Frustrations with Underhero

This is the first time I’ve truly disagreed with a game’s rating on Steam. I’ve disliked popular games before, but I could usually see what the appeal is, why other people might enjoy it. But Underhero feels like a mess of unfair mechanics, tedious fights, and rage-inducing design.

I wanted to like Underhero. I kept coming back, telling myself I just needed to “get good.” But after more than five hours of frustration, I’ve realised the game isn’t challenging, it’s just unfair.

Story

The story is actually really engaging. You play as a minion of the evil king who breaks the status quo by killing the Chosen Hero instead of letting him kill you so he can save the world. You take his talking sword and end up going on an undercover adventure to save the land yourself.

The game is comedic in tone, and this leads to a lot of interesting and hilarious scenarios. An early example comes while trying to fix an elevator so you can get to the top of a tower and fight the Moth Queen. You end up accidentally flooding the tower with beer instead, and swimming to the top.

Audio Torture

That’s really where the fun ends for me. The sound of the game is grating. While having conversations they are randomly punctuated with these horrible “hit” and “scrape” sounds that torture your ears. It’s like the aural version of being repeatedly punched in the face.

The music is okay. It’s very generic platformer music. They seem proud of it, since the main collectible in the game are tapes so you can play the various tracks in the game. I hate this. You spend ages trying to get to a difficult chest, hoping for something useful like an attack or health boost, only to find another of these useless tapes. One chest literally has you go backwards through an entire level just to open it and it turns out to just be another one of these god damned tapes.

If I didn’t hate the music before, I do now.

Combat Mechanics

Then there’s the combat system. It seems simple enough at first. Each button does something different. There are several attacks, including a hammer, a sword, and sling. There’s a shield for defense. You can also duck and jump, or drink potions to restore health. You can even use gold to bribe enemies and avoid the fight altogether.

These mechanics are introduced to you one-by-one and the early battles are easy. It’s actually a well done tutorial.

Puzzling Fights

Unfortunately, the difficulty steps up really quickly. Each enemy type can only be fought in one specific way. Talking to your sentient sword can help you figure out how to some extent, but there were several enemies I had to look up how to fight online because they would slaughter me.

Take the spiders. They have two attacks. One poisons you and saps your health. The second is a web attack that holds you in place. If you get poisoned you might as well reload right away because death is inevitable.

Jumping or ducking cannot avoid these attacks. You can get lucky by jumping if you time things right, but not reliably. They attack so fast that getting off sling shots between just opens you up to more attacks.

Elizabeth II (the sword) tells you to use your shield. So you do. Only to learn that it doesn’t block the web attack, only the poison attack. Then you get poisoned while trapped in the web. Then you die.

Or, your shield breaks, and you can’t repair it mid-battle. You’re fucked.

I died so many times trying to fight these things. Then there’s a part of the game where you have to fight three of them at once. This fight was impossible. No matter how much I dodged or relied on my shield I would be overwhelmed. You can’t bribe these enemies either, you have to fight them.

It wasn’t until I looked it up online that I figured out what you’re supposed to do. You need to parry their attacks. This means pulling up the shield just before their attack hits. This deflects the attack back on them and doesn’t damage your shield.

I was able to win, but this demonstrates the problem with these fights. As I said, each enemy has to be beaten in a very specific way. Once you know the specific set of actions you need, the fights are easy to win. But they also become repetitive and tedious. It takes so long to kill each enemy that you get bored going through the same motions over and over.

Another problem is that it is too easy to use a potion. I have wasted so many potions when I am at almost full health by accidentally pushing left. This is especially problematic in boss battles, where you have to chase them, enter combat, do some damage, then chase them again. If you happen to be holding “left” when you enter combat, bye-bye potion. And potions are sparse in this game, so you really feel that loss.

The Nemesis Wall

What killed it for me was the first fight with the Nemesis. You have to avoid his attacks and engage him in combat. Once in combat the only way to do damage is to first parry his attack. Only he does two different attacks with different timings and its impossible to tell which one he’s going to use until its too late. The only way to beat this guy is to get extremely lucky.

The Angry Video Game Nerd would have said, “what a shitload of fuck,” and I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Giving Up

I don’t think a game has frustrated me this much in years. I gave it my best shot multiple times, but at this point I can’t play for more than five minutes without rage-quitting. Maybe it gets better. Maybe I’m missing something.