Reviews VideoGame / Undertale

...Eh, I'll argue the points.

First, I don't find Mercy as dull as you say simply because, the first time through at least, there are multiple options available and it's not always obvious which option does what. Thus, it turns the fight into a clever puzzle rather than a grind.

Conversely, that's also why the evil route is boring. It is deliberately constructing an unpleasant, grindy experience to make a broader point about video games and the psychology behind them. There's no long-term reward for going for the worst ending, and the "Attack" option deliberately lacks the depth of figuring out a dialogue puzzle to convince the enemy to back down. The only reason to do it is a) because you just want to see what will happen, or b) because you just like seeing the numbers go up, and the game does not have kind things to say about either way of doing things. And while one might argue whether or not that message is cogent, whether critiquing the player's mindset is a good or a bad thing, done poorly or well, the fact is that doing the "bad" route does necessitate pushing oneself through that awful, grindy experience for one of those reasons.

As to the difficulty... well, the answer there is probably just that you're a lot better at video games than me, so moving on! (Seriously, Asgore kicked my ass until I sighed, went all the way back to Temmie Town, and sold self-replicating dog residue until I could afford the special armor.)

Agree with it being annoying that you have to beat Asgore up to win though.

On that note... Eh, I only played through it twice, once getting Neutral and once Pacifist, but the fight with that creepy photoshop monster at the end of the neutral ending was really memorable, and I think it gives at least the original Neutral ending some artistic merit.

I think the problem here is that you think that the evil path should have you being an evil Badass, while the entire point of that path is how much being evil sucks. It's an active critique of the "fight everything" mentality.

My point is that the a game shouldn't be deliberately designed to be boring. Going from point A to point B, killing everything in your way is one thing, having to stop inches away from point B and then walking back and forth for 15 minutes, completely killing the pacing, is just stupid. It should be a case of "You've had your fun, now deal with the consequences," not "Wait, you actually put up with that slog? Now deal with the consequences."

One other point I want to clarify: even if you go full pacifist, you still have to defeat Asgore and get the neutral ending before you can get the pacifist ending, solely because a certain phone call won't trigger on a first playthough. As such, a "neutral playthrough" is pointless as you get the same thing by being pacifist.

Also I beat Asgore without using items or upgrading my armor at LV 1 once, so I guess I'm just too pro.

It's a course of action the designer is deliberately discouraging, so as to ensure there is no possible way you could "accidentally" genocide the place. If the player wants to see it through, it must be because they chose to put themselves through that just to see what would happen and/or to make the otherwise-meaningless numbers go up. A send-up of both the completionist and grinding mindset.

If it weren't a boring, unfun slog, it wouldn't have the same impact.

Also, it's not just because that phone call won't trigger. It's also, again, so we can have that boss fight with the creepy photoshop monster. It adds to the pacing, even though I wish it were a bit quicker to go through the game a second time as a result.

...And yeah. 2pro4me

The creator already handily discourages being murdery through making the characters so likable that the player will like an ass if they go out of their way to murder the cute monster lady. There is no need to discourage it further by making it painfully boring.

Again, genocide isn't difficult, it's just boring. It should be "MUWHWHAHAH..Ha..ha? Oh my, I'm a terrible person," not "UUUUGGGHHH."

The thing is it\'s a meta-commentary on the nature of RP Gs. It\'s boring because it\'s replicating a phenomenon common to the genre; the dull, boring slog of the grind. If it were fun it\'d undermine its own point.

You\'d be right... no scratch that, you are right from a purely narrative standpoint. It is boring, and it does kill the story\'s pacing.

But it\'s not done from a narrative standpoint. It\'s done to use the game\'s mechanics to communicate a message. If it\'s a boring task that\'s taking forever, and offers almost no concrete rewards in the short or long term... why\'re you doing it?

And since the only answers are \"Because I wanted to see what would happen,\" and \"Because it was making the imaginary, meaningless numbers go up...\" well, the game is asking, what does the fact that you\'re doing it say about you?

My reason? Obviously it was option 3: for the boss fights.

So \"to see what would happen\" then.

Honestly, we\'ve already established that you\'re 2pro4me. We\'re probably just engaging in different ways then. I feel absolutely no desire to \"test my skill\" against the bosses in question. And downloading a safe off the internet from right before fighting them would scratch that itch better than actually doing the Genocide route.

^^Perhaps, but under ideal circumstances (i.e. going in without spoilers), you wouldn't know about those boss fights. Therefore, if an unspoiled player started going through the Genocide route...well, that begs the question of just why they were putting in the effort. It's not the game's fault that you went in with prior knowledge of the boss fights.

7 out of 10 is a meh now-a-days

\"Asgore\'s castle is just Toriel\'s cottage in greyscale\"

That\'s...kind of the point. Asgore felt guilty about his whole ordeal with Toriel, so he modelled his room in remembrance. It\'s a bit more then the developer being a little lazy.

Other then that, I do agree with a fair amount of your points.

^ Adding on to the point you made, I feel that Asgore\'s house being the same as Toriel\'s -albeit in gray scale- helps symbolize that no matter how hard Asgore tries to bring back \"the good old days\", it will always feel colorless now that his loved ones are no longer by his side.

The point I was trying to make is that Toriel\'s cottage is described as a small cottage in the ruins, while Asgore\'s castle is supposed to be well...a castle.

It would stand out much more if like a certain wing of the castle happened to be arranged in the same way, that an observant player would notice and be like \"Oh, that\'s pretty neat.\"

Isn\'t it just one wing, though?

I mean, I get the impression that we only see a bit of New Home, and the garden/throne room area is completely original.

\"It is deliberately constructing an unpleasant, grindy experience to make a broader point about video games and the psychology behind them. There\'s no long-term reward for going for the worst ending, and the \"Attack\" option deliberately lacks the depth of figuring out a dialogue puzzle to convince the enemy to back down.\"

There\'s a few problems with how Undertale delivers this. First, in RP Gs with more detailed game mechanics, even in something like early NES RP Gs, there\'s more meaningful character customization and options in battle (spells, etc), which means that \'grinding\' is generally a far more interesting experience. In something like Mother, you\'re not even necessarily killing enemies, you\'re not a violent murderer racking up a bodycount. Undertale gets way too heavy-handed by basically declaring you a complete monster for ever using the fight command, and to see by far the most interesting fight in the game (the last one on Genocide), you have to go through an unbelievably boring slog, only to be declared a complete monster at the end of it. Wouldn\'t it have been nice to have this as an optional encounter on the Pacifist route too? Strictly a challenge fight?

Undertale is actually a very, very basic shmup combined with an even more basic RPG - there\'s very little in terms of game mechanics to keep one\'s interest, and the main reason it\'s hyped is for the story and characters, not because the gameplay is a big deal.

Undertale\'s battles frankly lack depth compared to most RP Gs except perhaps the earliest ones like Dragon Quest. Either you use the Fight command (and learn you\'re never to ever use it), or repeatedly use the talk command until you get to spare the enemy. There\'s a few exceptions here, but with very few exceptions, battles consist of dodge attack -> talk/heal -> repeat.

Really, I wouldn\'t classify Undertale as an RPG. It\'s more of a visual novel in terms of how linear it is, how focused it is on dialogue. I think of it as a visual novel with some basic RPG mechanics. It\'s got good music, but otherwise the character interactions and gameplay both feel too shallow for it to really feel memorable to me.

It\'s also really atrocious how on the Pacifist route, the game subverts the \"EVERYONE CAN BE SAVED\" by preventing you from being able to do a thing about the one character who actually needs saving (other characters don\'t even acknowledge this, or his existence). And that\'s why we have a bunch of Undertale-obsessed players falling over each other trying to be the first to write self-insertion fanfiction that \'fixes\' that plot issue. :/