For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Unicorn Overlord, developed by Vanillaware, published by SEGA, and also released on PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series.
This seems to be one of the biggest releases of the year with the amount of buzz it's been getting. This is a genre that i've played a couple of games in, but i wouldn't say i'm great at it. So trying out the demo for Unicorn Overlord
was actually quite appealing so when it came out i quickly downloaded it and gave it a go.
The demo, and i assume the game, starts of strong with a colorful video showing locations and characters in the game and it looked like a cross between Vanillaware's Dragon Crown design and the design from Final Fantasy Tactics. so, somewhat familiar but also someone different. There's a title page and a decent options menu that details what each option does at the bottom. i only changed sound effect volume before starting the demo and watching the opening story play out.
After about 3 minutes of in-game cinematics it's our turn to take control and unfortunately the game uses on screen prompts for a tutorial but at least the music during this sequence is very epic and great to listen to. what's a little strange is how during this tutorial section it's telling us what to do but then fails to tell us to attack of how it works before our first fight. So there were a lot of unknowns going into the first and then second fight, the main being were the characters attacking automatically because it's a tutorial, because it's the demo, or because that's how it normally is.
We wouldn't find out for a while to come. so the tutorial we got wasn't really a tutorial but rather it was a set of instructions to make the story proceed. once it's over, we get more story, and then comes a time skip to the "present". We get another intro sequence before the story picks back up and we're fighting once again. This tutorial also uses information on screen and i'll be honest, i don't think i fully understood it all. it felt like there was a lot to take in and it was clear by the end of this video that there was a lot left to teach. After playing this demo i'm a little concerned with the tutorial and that this game might not be the most accessible.
But once this section is finished and we set off away from the island with a new old friend the game does give us the option how we want to play the game. do we want to play for the story, do we want to use more tactics, or do we want expert difficulty. So whilst the tutorials might be average at best, by choosing story i know that they're now not as difficult to manage so i feel more confident that i have the time and space to learn without the punishment.
I only played a little bit of this next section but it did reveal even more elements of gameplay like castle management. this demo didn't feel close to finishing, but it also never said how long it is. It was saving along the way but again, it never said if the save is carried over to the retail game. I hadn't read the PSN Store page, i saw it was out and downloaded it so i can play it. it's a shame that a game with this much attention got such an average demo.
So whilst as a demo it's fine, the experience playing the game was great. even on my base PS4 it looked stunning. there's soo much attention to detail, so much movement, and things like the backgrounds and lighting made it all look cohesive rather than great looking characters on top of a background. And the music is fantastic, just from this demo alone i know i want to get the soundtrack. the soundtrack outshone the gameplay more than once in this demo.
So whilst it's not the best demo, the game itself does enough to still shine and i would still recommend people try it out but i would also recommend people just get the game as this is something special.
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