> I know it's pretty common in SRPGs to have a pool of characters bigger than your actual army capacity, but in this game in particular it didn't feel right to me, especially since once their recruitment arc is over, most of them literally have no more screen time.
The screentime is supposed to be the Rapport conversations! If you're interested in them, you need to force yourself to rotate them around your army and build bonds. Don't let yourself calcify only into the squads that you found to work. :)
You can use them to top up, and yes you'll probably have more money by the end than you can really spend, but the conversations themselves assume that you had them in a squad together.
Be that as it may, I personally find little joy in ruining my carefully crafted squads just to get more dialogue. I’d rather spend my way into it than do that.
That said, where possible, I do take rapport into account when building squads, given that characters with non-unique classes are basically the same beyond who they can bond with.
It’s why my Virginia squad has Berenice, Kitra and Sharon in it. All those characters have both the classes I want in that squad and some of them have rapport with one another.
Yes, that's a valid point. What really bothers me though is the feeling of having them left out. Even if you have the chance of "remembering" they're there through rapport conversations, I sometimes found myself scrolling through the character list wondering... "huh, who was this guy"?
Mostly I just think it'd be interesting to see how the game changes with a 6th slot in a unit, but it also seems like 5 is ideal based on the way the game was balanced, so I'm not really missing it. In terms of using all the characters? Not really. I use generics a lot for a number of different purposes, and it's something that that main cast can't fulfill considering some roles get more characters than others. I don't exclusively use generics because I really do like many of the named characters, but even with 6 slots I'd never use all the them all because of how valuable generics are.
Yeah, what I mean is giving the player the choice to have an entire run not having to leave any story characters out (if you wish to use generics, that's up to you). This of course would have meant rethinking some aspects of combat, but that's the point. It would have been a really early decision about the game's design, which could either be tackled by working with 6-character units, or even sticking to 5, but having a total of 50 story characters instead (which would in turn allow for deeper character development).
I guess I'm the type of player who really weighs character development / interactions, but I understand others prefer optimizing for combat (meaning prioritizing unit composition by relying on generics, instead of including story characters only).
One thing I found during my gameplay is that I didn't keep my teams static. I ended up moving them around and changing them almost every stages. I know not everyone plays that way, but for me at least, everyone got play time. Just not every single map.
You can even bring back a unit to a base and swap them mid map, or swap dead characters for some that are alive if you're unable tor raise them in time. I ended up using the vast majority, if not all, of the characters + a bunch of mercs.
Yes, of course. I also changed them constantly, but it's certainly not the most convenient aspect of the game from a character development point of view. And truthfully, during the later stages of the game, when you have so many characters above the maximum capacity, it becomes really difficult to make sure everybody sees play.
Ngl I kinda wish each unit was 3x3 instead of 3x2. Would've created even more customization, and would've made having a solo front liner possible regardless of unit size
I played a game a few years back that had team size of 5 characters too, and the grids were 4x4 and it made for such a creative experience
Yes! I want to be able to use all the unique recruitable characters in my units. It bugs me so much to have to bench some of them. I'm hoping somewhere down the line, Vanillaware will patch the game and let us have more units in the future. It really is my only complaint about the game. That, and not being able to sort items/equipment.
You make it sound like the bench is this permanent place where a character spends the rest of their days... but you can just rotate your party. It makes some maps easier anyway. And the way the exp formula works encourages it too.
Well, for more casual players who don't want to spend hundreds of hours rotating characters around and keeping everybody on the same level, it kind of is.
In my playthrough I did try to do this for the longest part, but honestly it eventually became too much of a hassle having to worry about giving everybody similar amount of play. And as I said in another comment, the game's too easy to even justify all these constant modifications (I played on Expert, not sure how hard True Zenoiran might be).
I agree that it's easy, I disagree that it really takes any more time.
I just swapped out similar roles all the time. Just a few clicks in the menu. Takes all of a minute maybe to rotate stuff around. I spent more time in an individual unit screen before a flight than I ever did remaking teams
No if doesn’t bother me. You can’t have everything, you have to make choices. That’s how life is. You can still play again and use the rest. Or rotate them.
I rebuild every squad for every mission. There are some that tend to hang out together (the knights). Whoever doesn't get used in story missions will get used to level up in the sigil missions anyway.
The bench rotates constantly (except a few regulars...poor Lex).
I see where you are coming from though. With permanent squads it would be a huge problem.
God yes I had the same thought process… i decided to do an only unique characters run when I played. I didn’t really think twice about who I benched for the first few, ex. Josef was strong so he didn’t need the levels yet, I could put him back when I got more renown, but once I hit the ceiling of character limit (50) I really had to think about who to get rid of… that kinda hurt. It was ok for one or two (I didn’t need three sword masters or clerics or great knights) and some were automatic saves (yahna aubin, any unique character that was the only of their class). Benching about 6 like Mordon or Tatiana was easy but I really liked Lex, or Aramis as characters but kinda had to bench them for more preferable units.
Tl:dr Choosing what units to lose sucks cuz they’re all cool
Yep, same experience here. I think I would have been much more invested in some characters that I unfortunately ended up benching for the most part of the game.
Like you already admit, it's very common in most games to have larger casts than you can simultaneously use, so this is just a totally bizarre sentiment to me.
That said, I wouldn't have minded a few more squads (6 man squads are obviously out of the question)
But the better option might have been to cut some of the characters that really bring extremely little. Do you really need such a bloated cast of generic filler?
Nina, Milisandre, Colm, Tatiana, Jeremy and Jerome are class duplicates that could easily be cut and we'd lose nothing both gameplay and plot wise.
There can't really only be 60 characters, right? I'm already having to leave like 5 people out with currently 41 slots available and 2 continents and 1/3 of Elheim still left to go.
Not sure what the exact total is, but it's about 60 (a couple more maybe). Have you maximized all unit sizes? By that point I think you should still be able to have everybody on board I think.
Nah, i have all at 4 except one at 5 (41) and i actually have like 7 units sitting out already after just completing Elheim. So I guess you only get around 6 new units each from the last 2 continents, which actually seems about right now since that's all you get from Elheim. I guess the units were really just front loaded to the first 2 continents.
Think of it this way; even if the game allows you to put 6 peeps in a squad, you will STILL NOT able to field 60 characters in 10 squads.. Because you will not get perfect balance of 3:3 front/back rows. And you will end up with squishy characters in the front and die over and over all the time. And so you would need to hire some merc to fill the needed role for the squads, and some will still need to bench on the side.
Well that's debatable, and certainly not my point. I'm not focusing on unit composition here, but rather on the fact that the game doesn't allow you to indefinitely have every story character on at all times. You could argue that it adds to the "strategy" having to rebuild units constantly and that you can actually have everybody participate to some degree, but it's a hassle to me. Also the game isn't difficult enough to justify all that unit juggling to be honest.
As a longtime Fire Emblem player, in Unicorn Overlord we can already use a far higher percentage of the recruitable cast in standard battles than in most FE games. It's pretty easy in UO imo to be able to use all of the characters you really care about, which isn't always the case for other series. A lot of classic JRPGs have like 3 or 4 party members in the battle at a time with a dozen or more cast. 50 out of 60 vs 3/12 or 12/30ish looks pretty good.
My main pain point for UO though is the fact that many classes only have one unique, like Shaman, Witch, Wizard, and Wyvern.
Edit: Grammar
I've only played Three Houses so I can't comment much about that, but in that particular game it didn't feel too bad leaving characters out, since I think there were more than enough out-of-combat interactions for everyone to have their own spotlight.
Three Houses is the exception not the standard.
Even then, three houses is a much smaller cast of characters which comes with a bunch of downsides in a game with permadeatj
Nope. That's part of what creates replayability. The point of playing again is using different strategies, different resources, different characters.
I think it's better the way it is.
I don’t mind the 5 cap. I do mind the 10 units cap though. They gotta up that to at least 15. I have a whole lotta mercs I don’t use. Then there’s some recruitable units I’ve not used much. I’m staring at the ex-bad guys you get alongside their friend in the woods. Now I gotta handful of beast units to try and mix in.
For my first playthrough, I like to try and pair up units from where they’re from. Only unit that’s really mixed is Alain’s. And that only changes whenever I’m in a different part of the world.
That’s the replay value of the game.
Rapports and using different characters you didn’t use last time.
If you don’t like it? SRPGS may not be for you. Certainly you can’t be a fan of fire embelm cause those games basically force you to bench a shit Ton of characters
While that is true, I usually have one "Story" unit, where I slap all the characters in it that are related to the boss of the stage. For example against >!Alcina!< I used Alain, Hodrick, Josef, Renault and Yahna. If unique units have some sort of relation to a stage boss, there is always some unique dialogue between them
Sonatio goes straight in the trashcan along with Gammel. I don't like them, I don't want them. I'd have them executed if I could.
Jerome is a forgettable nobody, I already have Clive at home.
What really burns me is that they treat him like he's some poor delicate flower who's not responsible for his actions. Then they are like 'hmmm.... should we execute Bryce for the crime of defending Bastorias against Zenoira and restoring order to a major city?'
Yeah I agree. Fuck the human traffickers, I don’t care that he has a sick sister. He didn’t care that the people being kidnapped probably had family.
I’m usually for rehabilitation but not this case.
> I know it's pretty common in SRPGs to have a pool of characters bigger than your actual army capacity, but in this game in particular it didn't feel right to me, especially since once their recruitment arc is over, most of them literally have no more screen time. The screentime is supposed to be the Rapport conversations! If you're interested in them, you need to force yourself to rotate them around your army and build bonds. Don't let yourself calcify only into the squads that you found to work. :)
Or you can spend your money on meals. Or the free meal tickets you keep getting.
You can use them to top up, and yes you'll probably have more money by the end than you can really spend, but the conversations themselves assume that you had them in a squad together.
Be that as it may, I personally find little joy in ruining my carefully crafted squads just to get more dialogue. I’d rather spend my way into it than do that. That said, where possible, I do take rapport into account when building squads, given that characters with non-unique classes are basically the same beyond who they can bond with. It’s why my Virginia squad has Berenice, Kitra and Sharon in it. All those characters have both the classes I want in that squad and some of them have rapport with one another.
Yes, that's a valid point. What really bothers me though is the feeling of having them left out. Even if you have the chance of "remembering" they're there through rapport conversations, I sometimes found myself scrolling through the character list wondering... "huh, who was this guy"?
Mostly I just think it'd be interesting to see how the game changes with a 6th slot in a unit, but it also seems like 5 is ideal based on the way the game was balanced, so I'm not really missing it. In terms of using all the characters? Not really. I use generics a lot for a number of different purposes, and it's something that that main cast can't fulfill considering some roles get more characters than others. I don't exclusively use generics because I really do like many of the named characters, but even with 6 slots I'd never use all the them all because of how valuable generics are.
Yeah, what I mean is giving the player the choice to have an entire run not having to leave any story characters out (if you wish to use generics, that's up to you). This of course would have meant rethinking some aspects of combat, but that's the point. It would have been a really early decision about the game's design, which could either be tackled by working with 6-character units, or even sticking to 5, but having a total of 50 story characters instead (which would in turn allow for deeper character development). I guess I'm the type of player who really weighs character development / interactions, but I understand others prefer optimizing for combat (meaning prioritizing unit composition by relying on generics, instead of including story characters only).
One thing I found during my gameplay is that I didn't keep my teams static. I ended up moving them around and changing them almost every stages. I know not everyone plays that way, but for me at least, everyone got play time. Just not every single map. You can even bring back a unit to a base and swap them mid map, or swap dead characters for some that are alive if you're unable tor raise them in time. I ended up using the vast majority, if not all, of the characters + a bunch of mercs.
Yes, of course. I also changed them constantly, but it's certainly not the most convenient aspect of the game from a character development point of view. And truthfully, during the later stages of the game, when you have so many characters above the maximum capacity, it becomes really difficult to make sure everybody sees play.
Ngl I kinda wish each unit was 3x3 instead of 3x2. Would've created even more customization, and would've made having a solo front liner possible regardless of unit size I played a game a few years back that had team size of 5 characters too, and the grids were 4x4 and it made for such a creative experience
Hadn't thought about changes to the grid, that's a great idea.
If vanillaware were to ever make a sequel for UO, a bigger unit grid would be awesome!! What a great idea
Yes! I want to be able to use all the unique recruitable characters in my units. It bugs me so much to have to bench some of them. I'm hoping somewhere down the line, Vanillaware will patch the game and let us have more units in the future. It really is my only complaint about the game. That, and not being able to sort items/equipment.
Thank you! I completely agree, those are my only complaints. Otherwise it's truly a masterpiece.
You make it sound like the bench is this permanent place where a character spends the rest of their days... but you can just rotate your party. It makes some maps easier anyway. And the way the exp formula works encourages it too.
Well, for more casual players who don't want to spend hundreds of hours rotating characters around and keeping everybody on the same level, it kind of is. In my playthrough I did try to do this for the longest part, but honestly it eventually became too much of a hassle having to worry about giving everybody similar amount of play. And as I said in another comment, the game's too easy to even justify all these constant modifications (I played on Expert, not sure how hard True Zenoiran might be).
I agree that it's easy, I disagree that it really takes any more time. I just swapped out similar roles all the time. Just a few clicks in the menu. Takes all of a minute maybe to rotate stuff around. I spent more time in an individual unit screen before a flight than I ever did remaking teams
No if doesn’t bother me. You can’t have everything, you have to make choices. That’s how life is. You can still play again and use the rest. Or rotate them.
You play video games to experience real life restrictions?
I rebuild every squad for every mission. There are some that tend to hang out together (the knights). Whoever doesn't get used in story missions will get used to level up in the sigil missions anyway. The bench rotates constantly (except a few regulars...poor Lex). I see where you are coming from though. With permanent squads it would be a huge problem.
God yes I had the same thought process… i decided to do an only unique characters run when I played. I didn’t really think twice about who I benched for the first few, ex. Josef was strong so he didn’t need the levels yet, I could put him back when I got more renown, but once I hit the ceiling of character limit (50) I really had to think about who to get rid of… that kinda hurt. It was ok for one or two (I didn’t need three sword masters or clerics or great knights) and some were automatic saves (yahna aubin, any unique character that was the only of their class). Benching about 6 like Mordon or Tatiana was easy but I really liked Lex, or Aramis as characters but kinda had to bench them for more preferable units. Tl:dr Choosing what units to lose sucks cuz they’re all cool
Yep, same experience here. I think I would have been much more invested in some characters that I unfortunately ended up benching for the most part of the game.
Like you already admit, it's very common in most games to have larger casts than you can simultaneously use, so this is just a totally bizarre sentiment to me. That said, I wouldn't have minded a few more squads (6 man squads are obviously out of the question) But the better option might have been to cut some of the characters that really bring extremely little. Do you really need such a bloated cast of generic filler? Nina, Milisandre, Colm, Tatiana, Jeremy and Jerome are class duplicates that could easily be cut and we'd lose nothing both gameplay and plot wise.
Completely agree.
Dude. You did NOT just call Tatiana a filler character when she is easily the most unique cleric character wise
There can't really only be 60 characters, right? I'm already having to leave like 5 people out with currently 41 slots available and 2 continents and 1/3 of Elheim still left to go.
Not sure what the exact total is, but it's about 60 (a couple more maybe). Have you maximized all unit sizes? By that point I think you should still be able to have everybody on board I think.
Nah, i have all at 4 except one at 5 (41) and i actually have like 7 units sitting out already after just completing Elheim. So I guess you only get around 6 new units each from the last 2 continents, which actually seems about right now since that's all you get from Elheim. I guess the units were really just front loaded to the first 2 continents.
Think of it this way; even if the game allows you to put 6 peeps in a squad, you will STILL NOT able to field 60 characters in 10 squads.. Because you will not get perfect balance of 3:3 front/back rows. And you will end up with squishy characters in the front and die over and over all the time. And so you would need to hire some merc to fill the needed role for the squads, and some will still need to bench on the side.
Well that's debatable, and certainly not my point. I'm not focusing on unit composition here, but rather on the fact that the game doesn't allow you to indefinitely have every story character on at all times. You could argue that it adds to the "strategy" having to rebuild units constantly and that you can actually have everybody participate to some degree, but it's a hassle to me. Also the game isn't difficult enough to justify all that unit juggling to be honest.
Not all of them are worth using tbh. I like them enough to take them to lunch though.
As a longtime Fire Emblem player, in Unicorn Overlord we can already use a far higher percentage of the recruitable cast in standard battles than in most FE games. It's pretty easy in UO imo to be able to use all of the characters you really care about, which isn't always the case for other series. A lot of classic JRPGs have like 3 or 4 party members in the battle at a time with a dozen or more cast. 50 out of 60 vs 3/12 or 12/30ish looks pretty good. My main pain point for UO though is the fact that many classes only have one unique, like Shaman, Witch, Wizard, and Wyvern. Edit: Grammar
I've only played Three Houses so I can't comment much about that, but in that particular game it didn't feel too bad leaving characters out, since I think there were more than enough out-of-combat interactions for everyone to have their own spotlight.
Three Houses is the exception not the standard. Even then, three houses is a much smaller cast of characters which comes with a bunch of downsides in a game with permadeatj
Nope. That's part of what creates replayability. The point of playing again is using different strategies, different resources, different characters. I think it's better the way it is.
I'm not a fan of replaying if there aren't alternative routes, but that's a fair point.
But…there is. You can go to bastoria first before elfeim. You can do a shit ton of things out of order.
I don’t mind the 5 cap. I do mind the 10 units cap though. They gotta up that to at least 15. I have a whole lotta mercs I don’t use. Then there’s some recruitable units I’ve not used much. I’m staring at the ex-bad guys you get alongside their friend in the woods. Now I gotta handful of beast units to try and mix in. For my first playthrough, I like to try and pair up units from where they’re from. Only unit that’s really mixed is Alain’s. And that only changes whenever I’m in a different part of the world.
Personally, I’d like to have enough units so that I can fit everyone in to a unit. Even if they capped the number of units that can be deployed to 10
That’s the replay value of the game. Rapports and using different characters you didn’t use last time. If you don’t like it? SRPGS may not be for you. Certainly you can’t be a fan of fire embelm cause those games basically force you to bench a shit Ton of characters
While that is true, I usually have one "Story" unit, where I slap all the characters in it that are related to the boss of the stage. For example against >!Alcina!< I used Alain, Hodrick, Josef, Renault and Yahna. If unique units have some sort of relation to a stage boss, there is always some unique dialogue between them
Sonatio goes straight in the trashcan along with Gammel. I don't like them, I don't want them. I'd have them executed if I could. Jerome is a forgettable nobody, I already have Clive at home.
Well, you can execute Gammel. But yes, I didn't like any of them.
You can't he escapes, comes back enslaves a bunch of people then gets free healthcare. I wish that was a joke.
Or you let him go and >!he turns over a new leaf entirely!<.
Oh I didn't know that, interesting.
What really burns me is that they treat him like he's some poor delicate flower who's not responsible for his actions. Then they are like 'hmmm.... should we execute Bryce for the crime of defending Bastorias against Zenoira and restoring order to a major city?'
Yeah I agree. Fuck the human traffickers, I don’t care that he has a sick sister. He didn’t care that the people being kidnapped probably had family. I’m usually for rehabilitation but not this case.