Super Goomba RPG
Underhero has a pretty neat premise: you're trying to save the world, but you work for The Bad Guy. The Good Guy died, so you loot his magical equipment, and go on a sabotage mission within the Bad Guy organization.
Unfortunately Underhero's storytelling isn't creative enough to live up to that premise. The game brings a light sense of humor to this role-reversal setup, but at least within the span of the demo, it didn't sell me on the characters, the world, or how the plot might turn out.
Its storytelling techniques are... well, they're blatantly inspired by Super Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi games. The protagonist is mute, while real exposition is delivered by an annoying companion, to whom the protagonist reacts with pop-up exclamation points, wild hand-waving emotes, spontaneously falling down, et cetera.
The game is presented as a side-scrolling platformer, with some dubious ground rules - literally, it's inconsistent on whether stair-like platforms have horizontal collision - and the level available in the demo felt bland and remedial. Like the Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! game, boring level design feels doubly boring when you ask the player to backtrack through it.
Combat segments are where the game could shine, except the rules feel poorly thought out. It bears some similarity to, uh, the Mario & Luigi gimmick of using timing to dodge or parry enemy attacks. Including the aspect that enemy "tells" are totally unpredictable until you've seen them at least once, which I hate.
Underhero's combat isn't turn-based, it's real-time: both you and your enemy have to manage your actions with a stamina meter. Both attacking and defending will drain the meter, so if you attack too aggressively, you'll be unable to defend effectively. There are some cool quirks to this system, like well-timed dodges restoring some stamina, and well-timed parries temporarily incapacatating the enemy; but...
Fundamentally, this system's problem is that to get more stamina, you need to wait -- wait for an enemy attack to dodge, or if the enemy isn't attacking, wait for the meter to build up on its own. If you're trying to budget your stamina, you'll have to sit and wait for the right opportunities. And if you don't budget correctly, using too much stamina, you'll have to sit and wait while eating enemy attacks.
In aggregate, waiting occupies a too-significant portion of any given fight. I would rather just take turns.
Did I mention that the level-up screen is practically identical to Super Mario RPG's? Or that the audio sounds like it was composed on a Sega Genesis? Or that the main menu looks uncomfortably like the Unity engine's default UI tools?
Overall, Underhero feels like an enthusiastic, but under-cooked tribute to the developer's favorite games. It's a respectable effort, but doesn't execute as well as its inspirations, and its unique features aren't strong enough to distract from that.
Progress: Finished the demo.