As soon as I saw the trailer for Unicorn Overlord back in September 2023, I knew it was a Vanillaware game. It was the food, you see; the studio behind the sublime 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has a specific eye for food – Ghibli-esque in its detail – and as soon as a massive meal fit for an army appeared on the screen, I could see Vanillaware’s fingerprints all over it.
The studio’s gourmand obsession traces back to its first high-profile game, Dragon’s Crown, which people may remember for its other… assets, let’s say (just Google ‘Dragon’s Crown Sorceress’ if you don’t know what I’m talking about here. It’ll become very obvious, very quickly). The food in the fantasy brawler had no right looking as good as it did, even if it was overshadowed.
But that devotion to the culinary arts might be the only real through-line between Vanillaware’s more recent games. Dragon’s Crown, 13 Sentinels, and Unicorn Overlord couldn’t be more different. Yes, they’re all side-on 2D games with luscious art, but how they actually play varies hugely, game-to-game. Unicorn Overlord is not a beat-em-up like Dragon’s Crown, nor is it a visual novel-cum-RTS like 13 Sentinels (one of the best games of last-gen). It’s more SRPG, some sort of bastard lovechild between Final Fantasy 12’s Gambit system and Fire Emblem’s skirmishing, albeit with squads of soldiers rather than single units.
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