Board 8 > Unicorn Overlord Demo topic?

(+) Yeah! (+)

.....what if I prefer the Bicorn though?

Was really excited, but they confirmed the demo is Switch only, so I guess I'm not touching this.

Maybe I'll watch some videos.

downloading it now i guess, i hope it literally just starts with some long winded monologue about it being the xth chapter of some fake series and showing vague war maps and maybe even tarot cards to really drive the comparison home

now that i think about it, this time of every game having deckbuilding elements really would've been perfect for ogre battle

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Was really excited, but they confirmed the demo is Switch only, so I guess I'm not touching this.

Maybe I'll watch some videos.

@UshiromiyaEva
https://twitter.com/atlus_west/status/1760475508599624058

Oh sweet!

Wierd that people were being so definitive about it earlier.

Midnight tommorow, it's gonna kill me but to hell with it!

ok spoilers but not important ones really

one, god damn this is even more ogre battle than i thought was even possible

two, this is a really specific thing but man i love that you can just swap languages at any point and it'll just carry on with perfect lip syncs and everything. this is of course just a vanillaware thing period but still i always appreciate it

further demo remarks since i kept playing at the time up until i pretty much hit the time limit (i got very close and then my switch ran out of battery lol oops

overworld stuff is obv new but the rest is like 85% ogre battle with the remaining 15% all being net improvements over it and i already adore it. i feel like there may not actually be a huge amount of this game that general audiences will go crazy over though, because its strengths lie so firmly in adapting specific concepts from games they wanted from whatever cult classic jrpgs/srpgs/rtses they wanted tbh (and i think they nailed it). especially ogre battle of course, that's just not a thing most people are even familiar with and i just don't know how most gamers will react to this game pretty much just taking its 30 year old mechanics and using them as-is (especially with some of its innovations being pretty... not mainstream friendly i feel). don't expect to see it vying for any goty jrpg awards even if i think it deserves it

I care about job/class variety the most, preferably with some kind of promotion system as well. I was getting a bit of an FFT meets Fire Emblem vibe in regards to that mechanic specifically from some previews, does that seem about right?

frankly i didn't do anything promotion related in the demo (i mostly spent time exploring the map while underleveled, and also just checking everything in the unit viewer and reading lore entries) but i'd have to guess it is something along those lines yeah. at the very least, i didn't see anything that would point to it actually having an ogre battle promo system instead, and there very clearly are upgraded classes in there with all the things you'd expect of a recruitable roster in a game like this (varying growth rates etc). i'm also not sure if full class swapping is here since the primary focus definitely seems to be on battle skill customisation and also recruiting mercs to cover for class-focused missions if need be instead (also character affinity stuff)

Are there actual unicorns

trdl23 posted...

Are there actual unicorns

since it's vanillaware i feel like there easily could be even if i didn't see any in the demo

the name is mostly just for some amulet or whatever the protag has tho because duh

never heard of it but raided into a stream and wowee <3

Demo out everywhere.

This music is incredible.

This game even has a Jeigan!

First real mission down.

I have absolutely zero Tactics Ogre reference points here. So I won't be using that.

The vibe of the game gives me a lot of Vallyria Chronicles vibes
Obviously the combat type is completely different, but something about the positioning and orders is just feminine me of that. Also the save menu music sounds like the VC save menu music I think lol.

I am asking this so far. Definitely need to get the hang of things, but the positioning meta and changing those as needed is great. It feels way to freely useable now but I'm sure that will bexome much more important to manage in a timely manor as the game continues.

I paired the thief with the new horseback knight and that squad was way too overpowered. Need to learn the balance. Prince plus Shield Knight was not doing damage, soldier play spear girl was doing way more but taking way more.

I benched the Jeigan of course. He's literally mad level lol.

Even choosing who to pair in parties of two has me thinking hard, I can't even imagine what it will be like with parties of 6.

During the battle, the prince squad ran out of AP, and it was torture. DEFINITELY going to have to lay more attention there.

I had to save right when it let me start free roaming, so not sure how that works out yet. I'm assuming I'll have to do my homework on these extremely detailed stat sheets and character pages myself.

Is this game an actual timed 5 hour demo, or are people just saying it's about 5 hours long?

From the videos it looked more ogre battle than tactics ogre to me

Hopefully that's the case because ogre battle is the best

I meant Ogre Battle, yeah.

I HAVE played Tactics Ogre.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Is this game an actual timed 5 hour demo, or are people just saying it's about 5 hours long?

I think it's kind of both? I assume that it's the first chapter of the game, but there's also a hard time limit. Though I think the countdown pauses when the menus are open.

yeah it is pretty much both. they lock you off from exploring more than about a quarter of the map, and also about half of the stuff you do have access to is ramped up to (what i assume is) the max level. i was playing on the harder difficulty throughout so maybe that stuff's actually beatable if you're playing on easy but it sure wasn't for me lol

other than that, it has an 8 hour time limit, not 5 (and yeah it does pause). you get to finish off any mission after you run over the limit and after you clear any post-mission cutscenes is when they put up the "buy the game" banner

Wait, if they have a bunch of tuned up stuff, how does it then let you transfer your save into the full game? Or is it not stuff that would be relevant?

good question, there's actually a pretty good chance it is just that way in the actual game too since it's both the starting area and presumably final area of the game

Ogre...Battle....

UshiromiyaEva posted...

During the battle, the prince squad ran out of AP, and it was torture. DEFINITELY going to have to lay more attention there.

seconding this by the way, AP is super critical so definitely try to get as many items that refresh it as possible. also avoid losing battles too. you're just so vulnerable during the recovery time for both cases that it's close to suicide (on overworld fights it's fine to lose, it's just important to note that you'll get teleported back to the last key location you checked)

it's kind of the biggest thing i was worried most people wouldn't be on board with having carried over from ogre battle tbh

Was a little worried seeing some people describe the game as an auto-battler, but now that I've gone through the first real stage, that claim is unfounded. If this is an auto-battler, then so is Fire Emblem. The only thing that's different is that this game has multiple characters attacking once you initiate combat between two units on the map. In either game, you still control everything your characters will do before combat is initiated.

That said, I fully understand why people think it's auto-battling. It does feel different when you're watching animations play out in a 2v2 or 3v3 battle compared to a 1v1 battle, even though it's ultimately the same concept.

I would definitely prefer a grid to an RTS map I'm a strategy RPG, in general, but that's clearly not what this game is going for and I think it's going about it exactly how it should.

With seemingly never ending amount of unit types I'm seeing in trailers and clips, as well as the LARGE empty skill list characters have right now, I can't even imagine how complex it's going to get.

Right now, the only issue I have is that it appears the battle preview already accounts for crits before the fight even starts. Really don't like that, crits should be a surprise. If I have an ability in the mix that does guarantee a Crit, sure!

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Right now, the only issue I have is that it appears the battle preview already accounts for crits before the fight even starts. Really don't like that, crits should be a surprise. If I have an ability in the mix that does guarantee a Crit, sure!

The thing about this is you can try to manipulate the RNG by changing the order you do things to re-roll the RNG. Like, if it looks like you're gonna miss or the enemy is gonna crit, you can try to initiate combat between different units first, and that will re-roll the RNG.

It doesn't do anything to help with surprise or whatever, but it's another element of strategy you can try to alleviate bad luck.

i mostly skipped watching the battles but there were definitely times when i was roaming on the overworld and all my squads were projected to lose out to the enemy and sometimes i'd apparently eke out a win, so i don't think it always accounts for absolutely everything (though it usually tends to)

Second battle done. I feel like there may have been options here, so I'll say it was the Roof recruitment one.

Spared the boss and let him go, going to play this initial run of the game as malevolent, even if it bites me in the ass. Also the knight recruit who keeps talking in my ear rubs me the wrong way. When he ran away it cut to him saying he'll never forgive this mercy as long as he lives, so it felt genuine!

I'm so used to playing games like this with a recruitment guide, being completely blind is going to be a hoot!

The ranged backup mechanic is interesting. I also looked at the class sheet and hot DAMN there are a LOT of blanked out classes here!

Deciding on teams is so tough.

Did the sidequests where you get the Gladiator, the stress of Team Building is continuing to grow! I will need to seek out some literature on this.

I am Rank D Now, so I was able to unlock a 4th Squad. All Squads can also no field 3 units. I've been given the ability to recruit randos, but I have enough names characters to fill my slots, so I don't feel the need yet. Having to stop for tonight, but about to do the sidequest with the Angel.

Don't know what the economy is like yet, so I have held off on buying any gear. With how huge the army is and how little gear has been dropping, Imagine it may be worth investing?

I'm gonna space out my time with the demo so I'm not stuck with a two-week break.

Oh I did waaaaay to many sidequests before attacking the fortified city.

I wish I knew how close I was to hitting the time limit

It's like 7 or 8 hours (I see people saying both), but it will also let you finish whatever battle you're in when you hit the limit.

I can't imagine actually finishing this demo to the end. I have 1.5 hours left and apparently still have about 5 unrecruited demon characters.

catesdb posted...

I wish I knew how close I was to hitting the time limit

Right side of the pause screen.

5 minutes left in the demo, so no point in continuing here.

Last thing I did was a very largescale battle with Gaston, and then unlocked the option to continue with the main plot. Still tons of side stuff to hit though, multiple characters I didn't unlock. Literally right before I saved it gave me the tutorial for the Tactics/Gambit system, which I didn't even realize was in the game (unless it unlocked right then?).

Gotta say.....I would much rather be able to continue with this in Friday that FF7! This is absolutely spectacular. This excellent mix of Fire Emblem, FFT, and apparently Ogre Battle, in this beautiful, well scripted, wonderfully voice acted package.

It's also pissing off Twitter localization grifters which is ALWAYS a plus.

I think when you press + to get to the big menu there's a remaining time on the right. I've played 5 hours and have 2 hours left so I guess its 7 hours?

How do you guys feel about time limits on maps? I haven't hit one yet but iv been VERY close - and I'm thinking this could be a very critical flaw in the game. It feels like just moving my units across the map burns most of the overall time limit - which means there's not really much time for regrouping at strong holds, or rerouting units from different areas of the map if things go poorly

I'm probably gonna lose my shit if I start losing missions on this time limit while doing normal strategical stuff. Maybe a really long time limit is fine to prevent abusing stuff but i think there should be a lot of leeway. My experience is that i'm about in the middle of the map with half the time to go and when i send my troops to walk to the final stronghold - the timer is in the red about to blow. That's wayyyyy too tight.

I never once went under half time... maybe just a little under? Has felt like something I could completely ignore.

Now that I'm locked out, I'm freely looking up characters and such I didn't get to that are withing the demo cap, and it's truly astounding how much more I could have unlocked. I feel like the only way anyone actually got finished this thing is by playing multiple times in different accounts.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Literally right before I saved it gave me the tutorial for the Tactics/Gambit system, which I didn't even realize was in the game (unless it unlocked right then?).

You can start messing it with it as soon as you start the first real battle on the main land. There's just no real reason to do so that early, except maybe adjusting the healing conditions. Though I'm not on expert so I dunno about that one.

I took one look at all the options, my eyes just kinda glazed over, and I backed out of it, lol. Just looks rather intimidating at first to go through every little detail to find the best options for each skill, and I hope Normal difficulty won't require too much micromanagement there.

Yeah I definitely started encountering prioritization problems in that last fight, but it wasn't a problem before that.

Ever hour or two the menus became less and less intimidating.

When do foraging spots refresh? It said after fighting some battles but I haven't had any refreshes I don't think.

I don't think fighting wandering mercenaries really does anything besides stun the world map mob. Not sure what happens if you lose, I never did. But I realized you can mostly just avoid those guys by staying out of line of sight, hiding behind trees, and holding B to run and zoom past, so I basically explored everywhere I could before hitting dead ends so I could collect all the foraging spots before doing any actual battles so they'd refresh.

But they haven't refreshed after doing like four battles!

The implication I got was that when you left guards at upgraded towns, they were auto foraging all nearby nodes when they refreshed. I never saw an on screen indication of that though.

I did see a few nodes refresh that WEREN'T near an upgraded town, so maybe it was auto foraging and it just didn't say anything?

Just realized that other than a single Cavalier (I will be using FE terms for this game and nothing can stop me), I don't think I recruited a single duplicate class even once out of the 16 characters I ended up with, and I know there are more base classes I don't have yet.

Did you use forts to recruit? I think the story recruits are all intentionally different classes, but I grabbed another Soldier since Chloe's first aid was all that was keeping Lex's dumb ass alive, and another archer to counter pesky thieves

I only recruited one archer for the mission, haven't touched generics since. With what appears to be 8 groups of 6 possible....I mean it's not impossible that it has 48 uniques!

Watching more videos, and the game calling the horizontal lanes colums and the vertical lanes rows is completely offending my Excel using ass.

CoolCly posted...

When do foraging spots refresh? It said after fighting some battles but I haven't had any refreshes I don't think.

I don't think fighting wandering mercenaries really does anything besides stun the world map mob. Not sure what happens if you lose, I never did. But I realized you can mostly just avoid those guys by staying out of line of sight, hiding behind trees, and holding B to run and zoom past, so I basically explored everywhere I could before hitting dead ends so I could collect all the foraging spots before doing any actual battles so they'd refresh.

But they haven't refreshed after doing like four battles!

if you manage to actually kill the wandering units (instead of just doing more damage, and stunning them), you get some honor.

Realized I had free menu time so I made a mad dash to all the shops, unequipped and reallocated all my gear, and prepped all my formations and tactics for retail.

Found a typo! It's correct in the description at least.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/418e56fe.jpg

okay nice, i just wasn't far enough to see the clock in the pause menu =)

does the plot get more substantial, for lack of a better word, before the demo ends? it feels pretty par-for-the-genre to me so far, and i expected more having played (but never finished) 13 sentinels

regardless i am obviously going to dump a ton of time into this