Unicorn Overlord: ogre battle lives for ever more

[Bongo]

So there's some important nuances to the tactical system, and I want to post about it. This stuff is all in the game guide, but it's not the easiest to notice, and I haven't seen tutorial popups for them.

First, a note about the rows. There are plenty of attacks that have the Ranged property, even if they look like they're just a normal axe attack or whatever. All that Ranged means is that back-row enemies are legal targets even when there are still enemies in the front row. Attacks without the Ranged tag can only target enemies who are in the front row, unless there are none. However, even Ranged attacks will still prioritize front-row targets by default, unless you give them a targeting condition that excludes all the front-row targets. It also doesn't matter whether the same column is occupied or not, only whether there's anyone in the front row at all. (Note also that what row a character is in doesn't change whom they can target, only whom they can be targeted by.)

Unlike active abilities, passive abilities are only used when the trigger condition is met. Specifically, if a character has multiple passive abilities with the same trigger, at most one of them can activate, and it'll be the top one in the list whose tactical conditions are met. But there's further nuance. some passive abilities have the Limited property. This tag is used to control interactions between multiple characters. Specifically, if there are multiple characters who have Limited abilities with the same condition, only one of them - the one with the highest initiative - will actually be triggered, pre-empting the other Limited abilities. (Abilities that are not Limited can still happen, however.)

 

[Bongo]

So I made it to the Coliseum, and I found a strategy that's allowing me to punch way above my level, getting about halfway through the ranks even though those enemies are like level 27 and my own guys are around 15. I think I need more numbers to go further, but the general approach seems like it'll remain viable.

Spoiler: Inquire within for details.

I can summarize my strategy musically. Right there in the same town as the Coliseum, you can buy the Dustbound Staff. Buy it immediately. Promote Selvie or a mercenary into a Druid for the extra AP, then give her even more extra AP from equipment. A Carnelian Pendant is fine (but there's also the Acrobat's Shoes, whose only downside on a Shaman or Druid is that the Limited tag on the Impetus Stance on a Limited ability might compete with other "Triggers at start of battle" effects). Increase her Initiative as much as you possibly can with a Dove Plume, and an ally with something like a Tailwind Cape might help further. Then, finally, give her the Dustbound Staff.

The Dustbound Staff's ability, Sandstorm, costs 3 AP, and it inflicts Darkness on the entire enemy unit, effectively nullifying all their damage output if they're not immune. Victory in the Coliseum only requires inflicting proportionally higher damage than the enemy unit does, so tossing this Selvie in a squad with a highly prolific healer and some reliable hitters means that you can win with just chip damage, no matter what the enemy's level is.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Just popping in to say that this game is Very Good. Also there's a lot of it—I'm about 40 hours in, though I appear to be going on the slow side, and it seems like I still have a ways to go. I spend a lot of time agonizing over new gear, whom to give what new item and whether this or that new ability would help out or just mess with the character's flow, that sort of thing. I also watch almost every battle, although I do fast-forward them. They're soooo slow otherwise.

 

[Paul le Fou]

So, I rolled credits on this yesterday, and I think it's going to be a strong contender for my GOTY.

The resource collection and management, the curve of getting new characters, powering up your current ones, beefing up your army, it's all really well done. I found myself attached to my units as well as my characters, their leaders and their makeup, even when I had to make tweaks here and there to spread out things like start-of-battle abilities or other balance issues. I spent a lot of time staring at equipment screens agonizing over which character could best use this or that upgrade or who needed a certain type of pendant more (not that you necessarily will, but I personally got very engrossed in it because I love that stuff).

On normal difficulty, the game was on the easy side. Doing all the sidequests, and actively spreading the experience around so units were around the same levels as each other, I always had at least one or two units active on the field that could wipe out any given enemy unit in one or two battles; it was an exercise in getting the right unit to the right area. I rarely lost a unit entirely, and the few times I did, I had a surplus of items for revival or healing (in addition to losing characters within a unit or topping up HP) without needing to shop for them in most cases. Note: This difficulty was absolutely fine for me, I wasn't interested in slamming against a harder difficulty, but if you are you might want to turn up the setting.

The story was the weak point. It was pretty much bog-standard fantasy cliche with little nuance or depth. The characters are very much in the Fire Emblem style of having pretty much a single personality trait each that gets expounded on through rapport conversations also very much in the FE mold (characters chatting about training, or reading books, or cooking, or flirting with the main character). You eventually get to pick someone that you max out your rapport with to be your partner, and there are just a few random dialog changes to show for it. It doesn't do much of anything to challenge gender stereotypes. And so on and so forth.

But unless you're really just in it for the story, it's still a fantastic game. If you're still on the fence, I highly recommend it overall.

 

[Bongo]

I beat the Lords of Fevrith (the top enemies in the Coliseum) at a low level with the following cheesy as fuck setup specially designed to counter them:

Spoiler: Expand for details

Front row, center: Amalia
Weapon: Notos' Sword
Shield: Gran Baris
Accessory 1: Twilight Cloak
Accessory 2: Hero's Medallion
Tactics:
Active 1: Penetrate, First Action / Flying
Active 2: Penetrate, Second Action / Full Column (Armored would also work)
Passive 1: Nocturnal Evade
Passive 2: Hawk Eye
Passive 3: Heavy Guard, Own HP < 75%

Back row center: Selvie
Weapon: Ein Seeker
Accessory 1: Sapphire Pendant
Accessory 2: Angel Plume
Accessory 3: Lifeblood Talisman
Tactics:
Active 1: Offensive Curse, First Action / Back Row
Active 2: Offensive Curse, Second Action / Front Row
Passive 1: Magick Shell
Passive 2: Quick Curse, Back Row / Infantry
I had previously used an Idealist's Mirror to change her growth type to Go-Getter/Go-Getter, but that might not be necessary.

The basic idea here is that Amalia can only be hit by truestrikes and multi-hit attacks, and Selvie doesn't need to worry about being hit at all because few enough attacks will even target her. The initial Offensive Curse debuffs the Wyvern Master, and the Featherstaff will prefer clearing the debuff from the Werebear, meaning that it'll stay debuffed, greatly reducing the threat of the truestrike from Tempest Drive. The only remaining dangerous attack is the Landsknecht's Bastard's Cross; a single application of Quick Curse is enough to protect against the first time he uses it, but for the second time he'll have Bull Force active, so a hit of Offensive Curse negates that. Further debuffing is futile since their Elven Archer will toss around a bunch of debuff immunity. Buffing Selvie's HP increases the denominator of the final HP calculation, and the big Penetrate hits on the enemy should be enough to get you a win by decision.

This does take some high-end gear, but it doesn't require any Coliseum exchange prizes.

 

[Bongo]

Rolled the credits with a truly embarrassingly large number on the save file clock, because I really enjoyed just dithering and tweaking my units over and over again. I'll do the post-game quest, and then I'm going to start over on True Zenoiran difficulty, recruit everyone, max out the rapport log, and see how things go from there. What a remarkable game, and a very strong contender for my game of the year.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Tip for everyone: don't sleep on the mining mini-game. You'll get some free passes from sidequests, but even when you have to pay to mine it's worth it, because the metal ores you dig up sell for a lot and you're almost always making money on a dig. Also, each dig site has treasure maps for its continent, and you definitely want to track down those treasures as soon as you can, as they tend to have really useful stuff in them.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Found the Monarch Edition in stock for PS5 and went for it (would have done Switch if it had been in stock, but alas; no). Just barely getting started, but it's very pretty!

 

[Pombar]

Tip for everyone: don't sleep on the mining mini-game. You'll get some free passes from sidequests, but even when you have to pay to mine it's worth it, because the metal ores you dig up sell for a lot and you're almost always making money on a dig. Also, each dig site has treasure maps for its continent, and you definitely want to track down those treasures as soon as you can, as they tend to have really useful stuff in them.

Why anyone would sleep on the return of Chocobo Hot & Cold, complete with Chocographs, is beyond me. It's like half the reason the demo sold me on the game.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I warn people because it's what I did. Learn from my mistakes! Don't be like meeeeeeee

 

[Pombar]

You hear that, Paul? You're beyond me!

 

[Bongo]

Also, late in the game,

Spoiler: a Mining Secret!

I don't know what exactly unlocks this: is it beating the final mission or just completing all five treasure map quests in all five countries? But there are secret sixth treasure maps that can all be dug up rarely in Albion.

 

[Bongo]

So I've been getting into the online coliseum lately. My PVE-optimized endgame teams just aren't cutting it in this cutthroat PVP environment, but it's very rewarding nevertheless. It seems the most efficient thing is not to push your luck by taking on strong teams, but rather to choose your opponents very conservatively to try to maximize your win streak across multiple days.

It seems that there are several archetypes represented among the top defense teams: Glacial Rain, Elemental Roar, Trinity Rain, etc. first-turn wombo combos; defensive teams based on never letting the enemy attack the targets they want; teams based on exploiting some of the strong synergies of the late- and post-game Dark Marquess units; some very clever two-character teams using the Elite Standard to negate as many attacks as possible; and some that are just generically strong and efficient. But it seems like it's still worthwhile to log in even with an unoptimized team.

I haven't brought everyone up to level 50 yet. Repeating the post-game final mission is the way to go about it, much faster than the top-level auxiliary battle, but it takes such a long time that it feels like a major time commitment to go through it. I only even consider it because I want to do that for its own sake, though. After that, I want to focus on putting together teams that can take on the post-game, post-launch battles they added around the world against Possessed Amalia. To even unlock them, you have to beat the game, then find and defeat the first one (which is just against a single-character squad), and only then do the other five appear.

 

[Paul le Fou]

the post-game, post-launch battles they added around the world against Possessed Amalia. To even unlock them, you have to beat the game, then find and defeat the first one (which is just against a single-character squad), and only then do the other five appear.

I had no idea this was a thing...!

 

[Sarcasmorator]

I did the postgame thing that was to the north (vs. your own team, I think?) but I didn't do stuff after that. Sounds like there's a bunch.

 

[Bongo]

I wouldn't say there's a bunch. You may have missed it because it was only added in the most recent patch, the only content update the game has received. Check out northwestern Cornia after beating the repeatable post-game mission.

 

[Bongo]

A new period in the online coliseum started on the first of the month, and I’ve decided to put my theories to the test. My belief is that the key to reaping extreme profits is playing like a coward and a bully, only fighting weak teams.

How’s it going? Well, three days in, I’m still undefeated, though I’m tied for first place with at least 20 other people. With a win streak of 30, even the weakest teams give at least 80 CC, and plenty of those that give over 100 are safe. However, I must assume that at some point I’ll run out of weaklings and have to start taking risks.

I’ve learned to recognize when an enemy team is trying to pull off a high- or max-initiative first-turn area charge attack (Glacial Rain, Trinity Rain, or very commonly Dragoon Dive). Bringing a team with the post-game Dark Marquess (Staff) can usually negate that completely. The more they try to stack things like Hawk Eye and Inspiration on their big alpha strike, the more of their PP they lose when the whole thing is completely negated by Ominous Wall. However, there are a lot of sophisticated builds out there that can get around this defense. I haven’t yet tried to build something that can actually compete against high-level teams.

I think I’m going to switch my defense team to a single unarmed soldier with empty tactics, in order to facilitate others cheesing the win streak system in this way.

 

[Bongo]

Well, today is the last day of the coliseum period, and by identifying the same ten-or-so mid- and low-level defense teams and battling them every day, I was able to remain undefeated the whole time. The win streak counter stops at 99, which means the CC reward for the strongest enemies caps out at 525, but I basically never fought any team that close to the level cap. Extreme risk aversion was the purpose of this experiment, so if I wasn't absolutely certain of victory, or even if it just seemed like they were trying something weird, I left them alone, even if it meant a lot of reshuffling.

Three other people in the world also ended up tied for first place with me this time around, with a score of 4090.

Let me tell you, friends: playing like a coward paid off enormously. By the time I hit my stride, I was getting over 2000 CC every day. I've pretty much bought out the entire coliseum shop (leaving only items I don't need more than one of), and the idea of using five Dew of Illusion on every character I want to use is actually starting to look realistic.

This game has its hooks in me deep.

 

[Paul le Fou]

It's got long, strong hooks so it tends to do that. Congrats on going sicko mode, I poked at the arena a bit but never got toooo deep in it. I'll probably go hard in a replay though to try and get some of that sick loot.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I’ve had this on my shelf for months, and the thread getting bumped like this has gotten me to want to play it finally.

What kind of game is this, actually? I should have learnt that before buying, but it was on sale.

 

[Torzelbaum]

What kind of game is this, actually? I should have learnt that before buying, but it was on sale.

Unicorn Overlord is a a strategy RPG developed by Vanillaware for Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X, to be released on March 8, 2024 (don't hold your breath for a PC version). A substantial demo - basically the early parts of the game on a generous seven-hour timer, with complete save transfer to the full version - is available now, and I highly recommend it. The Switch version appears to have no performance compromises relative to the others, with fast loading times, responsive UI, and no framerate dips that I've noticed, though the Switch version does not support output at 4k resolution.

Unicorn Overlord applies Vanillaware's signature huge, hand-illustrated sprites to a highly specific subgenre of strategy RPG. This is only like the third or fifth game ever that is like 1993's Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen: the player gives commands to small squads of characters, who travel across the battle map in real-time (with pause) and fight it out autonomously when they encounter an enemy squad. Each of the sixty-ish named characters (plus generics) is customizable to a degree that would suit a regular-type RPG, even including a system somewhat similar to Final Fantasy XII's gambits to fine-tune the tactics. There is considerable depth to the process of countering enemy unit formations with your own, but it's got that classic Rock, Paper, Scissors foundation, where no unit is without a weakness. Between battles, you can freely roam the overworld completing side quests and getting optional battles and gathering allies and so forth.

The story is classic and, despite its design pedigree, seems to lack the political complexity and moral ambiguity of Yasumi Matsuno's work in this kind of genre. Rather, it begins as a very clear homage to Fire Emblem: Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light, with the blue-haired exiled prince and his wizened man-at-arms rallying a rebellion against a total jerkwad of an emperor. Unique units can also talk to each other if you have them fight together enough, unlocking Support Rapport Conversations.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

You got me.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

What kind of game is this, actually? I should have learnt that before buying, but it was on sale.

Basically an Ogre Battle like, where you make squads and they duke it out when they collide with enemy squads, with little direct input from you. Unicorn Overlord sort of defies the last bit by letting you set tactics for them, but the general idea still applies.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Setting tactics (very much like FFXII gambits) is still indirect input!

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I don’t know if I have the brains for something like this. Do units die for good if they lose? I’d feel guilty letting my little computer people die.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The game doesn't have permadeath, no. Ogre Battle styled games rarely do, likely because of how frequent death is when battles are between squads rather than characters.

 

[Bongo]

There is no permadeath. If you beat the game once, it unlocks a difficulty level where all the numbers are the same as Expert, plus also if every member of a unit is defeated, you need to use a valuable consumable before you can deploy those members again, which is a little bit like permadeath.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

No perma death is good. I’m going to play this later today. Wish me luck.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I got through the first two battles. I can’t wrap my head around not being able to give direct commands during each turn. The combat is very simple now, just get your best guys where they need to go.

I assume unit customization plays a large role later. Especially since you can’t give direct orders.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Yeah, it takes a little bit before they unlock the tactics for you. But once they do it's off to the races.