Underhero

This is game that sat in my backlog unfinished for waaay too long, i played the first chapter and temporarily dropped it due to other things, but i am so glad i went back and finished it!
The combat took a bit getting used to, but after you learn that parrying is key and not to focus too much on the groovy critical hits it becomes way more fun.
I would say that it gets better as the game progresses (i guess due to the secrets being revealed?), with the highlight being the ending, but it is quite fun throughout! I thought this game would have a "twist ending" since the start considering it also had a kind of "twist beginning", but it was so much more than i expected, i loved it!
Highly recommend if you enjoy games such as deltarune and iconoclasts!

The bad:
-Gameplay can be janky, it will take being hit a few times to figure out an enemy's attack pattern to be able to effectively dodge and attack.
-You do extra damage if you get groovy when attacking, which the game says happen when you press the attack button in time with the music, but it's not really explained well and in practice I find it very random. Or maybe it's because I'm tone deaf idk I've always been bad at rythm games.
-Some enemies are really annoying, like those ghosts in zone 2. At one point you have to cross a whole tower full of them and if you touch them you get teleported to the beginning and has to do the whole thing again.
The good:
-The soundtrack is awesome. Sometimes I let the MC idle to listen to the really lovely soundtrack. Reminds me of some classic JRPG music.
-Despite the janks it's a fun game to play. Each world have its own mechanic and enemies that keep gameplay (which is mainly platformer with some combat) from being tedious.
-The story is very interesting with lots of sweet emotional moments, and the characters are very likable. It went to places I did not expect even though I could tell it was going to have meta elements, and the ending got me teary. I did no expect to get so attached to these characters.
In conclusion, a really good game that you should play if you like RPG.

I must admit I was pleasantly surprized by this game, it proved itself to be quite an enjoyable adventure and worth the money I spent on it (though I got it 50% off). I have good and bad things to mention, but I'll get the bad out of the way first:

Negatives:

- The game is a tad jank, moving platforms in particular seem to be rather unstable as they sometimes just slide you right off them.
- Sometimes combat is just... quite slow. Sometimes you will just have to stand still for around 7 seconds until your opponent does something you can punish.
- Maps, or better the lack there of a portable one. Maps are scattered around in signs and you cannot open them on the fly, which is quite annoying, though not THAT bad.
- A couple late-game puzzles are quite unclear, you can definitely do them by yourself, but thankfully, if you are not up for that, there are a couple of guides here on steam.
- A couple of sections can feel a lil' lackluster from a level design standpoint.
- You might run into quite a few physics bugs, especially regarding obstacles.
- There is "rhythm" mechanic to combat, but its fairly irrelevant, it only really actively harms one optional combat mechanic because its really not easy to tell what the beat is in some of the songs. in the end it works more like a lucky bonus than anything.

Positives:

- The main premise of the combat is actually very well executed, opening up to quite a few clever interactions that can make you go "A-HA!" when you figure out.
- Pretty much everything in the game has tells, you are likely to get smacked around a bit before you start understanding them, but completly dodging every move and hitting perfect counters and parries feels great.
- There is a "Talk to Elizabeth" button that can really help you when you are unsure of what to do, and even when it doesn't you at least get some fun dialogue.
- The artstyle is honestly lovely and the designs for characters are both creative and charming.
- The plot, while seeming a tad simple at first, actually gets fairly interesting in the end, nothing that will flabbergast you, but enough to make you want to learn more.
- The characters are honestly great, even those I though I would hate at first proved to be more than what they seemed.

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Overall, I will say it was quite a cool experience and despite some hiccups, it was very much worth to play. If you are hesitating on getting the game at its full price, I'd 100% reccomend you get it when its on a discount, you won't regret it!

Great story, gameplay could've got more polishing but it was still fun, only minor bumps in the road. VERY recommended

From a technical perspective, Underhero has quite a few issues:
- Resolutions are broken on 4K screens, one must manually select a 1080p resolution in Windows before starting Underhero. VSYNC is also broken: With VSYNC, the game is unplayably laggy, without VSYNC, there is awful tearing. Even NVIDIA overrides (force VSYNC/GSYNC) don't fix this.
- Controls are pretty floaty and unprecise, particularly with an analog stick gamepad. For instance, climbing ropes makes you inadvertently toggle sides, and one of the minigames regularly misses button presses---changing over to keyboard input fixes both problems. In a similar vein, collision detection (e.g. at platform edges) is quite glitchy.
- Usually, I am good at rhythm games (say, Crypt of the Necrodancer). Underhero does have some rhythm features (for critical attacks and one minigame), but I haven't been able to get them to work reliably. Luckily, the game still plays well if you ignore the background rhythm altogether.
- Pixel art varies greatly in quality, from okay-ish (main characters, worlds 2 and 3) to simple (wall tiles in world 1) to programmer's art (some enemy and background sprites). The combination of different pixel art resolutions makes the overall look yet more messy. Also: Who in their right mind comes up with the idea to rescale pixel art? Even with nearest-neighbor texel filtering, the results are horrible.
- There are some minor bugs and annoyances in scripting: At one point, the game tells you that you are locked in, but you aren't. Your low-health indicator keeps popping up during cutscenes. Some dialogue lines skip by without any input. You can backtrack, but there is nothing new to be found---while outdated and now unfitting dialogues still play (with Liz, mainly).
- The first world (up until the tree) is a long, boring tutorial that feels like the devs themselves were learning along the way.
Yet, in spite of all these issues, I still had quite a lot of fun with Underhero. The basic gameplay mechanics are simple, but fresh and enjoyable. The world building is interesting, the soundtrack fitting. Some of the events and ideas made me chuckle (the tree basement event, the graveyard, the special lava), some made me laugh harder than I'd like to admit (the puzzle guy, the chieftain's son, the hat story and its conclusion). The final boss fights and the ending scenes were heartwarming and gave the entire game a satisfying conclusion---quite a lot of games could learn from this!
Thinking about it, had I played Underhero on the SNES as a kid, it'd probably have been one of my favorites.

I like this game for what it is. It is not the best game but it is okay. It took me a little while to get into it.

I love this game. The encounters, level platforming, and overarching story are great fun. I revisit it to replay. If they made a sequel I'd buy it immediately. Go into this blind, if you can!