Unicorn Overlord

[Etrurian emperor]

8 hours ago, ciphertul said:

Well so, who is everyone thinking on which character is getting the ring of the maiden? I'm heavily leaning Miriam, she is just so sweet.

Scarlet seems to be the obvious one but I'm going with Mellisandra because its funnier.  

Fun fact. You can also give the ring to Virginia and its not platonic. 

[ciphertul]

10 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Scarlet seems to be the obvious one but I'm going with Mellisandra because its funnier.  

Fun fact. You can also give the ring to Virginia and its not platonic. 

It’s seems par for the course but Melisandre and Virginia (along with Rosa) appear to be the fan favorite picks and like always I don’t get it. I’ve been pretty disappointed with Virginia’s personality.

[Etrurian emperor]

2 hours ago, ciphertul said:

It’s seems par for the course but Melisandre and Virginia (along with Rosa) appear to be the fan favorite picks and like always I don’t get it. I’ve been pretty disappointed with Virginia’s personality.

With Virginia its definitely the meme factor. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Fun fact. You can also give the ring to Virginia and its not platonic. 

It's for those who want a relationship that's both Alabamian and Freudian at the same time.

[Etrurian emperor]

Its nice every region seems to have its own combat flow.

In Drakenhold there's a lot more flyers as enemies which means the tyranny your knights inflict on the enemy forces is negated. Meanwhile Elheim has more archers which is a problem for your flyers. And its this very problem that finally give the much maligned fighter class a time to shine since they can block arrow fire.

[Original Alear]

Quote

I might just like the Drakengard cast in general because Aramis and Virginia rank pretty high too. I think Virginia's actually kinda insufferable but in a good way. Aramis meanwhile is an interesting combination of a graceful Lucius and someone who's just weird.

I haven't seen a whole lot of Aramis since I just played his chapter, but he's kind of like a Navarre or Rutger in terms of his recruitment (frees a healer) and unit type.

The main thing I dislike about this game is combat forecasts. It seems like the forecast reports based on the RNG or something??? Because it seems to be accurate in terms fo what will happen when the battle starts. But, sometimes it seems like another battle triggering elsewhere will then cause the forecast to change...or something causes it to change without any damage or stamina loss or valor effect to either unit.

Edited March 12 by Original Alear

[Fabulously Olivier]

27 minutes ago, Original Alear said:

I haven't seen a whole lot of Aramis since I just played his chapter, but he's kind of like a Navarre or Rutger in terms of his recruitment (frees a healer) and unit type.

The main thing I dislike about this game is combat forecasts. It seems like the forecast reports based on the RNG or something??? Because it seems to be accurate in terms fo what will happen when the battle starts. But, sometimes it seems like another battle triggering elsewhere will then cause the forecast to change...or something causes it to change without any damage or stamina loss or valor effect to either unit.

The game takes RNG into account to predict results because there's so much going on in any given round of combat that no player could be reasonably expected to calculate it. Like, you know how Fire Emblem Heroes is basically totally unplayable without a matchup calculator now because every weapon has a full kit's worth of effects, on top of all the other effects in every character's kit? It's basically the same thing, except with all the pay to win, obtuse nonsense replaced with actual teambuilding depth.

 

Personally, I think it's a good thing. Random unfavorable aberrant chance results (high hit misses, low miss hits, low chance crits) are the most hated thing in this genre, and a system that essentially eliminates these as an issue is really good game design. Fire Emblem should take notes. Fire Emblem wishes it was this good.

Edited March 12 by Fabulously Olivier

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, Original Alear said:

The main thing I dislike about this game is combat forecasts. It seems like the forecast reports based on the RNG or something??? Because it seems to be accurate in terms fo what will happen when the battle starts. But, sometimes it seems like another battle triggering elsewhere will then cause the forecast to change...or something causes it to change without any damage or stamina loss or valor effect to either unit.

My problem with the forecast is that it only shows the damage taken by the group and not by the characters. There's plenty of battles where my squad is said to win comfortably and they do, but I still find the unwelcome surprise that one member of the squad is on death doors. 

[MeteorPhoenix]

On 3/13/2024 at 12:31 AM, Fabulously Olivier said:

It's for those who want a relationship that's both Alabamian and Freudian at the same time.

I'm struggling. Virginia is great and has amazing chemistry with Alain. But it's giving me uncomfortable Rhea vibes.

I just finished Elheim and I'm trying to decide between Virginia, Yahna, Melisandre, Rosalinde and Eltolinde.

Edited March 13 by MeteorPhoenix

[Fabulously Olivier]

15 minutes ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

I'm struggling. Virginia is great and has amazing chemistry with Alain. But it's giving me uncomfortable Rhea vibes.

I just finished Elheim and I'm trying to decide between Virginia, Yahna, Melisandre, Rosalinde and Eltolinde.

It's not as bad as Rhea. Byleth x Rhea's family tree would be a goddamn slinky.

[MeteorPhoenix]

2 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

It's not as bad as Rhea. Byleth x Rhea's family tree would be a goddamn slinky.

The worst thing about S supporting Rhea is how boring it is. I thought to myself, is the game really not going to acknowledge how wtf this all is?

[Etrurian emperor]

Its funny that Drakenhold and Elheim went into the opposite direction as far as their storytelling goes. Drakenhold seems protagonist driven but is mostly lacking a villainous presence while Elheim has more focus on the antagonists over the elf twins. While I like the twins they seem more in the background compared to Virginia, the Tricorn duo and the Drakenhold siblings.

Spoiler

The witch Arcina is a better arc villain than that of Drakenhold because that arc doesn't really have a villain. The occupation force in Drakenhold mostly consist of mooks and the final boss spends most of that arc fighting on your side before getting brainwashed the second to last chapter. Even outside Arcina you have Gailey getting focus as a douchebag, a fight with Baltho and even a surprise return of Not Metodey. 

 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Enjoying the game so far for sure. This is the third game I've played with this sort of squad-based combat I've played (Ogre Battle and Soul Nomad) and I think it does it far better than the previous ones, since it actually wants you to think about how you assemble squads and gives different classes clear roles to play in that. Good fun.

On 3/12/2024 at 3:48 PM, Fabulously Olivier said:

Personally, I think it's a good thing. Random unfavorable aberrant chance results (high hit misses, low miss hits, low chance crits) are the most hated thing in this genre, and a system that essentially eliminates these as an issue is really good game design. Fire Emblem should take notes. Fire Emblem wishes it was this good.

While I definitely think this game's combat forecast is pretty good at what it does, I don't really think Fire Emblem would benefit from imitating it. If you know in advance that you're going to miss, hit, or critical in Fire Emblem, that feels like it would remove all the probabilistic decision-making. Being a game where each combat is 1-3 interactions instead of a dozen (or so) is a big difference.

Baking in the RNG for the combat forecast is interesting. On the whole I definitely think it's a decent, easy solution to letting players own their decisions, but it does result in some awkwardness. One of the most effective tactics in this game is to try your hand at attacking an enemy squad and if you don't like the preview (specificaly, if you feel like it's worse than it "should" be), wait until another combat has resolved elsewhere and try again; you may find a much more advantageous outcome.

I think it would probably be even better if the game gave a detailed combat forecast that included the % chance of every given unit in both squads falling to zero HP, and then listed average expected damage as well. But this would be pretty difficult to calculate (you'd have to follow an extensive series of probability branching; it would easily be hundreds of calculations) so I understand why they didn't go this road.

On 3/12/2024 at 4:42 PM, Etrurian emperor said:

My problem with the forecast is that it only shows the damage taken by the group and not by the characters. There's plenty of battles where my squad is said to win comfortably and they do, but I still find the unwelcome surprise that one member of the squad is on death doors. 

One thing I've definitely learned is that you really need to be wary when the listed enemy damage is equal to or greater than the lowest HP of your squad mates. In such circumstances it often pays to think about how the battle will go and try to predict if the damage will all go to one person or not, since by and large you don't want to lose units too often unless the map is about to end or there's a campsite nearby.

[MeteorPhoenix]

That's not even enough sometimes, though. Sometimes the projected damage is less than the remaining HP of one of my units, and what ends up happening is that someone dies, but a different unit gets healed.

[ciphertul]

7 hours ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

That's not even enough sometimes, though. Sometimes the projected damage is less than the remaining HP of one of my units, and what ends up happening is that someone dies, but a different unit gets healed.

It’s about setting your tactics right but sometimes something else happens. Like say you put Sharon to heal whoever has the lowest hp, but a different ally gets hit dropping them lower then the one you want healed.

Edited March 14 by ciphertul

[Etrurian emperor]

14 hours ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

I just finished Elheim and I'm trying to decide between Virginia, Yahna, Melisandre, Rosalinde and Eltolinde.

Given how horny she is about Alain I thought it funny to pair Melissandra with him, but now that Rosalinde is just as desperate to get into his pants she has some competition. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

Early Famitsu sales are looking promising. 74k first week (Japanese, physical only). This is over twice what 13 Sentinels did.

 

And it probably would have been higher if physical editions of the game didn't sell out in Japan.

 

Amazon US also ran out of physical Switch version stock.

[MeteorPhoenix]

7 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Given how horny she is about Alain I thought it funny to pair Melissandra with him, but now that Rosalinde is just as desperate to get into his pants she has some competition. 

Yeah, they know what they want. Eltolinde isn't being subtle either.

 

58 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Early Famitsu sales are looking promising. 74k first week (Japanese, physical only). This is over twice what 13 Sentinels did.

 

And it probably would have been higher if physical editions of the game didn't sell out in Japan.

 

Amazon US also ran out of physical Switch version stock.

I dunno. Remember when Engage ran out if physical copies and we thought it was.doing better than it was? It's good news, but I want to wait for some confirmation.

[Etrurian emperor]

I guess it was unavoidable but the open world part of Unicorn Overlord is mostly an illusion. In the demo you were mostly free to go any direction you wanted, but in the game proper its made clear you're not really supposed to. There's a pretty clearly preferred route through the countries and strict level gate ensure its not really feasible to switch this up.

I suppose its possible to go to Elfheim before Drakenhold, but the other countries will quickly kick you to the curb if you try to visit them early on. 

[Fabulously Olivier]

21 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I guess it was unavoidable but the open world part of Unicorn Overlord is mostly an illusion. In the demo you were mostly free to go any direction you wanted, but in the game proper its made clear you're not really supposed to. There's a pretty clearly preferred route through the countries and strict level gate ensure its not really feasible to switch this up.

I suppose its possible to go to Elfheim before Drakenhold, but the other countries will quickly kick you to the curb if you try to visit them early on. 

The game would benefit from an optional mode to remove story gates & scale levels to you. Or to randomly reassign stage levels. I reckon it'll be super replayable even without it, but it would help. 

 

There are other benefits to the game's structure though. It's really immersive that stages take place in the same map you explore. It's such a huge step up from the genre standard of bespoke disconnected maps, often with low detailed borders or the immersion breaking void of space.

[Etrurian emperor]

I wasn't feeling Scarlet for a long time. For much of the game she comes across as ''childhood friend: The character'' and most her rapports being about her declaring to other girls she won't lose Alain-kun to them isn't helping her case. But in Albion Scarlet gets more involved and shows she's got an actual life outside Alain. So now I like her more. 

Speaking of getting involved. I noticed Chloe mostly vanished from the story. In Elfheim and Bastoria Lex occasionally pops up but Chloe doesn't. This is pretty weird since they were depicted as a pair in the beginning. Lex being the rowdy puppy and Cloe the dutiful girl having the babysit him. 

[Original Alear]

Chloe shows up during the recruitment of some elven archer in Elfheim. That's about as far as I've gotten. Also, not the same thing, but Chloe also seems to be the one to find every Hallowed Corn Ash or whatever you call it. Wonder why she's so good at doing that.

[Etrurian emperor]

30 minutes ago, Original Alear said:

Chloe shows up during the recruitment of some elven archer in Elfheim. That's about as far as I've gotten. Also, not the same thing, but Chloe also seems to be the one to find every Hallowed Corn Ash or whatever you call it. Wonder why she's so good at doing that.

I think that when scouting in ruins its Chloe who finds the Ash, but when Lex shows up he finds a weapon instead.

[Fabulously Olivier]

6 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I think that when scouting in ruins its Chloe who finds the Ash, but when Lex shows up he finds a weapon instead.

Lex climbs towers, Chloe scouts ruins.

 

Anyway, who's everyone's favorites? Mine are Aramis, Travis, Rosalinde, Melisandre, Jeromy, and Ithilion.

[MeteorPhoenix]

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I wasn't feeling Scarlet for a long time. For much of the game she comes across as ''childhood friend: The character'' and most her rapports being about her declaring to other girls she won't lose Alain-kun to them isn't helping her case. But in Albion Scarlet gets more involved and shows she's got an actual life outside Alain. So now I like her more. 

Speaking of getting involved. I noticed Chloe mostly vanished from the story. In Elfheim and Bastoria Lex occasionally pops up but Chloe doesn't. This is pretty weird since they were depicted as a pair in the beginning. Lex being the rowdy puppy and Cloe the dutiful girl having the babysit him. 

I'm still not a fan. I think she's the dullest character of the original cast. And her design bugs the crap out of it. It's like they were going for titillating, but still wanted to keep her looking priestly ish, so it comes out looking a bit confused for me.

Lex and Chloe aren't really depicted as much of a pair anymore, I think. Chloe and Ridiel get more exposure.

 

9 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I think that when scouting in ruins its Chloe who finds the Ash, but when Lex shows up he finds a weapon instead.

Yup, and Yahna with the carvings, Ramona with the weapons, Selvie with the trial battles or whatever they're called, etc.