Honest Thoughts About Undertale

[NoonmanR]

Boring and preachy. There's not much else i can say about it. Every path in the game is a slog for slightly different reasons(i.e. genocide because every new area you just sit on you ass grinding until you hit an arbitrary limit).

 

[Coelacanth]

Deltarune's better. Apart from the fanbase the problem with Undertale is that your choices in game are seen as morally black/white there's no in-between or morally grey area. It looks like Deltarune is attempting to take Undertale (and maybe the fandom's view on it?) and deconstruct it.

 

[Overcast]

I enjoyed the game overall back when it came out. Although I'm not sure how I'd feel about playing it now.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Gay game beloved by gay people

 

[Meme Dispensing Retard]

Game got hard carried by its soundtrack

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

It's not unplayable and has some good music, that's the best I can say about that pretentious shit. It is has terrible art, boring gameplay, shit """humor""", and a crap story.

 

[Some Badger]

I think when people talk about Undertale now aside from cropping up often in conversations about Deltarune is the fact that there’s a monumental amount of hidden dialogue and neutral endings depending on your actions in the game. One that stuck out to me was when I killed Toriel on a blind run but reset before saving five minutes later so I could spare her, only to find that Flowey was aware of this and mocks the player accordingly, which hinted to me that there’s probably a lot of stuff like that in the game, and I was right because that’s basically all people talk about with Undertale anymore in 2022.

As for me, I went into my blind run a couple years after the original hype died down. Gave me some feels and the music really sold that, but the humor gave me whiplash at times.

 

[Coolio55]

I remember seeing it get an article on Kotaku back in 2014 or so and hoping that one of my favourite secret gems wouldn't be descended on by retards. (Played the DEMO and loved it)
Once again I am always right but I'm not too upset as it means toby gets the money he deserves and there's lots of fan-art.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

I hate the community around the game's story more then the story itself. The fact people unironically act like not killing the bad guys is some extremely unique and insightful idea, or that sparing your once enemy so they may become your friend is "revolutionary" for a JRPG is the most idiotic thing I heard back in that year. Enemies becoming allies and friends is one of the most common Japanese writing tropes basically ever. It is extremely common to try and talk the main antagonist down especially if they have a tragic backstory, but they're usually so far gone that it is impossible due to some other narrative element or theme. It is even more common to mourn your former enemy after you've won, because in another life you could have been friends or whatever the story is going for. Even antagonists who want to literally destroy the world get to be redeemed depending on the story, that requires an extreme amount of restraint but it is fairly common nonetheless. So showing restraint to your enemies and not murdering them in cold blood is a common Japanese trope in all its media.

So Undertale beating you over the head that "YOU CAN BE FRIENDS WITH THEM YOU MURDERER" isn't some new concept or extremely insightful, this idea is usually overlooked for gameplay reasons or because focusing on being overly pacifist isn't narratively reasonable when you're put on a doomsday clock to get to X before Y happens, or simply speaking it is just a fight to the death and nothing you can do besides let yourself die can spare them. Just how it goes. I don't mind the idea being explored, but it isn't new to say your enemy today can be your friend tomorrow. That is one of the most common JRPG tropes to anyone who actually plays the genre, yet apparently it wasn't somehow.

What Undertale effectively did was make it so you can talk down the wild boars that attack you in the wild, that's about it. Everything else in this message (besides the meta stuff I guess) is so common place yet people treated this narrative like it is the newest fucking shit remind me how hard internet trends overrun the narrative of everything. Undertale then is what Persona 5 is now to JRPGs, only Undertale is more pretentious in its audience's commentary around the work which makes discussion around it worse.

Game itself? Its whatever, its cute, kind of boring in some parts, genocide route takes forever to do, the story is fine, OST is great. I just hate the discussion around it that retards promoted while pretending they know the genre.

 

[Dave.]

I hate the community around the game's story more then the story itself. The fact people unironically act like not killing the bad guys is some extremely unique and insightful idea, or that sparing your once enemy so they may become your friend is "revolutionary" for a JRPG is the most idiotic thing I heard back in that year. Enemies becoming allies and friends is one of the most common Japanese writing tropes basically ever. It is extremely common to try and talk the main antagonist down especially if they have a tragic backstory, but they're usually so far gone that it is impossible due to some other narrative element or theme. It is even more common to mourn your former enemy after you've won, because in another life you could have been friends or whatever the story is going for. Even antagonists who want to literally destroy the world get to be redeemed depending on the story, that requires an extreme amount of restraint but it is fairly common nonetheless. So showing restraint to your enemies and not murdering them in cold blood is a common Japanese trope in all its media.

So Undertale beating you over the head that "YOU CAN BE FRIENDS WITH THEM YOU MURDERER" isn't some new concept or extremely insightful, this idea is usually overlooked for gameplay reasons or because focusing on being overly pacifist isn't narratively reasonable when you're put on a doomsday clock to get to X before Y happens, or simply speaking it is just a fight to the death and nothing you can do besides let yourself die can spare them. Just how it goes. I don't mind the idea being explored, but it isn't new to say your enemy today can be your friend tomorrow. That is one of the most common JRPG tropes to anyone who actually plays the genre, yet apparently it wasn't somehow.

What Undertale effectively did was make it so you can talk down the wild boars that attack you in the wild, that's about it. Everything else in this message (besides the meta stuff I guess) is so common place yet people treated this narrative like it is the newest fucking shit remind me how hard internet trends overrun the narrative of everything. Undertale then is what Persona 5 is now to JRPGs, only Undertale is more pretentious in its audience's commentary around the work which makes discussion around it worse.

Game itself? Its whatever, its cute, kind of boring in some parts, genocide route takes forever to do, the story is fine, OST is great. I just hate the discussion around it that retards promoted while pretending they know the genre.

Spoiler: Rant about the genocide ending

I utterly hated the genocide routes ending in this game because apparently if I'm playing a game for a challenge and looking to fulfill achievement through slaying monsters and overcoming hardship, I'm apparently a nihilistic psychopath... who is also apparently being controlled by an alter ego laid dormant until its personal desires come to fruition.

Games are not fucking real Toby. What people do in a virtual world completely inconsequential to the real world is not a fucking reflection of a person's personal character. I'm not a nihilistic psychopath because I kill an injured soldier in Dragon Age Origins for no other reason other than just to do it. I do it because there's black comedy in doing absurdly ridiculous and violent things and because playing evil characters in RPGs scratches a black comedy itch movies like American Psycho and Fargo tap into themselves. You're not blowing the lid off of anyone's personal character and any belief that calling someone a psychopath as they take the challenging route through Undertale is fucking absurd.

Hotline Miami did it way better than Undertale in terms of nihilistic psychopathy through gameplay and, in fact, turns it into a psychological existential horror throughout the game. Seriously, first time playing through a level and walking back to my car after killing everyone and not even remembering how like muscle memory while a droning desolate soundtrack plays is way more nuanced than having a little girl(?) tell you that you're awful because you played the wrong route in the game or you "confirmed Toby Fox's suspicions".

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Disliking things because other people like them is pretty gay.

Undertale was really good. It wasn't the gameplay or graphics or anything like that which made it good, it was just the high concept (integrating all the gamey aspects of it into the story, genocide vs pacifism, that stuff) and the banger soundtrack.

Edit: What the fuck am I talking about, it WAS the gameplay. I actually totally forgot the gameplay. It was extremely clever taking turn-based combat and making it into a bullet hell with all kinds of visual gags built into the bullet hell sequences, and metaphors and stuff, and then on top of that you add the quirk where you can talk your way out of every fight by doing it the right way. it was genius, and the music added to it massively. Honestly I'd compare it to Cuphead, it was like playing a little cartoon in the fights with really cool music.

 

[Soycast Guy]

Not bad but definitely overhyped tbh, and the story/characters are terrible. Literally over 90% of monsters are murderous psychopath who deserved to be killed on sight especially Undyne and Mettaton. And Toriel is creepy as fuck, I mean you haven't even met her for a week and she already considered you as her "children".

A NekoRightsActivist take that’s actually based? Impossible.

 

[Agarathium1066]

Spoiler: Rant about the genocide ending

I utterly hated the genocide routes ending in this game because apparently if I'm playing a game for a challenge and looking to fulfill achievement through slaying monsters and overcoming hardship, I'm apparently a nihilistic psychopath... who is also apparently being controlled by an alter ego laid dormant until its personal desires come to fruition.

Games are not fucking real Toby. What people do in a virtual world completely inconsequential to the real world is not a fucking reflection of a person's personal character. I'm not a nihilistic psychopath because I kill an injured soldier in Dragon Age Origins for no other reason other than just to do it. I do it because there's black comedy in doing absurdly ridiculous and violent things and because playing evil characters in RPGs scratches a black comedy itch movies like American Psycho and Fargo tap into themselves. You're not blowing the lid off of anyone's personal character and any belief that calling someone a psychopath as they take the challenging route through Undertale is fucking absurd.

Hotline Miami did it way better than Undertale in terms of nihilistic psychopathy through gameplay and, in fact, turns it into a psychological existential horror throughout the game. Seriously, first time playing through a level and walking back to my car after killing everyone and not even remembering how like muscle memory while a droning desolate soundtrack plays is way more nuanced than having a little girl(?) tell you that you're awful because you played the wrong route in the game or you "confirmed Toby Fox's suspicions".

I've just always felt the finger wagging from the game is at odds with its design. You can only face these harder fights, hear these unique tracks of music, or see the new animations if you play that route. Then it also went on to finger wag at someone for just watching a recording of it too. I'd always taken it as meant to be coming from the characters but the fanbase really makes it seem like it's a value judgement by Toby and the story in general.

It's a fairly simple RPG where all these 'innocent' monsters jump you and start attacking totally unprompted, some are attacking you because they're mercs paid to do you in. Yet if you kill them you're an asshole.

I think for the most part Deltarune is less up its ass about all of this, there's a notable gap between killdozing your way through and killing a couple of attacking monsters. The gameplay is also different instead of you just having to survive a bullet gauntlet while you attempt to spare them.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

I liked it because the gameplay was unique, music was great, graphics were aesthetically pleasing even if simple and it gave me laughs and some feels. The change in tone and the way it got real meta near the endings was very well done in my opinion.

The fandom however was cancer and made me sick of the game in spite of liking it.

 

[Soycast Guy]

I’d say my take on the game is that the music is pretty good, and most of the characters are generally likable. Most of them, except for the dinosaur bitch who I absolutely fucking despised. Her character as the “quirky weeb” was just obnoxious. Gameplay was unique, and I liked the bullet hell system. Story was meh, really nothing special. The boss fights in the pacifist route were boring, but I did like the genocide route bosses. An opinion that would make the undertale fandom gut me, but I preferred the genocide route. I just like being a cunt in video games. Overall the game was overhyped, but it’s fine for what it is.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It's a quirky Japanese esque game with constant moralizing that can only be thought by a person who never knew conflict in his life, so his thought of "lol, just tough it out until they give up" is about as realistic as a little girl jumping 50 feet in the air. The reason for the prominence of the game is due to getting a large support from multiple groups due to being "quirky", "degeneerate", "moralizing" and "subversive".

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Good but overhyped and degenerate fanbase.

 

[Mister Mint]

Once again I am always right but I'm not too upset as it means toby gets the money he deserves and there's lots of fan-art.

"Lots of fan-art" is a good thing?

Spoiler: Fan art.

 

[Two Dollars]

I really don’t see where the people saying the story was “preachy” are coming from. My first playthrough was a neutral route; I didn’t kill any major characters, but I killed a decent amount of normal monsters (I also did the “accidentally kill Toriel then reset” thing) and the only dialogue that even resembled preachiness was from Flowey, an antagonist who tries to make you second guess yourself regardless of what you do. Then at the end of the run, Flowey says something along the lines of “you made it out, but this isn’t really a satisfying ending… I wonder what would happen if you didn’t kill anything?”

Aside from that, the only times anyone tries to tell you “you shouldn’t have done that” are when you either kill a major character who wasn’t trying to kill you (Papyrus), or you’re in a genocide run. Given that you’re never allowed to spare anything or run away from a single fight, some early enemies are immediately spare-able, and the first area in particular requires you to walk in place for several minutes at a time for each of the last few encounters, entering and completing a genocide run is something you’d have to go far out of your way to do. And if you ever abort the run partway through and go back to neutral, everyone more or less forgets you were in genocide in the first place.

My guess is the people complaining about it being too preachy are either so thin-skinned that they can’t stand the idea of a game not patting them on the back for everything they do, or they only watched someone else do the Sans fight (the only fight that’s after the point of no return in genocide) and thought “the mean skeleton man hurt my feelings i cant play this game”.
Look, if the game really didn’t want you to do a genocide run, it probably wouldn’t be there in the first place.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

People mention the music but that is one element I can't for the life of me remember.