Castle of the Underdogs is a comedy JRPG game inspired by both Suikoden and FFX, with strategic turn-based combat, mass recruiting, and a castle HQ.
In-Game Background Story / Lore
Hikaru is a mischevous young girl that accidentally discovers she can do magic. She and her friends soon learn that her magical ability is rooted in her family, and with the magical gift comes a responsability. And a run-down castle. They embark on a journey to recruit dozens of quirky friends in order to restore the peace on the Bestann Federation despite spreading chaos most places she steps on.
Gameplay
As with most JRPGs, you can explore cities talking with villagers pressing the action button, enter houses pressing the action button, and looting chests pressing the action button. Some villagers may get angry with all the ransacking and stuff, but I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
Then you go outside, explore a little and BAM! Enemy.
The battle system is a pure turn-based system in the Final Fantasy X style, with lots of menus and action button presses, however, you can control the flow of the battle with the “wait” command and position your characters in the desired time bar position.
This is crucial in order to take advantage of the shattering system: Every enemy has several weak points which you must hit. Once hit, they enter the ‘shattered’ mode, where you can deal massive damage to the enemy, as well as steal special items from him.
However the enemy quickly regains control, so plan your strategy well.
The waiting command is also important to perform the “Unite Attacks”, which are combined attacks between characters which deal bigger damage.
The battle usable skills are contained in small receptacles called “corbs”. As you explore and progress, Hikaru learns skills, which you later can imbue into a corb to make it usable for every character. Those corbs can be either embedded on body (allowing you to use that skill), weapon (allowing you to get, in example, a fire elemental sword), or in armor (allowing you to get protection against that skill).
Key Features
- An absurd comedy with a ridiculous cast unlikely to succeed.
- Mass recruiting and castle HQ.
- 6 party battles (3 active, 3 can tag in) with a battle system very similar to Final Fantasy X.
- Unite attacks.
- Shattered system.
- Build your own runes.
- Restore and decorate your castle. (not yet on Early Access though)
- Skip battles with underleveled enemies.
- Save everywhere. Almost.
- 5 difficulty levels.
- Minigames.
About the Developer
An experienced developer with quite some games under his belt that realized that had never done a game of his favourite genre. So he decided to take a sabbatical to make a JRPG before realizing he is too old and have to enter a nursing home.
Being Suikodens and FFX his favourite games, he decided to do a gameplay mixture of both, while providing a comedy story in the style of the classic 80s-90s BBC comedies and Lucas adventure games, which he also love.
Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/underdogcastle/
Release date & platforms
Q2 2021 Early Access, Steam. Hopefully PS & Switch, when finished.
