Vanillaware's charms are something quite irresistible, like a nice bowl of vanilla ice cream, eternaly appealing to everyone's tastebuds, and considering I've been running through their catalog before this game's release, I've had but one worry
"What if it's not as good as their other games?"
And then I finished the opening section and all my worries were washed away, oh yeah, this was gonna be a banger
The artstyle is, as always, some of the best 2D art in the industry, unbelievably detailed, every location a painting to another land in its own right, every environment as wonderfully brought to life as the last, this is just another vanillaware game in terms of art, sure, but their high standard stays up to snuff no matter what, love it.
The music was also shockingly amazing. I adored some melodies from odin sphere and muramasa, and the ambiance of dragon's crown is memorable if not slightly underplayed, and 13 sentinels has some chill tunes I still listen to often. But this game is probably their best work with music yet. It's so grandiose yet so calm and soothing, the battle music hits hard and the exploration themes are absolute earworms. And spoilers for the endgame THE BALTRO BATTLE MUSIC IS SO GODDAMN GOOD, and the fact that it's used at the start of the game and then at the end is great too, I love it when games remind me that I just wasted 60 hours of my life
Well uh... What about the actual gameplay?
The gameplay is split into 2, exploration and combat, tho you'll most likely be doing the latter less.
Exploration is good... Enough. I guess games like Xenoblade 3 spoiled me on exploration and now anything less than that seems to feel underwhelming to me, but it's still quite good, and I enjoyed it greatly (and it's an unfair comparaison).
As for combat... I can't comment since, despite having played on tactical difficulty, I didn't fully engage with it till the fight against galerius because wtf happened there? 150 heal up after every match? I couldn't win if I didn't cheese it through online research..., I hope I would try harder on playthrough 2 on a harder difficulty but for now... Yeah it's cool? I mean it ain't for me but it says a lot that I love this game despite that, you know? It's just that good
Story's pretty generic, but it's effective at the very least. Thankfully the characters and world-building deserve a massive amount of praise. 60ish characters? That's quite the amount, and it's impressive I can remember a majority of them despite that number, and they're all generally cool. I mean they're no heroes from Xenoblade 3 but they're definitely great and memorable in their own right.
Conclusion : I admire Vanillaware's craft for many reasons, the art, the sound, the gameplay, and the worlds, but what I admire most is the seamless weaving of all these elements in an effortless fashion, there ain't a studio quite like vanillaware, and they should be remembered as one of the greatest video game studios in my opinion, and for now, unicorn overlord acts as their grandest and most impressive title.
Edit: but the countless translation issues in the rapports is extremely questionable, what the hell happened there...
