Unicorn Overlord - Tactical RPG by Vanillaware

[Reinhardt]

knights and their ability to decimate infantry

Gryphon Knights should be able to fill that slot pretty handily with their row kill skill, right?

they can but there are only 2 named + i had one generic which carried me early game until i started getting better recruits. also they are very squsihy against anything that can hit them. losing one of the girls late game was not uncommon.

 

[wolfbane]

also they are very squsihy against anything that can hit them

Quite true.

Do you have Amalia in your girls-only run? I bet she makes a big difference in that kind of a run

 

[Reinhardt]

Do you have Amalia in your girls-only run? I bet she makes a big difference in that kind of a run

yes. mostly for her equip and arena reward.

 

[wolfbane]

yes. mostly for her equip and arena reward.

Sadly I didn’t use her much, I got her too late to make much of a difference in my army. She couldn’t really replace Berengaria, and I didn’t have another slot for a shield bearing frontliner. She made a decent catapult bot though lol, since enemies would have a tough time taking her down, especially paired with a wearbear

 

[Yosharian]

Lmao right piracy is a real problem with PC games, its not like you can pirate the Switch version and play i... oh wait

 

[wolfbane]

I would wager that modding is a bigger “concern” to the devs tbh. Mods can “ruin” the vision of a game. I mean it is true that CEMU allows mods, as well as Citra. Idk if the switch emus allow them. I know little of switch emu in general, as I have little use for it personally

 

[Saark]

Lmao right piracy is a real problem with PC games

It's not, but many many people in charge of making decisions in the games industry still think so.

Besides, Sega, Sony and Nintendo are still actively fighting emulation and piracy for consoles, even ancient ones, which is a much smaller and "easier" to handle situation.

I would wager that modding is a bigger “concern” to the devs tbh. Mods can “ruin” the vision of a game.

It's definitely a part of it, even more so for a company like Vanillaware due to the company's director also being their main artist/designer.

 

[wolfbane]

It's definitely a part of it, even more so for a company like Vanillaware due to the company's director also being their main artist/designer.

Not to mention that the art is a major part of the appeal of their games, I can definitely see them being averse to some PC modders messing with that

 

[Jaedar]

just "hmm, why does this fight go completely differently if I move my backliner to a different backtile?"

like moving it from the tile it could be targeted by column attack? truly a mystery.

Don't be silly, if it was that I would notice it. It's not exactly rocket science.

Partly it's just rng, crits can change a lot.

Crits aren’t RNG though?

Err, yes they are? If you have 30% chance to crit, it's rng whether or not you crit.

 

[Saark]

Don't be silly, if it was that I would notice it. It's not exactly rocket science.

Yeah, RNG just rerolls entirely when you change anything, whether that is the position of any of the characters, or just activating or deactivating assist attacks. One of the most annoying parts of the game is that more often than not, you deal less damage with assist attacks active, than disabling them. Either way, the meta-gaming way to win most fights is to have 1-3 assist-units within range so you can reroll the RNG in your favor by simply activating and deactivating them one by one. It's dumb.

 

[wolfbane]

more often than not, you deal less damage with assist attacks active

Not that assist attacks are super useful in general (outside of bow assist on any flying unit), but that’s probably because many of the late game units have Doom Knights or something similar that gains boons to defense on any HP reduction.

 

[Saark]

Not that assist attacks are super useful in general (outside of bow assist on any flying unit), but that’s probably because many of the late game units have Doom Knights or something similar that gains boons to defense on any HP reduction.

I'm pretty sure something is scuffed with assists, or you're supposed to set up units differently to make them more meaningful. I'm not sure where I heard it, but apparently assist attacks get more powerful if you have multiple units of that type in the squad? Not sure if it's true or not, but that would certainly contribute to most magick and archer assists being dogshit, because those squads only had one such unit in it. Maybe it averages the phys/mag stats of that squad before calculating damage? Who the fuck knows.

Healing assists are great though, and ultimately the value of assists comes from rerolling the dice, not the actual damage.

 

[Jaedar]

I'm pretty sure something is scuffed with assists, or you're supposed to set up units differently to make them more meaningful. I'm not sure where I heard it, but apparently assist attacks get more powerful if you have multiple units of that type in the squad? Not sure if it's true or not, but that would certainly contribute to most magick and archer assists being dogshit, because those squads only had one such unit in it. Maybe it averages the phys/mag stats of that squad before calculating damage? Who the fuck knows.

I eventually set up a squad with 3 archers, didn't really notice any difference compared to 1. Maybe because I used 3 different archer types?
But they still would usually deal like 1-3 damage, which is basically nothing.

 

[Saark]

I eventually set up a squad with 3 archers, didn't really notice any difference compared to 1. Maybe because I used 3 different archer types?

It might just not be a thing then, I wouldn't be surprised if its a feature that's not fully fleshed out or working correctly. It's a shame, because especially early into the game, assist attacks make or break many fights, so maybe it's just an issue with increasing attack and defense stats on enemies. They still do get annoying when you have to fight enemies that are getting supported by 3-4 assists, and the availability of the wind chime to disable them when engaging an enemy are pretty limited. But overall I consider assist attacks to be a pretty forgettable feature of the game.

 

[Grunker]

Err, yes they are? If you have 30% chance to crit, it's rng whether or not you crit.

Odd. I watched like 5 reviews and multiple of them specifically named crit as something you set up units to do deterministically.

 

[Yosharian]

Err, yes they are? If you have 30% chance to crit, it's rng whether or not you crit.

Odd. I watched like 5 reviews and multiple of them specifically named crit as something you set up units to do deterministically.

You can do that if you have guaranteed crit abilities or effects

 

[Saark]

Odd. I watched like 5 reviews and multiple of them specifically named crit as something you set up units to do deterministically.

Well, there's some units where you can reach 100% crit-rate due to their skills having an innate crit-rate buff. But evasion and crit are still working the same as in any other game (beyond guaranteed crits/evades), where you simply roll the dice with your accuracy vs their evasion, and each characters crit-chance. That's how most fights end up being very swingy, sometimes you hit and sometimes you don't, and with how high damage gets on inaccurate units like gryphon or wyvern knights, or berserkers, that can make a major difference. You can actually see the hit chances when hovering over enemies in the bottom right, iirc.

The RNG on these is somewhat deterministic, meaning if you save the game, engage a fight, lose it and then load, the result ends up being the same unless you change a variable that re-calculates the fight results. That can be a change in positioning of one of the characters, using any consumable, or using assist-attacks. It basically rolls a new seed, if that makes sense, and that new seed could be more beneficial or a worse outcome for you, depending on how much luckier it is than the previous one on crits, evades and hits.

 

[Grunker]

Odd. I watched like 5 reviews and multiple of them specifically named crit as something you set up units to do deterministically.

Well, there's some units where you can reach 100% crit-rate due to their skills having an innate crit-rate buff. But evasion and crit are still working the same as in any other game (beyond guaranteed crits/evades), where you simply roll the dice with your accuracy vs their evasion, and each characters crit-chance. That's how most fights end up swinging one way or the other. You can actually see the hit chances when hovering over enemies in the bottom right, iirc.

Codex > reviewers for accuracy

Err, yes they are? If you have 30% chance to crit, it's rng whether or not you crit.

Odd. I watched like 5 reviews and multiple of them specifically named crit as something you set up units to do deterministically.

You can do that if you have guaranteed crit abilities or effects

Makes sense - but one guy specifically said it was 100% deterministic

 

[Grunker]

Like he even says "there is no RNG, no surprises, no *big crit moments*" or something to that effect

 

[Saark]

Yeah that's just wrong. There definitely is RNG, it's actually a major part of the game I would say, and there are some specific fights (without spoiling too much) where you can cheese fights by simply rolling the dice until you dodge all of the attacks against you. It's deterministic in the sense that redoing the same fight won't give you different results unless you change a variable. It's somewhat similar to the the deterministic loot that some games have put into chests to disincentivize save-scumming, where the random contents of a chest are rolled once and then kept without you being able to reload for better results, only in UO you can reroll it by changing variables. But without changing variables, outcomes remain the same, yes. All RNG results are predetermined the moment you engage a fight (as they have to be already calculated for the quick battle and battle prediction).

Spoiler

Fights in the Arena in the second area of the game end up being re-rolled on their RNG everytime you engage them. So the cheese-strat there ends up being taking 0 damage while dealing at least one damage to the enemy team, as that would be considered a "win" and you move on to the next fight. So you simply stack evasion as much as you can on a single character, and re-try the fight until all hits miss. Unless the enemy has true-strike, of course, then you gotta find another way to cheese.

You notice this difference in outcomes the easiest, by checking the fight-prediction for any given fight, then doing another fight elsewhere on the map. The result of the first fight will likely have changed, despite it being the same units, with the same gear, the same buffs and the same formation, but because another fight happened, the outcome gets re-calculated and RNG might be different this time around.

That being said, the outcome of fights is rarely decided by this RNG, so I could see how someone might come to the conclusion that it is just the choices of the player that dictate the outcome of any given fight (and to an extent, that's the case). It's not until the later parts of the game where bigger squad sizes and more actions per unit end up making the fights a lot more complex and as a result, tiny swings can have a major effect (i.e. a crit could kill a unit that otherwise lives with low HP, getting healed back up, and then ends up using their remaining AP/PP to deal some serious damage). But since most crit-based units reach close to 100% with very little investment, or get guaranteed crits from buffs, this rarely comes into play. It doesn't start becoming noticable until you regularly fight flying units which have an inherent 50% dodge chance against any melee attacks, that can turn the tide of battle one way or the other if you get lucky or unlucky.

 

[Jaedar]

Like he even says "there is no RNG, no surprises, no *big crit moments*" or something to that effect

What he probably meant is "the combat preview is 100% accurate".

Anyway, not to tell you how to practice your hobby, but maybe you should spend an hour playing the demo instead of looking at all those reviews?

 

[Grunker]

Like he even says "there is no RNG, no surprises, no *big crit moments*" or something to that effect

What he probably meant is "the combat preview is 100% accurate".

Anyway, not to tell you how to practice your hobby, but maybe you should spend an hour playing the demo instead of looking at all those reviews?

It's hard to play demos while at work. And either way, Codex corrected it, didn't they?

 

[Saark]

It's hard to play demos while at work. And either way, Codex corrected it, didn't they?

I'd argue that relying on the codex for reviews is almost as insane as relying on games journalists. Definitely seconding the demo suggestion though. You get to play the prologue and then get 5 or 6 hours to just play the game, and there's no restrictions to that at all. Once that time is over, you can buy the game and import the demo-save to continue where you left off. This is how every game should release, imo.

 

[Grunker]

It's hard to play demos while at work. And either way, Codex corrected it, didn't they?

I'd argue that relying on the codex for reviews is almost as insane as relying on games journalists. Definitely seconding the demo suggestion though. You get to play the prologue and then get 5 or 6 hours to just play the game, and there's no restrictions to that at all. Once that time is over, you can buy the game and import the demo-save to continue where you left off. This is how every game should release, imo.

Codex as a whole maybe, but trusted posters? No place has the deets on stuff like this place stuff, especially when it comes to subjective judgment. The people who actually come here for game discussion and post in niche game threads are the GOATs. It's the sole reason I still come here.

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah the fight preview is a little controversial. Perhaps the highest difficulty should have had it turned off?

If we had a PC version we could mod that in...