Unicorn Overlord is beautiful in its complexity

polygon.com:

It’s hard to write a review of Unicorn Overlord: the game is big, and after over 30 hours I’ve covered little more than half its map, traversing grasslands, desert, winding mountain paths, and a magical forest on my prince’s conquest to liberate the fantasy land of Fevrith and reclaim his throne. It’s hard because a lot of the games I’ve seen people compare Unicorn Overlord to — Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics — were released before I was born. I was worried about not getting it, not connecting with the supposed fun of spending hours in menus when the tactics games I played most growing up with a DS found their wider appeal through other systems, like romance. And it’s hard for me to write a review of Unicorn Overlord because I’d have to stop playing it long enough to write.

Unicorn Overlord’s map of Fevrith is an open world of five kingdoms that sprites explore from overhead. The presentation is similar to Square Enix’s use of HD-2D but with more painterly environmental art. It’s here that Unicorn Overlord makes its strongest break from convention, foregoing a traditional level-based structure. When battles happen, they happen on this map at this scale, just with shadowy borders boxing in the area and new UI elements. When battles begin, sprites are deployed at forts and towns; siege weaponry and barricades are laid; and forests, roads, rivers, and mountains all become part of the strategic puzzle.

Characters don’t fight alone, but in units. Each is composed of characters, whether unique to the story or customizable mercenaries-for-hire, on a 2x3 grid. When they collide, the scale shrinks from a sprite on the large map to the character within each unit to focus on tactical mechanics. Each character in a unit uses a mix of active and passive abilities unique to their class to deal damage, support allies, and debuff foes. With many, many variations on fantasy combat archetypes, from hoplite to witch to gryphon rider to elven archer to angelic knight, there’s no