Five years ago, the indie gaming scene was changed forever with the release of Undertale, a sort of ‘Anti-RPG’ that focused on mocking traditional RPG tropes as much as it did celebrating them. Suffice to say, it resonated with a lot of people and it’s clear that the uniquely unconventional design had no small effect on UnderHero. Still, it wouldn’t be fair to refer to UnderHero, which released on Switch in February 2020, as ‘just’ riding on the coattails of more well-known games. This is very much an experience that demonstrates mastery of the game mechanics it executes, making for an indie game that you shouldn't dismiss out of hand.
UnderHero picks up right at the end of a standard RPG, in which you control the hero as he makes the march through the main antagonist’s castle for the final battle. Things are quickly cut short, however, when a random minion drops a chandelier on the hero and kills him. From here, you then take on the role of the minion, as he sets off on his own quest to return the three macguffins collected to unlock the castle. Along the way, he’s guided by a magical talking sword hilt that belonged to the late hero, who encourages the minion to break free of his boss’ wishes and be his own hero.
It’s a fascinating premise to begin with, and its execution is greatly bolstered by the wry sort of writing that borrows liberally from Undertale’s playbook. Your quest as the minion is very much a send up of general video game and RPG tropes, frequently poking fun at such conventions while breaking the fourth wall plenty. One early sequence sees your minion needing to access the higher levels of a tree which he can’t reach by jumping. The solution is to take an elevator, but a fuse is missing, which kicks off an increasingly more ridiculous and contrived series of fetch quests to obtain the fuse. All of this is for nothing, however, as he soon just floods the tree with beer and swims up. It’s frequent moments like this which keep the narrative lighthearted and engaging, encouraging you to play further just to see what other off-the-wall scenarios and characters you come across.
Gameplay feels like something of a mixture between a Metroidvania and a Paper Mario game, which makes for a nicely balanced experience. Most of your time is spent navigating 2D worlds and platforming your way through myriad obstacles, all while picking up occasional upgrades and coins along the way. The upgrades boost parameters like your health or attack stats, while the coins can be spent at the “Evil Store” for potions, buffs to your weapons, and more. This makes for a solid feedback loop of continual power growth fostered by exploration, although one annoyance is the lack of an easily accessed map system. The labyrinthine dungeons aren’t too difficult to parse, but you can only look at a map at fixed signposts along the way, which needlessly makes navigation more difficult if you happen to lose your way. There were a couple times where we wasted a few minutes walking in circles before finding the correct path, something which wouldn't have been an issue if the map was always accessible. Still, the issue never became more than an irritation, and the enemy encounters helped to break up any monotony.
Most of the world has enemies patrolling around, and this is where the Paper Mario bit comes in. Your minion can attack at any time, but his actions are governed by a slowly regenerating stamina bar that decreases a fixed amount with each action. Your ability to dodge is tied to this, too, meaning that you have to constantly be weighing the cost of an attack against the likelihood that your foe will strike before you can regenerate enough stamina. You can use a shield to block or parry damage independent of your stamina, but the shield can only take so many hits before it needs to be repaired, and the timing for a parry is narrower than a standard dodge.
Whether you’re on offense or defense, the battle system is based on deftly timing your button presses, with correct presses rewarding you with better outcomes. Dodge an enemy attack at the right time and your stamina meter will temporarily refill at a faster rate, which allows you to pull off more attacks in a shorter window. Then, for your attacks, the timing is based on the beat of the music, where blows that land on the beat will deal more damage. Each enemy has different strengths and weaknesses, along with a variety of tells that telegraph what attack is coming next, which makes for a combat system that stays enjoyably dynamic no matter where you are in the story.
Your minion has a variety of attacks at his disposal, each of which are meant to be used in different situations. A quick slice with the sword is your standard attack, but he also has a slingshot for reaching those high-flying enemies. And if you think you’ve got a bit of time before the next attack comes from your foe, you can opt to use the slow-charging, but powerful hammer swing to do massive damage. It’s usually pretty clear what tool should be used when, which leaves a feeling that perhaps more depth could’ve been explored with this setup, but it’s perfectly satisfying in practice. Our one complaint, however, is that the controls for the slingshot prove to be needlessly sensitive, making it more of a pain to use that over your other weapons.
As for it presentation, UnderHero employs a rather unique look that doesn’t feel quite like pixel art, even though it clearly borrows heavily from that visual style. At any rate, each environment is intensely detailed and rich with color, with simply animated sprites that convey little personality quirks well. It all seems to perform smoothly, too, though we noticed occasional graphical hiccups every now and then. There was an occasion or two where a jump that barely should’ve landed on a platform resulted in seemingly passing through its edge and falling, or where getting caught in a gap that wasn’t quite wide enough to fall through would result in our minion juddering madly as he hung in the air. Such instances are rare, but they pop up every now and then, indicating that perhaps one more pass for polish may have been in order before UnderHero went gold.
Conclusion
Despite minor flaws with presentation and control, UnderHero proves itself to be a rewarding experience that frequently surprises with its ingenuity and writing. This isn’t exactly a ‘go out and buy it now’ kind of game, but if you like the sound of it, you likely won’t be disappointed by the content on offer here. It's not perfect, but a well-paced story, engaging combat system, and beautiful world make UnderHero a game that rarely disappoints, and we’d recommend it to anybody looking for a good ‘deep cut’ for their Switch library.
Comments 23
Was surprised this hadn't been reviewed before. A good game and a pretty fair review.
I have been asking for a review on this for almost all year!!!!! Finally. Took you long enough but it is a pretty good game😂
Sounds solid game. Especially if you like the genre. Doesn't hugely stand out for me but may get it discounted
That didn't read like a 7/10 review...
But yeah, I've been interested in this since I first heard of it, and I might get it eventually
Oh, well then. It's got my attention now. I remember hearing about this and the premise sounded interesting, then I got distracted by 2020 being horrid.
I just want to say I absolutely loved this game. One thing the review didn't touch on much is the absolutely stellar soundtrack. It's filled with what the kids nowadays seem to call bangers. I also really enjoyed the lack of random encounters. The Paper Mario-esque battle system was an amazing evolution of that series' original battle mechanics to me. The story and dialogue were crackling with some truly imaginative setpieces. The endgame in particular is exemplary. Anyway, this was a 10 for me, it's really stuck with me and I enjoyed it a ton.
Looks pretty cool. Definitely worth downloading someday.
Thanks for the review... had an eye on this game for the lovely graphics and undertale influences
The game is pretty alright but man, that name is horrible.
@PikaPhantom tbh I think that might be due to how skewed the last decade of gaming has made review scoring sound like as if anything below a 8 is utter trash rather than anything 6(the "passing grade") or above being where things can start being interesting?
Because otherwise I feel a 7/10 here is appropriate and interesting enough for a game of the quality and budget of this one? Mostly just my opinion mind but it's the score I expected while still being interested in this game.
@Ludovsky I'd definitely agree with that sentiment, which is part of why I'm personally not a fan of assigning scores to games. In my mind (and it seems the general consensus), any game scored from 1-5 is a complete waste of time, and when you're using a scale that's that skewed, you might as well just drop it altogether. Then you have people claiming that game x was scored one point higher than game y, which obviously makes it superior, when the reality is that those two scores are simply incomparable.
It just seems overly reductive to me to sum up an entire, several hour experience in a single number and expect that to do it justice. At best, the number should be no more than a loose guideline to lightly affect your reading of the text of the review.
This game is a hidden gem. I rate it much higher. Very unique and the story gets progressively better as the game goes on. I strongly recommend you play it.
i'd recommend it, they got a lot of variation out of their battle system, it was impressive
I've never heard of this but am now intrigued. Don't... judge... me... but I'm going to see if it's on Steam. Bc.
This is part of the Anti Hero Bundle, which is currently on sale for $6. (Also includes Nefarious and Reverse Crawl.) I picked it up, even though I have Nefarious in another bundle. Still a good price just for Underhero.
@SwitchVogel I don't read reviews w/o a numerical score attached, as i use that numerical score from several sites to see which reviews to read. There are way too many to read every review & when u get attached to certain reviewers at certain sites, then they leave to go work for Blizzard, Larian, Ubisoft, Supergiant,etc (looking at you Gamespot staff of the late 90's early 2000's, yiu have to start all over. So, metacritic has been so helpful, as I don't want to spend more time reading reviews than i do playing games & w/o numerical scores, that's what I'd be doing .ost likely. So, please understand how they help many of us (i realize u made that exception in your comment, but i wanted to share my personal use for them).
@MrGrim thanks, i just grabbed this. I would have passed otherwise.
@MrGrim @twztid13 Did you find it on the US Eshop or the UK one? I wanted to get it too but it’s not available in the US it seems. 😔
@AG_Awesome on the US eShop, but i had to search on the eshop itself, it wouldn't show anywhere on the nintendo site or online, sadly.
@AG_Awesome i searched "antihero" & it is the only result, fyi, but not sure if it's still on sale, sadly (i can't see price now). It sucks if forces u to download all 3 games tho, so i have to allocate precious space to games I'll never play (or maybe i will now, & maybe that's the intent behind the bundle, lol?).
@twztid13 Thanks for the update. I will check when I get home from work. Hopefully I didn’t miss it but I won’t hold my breath. Lol.
I'm in the US as well. @AG_Awesome, if it's not on sale just check again in a few weeks. Those Digerati bundles are always going on sale.
Kinda stupid this review didn’t mention the Mario & Luigi influence in the combat system, anyway I started playing it on sale and I enjoy the combat system!
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