I wanna buy Unicorn Overlord but all the gameplay I've seen of it makes the game look like an auto-battler that...

The combat is like Advance Wars/Fire Emblem: you move a unit into another unit and the battle takes place.
You can script your units a bit, like in FFXII, but correct: you do not select actions in combat.
You do however control and move units on the map, and can perform actions with them, or use items, real-time with pause.

wtf? I bought Pokemon, but when I selected Thunderbolt, Pikachu just attacked on its own! Why couldn't I control Pikachu after I chose what move to use?

By your logic, all RPGs are autobattlers.

Can you name a single RPG where you actually control the characters after you select attack?

Like, what button inputs are you pressing to do pic related? On my copy, I just pressed A once and then watched. How audacious for it to play itself.

It's a strategy game. You set up the strategy. You direct the units. The outcome of the battles depends on how you prepared before the battles happened. Nothing is "automatic" except the attacks.

Valkyria Chronicles.

About as much as any SRPG where you move your units to enemies on a map and then watch the fight animations happen. The only "auto" part is the sequence of actions performed during attacks, which you still have to set the parameters for beforehand to ensure your units will actually fight competently.

if the game didn't let you refresh rng by shuffling units and equiptment people would not be calling it easy

Press A

The gun fires

the bullet automatically flies out and does damage

???

Good counterexample, but Valkyria Cronicles is more like the exception to the genre.

Actually firing a gun instead of order spam Alicia to scout rush the enemy base.

dinah is best girl

Try scout rushing in VC4, they cucked the hell out of that strategy.

Stop looking at games before you play them. Just play them.

but how do you chose which one to play if you can't look at them

It's a real time SRPG, dumbo.
You tell your units where to go, execute an order (i.e. attack, special move, heal, set up barricade, etc.). Just like with most JRPGs, you can bruteforce your way through grinding or just use OP units all the time, but the game can buttfuck you.
Meat and potatoes of the game is more the logistics and formations you come up with (weapons, squad composition, skills programming, etc). Those are like 80% of the reason if you win or struggle with a battle.
As this anon says , play the fucking demo.

The guy probably thinks checkers is an autobattler because you don't physically have to wrestle your opponent every time your piece takes an opposing one.

It's more like it's turn based with units made up of a customized formation with a determined output (you can change at any time) that can do well or completely fail depending on the unit they're fighting. It's not just automatic; equipment, formation, and toggled skills and requirements you set for those skills to activate completely dictate how a unit will function.

Use poison dagger if enemy has 1 or more AP, prioritize armor

And even after all that, some skills are (limited) so only ONE limited skill can activate during a specific time frame of a battle. If this wasn't a thing, you can just put 5 sword masters in a party and have them all use hastened strike to kill everything before they could even do anything. There's so many options it's kinda unreal.

It's similar to Ogre Battle. You separate your units into squads and move those squads around the map in real-time-with-pause. When one of your squads runs into an enemy's squad or when a squad runs into an occupied base/town you get a battle between squads which you have the no direct control of. That's the auto-battling part, but even then you're expected to micro-manage all your squads AI scripts yourself before battle.

That's how the genre works. SRPGs do not, as a rule, suddenly become Devil May Cry or Max Payne when one unit attacks another. They play an animation and the attack is resolved.

Project X Zone
Yeah, i know it's not the norm, but i still wanted to mention it.

People calling UO an auto-battler is retarded, but I think their brains are just fried because of the existence of mobile games where you literally just click auto and then put your phone down and do something else while the game auto-grinds for you.

It's more like a strategy game, you arrange your units ahead of time and order the tactics they'll use, then the battles play out on their own.

Yeah kind of. It's like an RTS in how it's set up though.

Though unless you crank up the difficulty the right combo of units can steamroll basically the entire enemy army.

Man this game took them a while so I was kinda hoping they’d have added a difficulty that was fucking nuts. I’m still glad it came out and the mechanics are fun, but man I feel like a complete fuck you difficulty could have benefited this game.

The gameplay lies on how you set up your squads, from their equips, partners to their attack programming, the only problem is that if you set up your squads too well you are just gonna steamroll the game.
Dont even get me started on how broken the unique classes are.

True Zenorian isn't enough fun for you?

Not him but even the unlockable difficulty option is still too easy, even with self imposed challenges.

The story is pretty bad too, unless you thing magical mind control being the reason for everything is great.

setup your bots

move troops to the objective

go make a coffee

The combat is no different than a fire emblem game where you choose which units will battle each other and then you watch the animations of said battle. The fun part is setting up broken ass teams that annihilate the enemy based on the circumstances you set up for them. Like setting up a dragoon character with teammates who will buff, heal, and shield her while she charges her two turn dive bomb attack that one shots everything on the enemy side

It's an autobattler, but you can "program" your units to act in specific ways when presented with different things
It's very similar to Final Fantasy 12's gambit system
I liked it

I like sweatertits. Do I find the brown haired sword lady in the first zone? Soon done every battle I can there

It's an RTS with turn based combat but the actions during the combat are player scripted prior to the fight and freely editable scripts anywhere except in combat
Selecting which actions and support actions are used through class and variable equipment in what order with optional triggers such as
If flying exists enemy use anti-flying attack
else if armored enemy use defense down
else standard attack
end script

Try Tactics ogre 64 and see if you like it

Yes but there’s still more engagement than you’d think. Best game I played last year.

The New Grounds-esque animation and scruffy art are big downers for me.

Melisandre is by the northeastern half. IIRC northeast of the town where you rescue Scarlet.

Can you name a single RPG where you actually control the characters after you select attack?

Super mario rpg
Paper mario
Mario and Luigi

There's a free demo, retard.

Scruffy?

when you first meet her she makes it clear she's just using you

MC's rock-like social graces win her over

she becomes queen

owned

I only want more. Gimme some DLC

do you really expect someone to make a video of building a squad? Unless they talk over their decisions it's not like you'll know what's going on.
Combat doesn't give you full skill descriptions but it comparatively much easier to understand what is happening, so of course that's the kind of footage you're more likely to see.

What would they even do? John Unicorn liberated the whole continent.

It's an apt description given how braindead it is.

Oh, I guess I won't be requiting her anytime soon, I've yet to go to elfland or mountainland

There are other continents with other tyrants, or islands that need unicorn man to cleanse them, I dunno.

never forgive these bastards for not putting this game on pc

surely it'll happen one of these days

If you haven't come to terms with Vanillaware never porting games to PC by now you must be new here.

other continent needs help

plot contrivance means only MC and his ringed waifu/homie can go

this makes you use the new characters

Could work.

We just want the company to get more money but they're determined to go bankrupt or some shit. It's fucking annoying.

Vanillaslopware is always overrated garbage

It would REALLY work if only the MC and the one they chose could go to the new location. That would put some real replay value in.

Yes.

13 sentinels was similar - barely any gameplay. Seriously, VN's had more gameplay, at least they had puzzles.... in 13S you just click on each dialogue line and then the next level unlocks.

dark elf starts making moves on Alain

Josef:

You can skip the battles.

Devil Survivor
1 and 2 mog the rest of the genre so bad

It is an auto-battler. You auto-optimize equipment and units and then hold R2 to skip animations, effectively making it a visual novel where you have to bump into enemy units on the map to get to the next coom-filled cutscene with fat nigger elf tits.

The entire Tales series is just fighting game inputs in an RPG