has a horse and zooms across stages accordingly and even once his damage output drops to nothing special, he at least retains some healing utility. (Yes, that’s his second active skill, but had no opportunity to trigger in this stage.) And given the way UO’s battle system works, he won’t be “stealing” EXP; even when he personally gains zilch from winning battles, whatever other unit(s) you’ve put in his unit sure will appreciate the lift. Fevrith Archive entry: A former knight of the fallen kingdom of Cornia, he fled to the isle of Palevia with Alain at Queen Ilenia’s behest after the rebellion at Valmore’s hands. Recognized as a Holy Knight due to his valor and loyalty. Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 17:27
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I think one thing I might have missed in the tutorial is: how does targeting and active skill use work in combat? Do you actually run it round-by-round in control? Or do you set them ahead of the fight, as a sort of script, and they all run on their own?
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Apr 14, 2024 20:34
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I started fresh when I bought the full game instead of continuing my demo file, and had already forgotten just how much this first battle tutorializes at you. Let me tell you, it was incredibly jarring not having the combat forecast for those first couple fights. Also not being able to select a difficulty until you hit the mainland. (Barely even a spoiler, but technically it hasn't come up yet.)
Cattail Prophet fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 20:44
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This looks fun, shame it doesn't seem like it's going to PC anytime soon.
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Apr 14, 2024 22:14
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PurpleXVI posted:I think one thing I might have missed in the tutorial is: how does targeting and active skill use work in combat? Do you actually run it round-by-round in control? Or do you set them ahead of the fight, as a sort of script, and they all run on their own? The latter. You can pick which of your available actives and passives will be used, which ones should be used first/second/third/etc. (AP/PP allowing), and up to two conditions for who they should target. For instance, right out the gate, Josef's healing active is set to prioritize healing someone below 75% HP and his Slice skill is set to target whoever has the lowest HP. But by default, single-target offensive skills will target whatever enemy frontliner is in the same column.  so in the above formation, if there is an enemy on B3, Alain's single-target active skill will, in the absence of any player-set priorities, attack the enemy in B3. If there's an enemy on B4 and not B3, Alain will attack B4. If column B is empty then Alain will go for A3 or C3, or A4 or B4 if the entire enemy front line is empty. Chloe's first active skill attacks entire columns, and being in column A she will target column A by default; if there are no enemies in column A, she'll instead default to column B if you don't set any other priorities for who she should target. anyway the next update is going to be very short because it has three units of two to deploy and I'll have more than six characters in my roster. I'm thinking I'll post said update tomorrow evening, give some time for the thread to pick someone to bench for the stage, and then record the evening thereafter. Cattail Prophet posted:I started fresh when I bought the full game instead of continuing my demo file, and had already forgotten just how much this first battle tutorializes at you. Let me tell you, it was incredibly jarring not having the combat forecast for those first couple fights. Also not being able to select a difficulty until you hit the mainland. (Barely even a spoiler, but technically it hasn't come up yet.) nah you're good, that's not a real spoiler imo
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Apr 14, 2024 22:48
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:have not played Ogre Battle but hey, sounds like something for the bucket list once I'm through with this. I would actually recommend giving one of the Ogre Battle games a shot now, just to see the bits of Unicorn Overlord that are straight from Ogre Battle. You wouldn't have to get very far (I certainly never have) to immediately cotton on to some of them, like the five-man unit on a 2x3 grid with a leader (though iirc one of the Ogre Battles extended it to a 3x3 grid with...mixed results). Ogre Battle also has "large" units that take up two spots, and will let you set units between squares for symmetry's sake or to account for large units, but I don't know if UO does/doesn't. Jerry Manderbilt posted:Unlike how using an item costs you your action for the turn in FE, in UO you can use as many items as you want on the field, free of any consequence but opportunity cost for someone else using said item. It costs you no stamina and incurs no wait time. You can even use items when you’re staring at a battle forecast screen, on the precipice of a battle, and see how (or if) that changes the outcome. Jerry Manderbilt posted:Unlike in FE, stat growths in UO are fixed, only being modified by growth types, ... Two more examples from just this update. To say nothing of the Zenoira/Zenobia similarity, or immediately turning bosses into your units because of nonsense (though iirc that's an FE hallmark as well), or the heavy emphasis on Liberation, but until & unless you nab a city "the incorrect way" and it says Captured instead of Liberated, that could just be coincidence. I hope if there's anything like the Tarot cards from OB (one of the few ways to affect a battle in progress, among other things they can do), UO gets to them quickly.
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Apr 15, 2024 00:29
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Lean Edge doesn't just heal Alain on kill, it heals on hit too, and those two conditions are separate and thus can activate together on a killing blow. Lex doesn't have a full proper cover yet. Right now he has Arrow Guard, which covers an ally being hit by a ranged physical attack (arrows, obviously, though physical attacks from flying enemies also count). This nullifies the attack, while covers just divert the damage to the covering unit.
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Apr 15, 2024 01:00
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Felinoid posted:I would actually recommend giving one of the Ogre Battle games a shot now, just to see the bits of Unicorn Overlord that are straight from Ogre Battle. You wouldn't have to get very far (I certainly never have) to immediately cotton on to some of them, like the five-man unit on a 2x3 grid with a leader (though iirc one of the Ogre Battles extended it to a 3x3 grid with...mixed results). Ogre Battle also has "large" units that take up two spots, and will let you set units between squares for symmetry's sake or to account for large units, but I don't know if UO does/doesn't. OB64 has 3x3 units. I think the original does as well, but I'm not sure and it's been many, many years. Felinoid posted:Two more examples from just this update. To say nothing of the Zenoira/Zenobia similarity, or immediately turning bosses into your units because of nonsense (though iirc that's an FE hallmark as well), or the heavy emphasis on Liberation, but until & unless you nab a city "the incorrect way" and it says Captured instead of Liberated, that could just be coincidence. I hope if there's anything like the Tarot cards from OB (one of the few ways to affect a battle in progress, among other things they can do), UO gets to them quickly. One big difference is that UO seems to actually explain its important mechanics, unlike OB. Here's looking at you, Chaos Frame!
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Apr 15, 2024 05:57
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wedgekree posted:This looks fun, shame it doesn't seem like it's going to PC anytime soon. Probably never. VanillaWare has some unexplained beef with the very concept of porting to PC.
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Apr 15, 2024 06:38
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wedgekree posted:This looks fun, shame it doesn't seem like it's going to PC anytime soon. Just like every other Switch game, you can already play it on your PC and in much better quality too.
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Apr 15, 2024 12:20
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fatsleepycat posted:OB64 has 3x3 units. I think the original does as well, but I'm not sure and it's been many, many years. fatsleepycat posted:One big difference is that UO seems to actually explain its important mechanics, unlike OB. Here's looking at you, Chaos Frame! Yeah, this is a good part of why I'm excited to see what UO has to offer. OB had a lot of good points and a lot of just absolute head-shakers.
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Apr 15, 2024 16:57
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