Undertale.

[Dagoth Gares]

Steam page (http://store.steampowered.com/app/391540/)

Just had to share this game with everyone here. Undertale is a 10$ indie retro graphics style rpg with a focus on story and choices that easily contends with AAA titles for game of the year. Saying almost anything else is spoilers. You should not look at anything other than the steam page to get the best experience out of it. There is also a demo for the game on the website (http://undertale.com/).

[danzibr]

That looks really good! Like Earthbound with a darker atmosphere and mini-games. I'm downloading the demo.

[Cespenar]

I've mentioned it on the General Gaming Thread already, but no one seems to be checking that out lately.

[DigoDragon]

That looks really good! Like Earthbound with a darker atmosphere and mini-games.

I've heard of the game and others have praised it for being good. I'll eventually get around to trying the demo, but I never had an idea of what exactly it plays like. Descriptions from friends have been really vague outside of it being a really good rpg. I think you've been the first to actually give a decent idea of what it's like with a comparison. Thanks!

[danzibr]

I've heard of the game and others have praised it for being good. I'll eventually get around to trying the demo, but I never had an idea of what exactly it plays like. Descriptions from friends have been really vague outside of it being a really good rpg. I think you've been the first to actually give a decent idea of what it's like with a comparison. Thanks!
Oooooh I meant at a glance. But I did indeed play the demo!

Whelp, it's nothing like Earthbound. The art is somewhat reminiscent and you play as a child. I mean, it's just its own thing, really... hard to describe. Combat is interesting. The plot was interesting. Not sure I could handle the real game.

[Amaril]

Guys, one thing I have to say, and I really, really urge everyone to listen: do not expose yourself to any information about this game's story, any at all, before you finish it. Trust me, knowing anything in advance makes it infinitely less meaningful. I mean it.

As long as you adhere to that, it's an amazing work of art that you owe it to yourself to experience. Otherwise, still a pretty fun game that I'd recommend if you're into this type of thing.

[DigoDragon]

Guys, one thing I have to say, and I really, really urge everyone to listen: do not expose yourself to any information about this game's story, any at all, before you finish it. Trust me, knowing anything in advance makes it infinitely less meaningful. I mean it.

See, I tend to shy away from games when people tell me this. Every game that I have bought and liked has been because I look for a little exposure to get a feel for whether I want to buy it. Now, that said this game lucks out that it has a Demo. But if it didn't, then I'd probably not be looking into it. Money isn't easy for me to come by so I'm VERY picky with where I spend it.

[Avian Overlord]

I would agree that you should play Undertale (seriously, do it) without looking up anything about it. There's a specific moment early on I'm thinking of with loses its... punch if spoiled.

Going into the game thinking it's going to be a an rpg where the combat mechanics are replaced with mechanics about making friends, and it's going to be a bit twee makes "YOU IDIOT. DOWN HERE IT'S KILLED OR BE KILLED" one hell of an impressive shock.

[Amaril]

See, I tend to shy away from games when people tell me this. Every game that I have bought and liked has been because I look for a little exposure to get a feel for whether I want to buy it. Now, that said this game lucks out that it has a Demo. But if it didn't, then I'd probably not be looking into it. Money isn't easy for me to come by so I'm VERY picky with where I spend it.

Well, it's a damn shame that your financial situation might stop you from enjoying this game, but I have to stand by my advice. Without it, any recommendation I could give for the game would be very conditional.


I would agree that you should play Undertale (seriously, do it) without looking up anything about it. There's a specific moment early on I'm thinking of with loses its... punch if spoiled.

Going into the game thinking it's going to be a an rpg where the combat mechanics are replaced with mechanics about making friends, and it's going to be a bit twee makes "YOU IDIOT. DOWN HERE IT'S KILLED OR BE KILLED" one hell of an impressive shock.

Funny enough, I kinda had the opposite problem.

See, I went into it thinking it would be about loss of innocence--assuming it would try to lull you into thinking it was a happy fun game about making friends, and then flipping the script and forcing you to start killing. That's what I did when I got to the fight with Toriel, assuming I had to kill her to proceed. My mistake was talking to a friend shortly after passing that point, who informed me that you really can get through without killing anyone. Once I knew that, I felt like the game expected me to play that way, and I went through the rest as a complete pacifist because I felt obligated to, where had I not known, I would have had the fun of struggling with whether I really had to kill any given person or not. The lack of uncertainty cheapened the whole thing.

What made it even worse was when after I finished my first playthrough, I went and looked up some of the other endings, just for fun, and found that the game actually requires you to do at least one neutral playthrough before it'll give you the "true" pacifist ending (I hate that everyone keeps calling it that--every ending is equally true, and personally I think the neutral endings are both the best and the ones that were really meant to happen). So not only did I miss out on my chance to play authentically, but the assumptions I followed after losing that chance weren't even accurate.

Anyway, my point is, I don't want anyone else to have the game ruined for them like it was for me. Knowing what I know now, it's really my favorite game of all time, and I think everyone deserves the chance to experience it fresh.

[Avian Overlord]

Funny enough, I kinda had the opposite problem.

See, I went into it thinking it would be about loss of innocence--assuming it would try to lull you into thinking it was a happy fun game about making friends, and then flipping the script and forcing you to start killing. That's what I did when I got to the fight with Toriel, assuming I had to kill her to proceed. My mistake was talking to a friend shortly after passing that point, who informed me that you really can get through without killing anyone. Once I knew that, I felt like the game expected me to play that way, and I went through the rest as a complete pacifist because I felt obligated to, where had I not known, I would have had the fun of struggling with whether I really had to kill any given person or not. The lack of uncertainty cheapened the whole thing.

What made it even worse was when after I finished my first playthrough, I went and looked up some of the other endings, just for fun, and found that the game actually requires you to do at least one neutral playthrough before it'll give you the "true" pacifist ending (I hate that everyone keeps calling it that--every ending is equally true, and personally I think the neutral endings are both the best and the ones that were really meant to happen). So not only did I miss out on my chance to play authentically, but the assumptions I followed after losing that chance weren't even accurate.

Anyway, my point is, I don't want anyone else to have the game ruined for them like it was for me. Knowing what I know now, it's really my favorite game of all time, and I think everyone deserves the chance to experience it fresh.


Well, I wouldn't call it a problem it worked really damn well for me. I also looked up the endings (although I knew they existed from playing the demo). I didn't know if you had to run a pacifist run from the start or if you could spare everyone individually. Neutral totally seems like the best route from here. Having to make individual choices was well, let me use an example. I had pretty much decided that anyone who tried to kill me without surrendering or showing obvious remorse was dust. Yet, when I came to the first dog in the royal guard, I just couldn't do it. I missed my final attack on purpose, and went through the sparing process. Eventually I ended up sparing the entire royal guard. Also the conversation with Sans about how Toriel convinced him to spare your life is HEART-WRENCHING if you killed Toriel. And I ended up creating a society devoted to celebrity worship where all social problems are "solved" with the gratuitous body sparkles. I mean, how can you say no to that?

Does it strike anyone else as odd we're having this serious conversation about a game that is completely ridiculous most of it's playtime?

[Amaril]

Well, I wouldn't call it a problem it worked really damn well for me. I also looked up the endings (although I knew they existed from playing the demo). I didn't know if you had to run a pacifist run from the start or if you could spare everyone individually. Neutral totally seems like the best route from here. Having to make individual choices was well, let me use an example. I had pretty much decided that anyone who tried to kill me without surrendering or showing obvious remorse was dust. Yet, when I came to the first dog in the royal guard, I just couldn't do it. I missed my final attack on purpose, and went through the sparing process. Eventually I ended up sparing the entire royal guard. Also the conversation with Sans about how Toriel convinced him to spare your life is HEART-WRENCHING if you killed Toriel. And I ended up creating a society devoted to celebrity worship where all social problems are "solved" with the gratuitous body sparkles. I mean, how can you say no to that?

Does it strike anyone else as odd we're having this serious conversation about a game that is completely ridiculous most of it's playtime?

Not even a little bit. The game might be ridiculous, but it's about some serious s***.

Yeah, see, that method of deciding, that's what I would have done had I gone in fully blind. I resisted killing Toriel--I tried talking her down, but she showed no sign of wavering, and I assumed that was the game's way of signalling that from there on out, not everyone you met would be merciful, and you'd have to start making those hard decisions. It's just that once I knew with absolute certainty that everyone could be spared, the decisions became easy, which I didn't enjoy. Toriel was the only one I killed on my first run, but had I not had the truth spoiled, I'd have played differently at a fair few points; I probably would have killed Undyne, almost certainly Muffet and Mettaton, and quite possibly Asgore (though I don't know if I ever could have gone through with that).

And yeah, you're right about that scene with Sans. I never cry at games, but damn :smallfrown:

Funny enough, when I looked up the endings, the one in which you kill and spare everyone I probably would have if I'd been blind is actually a pretty happy ending (the one where Papyrus takes over). I'm doing a second playthrough now (after wiping my config data to fully reset everything) and going for that one, but I'll never get to experience it fresh again, which makes me sad.

[Avian Overlord]

My Kill/Spare was as follows
Toriel-Killed. Spared her in the demo, but decided to go on in-character knowledge.
Papryus-Spared. Clearly didn't want to fight, came to his senses of his own accord.
Undyne-Killed. Lady, if you want to keep the moral high ground, don't mention the six people you've murdered for their organs.
Muffet-Spared. Fully intended to kill her, but after she decided to stop of her own accord, I ended it.
Mettaton-Spared. Only looking out for humanity, plus all the crazy murder attempts weren't his idea.
Asgore-Killed. What I said about Undyne? Goes double here. At least he wasn't self-righteous about it.
Flowey-Killed with extreme prejudice. Fun fact. The only question I asked after the demo but before buying the game was "Can you kill Flowey?" And you can!

[Amaril]

Toriel: Killed. You try to keep me prisoner, and then challenge me to fight to prove my strength so I can leave, that's exactly what I'm gonna do until you back down. Which she never does.
Papyrus: Spared. Yeah, clearly has no real interest in fighting or hurting you at all.
Undyne: Killed. For reasons I would think are obvious.
Muffet: Killed unless it takes me long enough that she relents, in which case spared.
Mettaton: Likewise. Sure, you might be in it for humanity, but you still want to murder me, until you don't.
Asgore: Uncertain. I really should kill him, it'd be fully justified, but I just don't know if I can bring myself to.
Flowey: Spared. If you kill him, that means you prove him right and he wins.

And bonus round.

Doggo: Spared. I'd be justified in killing him, but it's easier to sneak by, and I'm not gonna fight if there's a more practical and just option.
Gay guardsmen in Hotland: Killed. That's what you get for attacking with the stated intent to murder me.
All other enemies before the Core: Spared. I might not have encountered everyone on my first playthrough, but all the normal enemies I did meet up to this point clearly didn't really want to kill me.
Enemies in the Core: Killed. That seems to change around this point.

[Avian Overlord]

Flowey: Spared. If you kill him, that means you prove him right and he wins.


Who cares?

[Amaril]

Who cares?

I'm stubborn. Sue me :smalltongue:

[Cute_Riolu]

For anyone that's beaten the game by killing anyone, I strongly recommend that you go through a second run without killing anyone. It adds a fair bit more to the game, and a LOT more to the story.

But yeah, that aside, literally my favorite game ever. I played it through on purely pacifist my first time, and haven't played it since. I can't stand to ruin the good times. I cried SO MUCH.

[Yuki Akuma]

For info on the actual gameplay, because no one seems to want to talk about that for some reason:

The combat system is like a cross between a turn-based RPG and a bullet hell shoot-em-up. You choose an action on your turn, then the enemy's turn involves dodging bullets and other attacks. It's pretty neat and I'd love to see more games use this mechanical style.



There's three - Neutral, Pacifist and Genocide.

Just play through the game normally. The final boss is Flowey. You can choose whether to kill or spare him - this has a slight effect on your next reset. Sparing him is the only way to get the hint for how to unlock the Pacifist ending, though.

Never kill anyone - you can beat regular enemies up until their names are yellow if you don't want to figure out the puzzle. The only requirement is that you have exactly no kills. You also need to befriend Papyrus, Undyne and Alphys. I don't think you can get this ending before you've seen the Neutral ending at least once, but you don't have to reset - just load your pre-Asgore save file. The final boss is Asriel.

Kill everyone, including the dummy and the Froggit that 'randomly' attacks you in the spike room. Then, before each boss, keep killing random encounters until random battles give the message "But no one came". After the Ruins, save points become a tally of how many monsters you need to kill before moving on. You can canel a Genocide run at any time before killing Mettaton by simply sparing a boss or not killing every encounter in an area before encountering the boss. The final boss is Sans of all people.

[Cespenar]

Wow. The two non-neutral endings. Both fantastic on their own way, but damn the tone change.

[Amaril]

There's three - Neutral, Pacifist and Genocide.

Just play through the game normally. The final boss is Flowey. You can choose whether to kill or spare him - this has a slight effect on your next reset. Sparing him is the only way to get the hint for how to unlock the Pacifist ending, though.

Never kill anyone - you can beat regular enemies up until their names are yellow if you don't want to figure out the puzzle. The only requirement is that you have exactly no kills. You also need to befriend Papyrus, Undyne and Alphys. I don't think you can get this ending before you've seen the Neutral ending at least once, but you don't have to reset - just load your pre-Asgore save file. The final boss is Asriel.

Kill everyone, including the dummy and the Froggit that 'randomly' attacks you in the spike room. Then, before each boss, keep killing random encounters until random battles give the message "But no one came". After the Ruins, save points become a tally of how many monsters you need to kill before moving on. You can canel a Genocide run at any time before killing Mettaton by simply sparing a boss or not killing every encounter in an area before encountering the boss. The final boss is Sans of all people.

There are actually a bunch of different Neutral endings, depending on who in particular you killed, spared, and befriended. They all lead to the same final boss sequence with Flowey, but the epilogue you get after is drastically different depending on what exactly you did.
According to the wiki, you do have to finish at least one Neutral run before you can get a real Pacifist one. Even if you do your first playthrough without killing anyone ever, the ending is still different. Haven't done the true Pacifist ending myself--I plan to after I finish my second Neutral run.

[Avian Overlord]

On the topic of gameplay, the boss fights in this are awesome, with just the right level of different from the normal gameplay without being total curveballs. I liked the one where you turned yellow and the one where you turn purple.

Well, not total curveballs except Flowey.

[Demonsul]

You don't actually need to restart from scratch if you never killed anyone in your first playthrough to get the pure pacifist ending - I didn't. You do need to beat Asgore and Omega-Flowey if you've not done that before, but once you've done that you can just reload your save from before you fought Asgore and wander off to go make friends/etc before heading back for the final battle. If the wiki says you need to restart, it's wrong.

Best game I've played in a very long time. I'm recommending it to everyone.

[Cespenar]

I thought Asgore and Flowey boss fights were epic until I watched the Genocide run yesterday and saw frikkin Sans. Simply put, saying that he is hardcore wouldn't do justice to him.

[Rakoa]

I just finished it. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It started off as a charming game with innovative mechanics and great humour, but it just isn't worth it. I have never before played a game and finished it feeling like I've wasted so much time.

[DigoDragon]

Finally got around to playing the game and I'm honestly disappointed.

The combat mechanics were okay. I like that you can try and end battles quickly by showing Mercy or changing things with Act, but on the other hand the dodging part was annoying. Does the game have joystick support? Using the arrow keys just wasn't intuitive in my opinion when you need good reflexes to dodge.

Puzzles were decent. The perspective one with the 3 colored switches was good.

I think the most frustrating part is the high encounter rate. Feels very much like Final Fantasy in that regard and I was never a fan of getting dragged into combat every five steps. I kept getting nickled-and-dimed to death by constantly encountering 2-3 enemies at a time. After my 3rd death I gave up.

Overall it's a decent game. However, I think it was over-hyped. Everyone keeps telling me I must play it and No Spoilers by looking it up, but it just didn't strike me as more than a decent game with elements of Earthbound and Final Fantasy. Maybe I'll try it again after a few days just to see if I feel different.

[Rakoa]

I wouldn't bother, Pony Man. The whole thing is trial and error. If you want to be nice to the monsters, then you get to stumble your way through Act dialogues until you figure out their random option that works. The bosses require immense trial and error to figure out how to be nice to them, if you can figure it out at all.

I killed Toriel because the game said talking wasn't an option. I tried to weaken her so I could Spare her but she just died. Learning my lesson, I decided not to do that anymore and always try and figure out the nice way. I lost to Azgore dozens of times because of that, because apparently you DO have to fight him down to low health so you can spare him! There is nothing to indicate this. Nothing at all. Just trial. And. Error.

If you mess up anything you get the Neutral Ending, which is not an ending at all. All it does is give you instructions on how to get one of the other endings. I guess they are better endings. I call this the "**** You For Trying This Without a Walkthrough Ending Try Again By Playing Another 10 hours".

[Yuki Akuma]

You gave up after you died three times? In a game where, not only do you as a player improve every time you fight an enemy (due to the puzzle and bullet-hell nature of combat), but there are save points scattered all over the place?

Yeah I think you gave up far too quickly.

The game also specifically tells you that sometimes you have to try sparing an enemy when their name isn't yellow. I have no idea why people have trouble with the Toriel fight.

[Rakoa]

The game also specifically tells you that sometimes you have to try sparing an enemy when their name isn't yellow. I have no idea why people have trouble with the Toriel fight.

No, actually, it doesn't. A random froggit that can be optionally spoken to tells if you speak to him. Big difference there, and one that isn't automatically or obviously applicable to Toriel.

[DigoDragon]

You gave up after you died three times? In a game where, not only do you as a player improve every time you fight an enemy (due to the puzzle and bullet-hell nature of combat), but there are save points scattered all over the place?

I am not a fan of shmup style games. The three deaths were in relatively the same area as I'm trying to complete a puzzle (getting interrupted by fights detracts from my enjoyment of puzzles). Yes there are some patterns in fighting the enemy, but a few require a couple rounds to make it work which means dodging in bullet hell and I'm simply not skilled with using arrow keys to do that. Rather than get frustrated over a game because a particular section was giving me problems, I put it away. I'll come back to it later and give it a second try, which I feel is different that "giving up".

[Yuki Akuma]

I personally consider things NPCs in the tutorial area tell you as being "the game explicitly telling you things". But that may just be me.

Flowey also outright tells you you're meant to Spare her if you didn't try the Spare command at all (but if you tried it and gave up, he doesn't, unfortunately).

I hope when you pick the game up again you have more fun with it. One of the (many) things I like about this game is that you can't really hit your face against a brick wall over and over because your stats aren't good enough - I've had that issue in RPGs before. In Undertale, you just have to git gud. :smallwink:

[Shekinah]

I'm currently watching the Let's Play that MegaGWolf is uploading on YouTube. He's doing the pacifist run. Since Steam hates me, I probably won't get it, but I'll talk Rezzy into getting it.

Also, I will never trust a smiling flower again.

[Avilan the Grey]

Hmm

I admit, I am shallow to a point. The graphics of this game is really putting me off.

A bigger issue though is that Laura likes it (Laura Kate, Laura K Buzz, etc). Seriously, I adore her, she seems to be a wonderful person, and really know what she talks about, but seriously... her taste in games is 180 degrees off from mine. So...

[Rakoa]

I just tried to get the Genocide Ending. Imagine my surprise when I got the exact same ending as the first time except with a slight modification on the phone call. What fun! Who knew that just killing bosses and monsters wasn't enough, but it is required that you kill every monster in every zone until monsters stop appearing! I sure am glad I ever imagined playing this without a walkthrough glued to my face.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I killed Toriel because the game said talking wasn't an option. I tried to weaken her so I could Spare her but she just died. Learning my lesson, I decided not to do that anymore and always try and figure out the nice way. I lost to Azgore dozens of times because of that, because apparently you DO have to fight him down to low health so you can spare him! There is nothing to indicate this. Nothing at all. Just trial. And. Error.

Yeah, in the demo, I was like "I'll try to get her down to really low health." Then the last hit, out of nowhere, does ~340 damage while she has a couple hundred health left and I'm like "welp! Guess I have to kill her!"
I can understand "don't read a summary" or anything like that, I did a quick skim of the Wikipedia page and I regret it, but I've been watching Cry's playthrough and every video has the heavily-upvoted comment "stop watching if you haven't played this yourself and go buy it."

[Rakoa]

Yeah, in the demo, I was like "I'll try to get her down to really low health." Then the last hit, out of nowhere, does ~340 damage while she has a couple hundred health left and I'm like "welp! Guess I have to kill her!"
I can understand "don't read a summary" or anything like that, I did a quick skim of the Wikipedia page and I regret it, but I've been watching Cry's playthrough and every video has the heavily-upvoted comment "stop watching if you haven't played this yourself and go buy it."

I've also been watching Cry's playthrough, actually. If he isn't using a walkthrough, he's doing an amazing job at doing everything right. But I can't agree with those comments. I just can't recommend this game. If there was a bit more guidance, I'd probably be adding it to my favourites list.

[Cute_Riolu]

I've also been watching Cry's playthrough, actually. If he isn't using a walkthrough, he's doing an amazing job at doing everything right. But I can't agree with those comments. I just can't recommend this game. If there was a bit more guidance, I'd probably be adding it to my favourites list.

It's thematically part of the game that there isn't guidance, and that your actions have consequences. Genocide is a conscious decision with legitimate consequences on the game. It's not easy, and I don't really think it'd be appropriate if you could do it without trying to, which is what would be the case if you could pull it off just by killing everything you come across; that's something that you already DO in most RPGs.

[Rakoa]

It's thematically part of the game that there isn't guidance, and that your actions have consequences. Genocide is a conscious decision with legitimate consequences on the game. It's not easy, and I don't really think it'd be appropriate if you could do it without trying to, which is what would be the case if you could pull it off just by killing everything you come across; that's something that you already DO in most RPGs.

To say that a game is intentionally bad doesn't excuse the fact that it is bad. I acknowledge that the game intentionally has little guidance, and I condemn it for that decision.

[Avian Overlord]

I object to the requirement discussed not for being obscure, but for being very very tedious.

[Cespenar]

I'd personally suggest anyone to try the game on their own once, which will probably get them to the Neutral Ending, and simply watch the other endings on youtube or something.

[Cute_Riolu]

To say that a game is intentionally bad doesn't excuse the fact that it is bad. I acknowledge that the game intentionally has little guidance, and I condemn it for that decision.

Please do not put words in my mouth. You may feel that the game is bad for that, and while you're welcome to that opinion as I am to mine, it is disingenuous to imply that I agree.


I object to the requirement discussed not for being obscure, but for being very very tedious.

That's fair. I don't really agree, but that's as much because I played through the demo beforehand and enjoyed it as it was then, and do the same now, as it is anything else. Can't argue with your opinion!

[Rakoa]

Please do not put words in my mouth. You may feel that the game is bad for that, and while you're welcome to that opinion as I am to mine, it is disingenuous to imply that I agree.

I didn't imply anything of the sort. My first sentence was intended as a general statement (something shouldn't be forgiven by virtue of intention) and my second sentence qualifying it in respect to the game in discussion ("a" game [general statement] vs. "the" game [Undertale]).

[Cute_Riolu]

I didn't imply anything of the sort. My first sentence was intended as a general statement (something shouldn't be forgiven by virtue of intention) and my second sentence qualifying it in respect to the game in discussion ("a" game [general statement] vs. "the" game [Undertale]).

My mistake, then! Thank you for explaining that.

[Rakoa]

My mistake, then! Thank you for explaining that.

No, no, my fault for not being more explicit.

[mythmonster2]

Personally, I had no trouble at all figuring out the Spare routines for any enemy, even the bosses. The game even advertises itself as "The RPG game where you don't have to destroy anyone," so it's not like it's difficult to remember that. As for the endings, I did look up how to do them after getting the neutral ending, just to make sure, though I haven't had the heart to do the Genocide run myself, but looking it up hasn't impacted my enjoyment of the game at all.

As for my review of the game: The gameplay is admittedly lacking, though I enjoyed figuring out each enemy's patterns. The bosses were also fun to fight. The story, characters, and music were all fantastic, and I gladly paid for the soundtrack, not something I do often. It's also definitely the funniest game I have ever played. Overall, despite the gameplay flaws, the story makes it one of the best games I've played this year.

[The Dark Fiddler]

The game also specifically tells you that sometimes you have to try sparing an enemy when their name isn't yellow. I have no idea why people have trouble with the Toriel fight.

It also, at very nearly the same time, tells you that enemies will sometimes give up if you bring them down to low health. IF you attempt this with Toriel, you suddenly crit for 10x normal damage, killing her just as you were probably about to stop and try something else. It's more or less set up so you either get the hint about how to spare her, try to bring her low and kill her, or miss them both and (probably) kill her.

Considering the opposite happens with Asgore you'd be hard-pressed to convince me it wasn't intentional.


Hmm

I admit, I am shallow to a point. The graphics of this game is really putting me off.

A bigger issue though is that Laura likes it (Laura Kate, Laura K Buzz, etc). Seriously, I adore her, she seems to be a wonderful person, and really know what she talks about, but seriously... her taste in games is 180 degrees off from mine. So...

It won't help you get over the graphics, but there IS a demo you can try to see if you like the gameplay and humor.

[mythmonster2]

It also, at very nearly the same time, tells you that enemies will sometimes give up if you bring them down to low health. IF you attempt this with Toriel, you suddenly crit for 10x normal damage, killing her just as you were probably about to stop and try something else. It's more or less set up so you either get the hint about how to spare her, try to bring her low and kill her, or miss them both and (probably) kill her.

Considering the opposite happens with #### you'd be hard-pressed to convince me it wasn't intentional.

That might want to be spoiler'd? I'm not sure exactly how spoiler-y this thread is trying to be, and it is only the first boss, but just a consideration. As for my own response:

I have heard a theory that I like, and that's that the sudden crit is supposed to make you try to reset, so that you get Flowey's spiel about resetting, which is a major theme of the game as a whole.

[NichG]

This is coming from someone who decided to spoil themselves but not play, so take it with that in mind.

Having seen how people approach the game in Lets Plays, and how the game reacts to that, I think that the main point of Undertale isn't 'killing stuff has consequences' so much as to pick at the different ways players approach games, and to explicitly have the game adapt to the way that it is being played. Because that would be impossible in the most general sense, the author designed the game to funnel people along pathways that are close to certain archetypes he had in mind. For people who fit near one of those archetypes, the game has the intended mind-blowing response. But of course there are people who won't fit well into it, and I think that for people like that, this game won't really 'work' for them. The reason that spoilers are especially problematic for a game like this is that if you're aware of the different paths, you can tell either consciously or not that you're being funneled.

If you play the game like everyone is real - you internalize 'I am playing a 9 year old child', 'this guy is just joking around', etc, the game is designed to let you skirt the edge of that, see how seriously you can take that, and then make you feel really bad about it when you break character or do something extreme. The more you RP the game, the more it seems that it assumes you will be going along a pacifist route, and the more it encourages you to do so. The exposure of monster personalities, the degree of lightheartedness in the game, the etc all increase the more pacifist you are. And also, importantly, the less explicitly meta the game becomes. The 'determination' that lets you reset the world is explained at every save point, and as long as you keep on this way it's explained as something that belongs to the character's perceptions: 'you are determined because of the experience of crinkling in the leaves', etc.

The neutral route represents an incompletely engaged player - they might RP a bit, they might game a bit, they just do whatever they feel like in the circumstance. But it's the jumping off point. It tells an incomplete story as a filter to see if the player is engaged enough that they have to try to get the 'real' best ending for the characters (their motivation for going back and doing it again is to make the story come out better). Or, alternately, if the player is the type who has to try to 'see everything', which leads to the genocide route. So based on that, the author can poke at the different types of players based on how he thinks their mind and motivations work, which makes the game feel eerily personalized when he gets it right for someone.

On Pacifist, the whole story of Saving and so on is more embedded into the actual story of the game rather than the meta-story. Now it becomes about the desire to not die, the desire for a good ending, and how that can be twisted by a gradual decay of empathy in the case of Flowey. But the meta stuff is downplayed, and the game tries to seem more 'real'. At the same time, if the player goes back after completing Pacifist, Flowey explicitly begs them to leave things alone and just let the story end. The author anticipates that the player might become jaded and transition to the Genocide style of play, and explicitly calls them out on that.

On Genocide, the game expects the type of player to not just kill, but to be such a completionist that they exhaust all the enemies in each area when the number count-downs tell them to do so. So the author models the motivations of such a player as being driven by metagame considerations: 'I have to see everything in the game', 'I have to do everything', 'I just want to know what happens', etc. The characters, the plot, and even the backstory all adapt to treat this drive as more and more real. The game behaves more gamey. You have a very non-violent character who ends up being a super-boss, and who explicitly begs the player to just turn the game off and do something else; the save point 'determination' just becomes the word in itself, and that 'just because' motivation is recognized in dialogue all over the place. It turns out that the main character's true nature is just that they are in fact a 'Chara' - something to enable the real person behind the keyboard to be rewarded for playing - and they suggest deleting Undertale and going and wrecking some other game world. You see shadows of this idea when players on the neutral route engage in 'meta' tendencies; for example, if they spare Toriel and then go and reload a save and kill her, Flowey specifically comments about it. Whereas, I think the game avoids doing that when the player does it in the other order (killing, then going back to fix their mistake). In Genocide, there's even a comment from Flowey for people like me who just watched it on Lets Plays and the like. E.g. the author anticipated another common way people would experience the game, and wrote content for that case.

And at the extreme end, the author recognized that there are motivations in players he doesn't understand but has seen in cases. if you repeatedly go for the Genocide ending over and over, 'Chara' - the big scary manifestation of metagaming who holds the game hostage, etc, etc, begins to comment that she doesn't understand the player anymore, or why they keep coming back. E.g. the author is sort of saying 'I no longer understand you enough to have anything to say, and this kind of behavior creeps me out'.

So anyhow, I think the reason that people have such extreme reactions here is that this funneling, combined with personalized, perceptive comments about the reasons people play games actually hits the mark quite often, and that's the author's big success here - how well they were able to generalize the potential players into a manageable set of archetypes, and how accurately they could recognize that in the play style employed. Some of the difficulties are there in order to implement those funnels. Genocide is tedious to really test to see if the player is truly obsessive above seeing everything, or if they're just going down that road on a lark. Pacificist has things where you have to just do what feels right regardless of what the interface is telling you (no yellow names, ignoring 'talking does work', etc), in order to check for and cultivate a certain level of engagement where the player begins to treat the game as deeper than the UI alone suggests.

But if you can see these funnels by e.g. being spoiled on them in advance, or if you don't fit these categories well, then those elements will be experienced as pushing you away from the direction you want to go.

[Cespenar]

This is coming from someone who decided to spoil themselves but not play, so take it with that in mind.

Having seen how people approach the game in Lets Plays, and how the game reacts to that, I think that the main point of Undertale isn't 'killing stuff has consequences' so much as to pick at the different ways players approach games, and to explicitly have the game adapt to the way that it is being played. Because that would be impossible in the most general sense, the author designed the game to funnel people along pathways that are close to certain archetypes he had in mind. For people who fit near one of those archetypes, the game has the intended mind-blowing response. But of course there are people who won't fit well into it, and I think that for people like that, this game won't really 'work' for them. The reason that spoilers are especially problematic for a game like this is that if you're aware of the different paths, you can tell either consciously or not that you're being funneled.

If you play the game like everyone is real - you internalize 'I am playing a 9 year old child', 'this guy is just joking around', etc, the game is designed to let you skirt the edge of that, see how seriously you can take that, and then make you feel really bad about it when you break character or do something extreme. The more you RP the game, the more it seems that it assumes you will be going along a pacifist route, and the more it encourages you to do so. The exposure of monster personalities, the degree of lightheartedness in the game, the etc all increase the more pacifist you are. And also, importantly, the less explicitly meta the game becomes. The 'determination' that lets you reset the world is explained at every save point, and as long as you keep on this way it's explained as something that belongs to the character's perceptions: 'you are determined because of the experience of crinkling in the leaves', etc.

The neutral route represents an incompletely engaged player - they might RP a bit, they might game a bit, they just do whatever they feel like in the circumstance. But it's the jumping off point. It tells an incomplete story as a filter to see if the player is engaged enough that they have to try to get the 'real' best ending for the characters (their motivation for going back and doing it again is to make the story come out better). Or, alternately, if the player is the type who has to try to 'see everything', which leads to the genocide route. So based on that, the author can poke at the different types of players based on how he thinks their mind and motivations work, which makes the game feel eerily personalized when he gets it right for someone.

On Pacifist, the whole story of Saving and so on is more embedded into the actual story of the game rather than the meta-story. Now it becomes about the desire to not die, the desire for a good ending, and how that can be twisted by a gradual decay of empathy in the case of Flowey. But the meta stuff is downplayed, and the game tries to seem more 'real'. At the same time, if the player goes back after completing Pacifist, Flowey explicitly begs them to leave things alone and just let the story end. The author anticipates that the player might become jaded and transition to the Genocide style of play, and explicitly calls them out on that.

On Genocide, the game expects the type of player to not just kill, but to be such a completionist that they exhaust all the enemies in each area when the number count-downs tell them to do so. So the author models the motivations of such a player as being driven by metagame considerations: 'I have to see everything in the game', 'I have to do everything', 'I just want to know what happens', etc. The characters, the plot, and even the backstory all adapt to treat this drive as more and more real. The game behaves more gamey. You have a very non-violent character who ends up being a super-boss, and who explicitly begs the player to just turn the game off and do something else; the save point 'determination' just becomes the word in itself, and that 'just because' motivation is recognized in dialogue all over the place. It turns out that the main character's true nature is just that they are in fact a 'Chara' - something to enable the real person behind the keyboard to be rewarded for playing - and they suggest deleting Undertale and going and wrecking some other game world. You see shadows of this idea when players on the neutral route engage in 'meta' tendencies; for example, if they spare Toriel and then go and reload a save and kill her, Flowey specifically comments about it. Whereas, I think the game avoids doing that when the player does it in the other order (killing, then going back to fix their mistake). In Genocide, there's even a comment from Flowey for people like me who just watched it on Lets Plays and the like. E.g. the author anticipated another common way people would experience the game, and wrote content for that case.

And at the extreme end, the author recognized that there are motivations in players he doesn't understand but has seen in cases. if you repeatedly go for the Genocide ending over and over, 'Chara' - the big scary manifestation of metagaming who holds the game hostage, etc, etc, begins to comment that she doesn't understand the player anymore, or why they keep coming back. E.g. the author is sort of saying 'I no longer understand you enough to have anything to say, and this kind of behavior creeps me out'.

So anyhow, I think the reason that people have such extreme reactions here is that this funneling, combined with personalized, perceptive comments about the reasons people play games actually hits the mark quite often, and that's the author's big success here - how well they were able to generalize the potential players into a manageable set of archetypes, and how accurately they could recognize that in the play style employed. Some of the difficulties are there in order to implement those funnels. Genocide is tedious to really test to see if the player is truly obsessive above seeing everything, or if they're just going down that road on a lark. Pacificist has things where you have to just do what feels right regardless of what the interface is telling you (no yellow names, ignoring 'talking does work', etc), in order to check for and cultivate a certain level of engagement where the player begins to treat the game as deeper than the UI alone suggests.

But if you can see these funnels by e.g. being spoiled on them in advance, or if you don't fit these categories well, then those elements will be experienced as pushing you away from the direction you want to go.


Grade-A analysis here. Won't change anyone's mind, but still.

[Yuki Akuma]

Flowey has something to say whenever you reset and do something different - he's always meta.

Heck he has something to say if you start the game, go to talk to him the first time, then reset and do it again.

[DigoDragon]

I hope when you pick the game up again you have more fun with it. One of the (many) things I like about this game is that you can't really hit your face against a brick wall over and over because your stats aren't good enough - I've had that issue in RPGs before. In Undertale, you just have to git gud. :smallwink:

After grinding a tiny bit I got further along, but that really doesn't say a lot other than 'I can take more hits now so I can last through more fights before dying'. :smallbiggrin: I just never had a fondness for shmups, so the dodge mechanic pretty much is just tedious for me. Like I told a good friend-- the last shmup I found myself engaged in was 1942. Most everything else about Undertale is decent to pretty good (the humor is probably the best part).



I can understand "don't read a summary" or anything like that, I did a quick skim of the Wikipedia page and I regret it, but I've been watching Cry's playthrough and every video has the heavily-upvoted comment "stop watching if you haven't played this yourself and go buy it."

I heavily ignore those remarks because they are a peeve of mine. If I want to see the first few minutes of a game, or try a demo, or just borrow a friend's copy for an hour, then it's my choice to do such before buying. Poor folks like me are frugal. :smalltongue:



I'd personally suggest anyone to try the game on their own once, which will probably get them to the Neutral Ending, and simply watch the other endings on youtube or something.

I looked it up on Wikipedia. XD
I'm happy that my guess on Toriel being the ruler of the underworld was somewhat correct.



It also, at very nearly the same time, tells you that enemies will sometimes give up if you bring them down to low health. IF you attempt this with Toriel, you suddenly crit for 10x normal damage, killing her just as you were probably about to stop and try something else. It's more or less set up so you either get the hint about how to spare her, try to bring her low and kill her, or miss them both and (probably) kill her.

I find those unspoken arbitrary rule changes in combat to be a bit annoying (assuming no warning is given that you're going to hit hard like that against her).



Grade-A analysis here. Won't change anyone's mind, but still.

I slightly disagree with the neutral part, but probably cause of my specific case. Everything seems good.

[Cespenar]

I looked it up on Wikipedia. XD
I'm happy that my guess on Toriel being the ruler of the underworld was somewhat correct.

I said Youtube because the two extreme endings are quite cinematic (despite the "poor" graphics). It's quite fun watching their plot twists and climaxes.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I went on youtube and horribly spoilered everything for myself. And saved myself the purchase price in the bargain.

This is not a game which I would have enjoyed. I view this game as a failed attempt at a cross between a Rorschach test and existential horror. The first part REALLY pisses me off because it applies judgment values to the results, and the latter is one of my least favorite genres. Granted, I know that's not how most people view the game, but I just call 'em as I see 'em.

I guess I'm really not one of the archetypes the game was designed in mind for.

Not a fan of throwing in a shump into the middle of an RPG either. Granted, I like the idea of trying new things, but this is a new thing that works out about as well as a screen door on a submarine airlock. So I'm not that big on the game from a mechanics point of view either.

The only thing I actually liked about the game was the 8-bit graphics, which was kind of nostalgic for me.

[Alanzeign]

It seems I had a different reaction to the early fights. I never thought that the game cheated me. Instead, I felt like the game was actually trying to get me to engage the fight more realistically rather than "game" the scenario. I can see people not getting that fight the first time, but after that the game guides you straight to the "complete" pacifist ending (if you were able to spare). I mean, the tagline is you can spare everyone, so I tried to do just that and got the ending on my first try without a guide.

There is a particular (completely optional, does not affect endings) puzzle that might require a guide for those less musically inclined. I saw a stream of two guys try that puzzle for 6 hours...painful.

I actually killed Toriel on my first attempt. Rather than feeling cheated or upset about the game, I immediately felt bad, especially after talking to Flowey afterwards. So I reset my game and attempted to spare her. Seeing that her dialogue continued to change made me feel like my sparing was progressing the fight. It worked (and still counted as pacifist since I reloaded my save)! I felt much better, but then Flowey called me out on feeling guilty for murdering her and going back to save her. I was immediately invested at this point.

Thinking back on it though, I absolutely believe the crit at the end is intentional. From a game perspective, spare and talking don't work, so you think "I'll try and fight to get her low then maybe I can spare her." The game is setup not to allow for that and expects you to kill her the first time.

Rather than poor mechanics, for me, this feels like a deliberate narrative choice. It immediately says "Stop treating this like a video game, she is a living creature." Gaming the scenario by cutting her up with your knife until she gives in is actually really messed up if you think about it this way. And of course, if you are cutting someone until they give in, it is very possible that you may accidentally go too far and do real damage, not to mention it is easier to hurt someone that is wounded.

For me it was that simple. After Toriel I continued to spare and spared Papyrus. I went on the date honestly because I thought I'd get some armor out of it, but when that didn't happen it was still fun. It made me try again later with Undyne, especially since Papyrus literally calls you during the fight and says to go hang out with her (this is the hand-holding I'm talking about).

Undyne's fight was really tricky, though it does subtly tell you how to win. At the beginning she says "As long as you are Green, you can't Escape." There's your hint, and checking her says she never runs away. She repeatedly says she won't take your mercy. Finally, her attack speed gets ridiculous at the end and all you get is an ellipsis that never ends. I died several times before I figured out how to spare her, but that was part of the fun for me. I never thought it was a hassle.

If I had a complaint it would be Asgore. But in hindsight, I think the game would feel less realistic if you didn't have to use the fight command with Asgore at all. He has the same stance as Undyne, that you need to die for the greater good, except you can't run away from him.

After beating the game, Flowey tells you you need to hang out with Alphys to get a better ending. After going back towards Hotland before you can even get to her lab, Undyne calls you and gives you the letter to start the next thing you need to do. I didn't need a guide to figure any of this out, the game came out and told me to do it based on the approach that I took.

I think it's really interesting to see how the game advances based on your decisions. I don't think the game really shames you for killing either, aside from Sans or if you are on a Genocide run. It's more about the fact that there are consequences to your actions, intended or not.
If you don't like the combat then the game probably wouldn't be worth it. I don't play schmups at all but the ACT system and the bullet-hell defense mode just felt like puzzles to me with a smooth and simple difficulty curve. I've actually had trouble getting some of my friends to play it because the ruins are too easy and kind of boring, though I think it steadily ramps up from there.

I had a lot of fun with it and I was really invested. I felt more from this game than any RPG I've played probably in at least the last 5 years. Though I can see how if you didn't connect with the characters or didn't like the humor that the game wouldn't have much to offer you.

I can absolutely understand being frustrated by doing a 'No Mercy' run and thinking it was a 'Genocide' run. To be fair to the game though, the game itself NEVER says genocide is possible at all. There's a reason the first save point doesn't have a kill counter and that the rest don't until you start this path by murdering the whole ruins. You have to go out of your way to murder every living being to start that path, and the entire thing is really a giant hidden part of the game.

The reason people know about it is because of the internet. Also, I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think the demo that's been out for 2 years includes the genocide dialogue if you kill everyone. That was probably a hint from a long time ago.
All that said, even if you don't like the game, as long as you don't hate chipset audio the music is FANTASTIC. Toby knows his music and every track is perfectly tailored to each encounter/area/atmosphere.

[Eurus]

I object to the requirement discussed not for being obscure, but for being very very tedious.

I agree, and I eventually gave up and watched an LP, but I actually think it's kind of thematically appropriate.

It really seems to play up that "psychopath" theme the Genocide route has going for it, and the fourth-wall-breaking focus on "grinding" up your stats, and obsessively doing things just because you can. And now that I think about it, considering how heavily the genocide route smashes the fourth wall, it might even be appropriate that most people only find out about it secondhand through spoilers.

On a semi-related note, I loved Flowey's conversation in the house at the end. I think that most people will go through a pacifist ending, and then try for a genocide ending after that, just to see what happens. Which was exactly Flowey's progression. The genocide ending really reinforces just how alien you, the player are in the context of the universe. Your motivations don't make any sense unless you see them in the context of someone with absolutely nothing at stake except entertainment and the ability to reset whenever they want. And then the genocide ending is almost inevitable, because what else are you going to do? You've already seen the shiny happy ending. Now you might as well slaughter everyone.

Also it's a good thing Battle Against a True Hero is such a good song because my god did I spend a long time listening to it.

[Tectonic Robot]

In regards to people talking about enemies who deserved to die;

You guys have a point about Undyne and such, but, uh, here's the big counterpoint!

You can SAVE.

This isn't some silly meta argument or whatever. It's a variable in the story. Sans, at the judgment, on a second playthrough on which you've gained EXP, says 'you look like you know what's going on. You have some sort of special power, don't you? Don't you think someone with that power has extra responsibility?'

Despite all their intentions, they are, ultimately, utterly, completely helpless before you. Killing them? That's just cruel.

[Amaril]

In regards to people talking about enemies who deserved to die;

You guys have a point about Undyne and such, but, uh, here's the big counterpoint!

You can SAVE.

This isn't some silly meta argument or whatever. It's a variable in the story. Sans, at the judgment, on a second playthrough on which you've gained EXP, says 'you look like you know what's going on. You have some sort of special power, don't you? Don't you think someone with that power has extra responsibility?'

Despite all their intentions, they are, ultimately, utterly, completely helpless before you. Killing them? That's just cruel.

But your character has to die at least once to even find out that that matters. Until then, they have every reason to believe that if they're killed, it'll be for good. So assuming you never die on a Neutral run (which you shouldn't, since the enemies that you should spare pose no real threat, and the ones you're justified in killing die far too quickly to do any real damage if you don't completely suck), you're justified, in character, in killing for self-defense.

[Tectonic Robot]

But your character has to die at least once to even find out that that matters. Until then, they have every reason to believe that if they're killed, it'll be for good. So assuming you never die on a Neutral run (which you shouldn't, since the enemies that you should spare pose no real threat, and the ones you're justified in killing die far too quickly to do any real damage if you don't completely suck), you're justified, in character, in killing for self-defense.

Who is Frisk? In character, I mean?

Is it the person who ends up in the Neutral ending? Or is it the person in the pacifist ending?

Or is it both?

The answer is it's both.

Frisk runs the world several times. At least twice. All of the ACT'S, therefore, are kind of things they'd do, right?

And going by the person from the ACT's alone, and like, judging by how other character's treat them... I think Frisk, in character, is someone who gets the Pacifist endin' on the first try. So saying that in-character you're justified for murdering is... kind of disingenuous?

I mean, maybe on the first playthrough, but even though, I'm very ehhhh on it.

[NichG]

Funny thing is, there's a big difference between things that are justified, and things with good consequences in the long run. If the game has already asked you once 'will you kill?', then in order to ask that question again it has to mix things up. That means asking you about various nuances and combinations: 'if its unjustified and the outcome is bad, will you kill?', 'what if its justified, but the outcome is bad?', 'what if it's unjustified, but the outcome is good?', 'justified, and the outcome is good?', etc, etc.

As for the in-character justification, it could be anything, because the game both embraces meta and doesn't assume 'young = innocent' (in the pacifist ending if you go back to the starting map and talk to Asriel, he says something like 'actually yeah, in retrospect [name of the fallen human] was a really terrible person, but I just didn't see it until now and I thought it was me' - so its perfectly within the character spectrum the game allows for that a random 9 year old kid could be a genocidal maniac.

It's curious though, and it was a bit interesting to try to imagine it. What if you replaced the protagonist with the, say, 40 year old version of themselves? Obviously it breaks some sequences (like, would Toriel still be so over-protective? And it's a lot less poignant when you aren't reminding her and Asgore of their dead children, and so on). I guess the question is, is that feeling of helplessness associated with being a child essential for what the game is trying to do, or just a very effective choice?

[PhantomFox]

Is it bad that I didn't get Toriel's name is a pun until someone said her twitter handle was @2toriel?

[Cespenar]

Is it bad that I didn't get Toriel's name is a pun until someone said her twitter handle was @2toriel?

I haven't until now.

[Shekinah]

Is it bad that I didn't get Toriel's name is a pun until someone said her twitter handle was @2toriel?

I had to have it explained to me, too.

[Hiro Protagonest]

So...
Is the Neutral ending the one you get if you do Pacifist, but fail to go see Undyne and then get more stuff with Alphys? If that's the case, I don't really see how you need to do Neutral run to get the full story. I remember someone saying you need to do all three routes to learn truly everything.


I actually killed Toriel on my first attempt. Rather than feeling cheated or upset about the game, I immediately felt bad, especially after talking to Flowey afterwards. So I reset my game and attempted to spare her. Seeing that her dialogue continued to change made me feel like my sparing was progressing the fight. It worked (and still counted as pacifist since I reloaded my save)! I felt much better, but then Flowey called me out on feeling guilty for murdering her and going back to save her. I was immediately invested at this point.

Thinking back on it though, I absolutely believe the crit at the end is intentional. From a game perspective, spare and talking don't work, so you think "I'll try and fight to get her low then maybe I can spare her." The game is setup not to allow for that and expects you to kill her the first time.

Rather than poor mechanics, for me, this feels like a deliberate narrative choice. It immediately says "Stop treating this like a video game, she is a living creature." Gaming the scenario by cutting her up with your knife until she gives in is actually really messed up if you think about it this way. And of course, if you are cutting someone until they give in, it is very possible that you may accidentally go too far and do real damage, not to mention it is easier to hurt someone that is wounded.

For me it was that simple. After Toriel I continued to spare and spared Papyrus. I went on the date honestly because I thought I'd get some armor out of it, but when that didn't happen it was still fun. It made me try again later with Undyne, especially since Papyrus literally calls you during the fight and says to go hang out with her (this is the hand-holding I'm talking about).

Undyne's fight was really tricky, though it does subtly tell you how to win. At the beginning she says "As long as you are Green, you can't Escape." There's your hint, and checking her says she never runs away. She repeatedly says she won't take your mercy. Finally, her attack speed gets ridiculous at the end and all you get is an ellipsis that never ends. I died several times before I figured out how to spare her, but that was part of the fun for me. I never thought it was a hassle.

If I had a complaint it would be Asgore. But in hindsight, I think the game would feel less realistic if you didn't have to use the fight command with Asgore at all. He has the same stance as Undyne, that you need to die for the greater good, except you can't run away from him.

After beating the game, Flowey tells you you need to hang out with Alphys to get a better ending. After going back towards Hotland before you can even get to her lab, Undyne calls you and gives you the letter to start the next thing you need to do. I didn't need a guide to figure any of this out, the game came out and told me to do it based on the approach that I took.

I think it's really interesting to see how the game advances based on your decisions. I don't think the game really shames you for killing either, aside from Sans or if you are on a Genocide run. It's more about the fact that there are consequences to your actions, intended or not.

It's absolutely possible to spare Toriel without getting her "ghost" dialogue. Cryaotic did it. But the game never teaches you to do this; you're taught that you use ACT until the descriptions/dialogue show they're ready to stop fighting, then use MERCY. At least in the demo. The full game is a bit better about this with the froggit saying "maybe you'll have to use SPARE when their name isn't yellow."
It's also probably possible to wander into Undyne's house without getting the other ending first. I mean, why wouldn't it be?

Oh, and because someone took the liberty of making this beautiful gif:
http://i.imgur.com/bNrV0VK.gif

[mythmonster2]

So...
Is the Neutral ending the one you get if you do Pacifist, but fail to go see Undyne and then get more stuff with Alphys? If that's the case, I don't really see how you need to do Neutral run to get the full story. I remember someone saying you need to do all three routes to learn truly everything.


The Neutral Ending is just a catchall term for everything that is not the Pacifist or Genocide ending. However, the Neutral ending that I think you're talking about is sometimes referred to as pre-Pacifist. The reason why you have to do a Neutral ending is that you can't befriend Alphys until after doing a Neutral ending at least once, and befriending Alphys is required for the true Pacifist ending.

[Hiro Protagonest]

The Neutral Ending is just a catchall term for everything that is not the Pacifist or Genocide ending. However, the Neutral ending that I think you're talking about is sometimes referred to as pre-Pacifist. The reason why you have to do a Neutral ending is that you can't befriend Alphys until after doing a Neutral ending at least once, and befriending Alphys is required for the true Pacifist ending.

Are you sure about that? Why can't you just go to Undyne's house?

[mythmonster2]

Are you sure about that? Why can't you just go to Undyne's house?

I said Alphys, not Undyne. You can befriend Undyne on a Neutral run, no problem. However, without Flowey telling you at the end of a Neutral run to go befriend Alphys, you don't get the call from Undyne saying to deliver a package to Alphys. That leads to the date with Alphys, which leads to friendship with her, which leads to the True Lab, which leads to the True Pacifist ending.

[Yuki Akuma]

You can get the call from Undyne even if Flowey doesn't tell you to go befriend Alphys. The only requirement is that you've beaten Omega-Flowey and watched the cutscene that happens after.

The requirements for the pacifist ending:

Don't kill a single monster.
Befriend Papyrus.
Give Undyne water in hotland.
Befriend Undyne.
Fight ASGORE, then complete Floweytale. If Flowey refuses to fight you, you've done this step on that file and don't need to do it again until you do a True Reset.
Go visit Undyne outside Papyrus's house to get a letter.
Give the letter to Alphys to befriend her.
Do the True Lab dungeon.

If you kill a single monster or don't give Undyne the water, she'll refuse to befriend you, locking you out of the pacifist ending. Killing anything after you befriends you causes her to not give you the letter for Alphys. Undyne is really serious about not being friends with murderers. ;)

[Hiro Protagonest]

"Sans, didn't you go the other way?"
"Shortcut."

"Sans, weren't you just standing over there?"
"Shortcut."

"Sans, how did we get from the alley where there's no entrance to the restaurant, to at a table?"
"Shortcut."

"Sans... why is there a picture of you and me and all our friends... from another timeline?"
"Uhhhh... shortcut?"

[Maryring]

So... uh. Why has there been no mention of the music of the game yet?

The game storyline is great, don't get me wrong. But the music. The music is fantastic. Megalovania, Hopes and Dreams, Spider Dance, Death by Glamour. They're all incredible and really make the game an incredibly enjoyable experience.

And now that I've gone back through all the comments.

Spoilers for real
For me, sparing Toriel, and almost anyone really, was for the most part easy. But for Toriel especially, even if talking didn't work, she was still a kind woman who had shown nothing but gentleness and compassion up until this point. Just because talking didn't work, didn't that mean I would attack her back. Pacifism isn't supposed to be easy. In many ways, it's a challenge of endurance. And her challenge to you wasn't to kill, but to show that you were strong enough to survive and endure the underground outside the ruins. Showing indomitable will... and proving that you have the Determination to stand up to the world and refuse to play by the creed of kill or be killed does show far more strength than succumbing to the easy way out. For me, choosing not to fight Toriel was easy.

Undyne, now she was far more difficult, mostly because I would never have guessed that it'd be possible to run from a boss battle. The "hint" at the start of the fight flew right over my head, because I'm far too used to the idea that trying to run in an RPG is just a waste of turn when done against a boss. So fleeing from Undyne only really happened after I'd tried everything else. And even then, the idea that you had to run into Hotland was, again, the result of trying everything. The fact that it's possible to even run from a boss could've been hinted at better.

Papyrus and Muffet are just plain endurance matches. Mettaton himself was fun, especially because you had the secondary mechanic of trying to raise his ratings. But really, none of these offered any difficulty with regards to sparing them. Considering that the actions you did would have a positive effect on the ratings, to me it was obvious that you had to increase the ratings somehow for something good to happen.

And with regards to Asgore. At that point, the mercy option was destroyed. That, more than anything, was a declaration that mercy would be impossible. Hence you'd have to fight. Even then, I still chose Mercy at the end.

And I also chose Mercy for Flowey. Even before I knew who he really was. Because I figured that ultimately, he is the one who needed mercy and compassion the most.

[Balmas]

Is it bad that I didn't get Toriel's name is a pun until someone said her twitter handle was @2toriel?

I find it much more entertaining that Asgore and Toriel have a child named Asriel, especially when you consider that Asgore is notorious for being bad at naming things. :smalltongue:

[Cespenar]

Regarding awesome soundtracks, this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTNJu_fcNVk) is a thing, apparently.

[Hiro Protagonest]

...Power of NEO is an unfinished remix of Battle Against A True Hero.

Unfortunately, this only confirms Mettaton is just a poser, trying to be something else. I wish we got a real fight.

[Forum Explorer]

After grinding a tiny bit I got further along, but that really doesn't say a lot other than 'I can take more hits now so I can last through more fights before dying'. :smallbiggrin: I just never had a fondness for shmups, so the dodge mechanic pretty much is just tedious for me. Like I told a good friend-- the last shmup I found myself engaged in was 1942. Most everything else about Undertale is decent to pretty good (the humor is probably the best part).


I actually really love this style of shmups (didn't know they were called that), where they are the absolutely insane dodging that goes on forever. So I get good at them.

I killed her by accident once, and then got lectured by Flowery. But what pissed me off, is that she got me low and started deliberately missing me. I decided that I couldn't stand that, and did a rematch where I killed Toriel without her getting me low. Flowerly called me a 'sicko' for that one. :smalltongue:


I got what I like to call the Undyne ending, which I think is appropriate cause in retrospect, I played the game as if I was a mini-Undyne.

I played with the attitude that I could and would best anybody in combat. But I would do my best to not kill anyone. So I would try and spare everyone, but accidents did happen. The dogs for example, didn't get that yellow spare sign so I kept thinking I had to get them a little lower til I accidentally killed them. I figured that for the 'mini-bosses' I would have to just fight them til they are low, then do the act stuff, which I did for them from then on.

Mettaton is another exception to being spared, because when you get him low, he's a torso and a head. It never occurred to me that it would be 'good' to spare him at that point. I did feel bad when he couldn't be rebuilt though.

I spared Asgore, because to my mind he was important enough to the underworld that I wouldn't want to kill him, even if it meant never getting home to the surface again.

Flowery didn't get spared because **** that guy.

Anyways, my ending was that Undyne took over for Asgore and took over the plan as well. Papyrus got the job of his dreams, but Undyne was apparently much better at the whole soul collection thing, and a much more militaristic leader in general. I like to think my character trained and eagerly awaited a final climatic showdown with Undyne. Or that they simply sealed the entrance so no more people could get in.

I am planning on doing a peace run next. Though I do want to see what happens (and if it's possible) to kill Undyne in combat.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Rather than poor mechanics, for me, this feels like a deliberate narrative choice. It immediately says "Stop treating this like a video game, she is a living creature." Gaming the scenario by cutting her up with your knife until she gives in is actually really messed up if you think about it this way. And of course, if you are cutting someone until they give in, it is very possible that you may accidentally go too far and do real damage, not to mention it is easier to hurt someone that is wounded.

This. This right here. This is what I have a HUGE problem with.

Ultimately, this *IS* a video game. It might not be a classical RPG, but it is, in fact, a video game. Some people have enough problems distinguishing fantasy from reality with this kind of BS.

This is not real. This is a game. And what really pissed me off about how the game was written is that it tries to blur the line between a game and real life morality. It's basically a redoux on the idiotic 'violent video games cause teen violence' nonsense. Which is not entertaining in the least. And it really cheezes me off when someone tries to conflate blowing off some steam by blowing up random pixels with actual violence. Having a video game attempt to call out the player, not the character but breaking the fourth wall to ridicule the player, on being a violent person because of how he plays a video game?

No.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I don't like the idea of "just a game." Is everything a game? No, some stories are told in a format better suited to books or movies. But Undertale has just as much right to exist as Hotline Miami. The idea that fiction could really mean something got put into my head about a year ago.

I still find that battle to be one of the rough patches, and would absolutely remove the auto-crit at the end, because it sent the wrong message to me at least. Undertale could definitely be improved in polish. There's a point to be made about how easy it is to get shunted into the most unsatisfying path, but anyone whose response to "show some mercy" is "no, screw that" gets no sympathy from me.

[Forum Explorer]

This. This right here. This is what I have a HUGE problem with.

Ultimately, this *IS* a video game. It might not be a classical RPG, but it is, in fact, a video game. Some people have enough problems distinguishing fantasy from reality with this kind of BS.

This is not real. This is a game. And what really pissed me off about how the game was written is that it tries to blur the line between a game and real life morality. It's basically a redoux on the idiotic 'violent video games cause teen violence' nonsense. Which is not entertaining in the least. And it really cheezes me off when someone tries to conflate blowing off some steam by blowing up random pixels with actual violence. Having a video game attempt to call out the player, not the character but breaking the fourth wall to ridicule the player, on being a violent person because of how he plays a video game?

No.

I don't think this needs spoilers but just in case.

So in effect you are getting upset that the game dare not be a simple hack and slash, but instead try for a more compelling and more original form of storytelling?

Because that's all it's doing. Trying to engage players more by directly bringing up these questions, and trying to make people think. For all it's comedic lightheartedness, the game is trying to be taken seriously, or at least the story on a whole is.

Some books are straight up fiction, some books have 'deeper meanings', and they both try and engage the reader on different levels. And they'll use a variety of tactics and methods to do so.

For example, House of Leaves does it's best to convince you that it is a manuscript written by someone going insane and being stalked by a monster while the author compiles a bunch of fragments about a different fictional work together.

Or on a more simple example, the Animorphs series always read like it was an account by one of the characters writing it down for posterity.

While the opposite can be seen in Discworld novels where it reads like, well a novel. Great, fantastic, and very rewarding reads, but it doesn't use the same methods to try and engage the reader, by even attempting to create the illusion that it might actually be happening somewhere.

You getting upset at a game for doing something similar falls between hilarious and weirdly ironic. :smallamused:

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I don't think this needs spoilers but just in case.

So in effect you are getting upset that the game dare not be a simple hack and slash, but instead try for a more compelling and more original form of storytelling?

Because that's all it's doing. Trying to engage players more by directly bringing up these questions, and trying to make people think. For all it's comedic lightheartedness, the game is trying to be taken seriously, or at least the story on a whole is.

Some books are straight up fiction, some books have 'deeper meanings', and they both try and engage the reader on different levels. And they'll use a variety of tactics and methods to do so.

For example, House of Leaves does it's best to convince you that it is a manuscript written by someone going insane and being stalked by a monster while the author compiles a bunch of fragments about a different fictional work together.

Or on a more simple example, the Animorphs series always read like it was an account by one of the characters writing it down for posterity.

While the opposite can be seen in Discworld novels where it reads like, well a novel. Great, fantastic, and very rewarding reads, but it doesn't use the same methods to try and engage the reader, by even attempting to create the illusion that it might actually be happening somewhere.

You getting upset at a game for doing something similar falls between hilarious and weirdly ironic. :smallamused:

I don't mind trying something different. I mind turning a game into a soapbox for your own brand of morality and attempt to belittle people who think differently. That's what I have a problem with.

[Forum Explorer]

I don't mind trying something different. I mind turning a game into a soapbox for your own brand of morality and attempt to belittle people who think differently. That's what I have a problem with.

It's really not, but I guess your mileage may vary. I see nothing wrong with characters in a game being upset that you are killing them, or rather, I don't see that as preachy. No more then I see losing Karma in Fallout 3 preachy when you blow up Megaton.

[Winthur]

reminder that toby fox thinks all the overanalyzing of the point of the game is completely over-the-top
reminder that dog ending is the canon ending
reminder that even with that, all of the choices and consequences and attention to detail make this game infinitely better than that spec ops: the line linear bullcrap

[Alanzeign]

Again, that was just my experience and my reaction to the game. But there are many ways to express things through different media, be it games, web comics, or whatever else. There is no reason that a video game needs to be confined to one person's personal expectations of existing to solely blow off some steam killing stuff. This is also not the first attempt at a medium exploring this avenue, it's not new. I mean, OOTS itself portrays that very message of it NOT being ok to go run out and kill all goblins because they have green skin and the 'game' (or world, in the case of OOTS, which is even worse) was designed for you to get XP that way.

All in all, even watching players killing monsters left and right in the game I felt like it didn't so much call you out on being a horrible person or anything like that, but showed there were consequences to your actions. That is, aside from a very specific route that is never mentioned in the game as a possibility, but still exists. Most games don't have consequences for killing enemies because that is the objective from a simplified 'game' perspective, which this game subverts. So I'm not sure where you are getting the game pushing a specific brand of morality or anything on you, I just don't see it. It's like saying you don't like any story/medium that subverts its genre. Which is fine, to each their own, but I don't see the preachy side.

I mean, even if you do kill Toriel, she just encourages you. It's only Flowey that calls you out, and his logic is not something I would take as fact. The game is pretty heavy handed if you play genocide mode, but seriously, you're literally playing a murder simulator at that point. You even have to kill creatures that don't want to fight at all.

Also, the idea of something being 'just a game' is quite controversial in the MMO crowd, where the people you interact with are real people. Anonymity causes some people to act more aggressively or not care about how they treat others. This blends further on the internet outside of a game context. Just stop by some Youtube comments sometime for a great (and terrifying) example of this.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Also, the idea of something being 'just a game' is quite controversial in the MMO crowd, where the people you interact with are real people. Anonymity causes some people to act more aggressively or not care about how they treat others. This blends further on the internet outside of a game context. Just stop by some Youtube comments sometime for a great (and terrifying) example of this.

Undertale is not an MMO and does not have the capability of playing multiplayer, so your argument has no basis in this instance.

In fact, your argument is, turned around, precisely my concern. By attempting to make the player treat characters as people, you encourage a reciprocal viewpoint of 'everyone is just a video game character', which is dangerous when presented to those who already have a tenuous grasp on what we fondly call reality in the first place. Sociopathy is little more than seeing the world as nothing more than a video game, after all.

Again, I don't have a problem with the idea of mercy as a foundation for an RPG style video game. I have problems with the implementation and attempted shaming of people who choose a path other than the one the creators intended.

[Hiro Protagonest]

It's somewhat amusing that here I'm on the side of the characters meaning something, and on another site I'm taking the stance of how the characters aren't real people with someone who's like "why would you ever do genociiiide".

[Eurus]

I was disappointed that Undertale didn't take it a level deeper, actually, and get into what it means for someone to have made a game like this in the first place. After all, the hypothetical player is probably just doing it because it's there, right? So what about the guy who wrote the option, knowing that people would do it?

The relationship between creator and player is strange, especially when the former is trying to get an emotional response out of the latter by creating empathy with these characters...

[Lord Raziere]

I was disappointed that Undertale didn't take it a level deeper, actually, and get into what it means for someone to have made a game like this in the first place. After all, the hypothetical player is probably just doing it because it's there, right? So what about the guy who wrote the option, knowing that people would do it?

The relationship between creator and player is strange, especially when the former is trying to get an emotional response out of the latter by creating empathy with these characters...


ooooh, now thats a good idea for a fan-fic. since the Annoying Dog is supposed to represent Toby, we could just have the Annoying Dog be the one who created all this, then make a fan-fic run where one examines that, possibly by replacing Flowey with the Annoying Dog.

[Forum Explorer]

In fact, your argument is, turned around, precisely my concern. By attempting to make the player treat characters as people, you encourage a reciprocal viewpoint of 'everyone is just a video game character', which is dangerous when presented to those who already have a tenuous grasp on what we fondly call reality in the first place. Sociopathy is little more than seeing the world as nothing more than a video game, after all.

Again, I don't have a problem with the idea of mercy as a foundation for an RPG style video game. I have problems with the implementation and attempted shaming of people who choose a path other than the one the creators intended.

That...doesn't follow. How does a story/game that treats fictional characters and encourages the player to be more empathetic result in someone being less empathetic towards other humans? Even if they were full sociopaths, you'd think that stories like Undertale would only help.


It hardly does this. If you play the game in one certain way, and it's damn hard to do that (not just killing all the bosses and one off encounters but literally grinding until no random monsters will appear and you have to do so from the beginning), then the game will start treating you like a monster.

Any other route and your complaint is essentially invalid. Characters will mourn each other and that's about it.

[Hiro Protagonest]

reminder that dog ending is the canon ending

Well, frankly, Neutral route has no satisfying endings, so I don't care if Toby decided one of them is correct.

[Rosstin]

Undertale was so good. Felt very Homestuck, which makes sense given that Toby did a lot of music for that series.

[Winthur]

Well, frankly, Neutral route has no satisfying endings, so I don't care if Toby decided one of them is correct.

* are you really implying that the ending where everyone is the happiest with the resulting course of action and where sans himself gives thanks is bad

[Guancyto]

Well, frankly, Neutral route has no satisfying endings, so I don't care if Toby decided one of them is correct.
Dog ending is a joke ending...

You know, like the dog ending in Silent Hill (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUDcSeUvkOw).

Actually, the accidental crit on Toriel touches on something that's bothered me for a really, really long time in "pacifist" routes. It's like Batman. Batman, supposedly, has never killed anyone. His day job (well, night job) is hitting people with his fists until they stop moving. With everything that can go wrong with brain damage, internal injuries and just general human cussedness (humans are actually sort of good at continuing to fight while fatally injured), it's nigh-on absurd to suggest that he doesn't have a body count in the low hundreds, much less one of zero.

I'm actually super down with the idea of accidentally offing Toriel while not meaning to because it sells the idea that hey, the only time you should draw your... toy knife is if you're prepared to have somebody die. Combine that with the "oh crap what have I done" face she gets if she accidentally kills you (and the fact that she intentionally starts missing if you're low on health) - "chip off enough HP until they're ready to concede and that will totally work" was the assumption she was making.

Overall it's quite frustrating but in retrospect, much more intelligent than it seems.

[Avian Overlord]

Actually, the accidental crit on Toriel touches on something that's bothered me for a really, really long time in "pacifist" routes. It's like Batman. Batman, supposedly, has never killed anyone. His day job (well, night job) is hitting people with his fists until they stop moving. With everything that can go wrong with brain damage, internal injuries and just general human cussedness (humans are actually sort of good at continuing to fight while fatally injured), it's nigh-on absurd to suggest that he doesn't have a body count in the low hundreds, much less one of zero.

I'm actually super down with the idea of accidentally offing Toriel while not meaning to because it sells the idea that hey, the only time you should draw your... toy knife is if you're prepared to have somebody die. Combine that with the "oh crap what have I done" face she gets if she accidentally kills you (and the fact that she intentionally starts missing if you're low on health) - "chip off enough HP until they're ready to concede and that will totally work" was the assumption she was making.

Overall it's quite frustrating but in retrospect, much more intelligent than it seems.

One of my favorite little touches the game does is that it treats existential violence consistently. Well, most of my spares were via low HP surrender, so I accepted a certain amount of dust on my hands. One the reasons I like neutral actually is that in the game you can defend yourself without necessarily killing everyone in your path, but if you do, some monsters will probably die.

[Forum Explorer]

And that was truly amazing and wonderful. I did not see that twist coming at all, and that has to be one of the best boss fights ever, with such a nice trick in fighting the 'lost souls'. And the full talking to everyone afterwords was great too.

The clincher of Flowery begging you not to play again though? That was spectacular, and as I am a sentimental sort, it pretty much means I will never be able to bring myself to do a genocide run and I mock my friend for being able to do so. (Though it's a running gag between us that he's a evil sneak)


Anyways, my headcanon on the whole thing.
Chara's plan was to die, and then be reincarnated through determination, and deliberately die to Asriel so that he would take all 7 souls. And then he'd seize control of Asriel and devastate everything as he saw fit. But doing so cost Chara whatever remained of his humanity, turning him into a purely evil spirit.

And it kinda worked. But when he possessed his 'reincarnation' he created Frisk. His reflection, the opposite side of the coin. Despite their physical similarities, in the end, they are opposites, Chara is a omnicidal maniac, and Frisk is out to save everyone. Where Chara is violent and vicious, Frisk is kind and empathetic. And so on and so forth. The two possess the same body, but cannot coexist.

In comes you, the player. You act as a sort of spiritual guide for Frisk/Chara. A guardian 'angel' so to speak. Your guidance strengthens one of two spirits depending on which side you encourage. And you provide the means for this young child to take on the strongest monsters to ever exist without fear and the ability to be victorious against any opponent. You also harness all the timestreams of reality, to remember what's going to happen, to reset whenever you dislike a decision, and even being able to reset Frisk/Chara themselves. (You are also the angel the prophecy spoke of, with Frisk/Chara being the avatar of your actions). In the context of the story, I guess you'd be a sort of benevolent (or not, depending) Elder God. You exist outside of time and space as the inhabitants of the universe understand it, and you can create or destroy the universe almost at will.

In the pacifist route, you strengthen Frisk up as much as possible, eventually driving Chara out to whatever afterlife awaits him. When that happens, Frisk is finally able to tell people his name, and wield determination himself (refusing death, kinda like Undyne does, instead of resetting like you do), as well as nearly fully controlling himself (forcing you to take only 'act' actions).

In the genocide route, you amp up Chara to a level that even he wasn't expecting. To the point where he doesn't even need his original plan. Again, the further you go, the more control he seizes, until he has full control, resulting in him killing certain opponents without input from you. Finally this culminates in him fully manifesting and destroying the universe, no matter if you like it or not. If you start the game again, the soul you are selling is not your own, because ultimately Chara has hit his limit, and cannot affect anything outside his own reality, but instead you are selling Frisk's. And once that happens, you can no longer empower Frisk at all, and Chara is the only soul in the body of the human.

Finally in the neutral ending, you empower them both a small amount, but ultimately neither of them can seize control. This results in a couple of possibilities, either you the player stay in control of body, or instead, they fuse, and become just an ordinary human, with both a good side and bad side like everyone else. I don't know which interpretation I like more.

[Zalabim]

See, if you can't tell me anything about something other than I have to do it, I'm not going to do it. That's no proper way to recommend anything. If you tell me it's a cross between turn-based RPG and shmup gameplay with a humorous dialog style, I still want to know what you mean by humorous, but at least I know I like turn-based RPGs (well, not the turn based aspect, but the strategy of it) and shmups. If it doesn't have controller support though, I'm out. I am not going to play a shmup on arrow keys. Well-handled controls are the keystone of gameplay.

[NichG]

See, if you can't tell me anything about something other than I have to do it, I'm not going to do it. That's no proper way to recommend anything. If you tell me it's a cross between turn-based RPG and shmup gameplay with a humorous dialog style, I still want to know what you mean by humorous, but at least I know I like turn-based RPGs (well, not the turn based aspect, but the strategy of it) and shmups. If it doesn't have controller support though, I'm out. I am not going to play a shmup on arrow keys. Well-handled controls are the keystone of gameplay.

It's not something I'd recommend on the basis of its gameplay. Any individual gameplay element taken in isolation is honestly pretty average. But in terms of overall experience, it's quite good. Even though the individual gameplay elements are meh on their own, they're used in ways that fit together with the mood, the context, the kind of experience the game wants to develop. In other words, it's extremely well-crafted and designed as a cohesive whole. It fits together in a way that you wouldn't get if you just took your 10 favorite gameplay mechanics or RPG ideas and threw them together into a bucket.

So when it comes down to it and you want to talk about liking strategy or well-handled controls, we could talk about those particular elements, but it would kind of be missing the point. It'd be like discussing how FTL handles keyboard mappings or something like that - sure, you can talk about it, but its not really useful to do so.

I guess if I were going to recommend Undertale on a particular basis I'd say something like 'Undertale is a game that attempts to address feelings of jadedness in long-term gamers; some gamers who have played it have experienced becoming less jaded as a result.' That sounds like a medicine advertisement I guess...

[Razade]

See, if you can't tell me anything about something other than I have to do it, I'm not going to do it. That's no proper way to recommend anything.

Then allow me to tell you why you absolutely shouldn't waste your money in extreme detail.


If you tell me it's a cross between turn-based RPG and shmup gameplay

It does have turn based RPG elements that turn into SHUMP/Bullet Hell elements however both terms are very generous for what Undertale provides. The game focuses on neither so both are very simple and incredibly repetitive. As soon as you figure out how to beat the random encounters with the "Talk not Fight" focus then it really comes down to pushing one button over and over until the enemies go away. This is even worse for bosses where you literally just sit around and wait for the Boss to get bored fighting you. This makes the game empty as you never really -earn- anything. The game tells you you earn things sure but that's not how a good story is written. Which brings me to this. Over all the gameplay is...not very good and it gets boring fast. Mr. Fox had a good concept with the "Talk not fight" concept but then he ruins it by making the bosses uninteresting because all their attacks and general methods of combat are nearly identical (save a very select few) to the enemies themselves which makes the Bosses not feel like anything special. I won't spoil the end boss but I'll simply say that had I not invested 10 hours or so into the game I'd have uninstalled the game after beating it.


with a humorous dialog style, I still want to know what you mean by humorous

The comedy is actually really anachronistic and also, like the combat, repetitive. It's like Family Guy where the joke lasts just a little too long and stops being funny. There's a lot of puns. A. Lot. And the over all tenor of the game makes it so each time a pun is made the entire game literally pauses to point it out to you which makes the writing seem infantile. The game is also "On Rails" as it were and none of the characters really stick around long and their writing and development are more or less wasted on you unless you're committed to doing all three endings of the game (True Pacifist, Neutral and MURDER). The only interesting character and the only interesting fight is Mrs. Muffat.


but at least I know I like turn-based RPGs (well, not the turn based aspect, but the strategy of it) and shmups.

If you're attracted to the game because of these two things then save your money. Neither are involved enough for you to get much out of them past five or so minutes into the game. And the "puzzles" the game throws you outside of combat isn't going to give you much enjoyment.


If it doesn't have controller support though, I'm out. I am not going to play a shmup on arrow keys. Well-handled controls are the keystone of gameplay.

It does not have controller support and the arrow key controls make the SHUMP parts of the game clunky and tedious. Undertale is a vastly overrated game.

That said, if you're into video game music, buy the soundtrack for Undertale. The developer of the game was originally a musician and it shows. The soundtrack is pretty darn good.

[Yuki Akuma]

It does not have controller support and the arrow key controls make the SHUMP parts of the game clunky and tedious. Undertale is a vastly overrated game.

It... does have controller support, though?

[Forum Explorer]

See, if you can't tell me anything about something other than I have to do it, I'm not going to do it. That's no proper way to recommend anything. If you tell me it's a cross between turn-based RPG and shmup gameplay with a humorous dialog style, I still want to know what you mean by humorous, but at least I know I like turn-based RPGs (well, not the turn based aspect, but the strategy of it) and shmups. If it doesn't have controller support though, I'm out. I am not going to play a shmup on arrow keys. Well-handled controls are the keystone of gameplay.

Okay, well as others have said, it's a mix of shmup, and turn-based RPG. Mostly shmup, as the RPG stuff is very limited in more or less simply choosing the correct answer until the encounter is completed.

The shmup part is presumably not very difficult. I haven't played a lot of them, and pretty much no fight gives me much trouble. And that's using the keyboard. Speaking of which, I didn't find the keyboard controls to be bad at all, though apparently there is joystick support (http://undertale.wikia.com/wiki/Joystick_Config).

The humor is basically split into two kinds, the first being ribbing of (mostly videogame, but you get some other ones too) tropes, and the character's personalities. The latter only really works if you get invested in the characters, which the game does it's best to do.

The same with the story. On paper it's a pretty simple story with a few twists. If you aren't invested, it'll be a mediocre experience. If you resent games trying to play with your emotions, this isn't the game for you.

Personally, I'd say it's a lot like Cave Story. A simple story with simple gameplay, but done really well, and put together it comes out as a really good game. A lot of effort was put in, and it shows. But I guess it's important to temper your expectations. It is a good game for what it is, but it is still an indie game made mostly by a single person with some help from their friends.

Also the music is amazing.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Then allow me to tell you why you absolutely shouldn't waste your money in extreme detail.
...
Undertale is a vastly overrated game.

It is vastly overrated. People are also saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, so that's not exactly a damning statement. Seriously, it's ten dollars. Buy it.

I wouldn't recommend Undertale the way I'd recommend something like Super Mario Galaxy. Instead, I'll focus on its strengths and address its weaknesses.

Undertale tells a very good story. The pacing is great. You start off in this kind of bizarre area where things aren't too dangerous, then it gets more serious. Then the tension suddenly drops off and jokes are getting tossed around as you go through this brighter area. Then there's a darker area where you attract the attention of a powerful warrior monster. In your encounters with the warrior, things are tense while outside of that it's a very calm area. Then things get sillier again, before getting near the final destination where it goes back to serious.

The consequence system is a "good enough" execution of a high concept. Toby managed to present his core concept well enough to get it through to the player, with three distinct paths. Whatever I feel about the Neutral path, it is the easiest path and so leaving a desire to reset is an adequate way of handling things. Pacifist is completely different from Genocide, and both of those have solid endings. NPCs may like you more in Deus Ex if you do a pacifist run of that, the difficulty ramps up if you go High Chaos in Dishonored, and you get a different ending cutscene if you decide to kit out with sweet corrupted wargear in Dawn of War 2, but Undertale has two vastly different experiences. That is the genius of Toby's consequence system, and the execution works like nothing before.

I found the humor to be great. It's partially subjective but I just disagree with Razade here. Toby knows the puns aren't funny, and they aren't EVERYWHERE either.

Razade is also being unfair to the characters (but he said Ms. Muffet is the only good character so I'm not sure why I'm taking this seriously). If they don't "stick around" for long enough, it's because you killed them. They get plenty of development in Pacifist, and Genocide adds even more to some of the characters, both major and minor. Of course, if you accidentally killing something in the first area or somesuch, one character still won't befriend you because she really doesn't take kindly to you killing any monsters. But the characters are great. My favorite is Undyne. She's prideful but hardworking, and abrasive yet fair. She's a flawed but likable character.

Alright, that's it. That's what I recommend the game on. Great pacing, great characters, good humor, interesting concepts that work in practice.

Now here's the one thing I'll mark against it: the smoothness of progression. This is different from pacing. Pacing is the atmosphere. Progression is based purely in gameplay. Essentially, it's a subset or branch of pacing, since the gameplay should tie in to the rest of it. And for the most part, the progressions works. You can easily get through 90% of Pacifist without any guide beyond the tagline of "you don't have to kill anyone." There is a bossfight that is the sole exception. I've seen people figure it out quickly, I've seen people waste two hours on it, I've seen people just look up the solution, and I, personally, know I never would've gotten it because of something I had tried earlier in the very same game.
UDNYNE I LOVE YOU BUT YOUR FIGHT IS THE WORST!

...So, the solution to this fight is to flee. You cannot flee while green, you have to be red. Okay. But here's the thing. I know that fleeing is capable of exiting a bossfight in Undertale, because I decided to flee against Toriel. Guess what Toriel did? She blocked the way, just like she said! Where does Undyne's fight take place? IN FRONT OF A TUNNEL YOU HAVE TO GET THROUGH! How would I ever know that she WOULDN'T just block the way?!
I've also leveled complaints at the first boss, but I've decided that was mostly due to my experience with the demo and the full game would've been different (because the demo has some key things missing... Toby, why didn't you update it...). I've also seen people level complaints at one of the end-bosses, but I think that design was fine.

In any case, the bossfights are all interesting, but the solutions can warrant using gamefaqs.

So yeah, I recommend Undertale on the basis of excellently utilizing the narrative tools of games and having great writing. My favorite RPG is a more "standard" one, but this game is worth at least watching Let's Plays of. It's worth your time, even if you value the $10 that much.


Personally, I'd say it's a lot like Cave Story. A simple story with simple gameplay, but done really well, and put together it comes out as a really good game. A lot of effort was put in, and it shows. But I guess it's important to temper your expectations. It is a good game for what it is, but it is still an indie game made mostly by a single person with some help from their friends.

I've been thinking of this comparison for a while, and I'd say it's very different from Cave Story. Daisuke Amaya spent years working to make sure players would never get stuck on any kind of gameplay aspect of his game, until he decided to implement the hidden level. He also made a story that was really good to go along with it. Toby Fox spent years making sure that his narrative was properly conveyed and his story was so good that it warranted the narrative exploration. He then designed interesting bosses but skimped on the polish.

[Razade]

It... does have controller support, though?

None of my controllers worked with it, which after some poking around seems a problem with the Steam version of the game. I stand corrected all the same. I stand by the rest of my statements however.



Razade is also being unfair to the characters (but he said Ms. Muffet is the only good character so I'm not sure why I'm taking this seriously). If they don't "stick around" for long enough, it's because you killed them. They get plenty of development in Pacifist, and Genocide adds even more to some of the characters, both major and minor. Of course, if you accidentally killing something in the first area or somesuch, one character still won't befriend you because she really doesn't take kindly to you killing any monsters. But the characters are great. My favorite is Undyne. She's prideful but hardworking, and abrasive yet fair. She's a flawed but likable character.

The only character I killed was Toriel when I did my neutral run. I've done all three runs and I will stand by the statement. Characterization in Undertale is lackluster and paper thin with a wild fanbase attributing more to the characters than the game ever provides. And that's cool, it just isn't an argument for the characters being well written.

[Hiro Protagonest]

The only character I killed was Toriel when I did my neutral run. I've done all three runs and I will stand by the statement. Characterization in Undertale is lackluster and paper thin with a wild fanbase attributing more to the characters than the game ever provides. And that's cool, it just isn't an argument for the characters being well written.

To be honest, I don't get the love for Papyrus. But I've also disliked similar characters in other stories, so I chalk it up to incompatible personalities or somesuch. He's in all the moments I consider funniest, too.

[Razade]

To be honest, I don't get the love for Papyrus. But I've also disliked similar characters in other stories, so I chalk it up to that. He's in all the moments I consider funniest, too.

Sans and Papyrus make me want to punch someone, they're both super agitating and the two characters who stick around longest. Undyne is just Tsundere to the max and that trope bores me. Alphys was -ok- except, going back to the game being repetitive, her constant calling and causing me to essentially pause the game every ten seconds was frustrating and needless. There was no reason why I had to -stop playing the game- to sort through her dialogue. Torial is just Super Mom and Asgore is barely a participant for most peoples game unless they're really trying to go for the completion route of doing every story. But that's what I mean really. The characters are, for the most part, one noted. They're not well developed and we can quibble over how well the writing is but the biggest problem with Undertale is that it was made (mostly) by one dude and that one dude didn't have the money to make the game longer and things took a hit. I get that. Acknowledging the limitations of the developer doesn't magically make the problems less important or less severe however. The game is simply too short to invest any sort of time or emotional attachment to the characters despite the game telling you you should have some level of emotional attachment to them. That's poor writing, that's not something to debate over. A game telling you how to feel is heavy handed and lame and that's all 10ish hours of Undertale. Heavy handed over emotional pap and lame justifications for it.

[Forum Explorer]

I've been thinking of this comparison for a while, and I'd say it's very different from Cave Story. Daisuke Amaya spent years working to make sure players would never get stuck on any kind of gameplay aspect of his game, until he decided to implement the hidden level. He also made a story that was really good to go along with it. Toby Fox spent years making sure that his narrative was properly conveyed and his story was so good that it warranted the narrative exploration. He then designed interesting bosses but skimped on the polish.

Different paths to similar results. :smalltongue: I haven't done any research about the people themselves, or how they made the games. I'm just saying from what I see when I played them both. (I think I'll play Cave Story again soon.)

As for the Undyne fight, I don't know why, but I got that I was supposed to do something there pretty quickly. A combination of her description (The Heroine who NEVER gives up), and her saying it was her final attack. That, and us staying on the Red mode, got me to look around at all the options, and maybe see if spare was available, which let me see run, and then I chose it because why not?


Anyways, another important thing to take note; the game is short. I think I did a pacifist run in under 4 hours, and that was going back multiple times to talk to everyone (even the random monsters), 'fighting' enough monsters to raise enough money to buy Temmie Education, and exploring everywhere I had been multiple times to try and find everything. Had I just played the main part I could've done it in under 2 hours, easy.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Undyne is just Tsundere to the max and that trope bores me.

I have something of a resistance to anime mannerisms, which Undyne does possess (what's funny is there's actually a reason for it, but that doesn't make them good), but being one-note tsundere is not something she is. There are some things that are tsundere about her, but at least she's likable, which is much more than I can say about someone like Tohsaka Rin. Most of the reason she dislikes you is because you're a human, which is understandable. When spending further time with her, she's readily willing to point out your and all her friends' good traits even through her rough attitude. She's also hotheaded, which isn't a trait tied to tsundere (by contrast, Rin is very cool).

Also, you fight Asgore even if you do everything right for Pacifist. it's a requirement.

As for Sans... he's an interesting one. I haven't really delved into his personality though.

We could go back and forth all day about consequences and emotional manipulation and probably not get anywhere. The only thing I have to say about that is: the game gives you a choice. Spec Ops: The Line gave you no choice and just told you to feel bad about buying their game.

[Guancyto]

I have a question about the Genocide route.

SO. At the very end of the Genocide route, where you're presented with the option to destroy the world or not (at which point Chara does it for you)...

...what happens if you just, you know, close the game instead of making a choice?

What happens if you close the game after you've decided not to destroy the world, but before Chara turns on you?

What happens if you close the game after you've decided not to destroy the world, after Chara turns on you, but while she's monologuing and before she hits?

[Lord Raziere]

I have a question about the Genocide route.

SO. At the very end of the Genocide route, where you're presented with the option to destroy the world or not (at which point Chara does it for you)...

...what happens if you just, you know, close the game instead of making a choice?

What happens if you close the game after you've decided not to destroy the world, but before Chara turns on you?

What happens if you close the game after you've decided not to destroy the world, after Chara turns on you, but while she's monologuing and before she hits?


I dunno....and I'm not really keen on doing a Genocide run myself to find out. I'm still on my Pacifist run and I still feel its kinda wrong to do Genocide, even if I don't particularly care for the characters in particular, even if their personalities aren't the best things in the world they're still not intending any harm and don't want a bad outcome.

perhaps I should google the answer or check the undertale wiki or something? I think people would've tried that at some point and reported if it did something....

Edit: ok, checked the wiki. Turns out? YOU CAN'T EXIT OUT OF THE GAME WHEN THIS IS HAPPENING, AT THIS POINT, THE ONLY WAY TO CLOSE THE GAME, IS THROUGH THE COMPUTER'S TASK MANAGER.

so yeah, the answer is something incredibly boring and kind of a jerk move.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Different paths to similar results. :smalltongue: I haven't done any research about the people themselves, or how they made the games. I'm just saying from what I see when I played them both. (I think I'll play Cave Story again soon.)
Cave Story is well-written, but much less ambitious about its narrative. Daisuke also erred on the side of being a bit too easy and slightly samey to ensure the player would never be stuck on gameplay (Blood-Stained Sanctuary was created after his friends gave him feedback as such). Toby had ambitious narrative and erred on the side of too difficult and obtuse in exchange for variety and challenge (yet he still designed two bossfights that were pure endurance runs... Toby is just not as good of a game designer as Pixel, no matter how highly I regard his writing).

I have a question about the Genocide route.

SO. At the very end of the Genocide route, where you're presented with the option to destroy the world or not (at which point Chara does it for you)...

...what happens if you just, you know, close the game instead of making a choice?

What happens if you close the game after you've decided not to destroy the world, but before Chara turns on you?

What happens if you close the game after you've decided not to destroy the world, after Chara turns on you, but while she's monologuing and before she hits?



I dunno....and I'm not really keen on doing a Genocide run myself to find out. I'm still on my Pacifist run and I still feel its kinda wrong to do Genocide, even if I don't particularly care for the characters in particular, even if their personalities aren't the best things in the world they're still not intending any harm and don't want a bad outcome.

perhaps I should google the answer or check the undertale wiki or something? I think people would've tried that at some point and reported if it did something....

Edit: ok, checked the wiki. Turns out? YOU CAN'T EXIT OUT OF THE GAME WHEN THIS IS HAPPENING, AT THIS POINT, THE ONLY WAY TO CLOSE THE GAME, IS THROUGH THE COMPUTER'S TASK MANAGER.

so yeah, the answer is something incredibly boring and kind of a jerk move.


I don't think it's a jerk move at all. It shows that Chara is in control here, and you still have ways around it, just alt-f4 or something.

And if you exit it that way, there's no negative impact for resetting from there.

[Guancyto]

I don't think it's a jerk move at all. It shows that Chara is in control here, and you still have ways around it, just alt-f4 or something.

And if you exit it that way, there's no negative impact for resetting from there.
Interesting.
Makes sense, though. At the point at which Chara is directly addressing/attacking the player, they are challenging the 'god' of their universe. They have substantial power by that point (closing the game is a power Flowey has at the end of Neutral and he's not really even powerful enough to destroy the world), but they're not in control. It would be a particularly stupid god who accepted an antagonistic mortal's terms if they didn't like them - the power of task manager (or windows explorer (http://i.imgur.com/AmabR7h.png)) trumps all!

[Winthur]

Chara is actually just an edgelord who can't do anything except doodle on pictures in crayon and be spooky on occasion
Going Pacifist->Genocide->Pacifist is the only way to give Chara some peace of mind by giving Frisk a nice headmate through which they can go through their edgy goth phase
Chara tells you that you're surpassing even them when you go Genocide because all you're doing is deliberately choosing to act on your worst possible instincts
As such, on a LV1, harmless Frisk, the most Chara can do is listen to Linkin Park

[Cute_Riolu]

Interesting.
Makes sense, though. At the point at which Chara is directly addressing/attacking the player, they are challenging the 'god' of their universe. They have substantial power by that point (closing the game is a power Flowey has at the end of Neutral and he's not really even powerful enough to destroy the world), but they're not in control. It would be a particularly stupid god who accepted an antagonistic mortal's terms if they didn't like them - the power of task manager (or windows explorer (http://i.imgur.com/AmabR7h.png)) trumps all!

"take it from me, kid. some day, you gotta learn when to QUIT." ...That's my interpretation, anyway.

[Forum Explorer]

Chara is actually just an edgelord who can't do anything except doodle on pictures in crayon and be spooky on occasion
Going Pacifist->Genocide->Pacifist is the only way to give Chara some peace of mind by giving Frisk a nice headmate through which they can go through their edgy goth phase
Chara tells you that you're surpassing even them when you go Genocide because all you're doing is deliberately choosing to act on your worst possible instincts
As such, on a LV1, harmless Frisk, the most Chara can do is listen to Linkin Park

I kinda disagree. I mean, sure he isn't super powerful or anything, but he is in a position of trust, and is a complete psycho. Ordinary people can do a lot of damage with those two traits.

Oh, I do disagree that Frisk is in there with Chara at the end of a pacifist run after a genocide run. I think Chara is in complete control, but is just trying to escape the underground because he learned that after destroying the world, all that's left is oblivion. He doesn't get to accompany the player to another 'universe (game)' like he thought. He just gets left in darkness by himself.

So this time he isn't seeking to destroy the world, but still wishes to indulge himself in the surface.

[huttj509]

Sans and Papyrus make me want to punch someone, they're both super agitating and the two characters who stick around longest.

So, like their namesakes?

/Font burn

[Razade]

So, like their namesakes?

/Font burn

I'm not a Typeface or Graphical Designer, I have zero emotional investment in type faces. I am however a game dev and a game critic and do have an investment in poorly written, poorly fleshed out (hey Undertale. I can make puns too. Get it? They're Skeletons so they don't have skin. Isn't it great explaining your jokes?) characters which is a fault Undertale suffers from from the get go.

[NichG]

I'm not a Typeface or Graphical Designer, I have zero emotional investment in type faces. I am however a game dev and a game critic and do have an investment in poorly written, poorly fleshed out (hey Undertale. I can make puns too. Get it? They're Skeletons so they don't have skin. Isn't it great explaining your jokes?) characters which is a fault Undertale suffers from from the get go.

As someone who has done a bit of game dev myself, the thing that I appreciate about Undertale is how well-targeted it is. You can say 'well, it didn't target me!' which I suppose is true, but it did somehow manage to target 400k other people quite well despite whatever failings it might have. I think its worth taking a step back and trying to understand just how it pulled that off, using only what it did. In Undertale's case, I think it comes down to really understanding how a large segment of gamers think and feel when they play, and then explicitly factoring that in to the overall design to keep hammering home that reaction. I guess the point is, if you really deeply understand how that happened, then its something you could in principle do too. Whereas if you just say 'man, I can write better characters than that' you might miss out on why Toby Fox didn't actually need to...

[Kaptin Keen]

Ok, so ...... how is Undertale not the most boring game since the 80's?

And that's a real question. I've read hundreds of times how much everyone loves it - then watched the game trailer, and thought that can't be good. Then I read another hundred people praising it to the sky - so I downloaded the trailer. And I was insta-bored. To tears.

Am I completely missing the point?

[NichG]

Ok, so ...... how is Undertale not the most boring game since the 80's?

And that's a real question. I've read hundreds of times how much everyone loves it - then watched the game trailer, and thought that can't be good. Then I read another hundred people praising it to the sky - so I downloaded the trailer. And I was insta-bored. To tears.

Am I completely missing the point?

I do think the game really rests on being able to form an emotional connection with the player - either by the player buying in to the premise, or the player aggressively rejecting the premise (you can't get me to feel guilty about killing pixels, so I'm going to go kill everyone!), or the player just being curious (I wonder what happens if...). The thing is that it seems to have a very good rate of pulling that off, even within just the first 10 minutes of gameplay. You can see it happen in blind Lets Plays, for example. I've also had a few friends buy it all at the same time, and we played through the first bits separately, but talking to each-other on Skype, and you could really see that kind of connection forming very quickly.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Ok, so ...... how is Undertale not the most boring game since the 80's?

And that's a real question. I've read hundreds of times how much everyone loves it - then watched the game trailer, and thought that can't be good. Then I read another hundred people praising it to the sky - so I downloaded the trailer. And I was insta-bored. To tears.

Am I completely missing the point?

Part of it is that yes, you are missing the point. Toriel doing the puzzles for you is intentionally boring, a deconstruction of tutorials. And the game as a whole is more about exploring narrative tools than making the best gameplay

Fighting normal monsters is rather simple (especially in The Ruins), but I don't see how it's any more boring than a typical turn-based RPG like Dragon Quest IX. Turn-based RPGs are pretty much always boring early on. But even so, with the bullet hell elements, I don't see how it's that boring.

The demo also put me off the game, for different reasons. Ultimately, it's the most boring area, rougher than the final product, and the gameplay is never absolutely mind-blowing in any part of the full game and the first area isn't its best. I question the wisdom of the demo.

I know a guy who was utterly bored playing this game but decided he would enjoy Let's Plays of it because he could get the writing without having to play it himself. And I wouldn't call it the best RPG I've played, but I'm still not sure how it's that bad. Though he avoids turn-based RPGs in general (he had to play this for a podcast), so if you were expecting a bullet hell, you're not getting one.

[Lord Raziere]

well hm....good point Hiro.....I am midway through pacifist run.....but I'm having trouble getting past Undyne and I mostly just want to see the story anyways so......

hm. guess I could just watch it. I mean its not as if there are different ways to actually play the game, isn't there? just three runs, and if I really wanted a personal experience that varied depending on my choices, I'd go play Skyrim...

[Razade]

As someone who has done a bit of game dev myself, the thing that I appreciate about Undertale is how well-targeted it is. You can say 'well, it didn't target me!' which I suppose is true, but it did somehow manage to target 400k other people quite well despite whatever failings it might have. I think its worth taking a step back and trying to understand just how it pulled that off, using only what it did. In Undertale's case, I think it comes down to really understanding how a large segment of gamers think and feel when they play, and then explicitly factoring that in to the overall design to keep hammering home that reaction. I guess the point is, if you really deeply understand how that happened, then its something you could in principle do too. Whereas if you just say 'man, I can write better characters than that' you might miss out on why Toby Fox didn't actually need to...

It hit on the nostalgia of Earthbound and the market of "Indie RPG" which honestly there aren't a lot of. Which I fall into both target audiences. I understand its popular but its popularity doesn't mean it's good. Eat crap, a million flies can't be wrong! Also not sure where you got the 400K number, if those are the sales figures than 400K people weren't the target audience as plenty of people have expressed dissatisfaction with the game. Only 2k-ish people Kickstarted the game and there are only 20K reviews on Steam. A fair number of those negative. All of this however skirts around your point which seems to be "Toby made a popular game, figure it out and duplicate it." which isn't much of an argument.

[Hiro Protagonest]

It hit on the nostalgia of Earthbound and the market of "Indie RPG" which honestly there aren't a lot of. Which I fall into both target audiences. I understand its popular but its popularity doesn't mean it's good. Eat crap, a million flies can't be wrong! Also not sure where you got the 400K number, if those are the sales figures than 400K people weren't the target audience as plenty of people have expressed dissatisfaction with the game. Only 2k-ish people Kickstarted the game and there are only 20K reviews on Steam. A fair number of those negative. All of this however skirts around your point which seems to be "Toby made a popular game, figure it out and duplicate it." which isn't much of an argument.

I'm having trouble understanding your position, mostly because you're trying to argue things that are more objective instead of subjective. You're even trying to present your humor argument as objective, when that's basically the only place I might concede on the basis of subjective tastes.

Did I get emotional over it? No. I can't really see myself getting emotional in any scenario, if I had played it myself gameplay would likely get in the way, whereas I watched a Let's Play and just let the commentator react for me. I couldn't really understand those people in the YouTube comments who were like "OMG pacifist end was so emotional." But just because it didn't manage to evoke emotion over characters I hadn't seen everything of doesn't mean it's badly written, and I disagree that the characters are poorly done just because the game didn't spend six hours on each of them.

This isn't Sword Art Online. After finishing SAO, I began picking it apart piece by piece. I've done the same to Undertale, and that's why I see the rough spots in the gameplay. Writing still holds up as enjoyable. I mean, Frisk isn't really a better protagonist than SAO's Kirito, but neither are Ness or Crono, and silent protagonists are more obvious player-inserts.

[Winthur]

It hit on the nostalgia of Earthbound and the market of "Indie RPG" which honestly there aren't a lot of.
dude the oldschool rpg genre is having a renaissance with all the kickstarters and indie stuff on the market
underrail and age of decadence just came out
heroines quest is free
get on it

[NichG]

It hit on the nostalgia of Earthbound and the market of "Indie RPG" which honestly there aren't a lot of. Which I fall into both target audiences. I understand its popular but its popularity doesn't mean it's good. Eat crap, a million flies can't be wrong! Also not sure where you got the 400K number, if those are the sales figures than 400K people weren't the target audience as plenty of people have expressed dissatisfaction with the game. Only 2k-ish people Kickstarted the game and there are only 20K reviews on Steam. A fair number of those negative. All of this however skirts around your point which seems to be "Toby made a popular game, figure it out and duplicate it." which isn't much of an argument.

The 400K is IIRC the total number of people who own the game on Steam, which is the number that actually translates directly to income. But actually, that was out of date; I just checked, and its up to 562k copies. It's also on other modes of distribution, but Steam is probably the dominant one by quite a bit. So maybe 600k. For the reviews on Steam, it looks like the summary is 21400 positive, 400 negative, which is strongly on the positive end for a review pattern on Steam (compare with Fallout 4 at 35k/8k negative; Skyrim at 138k positive/12k negative; etc). It also managed to rally something like 90k votes on GameFaqs 'Best Game Ever' poll, so it has a pretty good sustain power on people having played it and still caring enough to follow Undertale social media and go to the site to vote.

So this is a game where a pair of indie developers made several million dollars for something they did in Gamemaker over the course of 2 years. That's pretty much an indie game development success story. It's not on the level of Minecraft, but its up there with a small handful of others. I think if you're interested in actually making a living making games, it makes sense to study successes like this objectively and understand just what the game touched on, because it did actually resonate with quite a few people even if whatever was there didn't work with you. It's not going to be something you can just clone (although I suspect making an Undertale clone would be a pretty safe way to gross $50k-$100k for the next year or two just based on the 'its obviously an Undertale clone so I have to check it out' crowd), but there's going to be some design principle in there that Toby managed to either understand or luck into, which made this game wildly successful where others were not.

[Razade]

The 400K is IIRC the total number of people who own the game on Steam, which is the number that actually translates directly to income. But actually, that was out of date; I just checked, and its up to 562k copies. It's also on other modes of distribution, but Steam is probably the dominant one by quite a bit. So maybe 600k. For the reviews on Steam, it looks like the summary is 21400 positive, 400 negative, which is strongly on the positive end for a review pattern on Steam (compare with Fallout 4 at 35k/8k negative; Skyrim at 138k positive/12k negative; etc). It also managed to rally something like 90k votes on GameFaqs 'Best Game Ever' poll, so it has a pretty good sustain power on people having played it and still caring enough to follow Undertale social media and go to the site to vote.

So this is a game where a pair of indie developers made several million dollars for something they did in Gamemaker over the course of 2 years. That's pretty much an indie game development success story. It's not on the level of Minecraft, but its up there with a small handful of others. I think if you're interested in actually making a living making games, it makes sense to study successes like this objectively and understand just what the game touched on, because it did actually resonate with quite a few people even if whatever was there didn't work with you. It's not going to be something you can just clone (although I suspect making an Undertale clone would be a pretty safe way to gross $50k-$100k for the next year or two just based on the 'its obviously an Undertale clone so I have to check it out' crowd), but there's going to be some design principle in there that Toby managed to either understand or luck into, which made this game wildly successful where others were not.

I think you misunderstand me. It doesn't matter that Undertale is popular. And I honestly don't care, not really, if people enjoy it. It's their time and their money. It just doesn't matter if it's popular or not. None of that has anything to do with the criticism of the game. This is an Argumentum ad Populum pure and simple.

[Forum Explorer]

It hit on the nostalgia of Earthbound and the market of "Indie RPG" which honestly there aren't a lot of. Which I fall into both target audiences. I understand its popular but its popularity doesn't mean it's good. Eat crap, a million flies can't be wrong! Also not sure where you got the 400K number, if those are the sales figures than 400K people weren't the target audience as plenty of people have expressed dissatisfaction with the game. Only 2k-ish people Kickstarted the game and there are only 20K reviews on Steam. A fair number of those negative. All of this however skirts around your point which seems to be "Toby made a popular game, figure it out and duplicate it." which isn't much of an argument.

I never played Earthbound, and neither have my friend, so I can safety say that nostalgia alone is not what is making this game popular because we both love it.

As for Indie RPG, well, it's not much of an RPG. It's more of a bullet hell game then RPG considering how little customization you have over the character, and combat never really changes.

But, sure, popularity isn't a sure sign of quality. Afterall 50 Shades of Grey is successful, but I sure as **** can't be convinced that it is any good. So you have to look at why they are successful, and for that, you need to look at what the people who enjoy the product are getting out of it. Why are they being entertained, why are they feeling touched about the storyline, why are they getting attached to these characters?

Now onto a separate topic, your biggest complaint seems to be that the characters are underdeveloped, boring, and one-note, correct?

In reply I ask, in comparison to what? It's a sad fact, but most video game characters are really poorly developed. Even for big AAA games like Skyrim and Fallout there are very few characters who I'd say are more developed then any of the characters in Undertale. Nintendo is even worse where it's primary protagonists have practically zero personality (DK, Mario, Samus, and Link. Oh, and every Pokemon trainer). Halo's Master Chief, and Arhkam Asylum's Batman had some, but not much. JRPGs put a lot more effort in, but with limited success, with many characters being underdeveloped. Bioshock 1 and 3 both beat Undertale by a lot, but over a long, long game.

I can think of two that routinely do outperform Undertale in character development and story;

everything Bioware does (hate or love the end result, they put a ton of effort in fleshing everyone and everything out)

the Touhou Project, though I'm kinda iffy on what counts as canon for that. Plus it gets all the manga's that go with it.

I'm sure there are others, but I can only go by my own experiences, particularly since I have a limited time to play games. And I can't think of any that have a run time of a couple of hours and beat Undertale in character development.

[NichG]

I think you misunderstand me. It doesn't matter that Undertale is popular. And I honestly don't care, not really, if people enjoy it. It's their time and their money. It just doesn't matter if it's popular or not. None of that has anything to do with the criticism of the game. This is an Argumentum ad Populum pure and simple.

If you're just talking about your opinion as a player, that's fine, you have one, I have one, they can be different, there's no real point in debating it at all.

But as part of your comments you mentioned specifically that you're a game developer. As a game dev, it really does matter if something is popular or not. That is, in fact, what determines whether or not you're going to make enough money to keep being a game dev. If its your job, you can't really afford to not care about if your games are popular or not. And that means that when you see a game do very well, you need to actually pay attention to why. That's especially true when its a game that by all the usual metrics should do poorly. That means that there's something which that developer understood that let him use very few resources but at the same time let him effectively reach a very large number of people. You shouldn't be saying 'well I've made better games than that' or 'it doesn't matter if people like it, because I think it sucks', you should be saying 'huh, I wonder how that happened?' or better yet 'I wonder what I should be doing differently?'

Edit: Noticed that Touhou was brought up. This is a good example. Graphics-wise, the character art is sub-par compared to even other Japanaese indie studios, but at the same time the fandom is massive, and they actually do a lot to extend the characterizations and the quality of the art. It's interesting that when you look at what gets praised about Touhou and what gets praised about Undertale, even people who are meh about the other aspects tend to think the music is a strong point. Both Undertale and Touhou also make heavy use of character-specific pieces and leitmotifs. So perhaps part of the feeling of depth of the characters comes from the fact that each character has their own piece of music.

I would also say that density of coverage matters for characterization. For all I know, Skyrim and Fallout do have some well-written NPCs, but they're buried under a vast, vast number of generic ones. One of the things that Toby explicitly said about his design process for Undertale is that he wanted to 'have an RPG made out of only the good parts of RPGs' - so basically, aggressively strip out grinding, generics, etc. He was originally aiming for a 2 hour play-time.

[Razade]

As for Indie RPG, well, it's not much of an RPG. It's more of a bullet hell game then RPG considering how little customization you have over the character, and combat never really changes.

Toby Fox thinks it's an RPG. It's listed as an RPG on Steam. The website for Undertale in big bold letters says "an RPG for PC and Mac" and then goes on to state "in this RPG, you don't have to kill anyone." An RPG with "an emphasis on humor, character dialogue and player choice". One of which is too subjective to be put on the tin and the other that it just doesn't have the time or money to invest in. Player choice? Well I guess if you consider a three path chain a choice then sure. Undertale is bursting with choice. Point remains. Undertale is an RPG whether you want to classify it as one or not. Undertale fails as an RPG and it fails as a Bullet Hell game.


But, sure, popularity isn't a sure sign of quality. Afterall 50 Shades of Grey is successful, but I sure as **** can't be convinced that it is any good. So you have to look at why they are successful, and for that, you need to look at what the people who enjoy the product are getting out of it. Why are they being entertained, why are they feeling touched about the storyline, why are they getting attached to these characters?

I haven't not "walked a mile in people's shoes" when it comes to Undertale, if anything I've said indicates that then I apologize. My statement simply is it doesn't matter if Undertale is popular. That's not a valid argument for why it's good and that's what I was arguing for. Undertale can sell two million copies and be voted Game of the Year by every major media outlet in the gaming industry. That -STILL- doesn't mean the game is good. It just meas the game is popular.


Now onto a separate topic, your biggest complaint seems to be that the characters are underdeveloped, boring, and one-note, correct?

It's one of many, it's the one people seem most invested in arguing against. The controls are garbage, the bullet hell segments are repetitive and the writing (not just character writing) is badly done. The game gets a C across the board except on its soundtrack which, as I've mentioned, gets a solid A+. Toby Fox was a musician before he made Undertale and it shows. Soundtrack to Undertale is awesome.


In reply I ask, in comparison to what? It's a sad fact, but most video game characters are really poorly developed. Even for big AAA games like Skyrim and Fallout there are very few characters who I'd say are more developed then any of the characters in Undertale. Nintendo is even worse where it's primary protagonists have practically zero personality (DK, Mario, Samus, and Link. Oh, and every Pokemon trainer). Halo's Master Chief, and Arhkam Asylum's Batman had some, but not much. JRPGs put a lot more effort in, but with limited success, with many characters being underdeveloped. Bioshock 1 and 3 both beat Undertale by a lot, but over a long, long game.

I don't think Skyrim or the Fallout games are very good RPGs. They're alright action games. They're fine sandbox games but Skyrim has very little RPG in it outside the leveling system and the New Fallout game (4) has all but eliminated the RPG elements within the game. Three and New Vegas are a little more RPG-y, more RPG-Y than any Marrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim. Halo isn't an RPG though through the five Halo games they've done some decent characterization for him and the novelizations have expanded even further on that. Most Nintendo games you mention aren't RPGs save Pokemon and Zelda. Zelda is an Action RPG and the series has always been more Action than RPG though I'm certain there's arguments to be made about that. Pokemon's trainer isn't very well fleshed out but every Pokemon Trainer is a Silent Protagonist and they never get characterization. The rest of the cast however do to greater or lesser extents. Some of them much more than a single character in Undertale like Professor Oak. Plenty of JRPGS, way to many to actually delve into here, do much better at characterization. A good example would be Chrono Trigger, a handful of the Final Fantasy games come to mind and The Tales series especially make a note to flesh out their characters. And those are just the popular JRPGs. There are plenty of JRPGs that never gained a massive following in the U.S like the Mother series that Undertale absolutely is inspired by that take a lot more time (with a silent protagonist) making the characters memorable and fleshed out. Undertale doesn't. And a lot of those reasons is because Undertale is so very short. You mention Bioware and absolutely in Western RPGs they're a good example, not so sure about Tohou as a lot of that seems outside people putting in work but I don't really play those games.



If you're just talking about your opinion as a player, that's fine, you have one, I have one, they can be different, there's no real point in debating it at all.

I'm talking about it as a game critic and just a general person. However



But as part of your comments you mentioned specifically that you're a game developer. As a game dev, it really does matter if something is popular or not. That is, in fact, what determines whether or not you're going to make enough money to keep being a game dev. If its your job, you can't really afford to not care about if your games are popular or not. And that means that when you see a game do very well, you need to actually pay attention to why. That's especially true when its a game that by all the usual metrics should do poorly. That means that there's something which that developer understood that let him use very few resources but at the same time let him effectively reach a very large number of people. You shouldn't be saying 'well I've made better games than that' or 'it doesn't matter if people like it, because I think it sucks', you should be saying 'huh, I wonder how that happened?' or better yet 'I wonder what I should be doing differently?'

I don't know how many times I have to say this but this has no bearing on whether the game is good or not and that's all I'm discussing. I've already stated a few reasons why I thought Undertale did so well but none of that has squat to do with why the game is bad. I'm talking about why the boat isn't going to float and you're coming to me and saying "yeah but it sure can carry a lot of people!" I don't think Undertale should have done poorly and I don't think you can show that it should have, so it's just a flat assertion on your part. I also never said, not even once, that I made a better game than Undertale or that it doesn't matter if people like it. People are allowed to like bad things, people are allowed to find things that are demonstrably bad enjoyable. I don't generally need you to lecture me on how popularity can help a game or if I should take note on what Undertale has done, especially since I have in no way shape or form demonstrated that I've simply written it off.

[NichG]

I don't know how many times I have to say this but this has no bearing on whether the game is good or not and that's all I'm discussing. I've already stated a few reasons why I thought Undertale did so well but none of that has squat to do with why the game is bad. I'm talking about why the boat isn't going to float and you're coming to me and saying "yeah but it sure can carry a lot of people!" I don't think Undertale should have done poorly and I don't think you can show that it should have, so it's just a flat assertion on your part. I also never said, not even once, that I made a better game than Undertale or that it doesn't matter if people like it. People are allowed to like bad things, people are allowed to find things that are demonstrably bad enjoyable. I don't generally need you to lecture me on how popularity can help a game or if I should take note on what Undertale has done, especially since I have in no way shape or form demonstrated that I've simply written it off.

Its more like I'm saying 'hey look, the boat managed to float after all' and you're telling me 'but it has holes in the hull'. Obviously there's something that needs to be explained, because it seems like they can't both be true. But that's how it went, so now all that's left is to explain it. Repeating 'but it has holes in the hull, the fact that it floats doesn't change that!' is, I suppose, a way to make lots of statements that are factually true, but they're not adding anything to the conversation. The relevant thing is 'why is it floating despite its holes?'.

Before I stretch the analogy too thin, coming back to games. We have a pre-disposition to think that certain things matter to the gaming experience, that certain things are core, etc. A lot of the development in the gaming landscape in the last 5 years has been a re-examination of those assumptions. You're assuming 'it takes 20+ hours to become invested in a character' because you're basing it on other gaming experiences that tried to build that investment in a particular way.

But the objective fact is, lots of people are becoming invested in Undertale's characters.

The answer to this isn't 'everyone else is just stupid, and I have the only true authority to judge what is good and bad'. The answer is that you're missing something, because you're making assumptions about what is needed for a game to work, and those assumptions come from a certain category of game that follows certain genre conventions that in turn create those requirements.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if Undertale is a 'good game' according to your particular metrics and standards. I mean, what is actually at stake in this discussion? Do we just want to go back and forth about purely subjective things that we're obviously not going to reach any kind of new realizations about? Or do we want to understand just what it is about Undertale that makes it able to form emotional connections to its players in 10 minutes rather than 10 hours? Or do we want to provide useful information for people who are considering buying the game?

[Forum Explorer]

Toby Fox thinks it's an RPG. It's listed as an RPG on Steam. The website for Undertale in big bold letters says "an RPG for PC and Mac" and then goes on to state "in this RPG, you don't have to kill anyone." An RPG with "an emphasis on humor, character dialogue and player choice". One of which is too subjective to be put on the tin and the other that it just doesn't have the time or money to invest in. Player choice? Well I guess if you consider a three path chain a choice then sure. Undertale is bursting with choice. Point remains. Undertale is an RPG whether you want to classify it as one or not. Undertale fails as an RPG and it fails as a Bullet Hell game.



I haven't not "walked a mile in people's shoes" when it comes to Undertale, if anything I've said indicates that then I apologize. My statement simply is it doesn't matter if Undertale is popular. That's not a valid argument for why it's good and that's what I was arguing for. Undertale can sell two million copies and be voted Game of the Year by every major media outlet in the gaming industry. That -STILL- doesn't mean the game is good. It just meas the game is popular.



It's one of many, it's the one people seem most invested in arguing against. The controls are garbage, the bullet hell segments are repetitive and the writing (not just character writing) is badly done. The game gets a C across the board except on its soundtrack which, as I've mentioned, gets a solid A+. Toby Fox was a musician before he made Undertale and it shows. Soundtrack to Undertale is awesome.



I don't think Skyrim or the Fallout games are very good RPGs. They're alright action games. They're fine sandbox games but Skyrim has very little RPG in it outside the leveling system and the New Fallout game (4) has all but eliminated the RPG elements within the game. Three and New Vegas are a little more RPG-y, more RPG-Y than any Marrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim. Halo isn't an RPG though through the five Halo games they've done some decent characterization for him and the novelizations have expanded even further on that. Most Nintendo games you mention aren't RPGs save Pokemon and Zelda. Zelda is an Action RPG and the series has always been more Action than RPG though I'm certain there's arguments to be made about that. Pokemon's trainer isn't very well fleshed out but every Pokemon Trainer is a Silent Protagonist and they never get characterization. The rest of the cast however do to greater or lesser extents. Some of them much more than a single character in Undertale like Professor Oak. Plenty of JRPGS, way to many to actually delve into here, do much better at characterization. A good example would be Chrono Trigger, a handful of the Final Fantasy games come to mind and The Tales series especially make a note to flesh out their characters. And those are just the popular JRPGs. There are plenty of JRPGs that never gained a massive following in the U.S like the Mother series that Undertale absolutely is inspired by that take a lot more time (with a silent protagonist) making the characters memorable and fleshed out. Undertale doesn't. And a lot of those reasons is because Undertale is so very short. You mention Bioware and absolutely in Western RPGs they're a good example, not so sure about Tohou as a lot of that seems outside people putting in work but I don't really play those games.



If I had to classify it, then what I would call it an RPG. If someone asked for 5 examples of RPGs, Undertale would not make the list, because it doesn't hold with many of the typical RPG game elements. That doesn't make it a bad game, but it's unconventional enough, that if someone was looking for RPGs, I wouldn't recommend it on it's merits as an RPG


Okay, so what are your answers to my questions then? Or to rephrase, why do you think that people are entertained by Undertale, why is it's storyline getting strong emotional responses, and why are people getting attatched to the characters? (I'm assuming your double negative was deliberate and not a typo)

Well because other then the writing, it's kinda hard to argue those points beyond, I disagree. I disagree that the controls are bad, I found the keyboard controls quite satisfactory, and I know there is joystick support. I disagree that the bullet hell segments are repetitive (well maybe they are on genocide routes), the different combinations of monsters and bosses (particularly since the bosses change how you dodge the attacks), the bullet hell segments remain fresh, partially because combats are quick and grinding isn't mandatory.

You haven't really elaborated on why the writing is bad, like you did with what you dislike about the characters. Or if you have, I can't recall what you said.

So? I'm just comparing all games to Undertale, regardless of genre. Only fighting games get a pass for having a lazy story for me (because I really sympathize with those poor writers), but I do feel that every sort of game I play should have some sort of story, and if the story is poor or non-existent then my enjoyment will be effected. Basically, why is not being an RPG an acceptable reason to you for having a worse story/characterization then Undertale?

I would strongly disagree with your assessment of Pokemon supporting characters. I can't think of any of them that can't be summed up in a sentence or two. For example Oak: Pokemon researcher/radio host who believes in treating Pokemon nicely. And what else? Even what we get doesn't really make him a compelling character. I certainly don't have any attachment to him as a character. I don't think I have any attachment to any character in Pokemon, nor have I ever.

I will admit I haven't played many JRPGs outside of Final Fantasy. And inside Final Fantasy I've only really played 3-7 and some of 10. But in those, I'd say only 6 and 7 really exceeded Undertale's characterization, and even then other characters like Red XIII, Yuffie, Barret, Cid, and Vincent were equal to or below the characterization seen in Undertale.

Shortness should be taken into account as a positive for Undertale, IMO anyways. Or rather, it's a 2-3 hour long, indie game that cost 10$. And it managed to provide more characterization and a better story then the majority of the 20 hour, AAA games that cost 60$. By that standard, I'd say that Undertale blew it out of the park.

Yeah, it's not the best story I've ever seen. I don't know if I'd be depressed or ecstatic if it was. But it shouldn't be the best story I've ever seen. But it did pretty damn good for the amount of time, effort, and energy put into it. (and the time, effort, and energy it required from me)

EDIT: To put it another way, if I read a fanfic, I expect a lot less out of it then I would of a novel. And vice versa. I do not judge them by the same standards.




In the end, it doesn't really matter if Undertale is a 'good game' according to your particular metrics and standards. I mean, what is actually at stake in this discussion? Do we just want to go back and forth about purely subjective things that we're obviously not going to reach any kind of new realizations about? Or do we want to understand just what it is about Undertale that makes it able to form emotional connections to its players in 10 minutes rather than 10 hours? Or do we want to provide useful information for people who are considering buying the game?

Well I learn stuff from these sorts of conversations, even if it is just about people.

[Kaptin Keen]

Part of it is that yes, you are missing the point. Toriel doing the puzzles for you is intentionally boring, a deconstruction of tutorials. And the game as a whole is more about exploring narrative tools than making the best gameplay

Fighting normal monsters is rather simple (especially in The Ruins), but I don't see how it's any more boring than a typical turn-based RPG like Dragon Quest IX. Turn-based RPGs are pretty much always boring early on. But even so, with the bullet hell elements, I don't see how it's that boring.

The demo also put me off the game, for different reasons. Ultimately, it's the most boring area, rougher than the final product, and the gameplay is never absolutely mind-blowing in any part of the full game and the first area isn't its best. I question the wisdom of the demo.

I know a guy who was utterly bored playing this game but decided he would enjoy Let's Plays of it because he could get the writing without having to play it himself. And I wouldn't call it the best RPG I've played, but I'm still not sure how it's that bad. Though he avoids turn-based RPGs in general (he had to play this for a podcast), so if you were expecting a bullet hell, you're not getting one.


I do think the game really rests on being able to form an emotional connection with the player - either by the player buying in to the premise, or the player aggressively rejecting the premise (you can't get me to feel guilty about killing pixels, so I'm going to go kill everyone!), or the player just being curious (I wonder what happens if...). The thing is that it seems to have a very good rate of pulling that off, even within just the first 10 minutes of gameplay. You can see it happen in blind Lets Plays, for example. I've also had a few friends buy it all at the same time, and we played through the first bits separately, but talking to each-other on Skype, and you could really see that kind of connection forming very quickly.

Thanks for the replies. Maybe I'll go watch a lets play of it.

One thing though: Bullet hell games bore me - so that's part of it. Another part of it is the graphics. I played games when graphics were just like this, back in the day. I've had my share of it, so to speak.

But the real point is that I could handle both those things if I'd found something else that I thought was entertaining.

I'll give a lets play a shot tho ... I really wanna know what the deal is =)

[NichG]

I'll give a lets play a shot tho ... I really wanna know what the deal is =)

The one I watched was by Cryaotic, and I thought he did a pretty good job of it.

[Hiro Protagonest]

The one I watched was by Cryaotic, and I thought he did a pretty good job of it.

Yeah, that would be my first recommendation as well. There's an optional thing in Pacifist that is actually really friggin' important for lore, and Cry found it.

[Winthur]

I don't think Skyrim or the Fallout games are very good RPGs. They're alright action games. They're fine sandbox games but Skyrim has very little RPG in it outside the leveling system and the New Fallout game (4) has all but eliminated the RPG elements within the game. Three and New Vegas are a little more RPG-y, more RPG-Y than any Marrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim. Halo isn't an RPG though through the five Halo games they've done some decent characterization for him and the novelizations have expanded even further on that. Most Nintendo games you mention aren't RPGs save Pokemon and Zelda. Zelda is an Action RPG and the series has always been more Action than RPG though I'm certain there's arguments to be made about that. Pokemon's trainer isn't very well fleshed out but every Pokemon Trainer is a Silent Protagonist and they never get characterization. The rest of the cast however do to greater or lesser extents. Some of them much more than a single character in Undertale like Professor Oak. Plenty of JRPGS, way to many to actually delve into here, do much better at characterization. A good example would be Chrono Trigger, a handful of the Final Fantasy games come to mind and The Tales series especially make a note to flesh out their characters. And those are just the popular JRPGs. There are plenty of JRPGs that never gained a massive following in the U.S like the Mother series that Undertale absolutely is inspired by that take a lot more time (with a silent protagonist) making the characters memorable and fleshed out. Undertale doesn't. And a lot of those reasons is because Undertale is so very short. You mention Bioware and absolutely in Western RPGs they're a good example, not so sure about Tohou as a lot of that seems outside people putting in work but I don't really play those games.

congratulations on making this a nowhere-leading "what is an rpg" thread and then betraying that your narrow idea of an rpg is that it is solely about characterization and story, while ignoring anything else that the genre has been renowned for in the past

why bother about the reactive world, worldbuilding, attention to detail and choices and consequences or the way the storytelling is implemented into the gameplay mechanisms, why bother about the general convention the game is set in (levels, commands, experience, and appropriate lingo), it fails at being an rpg because you don't think the writing is good

[Maryring]

Regarding characteristics, one of the things that Undertale (and Touhou since it was mentioned) does right is that it uses more than just plain text to tell you about the characters involved. The way you have to fight each character, and the way you have to beat them through pacifism, their leitmotifs and their bullet-patterns, all help further define the personality of the characters.

You know how "a picture says a thousand words"? In the same manner, Toriel's fire magic missing you as you get low on health speaks volumes about her. Mokou's spellcard involving a pattern that requires you to trust that, and figure out how, she's following the rules of the system speaks volumes about her.

One of the big things that games can do with storytelling is to use more than just text to tell a story. The mechanics, the way you have to interact with those mechanics, the music, it all helps add to the characteristics of the characters. Touhou and Undertale does this really well to tell you a whole lot about the characters and the world, even though they're not using many words.

[Winthur]

Regarding characteristics, one of the things that Undertale (and Touhou since it was mentioned) does right is that it uses more than just plain text to tell you about the characters involved.

an amazing thing this game does is the way every character gets his own little jingle for spoken text

greatly avoids crap voiceacting issues and sets a distinct tone for every character

any time sans dialogue stops being "voiced" it can get downright chilling

[Razade]

Its more like I'm saying 'hey look, the boat managed to float after all' and you're telling me 'but it has holes in the hull'. Obviously there's something that needs to be explained, because it seems like they can't both be true. But that's how it went, so now all that's left is to explain it. Repeating 'but it has holes in the hull, the fact that it floats doesn't change that!' is, I suppose, a way to make lots of statements that are factually true, but they're not adding anything to the conversation. The relevant thing is 'why is it floating despite its holes?'.

That's a separate discussion, a fact that I am increasingly distressed you don't see.


Before I stretch the analogy too thin, coming back to games. We have a pre-disposition to think that certain things matter to the gaming experience, that certain things are core, etc. A lot of the development in the gaming landscape in the last 5 years has been a re-examination of those assumptions. You're assuming 'it takes 20+ hours to become invested in a character' because you're basing it on other gaming experiences that tried to build that investment in a particular way.

That is a good part of the Indie scene however that re-examination isn't something that is done in a vacuum nor is it something that will give conclusive answers. Mostly because when someone raises a criticism they're hit with "you're making assumptions" when they're not. Like this conversation right now and you telling me what I'm assuming when I've made no indications to lead you to that conclusion.


But the objective fact is, lots of people are becoming invested in Undertale's characters.

This is objectively true.


The answer to this isn't 'everyone else is just stupid, and I have the only true authority to judge what is good and bad'. The answer is that you're missing something, because you're making assumptions about what is needed for a game to work, and those assumptions come from a certain category of game that follows certain genre conventions that in turn create those requirements.

A statement no one in this thread, as far as I can see, has made. If you want to argue against that then feel free but it's not an argument I'm making so I fail to see why you keep bringing it up to me. Unless you're intentionally trying to put words in my mouth and I think I can be certain that's not what you're trying to do. Because that wouldn't be a very honest method of discussing things now would it?


In the end, it doesn't really matter if Undertale is a 'good game' according to your particular metrics and standards. I mean, what is actually at stake in this discussion? Do we just want to go back and forth about purely subjective things that we're obviously not going to reach any kind of new realizations about? Or do we want to understand just what it is about Undertale that makes it able to form emotional connections to its players in 10 minutes rather than 10 hours? Or do we want to provide useful information for people who are considering buying the game?

These things aren't exactly subjective however. We can objectively assess the strengths and merits of things by comparing them to similar works. Subjectivity also isn't something that abolishes criticism, criticism is important in any medium especially when something is successful. Simply waving a hand and saying "But this thing is popular so we need to understand that!" isn't going to get you anywhere except with repetitive clones of a game like Call of Duty. We can all remember a time when businesses were more invested in copying the successes of a game instead of siting and looking at things objectively.


If I had to classify it, then what I would call it an RPG. If someone asked for 5 examples of RPGs, Undertale would not make the list, because it doesn't hold with many of the typical RPG game elements. That doesn't make it a bad game, but it's unconventional enough, that if someone was looking for RPGs, I wouldn't recommend it on it's merits as an RPG.

That's absolutely fine. But it's being sold as an RPG. It's not incorrect of me to assess it as an RPG when that's what it's being sold as, nor is it incorrect of me to criticize it for failing to be a strong RPG. Just because Forum Explorer doesn't see it as an RPG doesn't make my criticism of the game itself any more or less correct to the work. It just makes it less true to you. And that's cool.



Okay, so what are your answers to my questions then? Or to rephrase, why do you think that people are entertained by Undertale, why is it's storyline getting strong emotional responses, and why are people getting attatched to the characters? (I'm assuming your double negative was deliberate and not a typo)

This is a separate discussion and not one I'm against having but not one I'm comfortable having on Giants just by merit of the forum rules being so Care Bear-ish. I can PM it to you if you're absolutely interested.


You haven't really elaborated on why the writing is bad, like you did with what you dislike about the characters. Or if you have, I can't recall what you said.

Same arguments as I think the rest of the game is bad. Not enough time was spent on the writing to make more time for other things that could have been cut out. Not enough world building. Bits of writing that not only don't propel the story but also don't flesh out the world in any way shape or form. Things meant only to be humorous that break you out of the game. References to fonts and things that only a select group of people will understand and won't maintain their humorous attempts further down the line just by merit of time being a thing.


So? I'm just comparing all games to Undertale, regardless of genre. Only fighting games get a pass for having a lazy story for me (because I really sympathize with those poor writers), but I do feel that every sort of game I play should have some sort of story, and if the story is poor or non-existent then my enjoyment will be effected. Basically, why is not being an RPG an acceptable reason to you for having a worse story/characterization then Undertale?

I'm not comparing Undertale to any other game. I'm comparing Undertale to itself. I'd prefer if all games had as good characterization and story telling as the games that do them best. Because I like playing video games for their story and for their characters just as much as I like playing them because I enjoy their mechanics or art. Story and character writing are as important to me as anything else regardless of what genre the game is. I want my Guilty Gear to have as good storytelling as my Dragon Age and I want my Dragon Age to have as good mechanics as my Shovel Knight.


Shortness should be taken into account as a positive for Undertale, IMO anyways. Or rather, it's a 2-3 hour long, indie game that cost 10$. And it managed to provide more characterization and a better story then the majority of the 20 hour, AAA games that cost 60$. By that standard, I'd say that Undertale blew it out of the park.

I don't agree with that assertion. Maybe if they cut a character or two and spent the time dedicated to the characters that remained that'd be another story but Toby didn't and that's why shortness shouldn't be taken into consideration. Or as much consideration. When you know you've got a game that will be four hours long you don't try to cram as much in as you can. And you don't leave things in and cut from them so it all fits.



Well I learn stuff from these sorts of conversations, even if it is just about people.

I'll also echo this. A conversation is worth having even if the other side won't ever agree. I'm not continuing in this discussion because I think other people will be swayed to my side. I was, and I don't really see much point continuing further with anyone but Forum Explorer, because I think it's important to discuss why people like a game and offer why you don't. But I forgot that on Giants in the Playground most threads are supposed to be Safe Areas where no one hears competing opinions. Least it get people out of their comfort zone.


congratulations on making this a nowhere-leading "what is an rpg" thread and then betraying that your narrow idea of an rpg is that it is solely about characterization and story, while ignoring anything else that the genre has been renowned for in the past

why bother about the reactive world, worldbuilding, attention to detail and choices and consequences or the way the storytelling is implemented into the gameplay mechanisms, why bother about the general convention the game is set in (levels, commands, experience, and appropriate lingo), it fails at being an rpg because you don't think the writing is good

Ooh I see. We're playing the Sentence Mix and Match. I want to play too.


Undertale fails at being an rpg because the writing isn't good

Well Winthur I'm glad you agree with me. Score one for being on the right side of this discussion. 10/10. Of course doing that is just for the sake of being silly. Just like picking a few choice sentences out of an entire paragraph that was strictly a response to someone talking about writing in RPGs is. But no one would do that because that's not an honest way of discussing something.

[Forum Explorer]

I
That's absolutely fine. But it's being sold as an RPG. It's not incorrect of me to assess it as an RPG when that's what it's being sold as, nor is it incorrect of me to criticize it for failing to be a strong RPG. Just because Forum Explorer doesn't see it as an RPG doesn't make my criticism of the game itself any more or less correct to the work. It just makes it less true to you. And that's cool.




This is a separate discussion and not one I'm against having but not one I'm comfortable having on Giants just by merit of the forum rules being so Care Bear-ish. I can PM it to you if you're absolutely interested.



Same arguments as I think the rest of the game is bad. Not enough time was spent on the writing to make more time for other things that could have been cut out. Not enough world building. Bits of writing that not only don't propel the story but also don't flesh out the world in any way shape or form. Things meant only to be humorous that break you out of the game. References to fonts and things that only a select group of people will understand and won't maintain their humorous attempts further down the line just by merit of time being a thing.



I'm not comparing Undertale to any other game. I'm comparing Undertale to itself. I'd prefer if all games had as good characterization and story telling as the games that do them best. Because I like playing video games for their story and for their characters just as much as I like playing them because I enjoy their mechanics or art. Story and character writing are as important to me as anything else regardless of what genre the game is. I want my Guilty Gear to have as good storytelling as my Dragon Age and I want my Dragon Age to have as good mechanics as my Shovel Knight.



I don't agree with that assertion. Maybe if they cut a character or two and spent the time dedicated to the characters that remained that'd be another story but Toby didn't and that's why shortness shouldn't be taken into consideration. Or as much consideration. When you know you've got a game that will be four hours long you don't try to cram as much in as you can. And you don't leave things in and cut from them so it all fits.




I'll also echo this. A conversation is worth having even if the other side won't ever agree. I'm not continuing in this discussion because I think other people will be swayed to my side. I was, and I don't really see much point continuing further with anyone but Forum Explorer, because I think it's important to discuss why people like a game and offer why you don't. But I forgot that on Giants in the Playground most threads are supposed to be Safe Areas where no one hears competing opinions. Least it get people out of their comfort zone.


I suppose, but I don't think all RPGs should be judged by the same standard. Particularly if the game if different enough. Or maybe to put it another way, just because something is a bad RPG, I don't think it necessitates something being a bad game.

If you want to send me a PM, then go for it.


Well I do disagree, I'm having a hard time thinking of how to improve the story as is, without making it a much longer story. I do think not every joke appeals to everyone, but they don't have to. I don't think many jokes could be cut out without severely reducing the amount of comedy in the game, and cutting out a fair bit of the characterization that many of the characters got.


I don't think that you can compare a game in a void. Good and bad only exists in contrast. IMO anyways. If you don't have good games, then Undertale would automatically be the best game ever, if you didn't have bad games then it'd be the worst ever.

Like I said, I don't think you could cut anything out. I can't think of a character who is unnecessary or doesn't fit a role in the narrative. It's a short story, but it's really tight and contained well. You can make a longer game, but part of what makes Undertale so impactful is that it's so short and self-contained.

[NichG]

That's a separate discussion, a fact that I am increasingly distressed you don't see.

'Is Razade right about their tastes in gaming?' isn't something I have anything to say about, nor, I think, is it really worth discussing. There's no point in me trying to convince you to have different tastes, or to contest your evaluations of the components of Undertale. If Undertale's writing failed to make an emotional connection to you, that's just what happened - nothing anyone says will change that fact. But nor will you stating that change the fact that it did make a connection to other people. So its just data - you're reporting the impression the game gave, fine. Nothing more to be said about that.

Instead, and this is the discussion I've been trying to have, we can discuss what that means given that Undertale has in general actually done quite well. Which means trying to understand the overall picture.



That is a good part of the Indie scene however that re-examination isn't something that is done in a vacuum nor is it something that will give conclusive answers. Mostly because when someone raises a criticism they're hit with "you're making assumptions" when they're not. Like this conversation right now and you telling me what I'm assuming when I've made no indications to lead you to that conclusion.


The indications you've given are by using specific genre comparisons 'Undertale fails as a bullet hell', and specific deconstructive analyses (talking about Undertale's graphics, controls, etc as separate things, and trying to frame the discussion as things like 'do you agree with me about Undertale's writing?' etc). Those comparisons only have any relevance if you've committed to a particular framework to understand the game. The point I'm raising is that despite Undertale doing abysmally if you rate it via a deconstructive system like that, the actual impact of the game on people is very poorly predicted by that kind of rating system.

That is to say, the evidence is that this particular systematic approach is stripping out the actually things that are relevant to why a lot of people are enjoying Undertale.

For example, if we discuss the graphics, if you compare Undertale to Skyrim in terms of technical achievement with the graphics, the outcome is obvious. But Undertale uses single-frame inserts, graphical leitmotifs, responsiveness in the graphics (e.g. details changing based on things you do), and a general lack of internal systematization to make the graphics it does have do something quite different than what Skyrim's graphics do to it. So how are you going to capture that with a single letter-grade graphics rating system? The purpose of the graphics in Undertale is just different than the purpose of the graphics in Skyrim.



A statement no one in this thread, as far as I can see, has made. If you want to argue against that then feel free but it's not an argument I'm making so I fail to see why you keep bringing it up to me. Unless you're intentionally trying to put words in my mouth and I think I can be certain that's not what you're trying to do. Because that wouldn't be a very honest method of discussing things now would it?


Fair enough. When you brought up your qualifications to judge 'I'm a game critic, I'm a game dev', this was kind of the message I was getting from it - that you were trying to give your opinion greater, undue weight. Basically, an argument from authority. But if we can drop that, I'll assume good faith from here out.



These things aren't exactly subjective however. We can objectively assess the strengths and merits of things by comparing them to similar works. Subjectivity also isn't something that abolishes criticism, criticism is important in any medium especially when something is successful. Simply waving a hand and saying "But this thing is popular so we need to understand that!" isn't going to get you anywhere except with repetitive clones of a game like Call of Duty. We can all remember a time when businesses were more invested in copying the successes of a game instead of siting and looking at things objectively.


I think the failure of the 'objective comparison system' here is that its pretty obvious that the comparisons are not predictive. That is, you can say 'objectively, ...' but it doesn't match with the data. So the comparison system is missing out on the relevant factors to understand what's going on. Part of the problem may be that there really aren't that many things similar to Undertale. Maybe stuff like the Stanley Parable?

Anyhow, I'm assuming again that the point of doing this will be to understand 'what's going on' rather than to come up with some kind of authoritative statement of 'this game is X good on this absolute scale'. If it's the latter, I honestly don't think its a meaningful exercise to do unless you pin it to some objective data like the game's popularity - without that objective reference point, it just becomes an echo chamber - its good/bad, why? Because we decided on a systematic grading rubric that made it good/bad.

I mean, to me, the only absolute standard of whether something is 'good' or 'bad' is 'how well did it accomplish what it set out to do?'

We're coming back to the question 'what is the utility of criticism?'

[Mono Vertigo]

An amusing thought concerning those who played the game but didn't like for plot/characters reasons:
Those folks consider the game as just a game, and complain about characters being one-dimensional*. They're unable to connect with these characters or feel any empathy for them.
Game's boring, and not engaging; they'd rather try out every possible option. It'd be best if they weren't criticized in-game for taking certain options, though. (Then again, when the ones doing the calling-out are video game characters, with the bonus of being ones you can't bring yourself to care about anyway, it doesn't really matter.)
They're just not into it at all. They're very likely going to quit before finding out how to give everyone the best possible ending, because it bores them.

Well, there's that one tiny psychopath who's exactly like that in the game...
Not that the players care, because, hey, can't connect with any of those characters. However, as a bonus, it reinforces the point.

No, the point is not that these players are psychopaths, come on. It does say something interesting about a certain point of view of gaming/assumptions about what entertainment should be.


*I'll take the time to note I've personally met a bunch of one-dimensional people IRL who didn't gain any depth after several hours in their contact (more than the length of the game itself). Their greatest advantage in life, I guess, is that they're not video game characters instead, and that no one so far has ever considered them as such.

Didn't play the game (in good part because I'm not into the gameplay of dodging stuff), just was that coward who spent hours watching Youtube. Liked a lot what I watched. May be overrated, but I'm nonetheless impressed by the impact of choices and appropriateness of every path.

[GAAD]

So I showed my friend Undertale yesterday.

At the final boss,
after Flowey kills Asgore, his computer crashed.
Not like it's supposed to, but because he clenched his soda bottle in rage so hard it exploded all over his computer and drenched the circuits.
Congratulations, Flowey. You've finally succeeded. :smallsmile:

[Forum Explorer]

So I showed my friend Undertale yesterday.

At the final boss,
after Flowey kills Asgore, his computer crashed.
Not like it's supposed to, but because he clenched his soda bottle in rage so hard it exploded all over his computer and drenched the circuits.
Congratulations, Flowey. You've finally succeeded. :smallsmile:

That's hilarious and awesome :smallbiggrin:

[Kish]

That's...ack. It sounds potentially very expensive. Was his computer salvageable?

[Guancyto]

It's a standoff of ages. One of us is going to crack first. It isn't going to be me.
http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll37/Geesaroni/Undertale_ghost_quiz_1_zpsdfv3lk5r.png

Practically speaking, it's probably going to be Alphys. She looks like she needs to pee.

[Cute_Riolu]

it's a standoff of ages. One of us is going to crack first. It isn't going to be me.
http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll37/geesaroni/undertale_ghost_quiz_1_zpsdfv3lk5r.png

heck yeah!!!!

[Guancyto]

Mostly I was just sort of curious what would happen. Now it's a challenge.

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll37/Geesaroni/Undertale_ghost_quiz_3_zpsiip7nslv.png

[Forum Explorer]

I'm kinda curious now too.

[Lord Raziere]

*roll eyes*

I looked it up, nothing happens, it just keeps going as it overlaps the answers.

given that its been going for at least....six days, I think its safe to assume that nothing happens if you don't answer.

[Cute_Riolu]

*roll eyes*

I looked it up, nothing happens, it just keeps going as it overlaps the answers.

given that its been going for at least....six days, I think its safe to assume that nothing happens if you don't answer.

Well, it'd eventually overflow unless there were considerations to that, but it might take ages.

[Lord Raziere]

I have just realized:
SAVE The World is a remix of Dating Start, the theme that plays when your on a date with somebody. the final battle with Asriel is a culmination of all your efforts and your final person to befriend.

[Guancyto]

Well, it'd eventually overflow unless there were considerations to that, but it might take ages.
This was mostly what I was curious about.

Sadly, my computer needed restarting and my Steam started to go haywire. As it turns out... Mettaton was more determined than me.
http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll37/Geesaroni/Undertale_ghost_quiz_4_zpsamc62qss.png

[mythmonster2]

I have just realized:
SAVE The World is a remix of Dating Start, the theme that plays when your on a date with somebody. the final battle with Asriel is a culmination of all your efforts and your final person to befriend.

While true, it's more that both songs use a leitmotif that's used throughout the entire game, that's first used in the intro. Undertale uses a lot of repeated music, you can find all of the links here (http://41.media.tumblr.com/46d706805917f4a9f5d4307828d575e0/tumblr_nydzt6m7qr1s375r5o1_1280.png).

[Knaight]

An amusing thought concerning those who played the game but didn't like for plot/characters reasons:
Those folks consider the game as just a game, and complain about characters being one-dimensional*. They're unable to connect with these characters or feel any empathy for them.
Nobody is saying the characters are one-dimensional because they are characters in a game. They are saying that the characters in this particular game are poorly done, with the primary critic being someone who has explicitly said that the storytelling in games (a category that includes the characters) is extremely important to them.

[Lord Raziere]

Nobody is saying the characters are one-dimensional because they are characters in a game. They are saying that the characters in this particular game are poorly done, with the primary critic being someone who has explicitly said that the storytelling in games (a category that includes the characters) is extremely important to them.

......

Toriel:
D1: caring mother if smothering
D2: does not want human to leave and tries to test them if they're strong enough
D3: has a divorced relationship with Asgore, angry with him
D4: likes puns, has a good relationship with Sans

Papyrus:
D1: egomaniacal and attention-seeking
D2: sweetest nicest guy of them all, also naive
D3: clever enough to trick Undyne into befriending Frisk
D4: is a bad cook, but a tough fighter.

Undyne:
D1: is intense in everything she does
D2: fights to defend both monsters and humans in the genocide route
D3: genuinely loves Alphys for who she is, can't bring herself to admit it to her face
D4: wisely keeps children out of trouble of what she thinks is a threat

Alphys:
D1: nervous, nerdy scientist
D2: is actually incredibly depressed and lacking in confidence
D3: mostly because of horrible mistakes she made in her past
D4: loves Undyne in return, doesn't think she is good enough for her
D5: despite seeing Undyne dying, does everything in her power to keep more people from dying to Chara
that is actually effective

Mettaton:
D1: selfish celebrity robot
D2: actually cares a lot for his fans
D3: seems to be a bad boss to Burgerpants
D4: tries to ensure humanities survival in all runs
D5: cares for his cousin napstablook

Asgore:
D1: benevolent king
D2: tries to do what he thinks is right for his people no matter how much he dislikes it
D3: doesn't feel like he deserves mercy and can't bring himself to look at Frisk during his fight
D4: regretted his past decision but has no idea of how to reverse or fix them

Flowey:
D1: sociopathic kill-flower
D2: actually has knowledge of Determination, and has reset and experienced everything more than anyone
D3: really wants to play with his old friend again because he is the only interesting thing left.
D4: is actually Asriel Dreamurr, Asgore's son.
D5: even him becomes afraid of Chara

Sans:
D1: pun-loving, prankster skeleton
D2: laziest guy in the Underground
D3: has knowledge of time travel, how timelines work, as well as LOVE and EXP
D4: renders the judgement near the end of the game and is the closest thing you have to a mentor
D5: actually has huge depression issues and doesn't think anything he does truly matters because it could all get reset again
D6: is the most badass person in the Underground.

Chara:
D1: demonic hell-child wanting to kill everything because they can.

........I don't see how any of them are one-dimensional, aside from the last one. they all have relationships, secrets, stories of their past, different aspects of themselves showing up in different situations and so on that make them apart of a world that makes sense and act like believable people. the only one who doesn't is the literal demonic abstract entity designed for nothing but bringing complete and utter oblivion to everything, and they don't even have a good reason why. even Flowey has different aspects to him and a motivation that is more well thought out. I find stories extremely important as well, and it seems to be well told and the characters well made to me. so *shrug*

[Cute_Riolu]

......

Toriel:
D1: caring mother if smothering
D2: does not want human to leave and tries to test them if they're strong enough
D3: has a divorced relationship with Asgore, angry with him
D4: likes puns, has a good relationship with Sans

Papyrus:
D1: egomaniacal and attention-seeking
D2: sweetest nicest guy of them all, also naive
D3: clever enough to trick Undyne into befriending Frisk
D4: is a bad cook, but a tough fighter.

Undyne:
D1: is intense in everything she does
D2: fights to defend both monsters and humans in the genocide route
D3: genuinely loves Alphys for who she is, can't bring herself to admit it to her face
D4: wisely keeps children out of trouble of what she thinks is a threat

Alphys:
D1: nervous, nerdy scientist
D2: is actually incredibly depressed and lacking in confidence
D3: mostly because of horrible mistakes she made in her past
D4: loves Undyne in return, doesn't think she is good enough for her
D5: despite seeing Undyne dying, does everything in her power to keep more people from dying to Chara
that is actually effective

Mettaton:
D1: selfish celebrity robot
D2: actually cares a lot for his fans
D3: seems to be a bad boss to Burgerpants
D4: tries to ensure humanities survival in all runs
D5: cares for his cousin napstablook

Asgore:
D1: benevolent king
D2: tries to do what he thinks is right for his people no matter how much he dislikes it
D3: doesn't feel like he deserves mercy and can't bring himself to look at Frisk during his fight
D4: regretted his past decision but has no idea of how to reverse or fix them

Flowey:
D1: sociopathic kill-flower
D2: actually has knowledge of Determination, and has reset and experienced everything more than anyone
D3: really wants to play with his old friend again because he is the only interesting thing left.
D4: is actually Asriel Dreamurr, Asgore's son.
D5: even him becomes afraid of Chara

Sans:
D1: pun-loving, prankster skeleton
D2: laziest guy in the Underground
D3: has knowledge of time travel, how timelines work, as well as LOVE and EXP
D4: renders the judgement near the end of the game and is the closest thing you have to a mentor
D5: actually has huge depression issues and doesn't think anything he does truly matters because it could all get reset again
D6: is the most badass person in the Underground.

Chara:
D1: demonic hell-child wanting to kill everything because they can.

........I don't see how any of them are one-dimensional, aside from the last one. they all have relationships, secrets, stories of their past, different aspects of themselves showing up in different situations and so on that make them apart of a world that makes sense and act like believable people. the only one who doesn't is the literal demonic abstract entity designed for nothing but bringing complete and utter oblivion to everything, and they don't even have a good reason why. even Flowey has different aspects to him and a motivation that is more well thought out. I find stories extremely important as well, and it seems to be well told and the characters well made to me. so *shrug*


In regards to the last... well, the dialogue in New Home during a Genocide run is kind of telling. There's clearly more to it, but the meaning behind much of Chara's lore is left to the imagination of the player.

[Gemhammer&Sons]

this game is amazing, it's the earthbound sequel we never got.

[Anarion]

Well, this is weird. I poppped in here after finishing the game last night to say how awesome it was and talk about how I feel it critiques and grapples with traditional RPG assumptions while treating its characters and the player much more realistically than many games I have played. And I find a conversation about game design and what defines an RPG.

That strikes me as missing the point.

[Forum Explorer]

Well, this is weird. I poppped in here after finishing the game last night to say how awesome it was and talk about how I feel it critiques and grapples with traditional RPG assumptions while treating its characters and the player much more realistically than many games I have played. And I find a conversation about game design and what defines an RPG.

That strikes me as missing the point.

You know the internet, the point and what we are actually discussing is rarely on the same page. :smallwink:


Nobody is saying the characters are one-dimensional because they are characters in a game. They are saying that the characters in this particular game are poorly done, with the primary critic being someone who has explicitly said that the storytelling in games (a category that includes the characters) is extremely important to them.

Are you willing to pick up that argument? The person who originally presented that argument has since left the thread, and I would love to discuss it more (I certainly take the opposite stance on the matter)

[Hiro Protagonest]

Undertale characters are weird, because I would dislike most of them in other games. As I've thought more about them, I realize just how oddly Toby wrote them. Basically, the only ones I would put up with in other stuff are Sans, Undyne, and Alphys, because they have self-awareness about their own flaws (even if Undyne is a little roundabout with it due to her abrasiveness). Toriel's caring nature is exaggerated until it's smothering, Asgore's kindness is pathetic, Papyrus is completely narcissistic and naive. But they're funny and not just blocking your progress. Papyrus is hilarious, which is the only thing that stops me from outright hating him.

[NichG]

Undertale characters are weird, because I would dislike most of them in other games. As I've thought more about them, I realize just how oddly Toby wrote them. Basically, the only ones I would put up with in other stuff are Sans, Undyne, and Alphys, because they have self-awareness about their own flaws (even if Undyne is a little roundabout with it due to her abrasiveness). Toriel's caring nature is exaggerated until it's smothering, Asgore's kindness is pathetic, Papyrus is completely narcissistic and naive. But they're funny and not just blocking your progress. Papyrus is hilarious, which is the only thing that stops me from outright hating him.

That's integration with context for you. Things that only work because they work together. For example I think it's really important that the protagonist in Undertale is a child in order to make this stuff work. You can see the way that Toriel, Papyrus, and even Alphys act as being the kinds of screwy facets of how adults behave when they try to interact with children. But if you were playing some 50 year old diplomat who attacks things with an attache case and had a Serious Mission to reunite the Underground with the Overground, then all of the silliness would feel intensely frustrating instead - 'I'm trying to help these people, why are they cracking puns and trying to electrify me?'.

[NeoVid]

That's one thing I didn't realize until after the fact in a lot of cases... a lot of the characters would be pretty unpleasant to be around, but we're given enough time to get to know them that I didn't actually notice the downsides of their personalities for a while. It took me a long time before I thought, "Wait, Papyrus is an obnoxious dork..." since I'd already seen that he was one of the most genuinely decent people on the planet. I suppose that went the opposite of the way it typically does in RL, where the first thing you'd notice is that he's an arrogant, oblivious bozo.

The big exception was Alphys, because her scam to get you to like her was revealed partway through. Of course, part of the reason I didn't like that was... well, because trying to fool people into liking me because I have no idea how it's supposed to work naturally reminded me of myself. I'm told that's a common reason Alphys is less liked by the fans than a lot of the cast.

[Morph Bark]

Ohey, dinna see this thread before now. Thought the other one was the only one.

I finished Undertale about a month ago, and I quite enjoyed it. It gets a lot of things right. Sadly, there are also a lot of things where it gets close to being great, but it's abandoned in favour of something else. I found it a bit grating how great puzzles are often teased, but then only serve as the setup for a joke. It makes for great characterization, but it's done again and again after the point has already been made, and there's no gameplay at those moments. In many ways, Undertale is just good, but the one thing that makes it great is that the mechanics and the narrative are married together so well. Toby Fox definitely did a great job of that.

[Lord Raziere]

well, Papyrus is my least liked character because he is so obnoxious, naive and oblivious. I'm not one for outward displays of emotion and such.

I actually like Alphys and Sans the most. yes she lied to try and make me her friend, but technically thats not even the worst shes done, or the worst other people have done. Undyne tried to kill me, Papyrus did multiple puzzles that were clearly dangerous even if he only tried to capture me, Asgore killed me many times, and Mettaton was the one who really tried to kill me in his battle for selfish reasons. the point is that while they're inherently good, its that they all have flaws and goals that set them against you and a big part of the point is learning to look past the big flaws in all their personalities and forgive them for what they've done. many of their problems are because of the circumstances they are in and how they've tried to solve the problems of those circumstances with varying degrees of success.

[NichG]

In a lot of games where the player's choices involve a moral dilemma, the usual structure is 'which of these two ambiguous sides will you support?'. E.g. they encourage the player to act as judge, to evaluate the worthiness of aspects of the world and to cut away the unworthy ones and raise up the worthy ones (according to the player's standards, whatever they might happen to be).

So it seems that Undertale is encouraging the player to not judge, by presenting a bunch of characters that have a high chance of making players say (at least for some subset of characters) 'actually, I don't really approve of/like that...', but then saying 'so, you're going to have a kid kill them for that, really?'. On saying that, it doesn't entirely ring true though. If that were the case, shouldn't there be at least the possibility of fighting Alphys? Obviously it doesn't make sense for Alphys to attack you, but there are fights in which she's present and could have been made possible to target (I mean, the player would kind of have to go out of their way to be a jerk about it, but its not like Undertale shies away from that elsewhere).

[Lord Raziere]

If that were the case, shouldn't there be at least the possibility of fighting Alphys? Obviously it doesn't make sense for Alphys to attack you, but there are fights in which she's present and could have been made possible to target (I mean, the player would kind of have to go out of their way to be a jerk about it, but its not like Undertale shies away from that elsewhere).

Alphys is implied to be near the brink of suicide. you basically accomplish her non-Genocide death by killing Undyne, Mettaton or both. so. WORSE than directly killing her.

[NichG]

Alphys is implied to be near the brink of suicide. you basically accomplish her non-Genocide death by killing Undyne, Mettaton or both. so. WORSE than directly killing her.

Yes, but what I mean is that if one were trying to maximize contrast with other games which encourage the player to act as a judge, having the player make that decision explicitly would make sense. So since the decision to do so is indirect, it feels like it's not so much about only making contrast with those other things, but that the particular ways in which Alphys might be unlikeable are being used to different effect. I don't think most players would kill Mettaton specifically because they didn't like Alphys (and they certainly wouldn't kill Undyne because they didn't like Alphys, since they wouldn't've known about Alphys yet normally), so Alphys' suicide is more of an indirect thing.

[Anarion]

Yes, but what I mean is that if one were trying to maximize contrast with other games which encourage the player to act as a judge, having the player make that decision explicitly would make sense. So since the decision to do so is indirect, it feels like it's not so much about only making contrast with those other things, but that the particular ways in which Alphys might be unlikeable are being used to different effect. I don't think most players would kill Mettaton specifically because they didn't like Alphys (and they certainly wouldn't kill Undyne because they didn't like Alphys, since they wouldn't've known about Alphys yet normally), so Alphys' suicide is more of an indirect thing.

I think Alphys is a bit different. She's really a non-combatant unlike the other characters and the game is, in some ways, trying to treat its characters as realistic (if totally goofy and weird). Asgore fights you because he's really incredibly strong, Undyne because she's the head knight and never gives up, and so forth. Alphys would never want to fight though, she'd flee a murderer and befriend a normal person (and kinda indirectly hassle them because she sucks at friendship as a concept).

[Forum Explorer]

Alphys disappointed me, not because of her trickery, but because she never confessed it and thus we never got the opportunity to tell her that we knew about it and wanted to be her friend anyways. The true lab came close though so I was happy with that.

Undyne is without a doubt my favorite. She called me out on my bad behavior in my Neutral run, was the most challenging fight of that run, has the absolutely best date, and is a total bad*** in the Genocide run. She's also the only monster who seems fully competent and fully understands what their actions would do. (Barring Sans in the Genocide run)

My least favorite? Asgore. I was pretty much neutral towards him til the Pacifist run where Toriel calls him out on how pathetic he is. And everything she says is true. So I hold much the same opinion as Toriel in that he is a pitiful whelp who fails as a leader, despite his strengths in inspiring the people.

[Guancyto]

I don't particularly see Asgore as pathetic - well actually I do, but in the sort of classic tragedy sense. He made a godawful decision when he was in a really dark place, and ever since then has been stuck with it because hey, he's the king, he knows best even when he doesn't, right? His plan couldn't be a terrible idea, right? You sort of see that with the way he names things - he's really bad at names and everyone seems to understand this, but everyone also goes "eh, he's our king, 'New Home' is good enough." If not for the killing humans thing, he would be a great king of a people trapped in a tiny Underground - in the various neutral endings, the best ruler turns out to be the person most like him, which is Papyrus, of all people!

I mean, the entire underground of monsters, from genius Gaster to clueless Papyrus, missed the really obvious solution.
Just... let the fallen humans be? And then collect their souls when they die of old age like humans tend to? It takes a lot more patience, but boss monsters are immortal and as plans go it requires killing exactly zero children.

Plus I can't exactly blame him for not going for Toriel's solution: Human+monster soul venturing aboveground to find some humans is exactly how he lost his son, after all!

[Hiro Protagonest]

Toriel berating Asgore is where I lost respect for them both. They're not as bad as Papyrus, who I immediately disliked even though his scenes were funny. But Toriel calling him out is valid, yet she is at least as flawed. I've heard the theory that Toriel's "moved on" more from the past, because Asgore still has the children's room with all of Asriel's and Chara's things, but I don't think she has. While she had the resolve to walk away from him, the desperate desire she has for the way things used to be is taken out on any outsiders who wander in. She tries to act humble, but she doesn't actually acknowledge her own flaws.

[Maryring]

I don't particularly see Asgore as pathetic - well actually I do, but in the sort of classic tragedy sense. He made a godawful decision when he was in a really dark place, and ever since then has been stuck with it because hey, he's the king, he knows best even when he doesn't, right? His plan couldn't be a terrible idea, right? You sort of see that with the way he names things - he's really bad at names and everyone seems to understand this, but everyone also goes "eh, he's our king, 'New Home' is good enough." If not for the killing humans thing, he would be a great king of a people trapped in a tiny Underground - in the various neutral endings, the best ruler turns out to be the person most like him, which is Papyrus, of all people!

I mean, the entire underground of monsters, from genius Gaster to clueless Papyrus, missed the really obvious solution.
Just... let the fallen humans be? And then collect their souls when they die of old age like humans tend to? It takes a lot more patience, but boss monsters are immortal and as plans go it requires killing exactly zero children.

Plus I can't exactly blame him for not going for Toriel's solution: Human+monster soul venturing aboveground to find some humans is exactly how he lost his son, after all!

See, I very much can blame him for not going for Toriel's solution. It's clear that Asgore is a very kind person, but he is passive. And that passiveness got six children killed. Asgore is fully responsible for the deaths of the six unnamed children. He never had the strength of character to admit he did wrong and recall the decree. After he got the first soul, he should've taken it and gone into the outside world to acquire more souls. Souls that didn't have to be murdered to empower some eldritch ritual. In the outer world, there are tons of humans, humans who die of natural causes. Their souls could be borrowed for enough power to break the barrier. Asgore could and should have done that. Instead of letting a bunch of kids die for his weakness.

[Morph Bark]

See, I very much can blame him for not going for Toriel's solution. It's clear that Asgore is a very kind person, but he is passive. And that passiveness got six children killed. Asgore is fully responsible for the deaths of the six unnamed children. He never had the strength of character to admit he did wrong and recall the decree. After he got the first soul, he should've taken it and gone into the outside world to acquire more souls. Souls that didn't have to be murdered to empower some eldritch ritual. In the outer world, there are tons of humans, humans who die of natural causes. Their souls could be borrowed for enough power to break the barrier. Asgore could and should have done that. Instead of letting a bunch of kids die for his weakness.

The thing is though, could they even take the soul of someone who dies of natural causes? It seems sort of implied that you have to kill someone to be able to take their soul, or at least await an opportune moment, as with Chara's suicide.

[Forum Explorer]

Toriel berating Asgore is where I lost respect for them both. They're not as bad as Papyrus, who I immediately disliked even though his scenes were funny. But Toriel calling him out is valid, yet she is at least as flawed. I've heard the theory that Toriel's "moved on" more from the past, because Asgore still has the children's room with all of Asriel's and Chara's things, but I don't think she has. While she had the resolve to walk away from him, the desperate desire she has for the way things used to be is taken out on any outsiders who wander in. She tries to act humble, but she doesn't actually acknowledge her own flaws.

I hear Toriel getting a bunch of flak for not doing more, but honestly she did as much as she could. She protested it, and made it clear that she wasn't going to support Asgore's plan, and she tried to protect the humans. Plus like her Neutral ending shows, her trying to force her beliefs on the people usually end with her getting ejected from power anyways.

But she's a pacifist and refuses to violate her own ideals by physically stopping Asgore/the Humans.

Sure she hasn't moved on, but I don't think she pretends that she has.


I don't particularly see Asgore as pathetic - well actually I do, but in the sort of classic tragedy sense. He made a godawful decision when he was in a really dark place, and ever since then has been stuck with it because hey, he's the king, he knows best even when he doesn't, right? His plan couldn't be a terrible idea, right? You sort of see that with the way he names things - he's really bad at names and everyone seems to understand this, but everyone also goes "eh, he's our king, 'New Home' is good enough." If not for the killing humans thing, he would be a great king of a people trapped in a tiny Underground - in the various neutral endings, the best ruler turns out to be the person most like him, which is Papyrus, of all people!

I mean, the entire underground of monsters, from genius Gaster to clueless Papyrus, missed the really obvious solution.
Just... let the fallen humans be? And then collect their souls when they die of old age like humans tend to? It takes a lot more patience, but boss monsters are immortal and as plans go it requires killing exactly zero children.

Plus I can't exactly blame him for not going for Toriel's solution: Human+monster soul venturing aboveground to find some humans is exactly how he lost his son, after all!


Yeah, I actually spared him more out of a mercy to the rest of the Underground then any personal preference to Asgore. But Flowery killed him anyways so hey.

Eh, that plans sounds nice on paper, but I don't think the rest of the non-immortal monsters would like it. Though I think that's basically Sans plan in their Neutral ending, if the humans are good anyways.

Just being on the surface would be pretty easy. I mean they don't need to directly kill humans, just hang around places where people die and collect their souls stealthily.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Just being on the surface would be pretty easy. I mean they don't need to directly kill humans, just hang around places where people die and collect their souls stealthily.

Except if that were possible, it's a pretty big plothole for why the monsters never took a human soul before they were banished.

[Maryring]

The thing is though, could they even take the soul of someone who dies of natural causes? It seems sort of implied that you have to kill someone to be able to take their soul, or at least await an opportune moment, as with Chara's suicide.

"Natural cause" could also be people perishing in car accidents, or even the execution of criminals depending on if the nearby human settlements practice capital punishment. There's suicides, robberies gone wrong, young kids being handed guns. Plenty of instances where a soul could be collected. And no, you do not have to kill someone to be able to take their soul. As shown with Chara's suicide, it should be more than enough to be close to someone as they die. Sure, it'd be riskier, and it would take more work, but it's a way, way, way better alternative than turning into a child-murderer. Since the children were killed because of Asgore's orders, I'm holding him directly responsible for all their deaths.

[Forum Explorer]

Except if that were possible, it's a pretty big plothole for why the monsters never took a human soul before they were banished.

I've thought of a couple reasons for that.

1. Biggest one? There were a lot less humans (and thus less deaths) back when the monsters were banished. The humans we see look like they are using stone spears and are in 'native' garb. So depending on where Mount Ebott is, that means they could have been imprisoned since before the Bronze Age.

2. In combination with the above, human deaths were a lot more noticed by the people around them, and there was greater respect for taking care of the remains and soul of the lost human.

3. Humans in the past knew that monsters could take souls and were being careful to ensure the soul passed on peacefully. These days humans don't even know monsters exist, let alone that they have souls that can be absorbed by monsters.

4. The monsters had no motive to claim souls, not really caring about the power, and not wanting to upset the humans who were very adamant about not having their souls taken.

5. The Human-Monster war actually predates every human conflict. There was never the opportunity to really collect souls if they had the motive for it.

[Morph Bark]

"Natural cause" could also be people perishing in car accidents, or even the execution of criminals depending on if the nearby human settlements practice capital punishment. There's suicides, robberies gone wrong, young kids being handed guns. Plenty of instances where a soul could be collected. And no, you do not have to kill someone to be able to take their soul. As shown with Chara's suicide, it should be more than enough to be close to someone as they die. Sure, it'd be riskier, and it would take more work, but it's a way, way, way better alternative than turning into a child-murderer. Since the children were killed because of Asgore's orders, I'm holding him directly responsible for all their deaths.

Sure, I suppose that's right and it would work. However, we're talking about someone who lost their child because they went to the surface, and they've got a responsibility as ruler of the underground. That probably would prevent him more than anything from trying to do it. It could be easy enough to do if he doesn't get detected and killed like his son was (which is probably easier for him, since he knows to be cautious and he's much stronger, but monsters are generally weaker than humans are and Asgore is big), but he'd be away from the underground for a while to collect those souls. Unless I'm mistaken (correct me if so), monsters can live for quite some time, so Asgore could more easily bide his time instead and be patient before invading the human world.

[Jermell]

Sure, I suppose that's right and it would work. However, we're talking about someone who lost their child because they went to the surface, and they've got a responsibility as ruler of the underground. That probably would prevent him more than anything from trying to do it. It could be easy enough to do if he doesn't get detected and killed like his son was (which is probably easier for him, since he knows to be cautious and he's much stronger, but monsters are generally weaker than humans are and Asgore is big), but he'd be away from the underground for a while to collect those souls. Unless I'm mistaken (correct me if so), monsters can live for quite some time, so Asgore could more easily bide his time instead and be patient before invading the human world.

Super late to the party, but I think everyone's forgetting thatEven if Asgore cancelled the war he's still of the opinion that there will be a war as soon as he arrives on the surface. After all humans were the ones that started the first one, there's no reason they'd hesitate for a second. This is somebody that is guilt-ridden by six deaths he'd absolutely put off going to the surface as long as he possibly could so that he wouldn't have to kill millions (well, billions but they probably don't have a good headcount on the humans in the underground). I think any plan that involves Asgore going to the surface is kind of absurd for that reason.

Also who knows how many years it was before he was willing to let go of his rage? We could be 5, 10, even 20 years down the road. That doesn't change what he should have done (just wait for humans to die of old age) but I understand that would make it harder.

[DiscipleofBob]

I just got the game, just got past the intro, and before I get any further I have a few questions...


1. I wanted to play the game pacifist because that sounded personally interesting. I accidentally killed a random encounter early on. Does that screw things up permanently?

2. Is Pacifist-mode generally too difficult the first time playing the game? I notice I'm not getting any XP and wonder if the entire game is going to be extremely difficult because of passive mode. Is a first-run pacifist mode recommended? Are there enemies that I just can't not kill to watch out for?

3. If I do continue pacifist mode, are absolutely zero kills required? Or are there a 'safe' number of random encounters I can kill for XP?

3. The first time I killed Toriel trying to spare her. I went back to the previous save and managed to spare her, and the game acknowledges that I did so. Stuff like this makes the game awesome, but I also want to make sure I'm not screwing myself out of a particular ending or other game aspect long-term.

4. If the game keeps track of your saves and breaks the fourth wall about it, is there a way to completely reset the game?

[Hunter Noventa]

I just got the game, just got past the intro, and before I get any further I have a few questions...


1. I wanted to play the game pacifist because that sounded personally interesting. I accidentally killed a random encounter early on. Does that screw things up permanently?

2. Is Pacifist-mode generally too difficult the first time playing the game? I notice I'm not getting any XP and wonder if the entire game is going to be extremely difficult because of passive mode. Is a first-run pacifist mode recommended? Are there enemies that I just can't not kill to watch out for?

3. If I do continue pacifist mode, are absolutely zero kills required? Or are there a 'safe' number of random encounters I can kill for XP?

3. The first time I killed Toriel trying to spare her. I went back to the previous save and managed to spare her, and the game acknowledges that I did so. Stuff like this makes the game awesome, but I also want to make sure I'm not screwing myself out of a particular ending or other game aspect long-term.

4. If the game keeps track of your saves and breaks the fourth wall about it, is there a way to completely reset the game?


1. Yep. Until you beat the game and start again, it does keep track of things between saves. But you can get the True Pacifist ending on a second run.

2. Nope, you don't need to gain a single exp, that's kind of the point of the game. Note that you still get money for ending encounters peacefully. Buy better armor and healing items and you'll be fine. As long as you keep your armor updated you'll be able to take a few hits. You don't even need to upgrade your weapon. If you're good enough at the bullet-hell bits you can beat the game taking no damage, but it's unlikely.

3. Yes, you need absolutely zero kills, however you can effectively do a new game+ after getting one of the other endings. Well, except for one.

4. The only thing you can really 'screw' yourself with is if you murder absolutely everything. I won't say why, just that it is the case.

5. You can manually delete the save data in the game folder if you really have to, but I wouldn't suggest it if you want a proper experience.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Yes

See for yourself

Yes

It has a very minor effect

True Reset does reset any characters who could know about it. Except one who doesn't show up in Pacifist.

[Forum Explorer]

I just got the game, just got past the intro, and before I get any further I have a few questions...


1. I wanted to play the game pacifist because that sounded personally interesting. I accidentally killed a random encounter early on. Does that screw things up permanently?

2. Is Pacifist-mode generally too difficult the first time playing the game? I notice I'm not getting any XP and wonder if the entire game is going to be extremely difficult because of passive mode. Is a first-run pacifist mode recommended? Are there enemies that I just can't not kill to watch out for?

3. If I do continue pacifist mode, are absolutely zero kills required? Or are there a 'safe' number of random encounters I can kill for XP?

3. The first time I killed Toriel trying to spare her. I went back to the previous save and managed to spare her, and the game acknowledges that I did so. Stuff like this makes the game awesome, but I also want to make sure I'm not screwing myself out of a particular ending or other game aspect long-term.

4. If the game keeps track of your saves and breaks the fourth wall about it, is there a way to completely reset the game?

1. Yup, you have to do a reset

2. It's a short game, so I honestly recommend your first run being however you personally would respond to the attacks (or any other character you wish to pretend you are). Then do a pacifist run.

3. Yes. You can't kill anyone. There's a reason for that. You can grind encounters for gold though, so long as you don't kill them, it's all good.

3.1 It is very awesome, but you generally don't need to worry. You actually cannot complete a pacifist run without reloading at least once, so it's expected. The only things you might miss are what are basically some characters responding to a challenge run (Beating the game without Saving for example)

There is one way to **** things up permanently, but it is nigh impossible to do that by accident. And the game will warn you many times beforehand.

4. Yes, after you beat a Pacifist run you are given the ability to do a True Reset, which even lets you rename the character.

[Studoku]

I just got the game, just got past the intro, and before I get any further I have a few questions...


1. I wanted to play the game pacifist because that sounded personally interesting. I accidentally killed a random encounter early on. Does that screw things up permanently?

2. Is Pacifist-mode generally too difficult the first time playing the game? I notice I'm not getting any XP and wonder if the entire game is going to be extremely difficult because of passive mode. Is a first-run pacifist mode recommended? Are there enemies that I just can't not kill to watch out for?

3. If I do continue pacifist mode, are absolutely zero kills required? Or are there a 'safe' number of random encounters I can kill for XP?

3. The first time I killed Toriel trying to spare her. I went back to the previous save and managed to spare her, and the game acknowledges that I did so. Stuff like this makes the game awesome, but I also want to make sure I'm not screwing myself out of a particular ending or other game aspect long-term.

4. If the game keeps track of your saves and breaks the fourth wall about it, is there a way to completely reset the game?
1. Yes, at least until you reset the game. You'll be prompted to when you finish anyway, so don't worry about this.

2. Depends how much experience you have with bullet hell games. If the answer is "not much", it will be extremely difficult.

3. Only certain dialogue will change. There is one thing which will permanently change everything, even if you reset, but it's pretty extreme. Suffice to say, you'll know it if it happens and it's not something you can do accidentally.

4. Yes. Once you beat the game with the "best" ending, you'll get a True Reset option which erases everything.

[DiscipleofBob]

I continued on with the game. Since I'll have to start the game over as part of the multiple playthroughs I guess it's not a big deal.

Papyrus was genuinely difficult to spare, what with that curve ball he throws you. I ended up getting captured the first time I fought him. But I'm glad I did. Papyrus is great.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I continued on with the game. Since I'll have to start the game over as part of the multiple playthroughs I guess it's not a big deal.

If you get the neutral end but are on a pacifist run, all you have to do is reload the save. If you are not on a pacifist run but plan on getting it later, you have to play from the very start again.

[Yuki Akuma]

I continued on with the game. Since I'll have to start the game over as part of the multiple playthroughs I guess it's not a big deal.

Papyrus was genuinely difficult to spare, what with that curve ball he throws you. I ended up getting captured the first time I fought him. But I'm glad I did. Papyrus is great.

I don't think Papyrus can actually be killed before you can spare him, unless you're on the "Kill Everyone No Seriously I mean EVERYONE" playthrough. I don't believe you can do enough damage to kill him before he stops fighting.

[NeoVid]

I'll agree with everyone saying that you should still run with what you've got after messing up Pacifist. Undertale is particularly good if you go in blind and have to learn as you go. It's so popular that not many people will get that experience, but I still like the concept.

And pacifist actually is more challenging than playing it like a regular RPG. One of the design goals was to make a game where taking the nonviolent route didn't cheat the player out of a ton of cool fights.

One major bit of advice for someone going Pacifist: The best healing items for a pacifist run are in the first town. Bicicles heal you for 11 HP twice and are cheap, which is great for a playthrough that will keep you at 20 HP forever.

[Maryring]

I'll agree with everyone saying that you should still run with what you've got after messing up Pacifist. Undertale is particularly good if you go in blind and have to learn as you go. It's so popular that not many people will get that experience, but I still like the concept.

And pacifist actually is more challenging than playing it like a regular RPG. One of the design goals was to make a game where taking the nonviolent route didn't cheat the player out of a ton of cool fights.

One major bit of advice for someone going Pacifist: The best healing items for a pacifist run are in the first town. Bicicles heal you for 11 HP twice and are cheap, which is great for a playthrough that will keep you at 20 HP forever.

And yet, the two best fights in the game are exclusive to genocide.

[Anarion]

And yet, the two best fights in the game are exclusive to genocide.

Hardest. And I think that's fair. If nobody really wants to hurt you, it's not surprising that they wouldn't go insanely all out. Genocide is the only run where the strongest monsters have any reason to engage you.

[Forum Explorer]

And yet, the two best fights in the game are exclusive to genocide.

Isn't Sans designed to be an unfair and not fun at all boss fight?

But really, if they didn't give you that, there wouldn't be any challenge to do a genocide run at all considering you are one shotting everything for most of the game.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Isn't Sans designed to be an unfair and not fun at all boss fight?

It's pretty easy to make an incredibly drawn-out, boring bossfight. Sans is not that. He breaks the supposed rules of the game, that's all.

[Forum Explorer]

It's pretty easy to make an incredibly drawn-out, boring bossfight. Sans is not that. He breaks the supposed rules of the game, that's all.

I suppose, though I know some people take some serious offense to that sort of thing. The number one complaint I hear about the genocide route is how dare it have permanent consequences in a video game, after all.

[Anarion]

Isn't Sans designed to be an unfair and not fun at all boss fight?

But really, if they didn't give you that, there wouldn't be any challenge to do a genocide run at all considering you are one shotting everything for most of the game.

For those who enjoy bullet hell itself, Sans looks incredibly fun. I've watched the fight but haven't tried it myself, and I really want to do it. Things move fast, you have to execute really carefully, and there are a ton of cool effects.

[Hiro Protagonest]

The number one complaint I hear about the genocide route is how dare it have permanent consequences in a video game, after all.

I don't like that either. That's the only point where I consider the game to be pretentious. I see Chara as a mouthpiece.

[Cute_Riolu]

I don't like that either. That's the only point where I consider the game to be pretentious. I see Chara as a mouthpiece.

I've got friends who complain of things being pretentious, but I've never really understood it myself. I guess that's a good thing; I can enjoy more media and such regardless of that, but it's kind of befuddling to me. My apologies if this comes across poorly, but I am genuinely confused about why it's really an issue, I guess? It's always seemed to me that something being pretentious was more a quality of the difference in opinion between someone and the creator of content than in the content itself, at which point I see little cause to be upset about it, personally, if that makes sense?

[Maryring]

For those who enjoy bullet hell itself, Sans looks incredibly fun. I've watched the fight but haven't tried it myself, and I really want to do it. Things move fast, you have to execute really carefully, and there are a ton of cool effects.

Pretty much this. I love bullet hell games. Weaving and narrowly grazing attacks. Sans is like challenge mode bullet hell patterns, and it's gorgeous. I find all the other fights in Undertale to be incredibly easy. almost to the point of being boring.

[Forum Explorer]

I don't like that either. That's the only point where I consider the game to be pretentious. I see Chara as a mouthpiece.

Eh, it doesn't bother me. In part because I'm never going to complete a genocide run, but also because the game does warn you, multiple times, that you are going to destroy the universe. (Both Undyne and Sans say as much). And the game had given plenty of other indications that it treated saves and resets differently then most.

That and if it bothers you so much, then why don't you give Chara the big middle finger and hack the game to actually reverse your actions? It's difficult to be sure (particularly if you bought the Steam version), but it's not all that difficult considering the internet has step by step guides on how to do so. Honestly, I think beating Sans would be much more difficult then that.


Pretty much this. I love bullet hell games. Weaving and narrowly grazing attacks. Sans is like challenge mode bullet hell patterns, and it's gorgeous. I find all the other fights in Undertale to be incredibly easy. almost to the point of being boring.

I kinda agree, the only bosses that I actually died to were Undyne and Mettaton on my first playthrough. But on the otherhand, Undertale is the only bullet hell game I have that isn't from the NES era, so it doesn't really have any competition. (I know of Tohou, but I haven't really figured out where to start if I want games of it)

[thracian]

I'm actually considering doing a genocide run as my first, mostly because I can't see myself playing the game three times to see every ending and I just want to play the difficult fights.

[Cute_Riolu]

I'm actually considering doing a genocide run as my first, mostly because I can't see myself playing the game three times to see every ending and I just want to play the difficult fights.

Do as you like, but I'd recommend against that. Part of the reason many folks like genocide is its contrast to more normal, or pacifist, playthroughs. If all you care for is the challenge, though, go for it, but be warned that most bosses are easier in genocide for reasons that will become evident, with two exceptions, but otherwise you'll miss much of the impact that the playthrough would provide with the context of a neutral or pacifist playthrough.

As far as endings go, you really only need to play through it twice. If you wanted to see EVERY ending, it'd be more on the order of 18 times, but most of them are just a matter of different dialogue. In order to complete a pacifist ending, there's a point at which you're required to load your save, but it is not necessary to restart.

[Forum Explorer]

I'm actually considering doing a genocide run as my first, mostly because I can't see myself playing the game three times to see every ending and I just want to play the difficult fights.

What cute said. I'd do a pacifist run first if you want a challenge, then do a genocide run. If you are just going to play the game once, then I still say do a pacifist run. The other bosses might not have the raw challenge of the two genocide bosses, but they are still a lot of fun, and you get a lot more of them plus subbosses.

Genocide from what I've seen is actually really boring beyond those two fights. Most of it is just mindlessly grinding the random encounters down to complete the genocide conditions. There is a lot of impact in seeing the desolation you are creating, but if that's your first experience with the game, most of that impact will be negated.

[Morty]

I just finished Undertale a few days ago - twice, for the "best ending". It's... something, certainly. One of a kind. I wasn't disappointed. I've also been reading up about a "no mercy" run, since I won't be making one myself.

Seems there's a lot you find out about Sans if you go that route. In a pacifist run, he's mostly just this easygoing, lazy guy who likes puns. There are some hints about something more, and the real reason he doesn't care much about anything. But you won't really see it.

[Jermell]

I just finished Undertale a few days ago - twice, for the "best ending". It's... something, certainly. One of a kind. I wasn't disappointed. I've also been reading up about a "no mercy" run, since I won't be making one myself.

Seems there's a lot you find out about Sans if you go that route. In a pacifist run, he's mostly just this easygoing, lazy guy who likes puns. There are some hints about something more, and the real reason he doesn't care much about anything. But you won't really see it.
That's the great thing about it.
It's almost literally a different game. The humor is gone or reduced to just the darkest humor, the life is drained from every area, instead of a whimsical journey you're on a tedious hunt to slaughter all these helpless creatures. And you really get to see the characters at their best. Or for Sans, their worst. When you've finally done it, you've found the pain behind that smile and he's gonna share it with you

[1dominator]

I've got friends who complain of things being pretentious, but I've never really understood it myself. I guess that's a good thing; I can enjoy more media and such regardless of that, but it's kind of befuddling to me. My apologies if this comes across poorly, but I am genuinely confused about why it's really an issue, I guess? It's always seemed to me that something being pretentious was more a quality of the difference in opinion between someone and the creator of content than in the content itself, at which point I see little cause to be upset about it, personally, if that makes sense?

I think people find a thing pretentious when it has sophisticated or high minded pretenses or themes but is not well executed or well written. The high mindedness seems absurd when presented so poorly and makes the whole work seem phony and preachy.

Not that I think Undertale is anything like this, I think it is great!

[Cute_Riolu]

I think people find a thing pretentious when it has sophisticated or high minded pretenses or themes but is not well executed or well written. The high mindedness seems absurd when presented so poorly and makes the whole work seem phony and preachy.

Not that I think Undertale is anything like this, I think it is great!

That makes a bit of sense; thanks for the explanation.

[Forum Explorer]

I think people find a thing pretentious when it has sophisticated or high minded pretenses or themes but is not well executed or well written. The high mindedness seems absurd when presented so poorly and makes the whole work seem phony and preachy.

Not that I think Undertale is anything like this, I think it is great!

Replace (or maybe add to) well executed or well written with not entertaining, and that's when I think something is pretentious. It might be technically well executed or written, but if it isn't enjoyable to read/play/watch then the only reason it seems to exist for is that high minded pretense or theme, and that makes it seem really preachy and intolerable to me.

[Morty]

On the subject of Sans...

It seems that, even if you achieve the best ending, he'll keep expecting it all to be reset at any given moment. That's really rather tragic.

[Cute_Riolu]

Replace (or maybe add to) well executed or well written with not entertaining, and that's when I think something is pretentious. It might be technically well executed or written, but if it isn't enjoyable to read/play/watch then the only reason it seems to exist for is that high minded pretense or theme, and that makes it seem really preachy and intolerable to me.

I guess my problem with the word, then, is that most of the people I know, when they use it, they use it as a statement of fact rather than opinion. Not saying that you do, of course. On which note, I think the reason I never really have a problem with things being pretentious is that I am easily immersed into stories, meta elements or no.


On the subject of Sans...

It seems that, even if you achieve the best ending, he'll keep expecting it all to be reset at any given moment. That's really rather tragic.

Yeah... there's a reason I've only ever played the game once. Even if it's silly to think of it that way, I'd like to imagine MY Sans at least, to be pleasantly surprised.

[cavalieredraghi]

I finished a pacifist run a couple says ago as my first play of the game ever. Now I can't bring myself to do a genocide run. I love the characters so much, it would be painful. Plus I suck at bullet hells.

On a side note has anyone played Toby Fox prior work of Halloween back of Mother?

[Guancyto]

That's the great thing about it.
It's almost literally a different game. The humor is gone or reduced to just the darkest humor, the life is drained from every area, instead of a whimsical journey you're on a tedious hunt to slaughter all these helpless creatures. And you really get to see the characters at their best. Or for Sans, their worst. When you've finally done it, you've found the pain behind that smile and he's gonna share it with you
Well...
That's not entirely true. I found Snowdin on No Mercy to be frigging hilarious - Papyrus gets more and more het up that you're just continually walking right through his puzzles - right up until the point where you fight Papyrus for real. Then you kill someone just for believing in you and offering you a chance, and it really truly stops being funny from there on out. I thought it made a nice transition: you have crossed a line, and suddenly the goofiness is gone.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Guys. Go to the Undertale wiki right now.

[cavalieredraghi]

Why I don't see anything different?

[Hiro Protagonest]

Are you on mobile? The mobile site is boring.

[cavalieredraghi]

Yes yes I am.

[Forum Explorer]

Guys. Go to the Undertale wiki right now.

What's up? I'm not on mobile and I don't see anything. (Though I don't go to that wiki often so if it's a subtle change I may have missed it.)

[Hiro Protagonest]

What's up? I'm not on mobile and I don't see anything. (Though I don't go to that wiki often so if it's a subtle change I may have missed it.)

...

It's gone now. Guess it's since the majority of the world has moved on.

http://i.imgur.com/v7HXa4O.png

[cavalieredraghi]

I honestly only noticed the cursor being different when I got home, not the Comic sans font. :smalltongue:

[AGD]

Lol, I've found a LPer, that is too much of a pacifist, to get the pacifist ending.

She refused to click the fight option, when it was plopping up against Omega Flowey, while she got the whole green items together with Floweys Attack.

[mythmonster2]

Lol, I've found a LPer, that is too much of a pacifist, to get the pacifist ending.

She refused to click the fight option, when it was plopping up against Omega Flowey, while she got the whole green items together with Floweys Attack.

How did she even get to Omega Flowey? You have to fight Asgore to get to him.

[AGD]

Well, she tried to talk with him repeatedly until she died several times and then she read in the comments of her video, that she had to fight him.

[Domino Quartz]

Lol, I've found a LPer, that is too much of a pacifist, to get the pacifist ending.

She refused to click the fight option, when it was plopping up against Omega Flowey, while she got the whole green items together with Floweys Attack.

You should put at least part of your post in spoiler tags. Some people reading this might not have played the game yet.

Anyway, my experience with the game was as follows:

I first heard about Undertale on these forums. However, my first actual experience of the game came from the Twitch channel of a YouTuber/Twitch streamer by the name of BaerTaffy. For a time, he had a (self-imposed) schedule of streaming the Spelunky Daily challenge (with one or two more normal runs if he failed early enough), and then Undertale for an hour or two. My first impression was actually not too favourable. The graphics (especially at the beginning) looked a bit ugly (what with the protagonist's overworld sprite and the Ruins being all purple). However, since I didn't have to play it myself, it wasn't too bad just to watch it happen (basically, it was "Come for Spelunky, stay for Undertale").

My initial unfavourable impression of the game started to sort of be reversed around the beginning of Snowdin as I became more immersed in the world, and I actually found myself laughing at some of Sans's puns. When he got to the part where you fight Undyne, I was actually somewhat invested in the story, and celebrated (in a small way) when he won that fight. After that, I found myself really liking the music of Hotland.

One part that was sort of a punch to the gut was the part where Sans talks about his meeting with an old lady behind the door to the Ruins (obviously Toriel), because Baer had killed Toriel at the end of the Ruins, and actually continued without resetting (though his run was mostly otherwise pacifistic)).

I liked the music of the Core, as well as Mettaton's boss fight (which was a small surprise to me). Then came New Home. The music and the story being told by the monsters combined to create a very emotional atmosphere (which was slightly interrupted at one point by a Twitch alert from a donation I made. Oops). After that, Asgore's fight surprised me by having him destroy the "Mercy" button. Then Photoshop Flowey really surprised me. I had not expected something like that to show up in a pixel-art game.

After that fight, and the ending that comes after it, Baer realised he hadn't got the "True" ending, and indicated that he would try for it some time. I wasn't really willing to wait for him to do so, however. In my impatience, I sort of spoiled some important story elements for myself (the fact that the character you name and the character you play as are not the same; the indication before the Asgore fight that you're about to get the Pacifist ending). However, I didn't spoil anything more, and decided to actually play it for myself.

My experience was largely the same as Baer's (except that I didn't kill Toriel, and what happens if you spare her had a moderate emotional impact on me), until I got to the Asgore fight. I thought to myself, "Wait, why am I fighting Asgore? Did I do something wrong?" Then I fought Asgore, winning after several tries. I had some trouble with Photoshop Flowey, but I won in the end. Then he popped up at the end, and told me how I could get a better ending. So, I did what he said. Then I had another surprise when I went to Alphys's lab. The True Lab was really weird (in a good way) and so was the music. The music especially showed the bits and pieces of inspiration this game takes from Earthbound. The fights in the True lab were also weird in a good way. I also really liked the fact that you get bits and pieces of "history", sort of, when you look at the reports, as well as some indication that Alphys might be responsible for Flowey's creation (although I didn't get that until later).

So, I got through the True Lab, and went to Asgore again. What transpired was as follows:

<toriel's fireball blasts Asgore away>
Me: Yay! I'm getting the Pacifist ending!
<other stuff happens>
Papyrus: Let's just say...A TINY FLOWER HELPED ME.
Me: What? Oh no...
Alphys: A tiny...flower?
Me: Oh God..
<Flowey traps everyone, and damages Frisk down to 1 HP>
<everyone says words of encouragement to Frisk, increasing Frisk's HP back to 20>
Me: Yes! We're winning!
<Flowey pretends to be scared, then...>
Me: Damn it.
Flowey: ALL OF YOUR SOULS ARE MINE!!
Me: Whoa, what's going on?
<I see what looks like a goat person from the back>
Me: Huh? What...?
Goat person: <name>, are you there? It's me, your best friend...
<super powered transformation>
Asriel: ASRIEL DREEMURR.
Me: What
<music with the melody of the "undertale" theme starts playing, indicating a boss fight>
Me: WHAT

Obviously, this isn't actually the hardest boss fight in the game, since it's impossible to lose. However, everything else about it, including the "But it refused." when you get to 0 HP, is really cool. Then it gets even better when, after the seeming hopelessness of not being able to move, or do anything other than struggle, you get to save everyone's souls. Then comes the extremely emotionally impactful part where you discover that the character you named is not the character you play as. Then the part where you repeatedly "save" Asriel's soul, and he gives you the childishly frustrated words "So stop doing this...AND JUST LET ME WIN!!", showing that despite everything, he's still just a kid. And finally, the part where he stops fighting you, and you get to comfort him by hugging him.

After all of that, you wake up, and get the happy version of the "undertale" theme that tells you that, yes, it's finally over, you've saved the world, and everyone's free.

Most of the game that I played was not really as impactful as it could have been, considering I watched a full Neutral run before actually playing it myself, but the parts that actually surprised me in my playthrough were very impactful.


Now, having said all of that, it is unfortunately not my favourite game of 2015. Considering all of the games I've played and enjoyed, that's a fairly high bar to clear. My actual favourite games of 2015 are games that didn't even come out in 2015 (namely, Portal, Portal 2 and Terraria), because I first played them in 2015. However, Undertale is still a very good game in my opinion. I would give it an 8/10. While the gameplay itself is decent at best, tedious and/or frustrating at worst, and the graphics are not that great, especially at the beginning (thus preventing it from getting a higher score on my arbitrary scale), the way the story is told is excellent, and as I've said many times, very emotionally impactful. I enjoyed the experience very much.

[Forum Explorer]

You should put at least part of your post in spoiler tags. Some people reading this might not have played the game yet.

Anyway, my experience with the game was as follows:

I first heard about Undertale on these forums. However, my first actual experience of the game came from the Twitch channel of a YouTuber/Twitch streamer by the name of BaerTaffy. For a time, he had a (self-imposed) schedule of streaming the Spelunky Daily challenge (with one or two more normal runs if he failed early enough), and then Undertale for an hour or two. My first impression was actually not too favourable. The graphics (especially at the beginning) looked a bit ugly (what with the protagonist's overworld sprite and the Ruins being all purple). However, since I didn't have to play it myself, it wasn't too bad just to watch it happen (basically, it was "Come for Spelunky, stay for Undertale").

My initial unfavourable impression of the game started to sort of be reversed around the beginning of Snowdin as I became more immersed in the world, and I actually found myself laughing at some of Sans's puns. When he got to the part where you fight Undyne, I was actually somewhat invested in the story, and celebrated (in a small way) when he won that fight. After that, I found myself really liking the music of Hotland.

One part that was sort of a punch to the gut was the part where Sans talks about his meeting with an old lady behind the door to the Ruins (obviously Toriel), because Baer had killed Toriel at the end of the Ruins, and actually continued without resetting (though his run was mostly otherwise pacifistic)).

I liked the music of the Core, as well as Mettaton's boss fight (which was a small surprise to me). Then came New Home. The music and the story being told by the monsters combined to create a very emotional atmosphere (which was slightly interrupted at one point by a Twitch alert from a donation I made. Oops). After that, Asgore's fight surprised me by having him destroy the "Mercy" button. Then Photoshop Flowey really surprised me. I had not expected something like that to show up in a pixel-art game.

After that fight, and the ending that comes after it, Baer realised he hadn't got the "True" ending, and indicated that he would try for it some time. I wasn't really willing to wait for him to do so, however. In my impatience, I sort of spoiled some important story elements for myself (the fact that the character you name and the character you play as are not the same; the indication before the Asgore fight that you're about to get the Pacifist ending). However, I didn't spoil anything more, and decided to actually play it for myself.

My experience was largely the same as Baer's (except that I didn't kill Toriel, and what happens if you spare her had a moderate emotional impact on me), until I got to the Asgore fight. I thought to myself, "Wait, why am I fighting Asgore? Did I do something wrong?" Then I fought Asgore, winning after several tries. I had some trouble with Photoshop Flowey, but I won in the end. Then he popped up at the end, and told me how I could get a better ending. So, I did what he said. Then I had another surprise when I went to Alphys's lab. The True Lab was really weird (in a good way) and so was the music. The music especially showed the bits and pieces of inspiration this game takes from Earthbound. The fights in the True lab were also weird in a good way. I also really liked the fact that you get bits and pieces of "history", sort of, when you look at the reports, as well as some indication that Alphys might be responsible for Flowey's creation (although I didn't get that until later).

So, I got through the True Lab, and went to Asgore again. What transpired was as follows:

<toriel's fireball blasts Asgore away>
Me: Yay! I'm getting the Pacifist ending!
<other stuff happens>
Papyrus: Let's just say...A TINY FLOWER HELPED ME.
Me: What? Oh no...
Alphys: A tiny...flower?
Me: Oh God..
<Flowey traps everyone, and damages Frisk down to 1 HP>
<everyone says words of encouragement to Frisk, increasing Frisk's HP back to 20>
Me: Yes! We're winning!
<Flowey pretends to be scared, then...>
Me: Damn it.
Flowey: ALL OF YOUR SOULS ARE MINE!!
Me: Whoa, what's going on?
<I see what looks like a goat person from the back>
Me: Huh? What...?
Goat person: <name>, are you there? It's me, your best friend...
<super powered transformation>
Asriel: ASRIEL DREEMURR.
Me: What
<music with the melody of the "undertale" theme starts playing, indicating a boss fight>
Me: WHAT

Obviously, this isn't actually the hardest boss fight in the game, since it's impossible to lose. However, everything else about it, including the "But it refused." when you get to 0 HP, is really cool. Then it gets even better when, after the seeming hopelessness of not being able to move, or do anything other than struggle, you get to save everyone's souls. Then comes the extremely emotionally impactful part where you discover that the character you named is not the character you play as. Then the part where you repeatedly "save" Asriel's soul, and he gives you the childishly frustrated words "So stop doing this...AND JUST LET ME WIN!!", showing that despite everything, he's still just a kid. And finally, the part where he stops fighting you, and you get to comfort him by hugging him.

After all of that, you wake up, and get the happy version of the "undertale" theme that tells you that, yes, it's finally over, you've saved the world, and everyone's free.

Most of the game that I played was not really as impactful as it could have been, considering I watched a full Neutral run before actually playing it myself, but the parts that actually surprised me in my playthrough were very impactful.


Now, having said all of that, it is unfortunately not my favourite game of 2015. Considering all of the games I've played and enjoyed, that's a fairly high bar to clear. My actual favourite games of 2015 are games that didn't even come out in 2015 (namely, Portal, Portal 2 and Terraria), because I first played them in 2015. However, Undertale is still a very good game in my opinion. I would give it an 8/10. While the gameplay itself is decent at best, tedious and/or frustrating at worst, and the graphics are not that great, especially at the beginning (thus preventing it from getting a higher score on my arbitrary scale), the way the story is told is excellent, and as I've said many times, very emotionally impactful. I enjoyed the experience very much.

Did you go back after you won to talk to all of the people you had met? Including many of the random encounter monsters. If you do, and you backtrack all the way to the Ruins, you can find Asriel where you first meet Flowey.

[Domino Quartz]

Did you go back after you won to talk to all of the people you had met? Including many of the random encounter monsters. If you do, and you backtrack all the way to the Ruins, you can find Asriel where you first meet Flowey.

Yes, I did.

[AGD]

A question that was propably already asked.

Why is Sans stopping us so late? If he knows that we are a potentially dangerous anomaly, wouldn't it be easy to be at least always in company of his brother Papyrus, while we are with him, to protect him. My only theory is, that Sans isn't that tough himself(he has only 1 HP and Attack after all) and his boss battle is so tough because of preparations of the room and his knowledge and creativity letting him think out of the box(for example, the attacks, while we are chosing our actions). But he can still dodge our attacks, which would imply some battle skill, that isn't explainable through preparation.

[Forum Explorer]

A question that was propably already asked.

Why is Sans stopping us so late? If he knows that we are a potentially dangerous anomaly, wouldn't it be easy to be at least always in company of his brother Papyrus, while we are with him, to protect him. My only theory is, that Sans isn't that tough himself(he has only 1 HP and Attack after all) and his boss battle is so tough because of preparations of the room and his knowledge and creativity letting him think out of the box(for example, the attacks, while we are chosing our actions). But he can still dodge our attacks, which would imply some battle skill, that isn't explainable through preparation.

It actually hasn't, at least not here.

My theory is because of a couple reasons,
1. He made a promise, and he will do almost anything to keep his promises.

2. He knows you can reset the game at anytime, this makes everything pointless, including stopping you.

3. He's lazy and depressed

And so as a result, he won't try and stop you until the last second because until then, you can change your ways (by sparing any monster) and thus just reset the whole thing, making it a wasted effort to fight you early. He also knows he can't win against you because your ability to LOAD means eventually you'll defeat him. So he only fights you when reality is about to be destroyed, and not a second sooner.

[AGD]

I would let that reason slide for all the other monsters, but not for Papyrus. Well, maybe he just really didn't thought, that we would kill him. Well, we meet Papyrus early. Maybe Sans didn't knew, we were the anomaly at this point. He just thought, there was something up with us, but he didn't knew, that we were a murderer.

I like the fact, that the only challenging enemies in the Genocide Run are the heroine and the one, that is no hero at all. Also, that it is the monster with the most Determination and the monster without Determination.

It would be nice to know, what he exactly knows about the other timelines. My theory is that he just knows the Lines and where they end and start new, but nothing else and not even in which Timeline he is.

[Forum Explorer]

I would let that reason slide for all the other monsters, but not for Papyrus. Well, maybe he just really didn't thought, that we would kill him. Well, we meet Papyrus early. Maybe Sans didn't knew, we were the anomaly at this point. He just thought, there was something up with us, but he didn't knew, that we were a murderer.

I like the fact, that the only challenging enemies in the Genocide Run are the heroine and the one, that is no hero at all. Also, that it is the monster with the most Determination and the monster without Determination.

It would be nice to know, what he exactly knows about the other timelines. My theory is that he just knows the Lines and where they end and start new, but nothing else and not even in which Timeline he is.

In a genocide route, I think Sans likely told Papyrus to retreat, and Papyrus refused. Otherwise, I think Sans was legitametly expecting you to spare Papyrus because why wouldn't you? He wouldn't hurt a fly afterall.

When you don't, I think he just disappears to drink and bitterly await another reset, only showing up to judge you.

Anyways, my theory regarding timelines is that he is just really good at watching your subtle differences, but can't remember anything between Loads. For full Resets his 'broken machine' activates, allowing him to send a message, or even a small possession about what happened to himself (Well, I think Gaster is the one running the machine), giving him some knowledge of what happened, and how many times you've reset.

But I don't think he knows that you've hijacked the power to Reset from Flowey.

[cavalieredraghi]

In a genocide route, I think Sans likely told Papyrus to retreat, and Papyrus refused. Otherwise, I think Sans was legitametly expecting you to spare Papyrus because why wouldn't you? He wouldn't hurt a fly afterall.

When you don't, I think he just disappears to drink and bitterly await another reset, only showing up to judge you.

Anyways, my theory regarding timelines is that he is just really good at watching your subtle differences, but can't remember anything between Loads. For full Resets his 'broken machine' activates, allowing him to send a message, or even a small possession about what happened to himself (Well, I think Gaster is the one running the machine), giving him some knowledge of what happened, and how many times you've reset.

But I don't think he knows that you've hijacked the power to Reset from Flowey.

However Sans is not the only one who knows when you have reset. Remember asgore if you fight him over and over, he will agree and know how many times he has killed you.

[Forum Explorer]

However Sans is not the only one who knows when you have reset. Remember asgore if you fight him over and over, he will agree and know how many times he has killed you.

That's Loading, Asgore won't remember between full Resets.

I think Alphys or Gaster (or maybe even Sans) discovered that Determination lets you control the timeline by saving and loading (and maybe Resetting). Asgore, as king, was informed about this.

So when you tell him how many times he's killed you, he believes you, because he knows humans have that power. He doesn't know or remember exactly what happened though. That's my theory anyways.

[Jermell]

In a genocide route, I think Sans likely told Papyrus to retreat, and Papyrus refused. Otherwise, I think Sans was legitametly expecting you to spare Papyrus because why wouldn't you? He wouldn't hurt a fly afterall.

When you don't, I think he just disappears to drink and bitterly await another reset, only showing up to judge you.

Anyways, my theory regarding timelines is that he is just really good at watching your subtle differences, but can't remember anything between Loads. For full Resets his 'broken machine' activates, allowing him to send a message, or even a small possession about what happened to himself (Well, I think Gaster is the one running the machine), giving him some knowledge of what happened, and how many times you've reset.

But I don't think he knows that you've hijacked the power to Reset from Flowey.

I'd agree with you on this. He's judging how many times you've died from facial expressions and stumbles over the number a few times, so it can't be that he remembers. And even if he knows you're the anomoly for any non genocide run there's no reason he'd fight you, even after Papyrus dies There are 4 ways that could end:
1. You realize the error of your ways and reset and go on a pacifist run
2. You fight and kill Sans after innumerable tries (I mean at snowdin you'd only have like 40 hp max, it'd take you weeks to get that good at fighting him)
3. You just see how many people Sans will take before he snaps, viewing it as entertainment
4. You just rage quit and never come back, leaving everyone you've killed permanently dead.

Notice how half of those involve lots of torment through multiple timelines and one involves his brother staying dead forever? There's a good reason he tries so hard to keep you happy, unless you kill his brother because c'mon, who's really gonna pal up with someone that does that? That said he should have realized the danger of a genocide player sooner and done more than the occasional criticism or scary threat.

[scottcrowan]

I had just visited your site, and it seems awesome.