Summary
One of the more unexpected, but welcome, surprises of the September 2023 Nintendo Direct was the reveal ofUnicorn Overlord. Coming from talented developerVanillawareand published by Atlus, this unique strategy and tactics RPG hybrid takes Vanillaware’s penchant for crafting captivating hand-drawn visuals and merges it with inspirations pulled from some of the genre’s all-time greats, such asOgre Battle,Fire Emblem, and the Sega Saturn classicsDragon ForceandDragon Force 2. It’s been nearly five years since the release of Vanillaware’s last game,13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and the developers recently revealed that both it andUnicorn Overlordbegan their development at roughly the same time.
Following the release of Vanillaware’s side-scrolling action-RPGDragon’s Crown, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rimwould begin development in 2013. A year later, in 2014,Unicorn Overlorddirector Takafumi Noma and producer Akiyasu Yamamoto would submit the initial proposal for the game. After roughly two years of conceptualization and planning, development onUnicorn Overlordwould begin in earnest in 2016 after securingpublishing from Atlus. Interestingly, the original proposal for the title was submitted in March 2014, meaning that its launch date of July 04, 2025 will see the game arrive almost exactly 10 years after its conception.
Trying Something ‘New’ Within the Genre Resulted in Unicorn Overlord’s Long Development
In an interview conducted at last year’s Tokyo Game Show, both Yamamoto and Naru, along with designer Wataru Nakanishi, spoke about the inspirations behindUnicorn Overlordand compared it to how the company approached makingDragon’s Crown. WhileDragon’s Crown’s genesis came from a place of wanting to modernize and reinvent the classic beat ‘em up genre and inject it with some RPG mechanics,Unicorn Overlordwas birthed from a desire to reimagine the classic strategy andtactical RPGsof the 1990s on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. However, the key was that the studio needed to find a way to inject its own flair into the genre and provide something new that would feel simultaneously familiar and exciting.
According to Noma, the biggest goal that the team had (and the one that led to the game taking a significant amount of time to develop) was attempting to pullUnicorn Overlord’s primary inspiration not from a single game, but the entire genre. By drawing all the disparate elements from classic games that the team enjoyed (Ogre BattleandDragon Force’s mix of commanding individual units and entire armies on the field,Fire Emblem’s character relationships, etc.), Nakanishi and Noma hoped to build a game that should feel right at home for fans of the genre but also provide a unique amalgamation of systems and mechanics.
Balancing Unicorn Overlord’s Story, Presentation, and Gameplay Took Time
The first thing that most fans will notice aboutUnicorn Overlordare its striking visuals, something thatdeveloper Vanillawarehas a long and storied tradition of including in all of its titles. Not only does crafting all of these hand-drawn assets take time, but the different unit types at play in the game were continually being rebalanced. The tweaks to the various unit types to provide a more even balancing of difficulty were primarily done to prevent certain classes from being “broken”, and this naturally led to additional time needed to redesign the look and animations of the units.
And of course, it would be nearly impossible forUnicorn Overlordto be a true homage to the strategy and tactics greats of the 1990s without a complex narrative grounded in political intrigue likeTactics OgreorFinal Fantasy Tactics’ now-legendary storylines. Noma notes that Vanillaware’s ultimate goal was to make the story and gameplay balance something that players would walk away from with a definitive feeling of it being “fun”. The director states that much of the game’s development time fell to “trial and error”, but it seems as if the end result will be well worth the wait for fans of the genre.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
WHERE TO PLAY
Vanillaware, the storytellers behind Odin Sphere and Dragon’s Crown, craft a sci-fi mystery epic spanning thirteen intertwining stories in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. With a Metacritic score of 86, 13 Sentinels has won the praise of critics all over the world.Uncover the truth and delve into a 2D sidescrolling adventure featuring gorgeous art and environments. Then, battle the kaiju in fast-paced, top-down combat. Customize the Sentinels with an arsenal of mechsuit weaponry, and fight to defend humanity
