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I had a good feeling! Celebrating 40 Years and 108 JRPGs of Destiny

Final Fantasy X-2 is not really a conventional sequel. It's a much more light and silly tone than most of the game with goofy Yatterman-like recurring villains and magical girl idol main characters. I imagine it threw a lot of people but on it's own terms, it is a lot of fun.
 
I like a lot of what X-2 does in the abstract as a sequel. And it's an endlessly fascinating game to pontificate on given its design decisions and the environment with which it was created. It would be easy to write the game off as a cash grab made out of financial necessity rather than artistic merit, but that's most assuredly not what this game is, at least not in full.

I still kinda can't fully divorce myself from my initial, irrational feelings/reactions though to FF10 having a sequel. The "final" in Final Fantasy came to mean over the years that these games were discrete packages and self-contained stories. FF10's ending is just so beautiful that I instinctively recoiled at the notion of a sequel reopening something closed and perfect. I'm glad they made this game however, and that it opened the door to the franchise making more sequels and spinoffs as well.
 
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X-2 does a lot with the budget it has, being able to see this world that had been consumed by a death spiral for a thousand years finally grow and change was a really cool concept. Shame about all that X-3 nonsense and every other attempt Square Enix has made at doing direct sequels to a Final Fantasy game though.
 
The main thing I remember from X-2 was breaking the combat, one of the few times I figured that sort of thing out myself. From memory, there was a limit break that made all attacks do 9999 damage, and an ability that let you do as many attacks as times you could hit a button in a few seconds, and using that you could beat pretty much anything almost instantly. Edit: I looked this up, had it slightly wrong. You equip the cat nip accessory and then keep your health critical and all attacks do 9999.

Also I locked myself out of 100% early on by going straight to a mission instead of exploring all the side areas first. And you could pause cutscenes but if you did they wouldn’t count towards your percentage.
 
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People talk a lot about the vibes of 10-2, but can we acknowledge how it might have the best ever job system implementation? "Garment grid" is a very silly term for a bit of equipment, but giving each character a custom gear shift for switching jobs mid-combat between limited personal loadouts was just rad, as was bringing back ATB and jazzing it up a bit with kind of a Shadow Hearts-y combo system if I'm not hallucinating that.
 
The battle system is amazing in X-2, yeah. And I didn't even switch jobs in combat all that much! But the fact that you can is great. I still haven't played any Shadow Hearts game so I can't speak to the combo system there, but in X-2 if you time your attacks correctly between party members, you do bonus damage (sometimes a lot of bonus damage). It's neat!
 
It's not a perfect comparison since those games... actually have the same time-units-turn-based sort of system 10-1 has, and needs more of a formal setup, but yeah, same principle of getting attacks coming out all at once and getting bonus damage.
 
Purple said:
but can we acknowledge how it might have the best ever job system implementation?
Click to expand...
As a battle system, it's really well made! I don't know if I could possibly condone it as the "best" Job System, but it's rock solid at the very least and worth discussing.

That said, my appreciation for the Job System is mostly academic. Clearly defined/unique combat roles are awesome. But I prefer it when they are locked to characters rather than letting you pick and choose on a whim. That's just my preference. And it's less about the systems themselves, and more about how those systems integrate into the total game experience. I come to RPGs first and foremost to experience a good story, told by someone else. Player choice is not all that important to me. And you can tell a better story if a well defined character's attributes are clearly shaped and consistent rather than nebulous and shifting on average.

That said! There's some pretty solid thematic resonance of Yuna switching up her "jobs" while essentially out on a quest of personal discovery and character growth. She's out exploring the world and finally getting to define herself and her life in her own way, so ofc she'd dabble in a little of everything.
 
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53. Unicorn Overlord
Vanillaware, 2024: 9th Generation Points: 286 Votes: 7​

We're almost halfway through and I could use a punt. I know next to nothing about Unicorn Overlord except that it's Ogre Battle for the 21st Century, and that for such a new game to rank so high it must be doing something right.

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So what makes Unicorn great? I know yall have strong opinions. Like units in this game: wind them up and let them loose!

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Unicorn Overlord is great. It is ostensibly an Ogre Battle, but feels pretty different in practice. The real challenge in Ogre Battle tends to be macro-level; organizing and maintaining an army that is capable of winning battles while juggling things like alignment and reputation. Unicorn Overlord tends to focus much more heavily on the individual battles and the unit synergy and tactics that go into winning them. The gambit-like system is a perfect fit.

It's also a secret Fire Emblem game, complete with some character tropes and traditions pulled wholesale from the earliest entries. The world and story within is definitely much more "Archanea" than "Zetiginea".
 
Unicorn Overlord's map movement is like Ogre Battle, but its combat relies on a "tactics" system similar to FFXII's gambits, where you set up each of your soldiers to use their abilities in response to specific conditions (and unlike FFXII, using this system is not optional - there's no way to give them direct commands and they won't do anything without an appropriate tactic). I'm sure I spent at least as much time tweaking tactics and equipment to make my units do just what I wanted as I did in the actual battles, despite letting them run at normal speed for most of the game to admire Vanillaware's animation. It was great fun when I was in the mood for it, but I burned out around the 2/3 mark when I played it on release, and only went back and beat it early this year. It wasn't on my list because I hadn't finished it at the time, but I'm sure I'd find a spot for it if I were making the list now.
 
I recently beat this game.

Its good, but its not in my personal list of great tactics games (or great tactics JRPGs). Hopefully two other strategy games I voted for are coming.

Unicorn Overlord is a super long game. I think my play time was in the 80 to 100 hour range. I got the platinum trophy. Given its length, I think the auto battling system was the right call from the developers. I can't imagine how long this game would be if you needed to made attack choices each turn.

There are definitely strategy decisions to be made as certain combinations of units do better or worse against opposing units.

I played on normal, and didn't dig into the individual tactics menu much. Equipment and unit builds were enough for me. However, that unit tactics menu is there if you want to fine tune and create really killer units.

The art is amazing. Its a Vanillaware game!

Ultimately Unicorn Overlord felt a bit like Ni No Kuni to me. I wanted to love Unicorn Overlord, but I ended up merely liking it. I feel similar to Dragon's Crown. Whenever I see screen shots of Vanillaware games I think, I'm going to love this. But so far both Vanillaware games I've played I end up just liking.
 
FFX-2: I'll go more into it as presumably, the mainline FF's come up, but short version is that FFX has perpetually been three or four deep on The List for the last 25 years, with it's sequel prepared to slot in afterwards. I have recently purchased it for the second time in anticipation of this monumental event.

Unicorn Overlord: No opinion except that, as Lokii says, such a recent game getting included here must mean it's doing something right.
 
Unicorn Overlord was almost my goty 2024, only barely beat out by Shadow of the Erdtree. Looks like I put it at #6 on my list. Looking again, that still seems right to me; this game got its shithooks in DEEP and I mainlined it hard over a very short span of time (for about 80 hours' play clock in the end).

At its core the most engaging thing about it is the army-building and customizing. There are so many different character classes and all of them are powerful and useful in more or less equal measure, even if only in a certain niche (but then, are very useful in said niche), and all in a wide variety of different ways. I was impressed with the breadth of character and class design they brought to the table. You build units out of 3-5 characters, and each one is like putting together a whole RPG party in and of itself (usually with roles like tank, damage, support, but very flexible to let you get crazy if you want), and by the end you get up to 10 of those units. You can play around with specializing or generalizing your units, with different forms of offense and defense, status effects (powerful and reliable, unlike in most games), and combos thereof. You can granularly program each individual member of each party not only on prioritizing conditions like "use your row attack if there are 2 or more enemies in a row" and "use your anti-cavalry attack if there's cavalry in the front row," and the options they grant you are a damn near, if not quite entirely, perfect list of tactical elements you want/need (want to only activate a certain attack if the enemy has a certain debuff, but only if they don't have the chance to use a more powerful attack on a large group?). Also some characters have abilities that can trigger off of other actions, so you can e.g. set up your caster to buff the party at a certain time to trigger a powerful healing reaction from your healer, or any of a number of very intricate and detailed possibilities. Then there's all the equipment you can find and set your characters up with, some of which even give them extra abilities...

Then you take all those units of characters on the road and deploy them in battle. When they actually encounter an enemy unit, they do combat automatically, but in the meantime you're guiding them around the map. The ultimate objective is to capture a certain enemy stronghold, typically, but along the way you'll need to capture other towns or forts, disable dangerous ranged support from towers, beat up fortifications, send someone out of the way to trigger a strong environmental effect, send a fast party into the range of heavy artillery to take it out before it rains destruction on you (and then use it against the enemies yourself)... Different character types in a unit's leadership can make a unit mounted (fast) or flying (versatile), so you can be executing multi-pronged strategies - two units to defend the west flank, a flying unit to go over the east mountains and capture the fort sending reinforcements, while your cavalry rides the main roads against the enemy and takes the towns along the way. Maybe when one cavalry unit reaches a midpoint town you swap it out for a beastfolk unit to take advantage of the buff they get at nighttime.

But ultimately, it's about building an intricate machine, then winding it up and watching it work. If you like the part of RPGs about strategically building parties from characters with distinct strengths and weaknesses, you'll love this one.

Not every battle is as big as the above (made-up) example; some are relatively small, or just not as complex. I do wish there were more of the large battles with multiple fronts and objectives.

It's got a nice big world map with distinct zones, gathering materials, hidden items, a hot-and-cold mining minigame with secret treasure map rewards, legendary weapons...

The art is absolutely beautiful, because Vanillaware, albeit in a more...normal way than their usual games. It's a little less exaggerated, less ethereal, more grounded than Vanillaware's typical house style. That's good, as it lacks some of their usual...excesses, we'll say (it's their least horny game by a country mile), but also makes it a bit less striking and distinctive. Still beautiful, though! Music's good too—nothing particularly memorable, but good at its job.

The story is the weakest point. It's not bad, but it's a very simple, very straightforward, basic-ass Fire Emblem story built out of cliches and common tropes. The characters are pretty generic as well. This one is definitely about the mechanics first and foremost (and luckily the mechanics are extremely good.) The other issue is that it's pretty easy. I breezed through it on normal difficulty with nary a hiccup, but that might just be because I engaged very hard with the army-building and they were giving some latitude to more casual approaches? Psh, pfft. Piffle and hogwash, I say. They do have harder difficulty settings that impose some different mechanical limits in addition to just giving you less good number and more bad number (e.g. imposing a limit on how many items you can use during a battle, adding a new element of strategic consideration where there wasn't one before). And like I said, there aren't as many battles that really explore the limits of the system and test your capabilities. Also, despite feeling like a perfect candidate for a New Game+ mode, there isn't one! Fuckin' c'mon!

In conclusion, Berengaria is best girl and my wife. Literally! You get to pick someone for your main character to marry, based on affinity ranks in the FE tradition. (Oh, that reminds me, UO is also cowardly about the possibilities of gay romance, so choosing to "marry" another man usually results in an FE-like Best Bro situation. Some characters hint somewhat obliquely at romance, but it's left vague at best. Even the het romances are a bit undercooked; only one of the four options I tried out before making my final decision actually had a kiss animation at all, the others just kinda stood closer to each other and blushed a bit. But they're still overtly romantic, compared to pussyfooting around the gay options.)

Anyway. Unicorn overlord good. play it

OH AND the demo is very generous, it's just "here's the full feature-complete game with a 7-hour timer, go nuts until the clock runs out" so there's no reason not to try it out!
 
I played about 10 hours of Unicorn Overlord, which is about 9 hours more time than I typically give any tactics game, so it must be doing something right. I remember falling off because I thought the game was a bit too repetitive, although increasing the speed helps a bit. I also part ways with many people because I kinda detest the Vanillaware house style. I usually don't care too deeply about art direction but I stomached what I could and moved on.
 
Unicorn Overlord rules. A bit easy on the default difficulty setting, maybe. I seldom changed up my gambits and I don’t think I ever had to retry a battle more than once, but there is certainly something satisfying to letting your strongest unit just barrel through an entire map of enemies.
 
I'm confident I voted for this and echo much of what folks have said here. I really liked how the game exists on one large, contiguous map: if anything exploring and opening the map is as much a gameplay loop as combat and unit building. There is a gently suggested path but you can broadly explore and progress the story as you like once things get going.

It definitely let my brain click into some kind of low gear flow state which is always so nice.
 
Scientists in white lab coats designed Unicorn Overlord to appeal to my own tastes exactly, but they forgot the New Game Plus feature. Perhaps it was a mercy. I want an infinite amount of this game.
 
Paul le Fou said:
You can play around with specializing or generalizing your units, with different forms of offense and defense, status effects (powerful and reliable, unlike in most games), and combos thereof.
Click to expand...

One thing I did love about Unicorn Overlord is discovering the synergies some units shared.

Discovering a synergy was a joy similar to discovering a combo attack in Phantasy Star IV. Really fun when you put two units together and discover they work even better together than you had planned.
 
Unicorn Overlord wears its influences on its sleeve. The fundamental gameplay, based on quasi-RTS movement, autobattling on an encounter, capturing towns and forts, etc. is pure Ogre Battle, obviously. The tactics menu is right out of Final Fantasy XII. The writing is mostly riffing on Fire Emblem in oddly specific ways. But its quest design is all its own. I can't think of anything else that has the world opening up in quite the same intricate and open-ended way, and it's terribly satisfying (although both the intricacy and open-endedness are very front-loaded).

It's all got that Vanillaware polish on it, and I'm not just talking about the hand-painted sprites breasting boobily; the user interface is fast, efficient, well-organized, and information-dense in addition to being idiosyncratically skeuomorphic. That sort of thing really does matter, because this is the kind of strategy game where you win on the prep screen, not the battlefield. Theorycrafting out the new tactics enabled by each new ability added to your repertoire is so satisfying that I had to hold myself back from reorganizing my entire army too often. Early on, it's the power boost from becoming more versatile on offense or defense; later, it's the thrill of bringing a wombo combo online. And you can keep going, by trying to master the meta in the online battle mode or trying to come up with some way to get an edge over the absurdly overtuned hidden superbosses they added in a post-launch patch.

Vanillaware doesn't do sequels, and it's too niche for anybody to think of cloning it, so I'm holding out hope for an expansion or other enhancement if their foray into finally releasing on PC pans out.
 
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This was my GOTY of 2024, and I've been beaten explaining why by others who nailed everything I would have said, lol. It's on sale right now for Switch! It's easily my favorite Vanillaware game and iirc it's in my top 5 RPGs and among the top 25 games ever made.
 
Didn't get to this thread for a bit and missed one of my votes... My FF rankings outside the top couple slide back and forth a lot depending on which day you ask me, but this time it looks like I had X-2 all the way up at my fourth-highest FF.

Plenty of people said it above, but the battle/job system really is top-notch if you can get into it. Changing jobs on-the-fly in an ATB system, with powerful knock-on effects from the change itself, was a pretty genius addition to something that was going to have both a really up-tempo battle speed and an extensive job system. I probably got more use out of a wider variety of jobs than in any other game with them. I feel like you can kind of judge how much I loved a given FF entry's mechanical systems by how deep I get into the end-game/post-game bonus content and by that measure this one was definitely an all-timer for me - I ran at *least* three levels deep into NG+ runs, by the end of which I had a party of tiny gods (even more-so than the average FF which granted usually gives you that option) and had done pretty much every single thing you could possibly do in the game.

Also "What Can I Do For You" is super fun to play in Theatrhythm. And on a real piano.

As for Unicorn Overlord, I've never touched it but it looks neat. Pity the length means I probably never will, since I am definitely intrigued by a turbo-charged Gambit system.
 
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