I haven't frequented the escapist forums in a little while and I'm sure you could create an accurate atomic clock if you timed how many undertale threads you guys have had to deal with lately but here is mine.
After watching Yahtzee's top 5 list and reading all the bitching (from both sides) in the comments I thought I might give a long winded deconstruction on why I dislike the game and not just point out the rabid player-base.
This is going to be more of a article than a tradition review, which i'll put at the end as a TD:LR if you want a more practical breakdown.
WARNING I WILL BE TALKING FREELY WITH NO ATTENTION TO SPOILERS
[HEADING=2] Part 1: Expectation and Execution. [/HEADING]
My brother got me this game cause he was to lazy to play it and see if it was any good. I'd only just found it in the steam top selling new games listing and thought, this ************ looks like a Cave Story inspire rogue-like, which sounded awesome to me. I then saw a ton of people talking about how you should go in blind and that it's awesome, so shut up, play now, no really, now.
I did so and it was fantastic. The start that is, the rest fell off at break-neck speed (Barring the soundtrack).
When you are introduce to the game it is instantly memorable in that traditional indie (J)RPG way. It looks like Earthbound and Cave Story had a baby. This is great, Cave Story is in my top 5. The set-up is that perfect balance between basic (monsters, humans, feud) and complex (which comes in the form of implied lore that is set up to be unraveled). This is a very successful way to kickstart a world like Undertales and it's really solidified with Flowey. Who after playing the whole game through seems like he is in the wrong game.
Flowey begins the game seemingly as a overly saccharine tutorial character and very successfully teaches you that every character is not as they seem. This is then wonderfully followed up by Toriel who appears to be another wonderfully saccharine tutorial character. You then spend, or at least I did, a fair bit of you interactions with her wondering whether she was the bigger fish taking from Flowey or if she was genuine. This is helped along by some wonderful world building with the spiders and the house etc.
The big punch in the gut here is that she is genuine and you end up fighting her and as a new player likely killing her. This is what I would consider Act 1 of Undertale and the best part of the game.
[HEADING=2]Part 2: Sticking the landing [/HEADING]
This is where the game starts to fall off, slowly at first as your understanding of the world is still fairly small, but is falls off pretty hard. Sans and Papyrus are at the core of this I think and at the end of the day if I wanted to give a two sentence review I would probably just ask "Do you like Sans and Papyrus? Then yeah it's great". They represent the conflicting themes that the game tried and failed to balance. When first introduce they are introduced as guards of the monster border. Then we slowly learn more and more, Sans is lazy and becomes quite buddy, buddy with you and Papyrus is comically incompetent and perhaps a genuinely autistic character, which could be interesting.
They are amusing at first, an oddity that would of been a side characters in another, better game but instead they become central to the entire story line. The story is quite good, as a basis. It's pleasantly dark, has a great replayability gimmick which actually builds on the whole story as opposed to just the current version of it and some of the main players are quite balanced, interesting characters (Toriel, Asgore, Flowey, Monster Kid, Undyne and Chara (more an interesting twist than character but...)).
The most notable characters missing from that list you might have noticed are Sans, Papyrus, Metatron and Alphys. The define thing that ties these characters together is that they all realize they are in a game, or maybe they all forget they are monsters, either way their traits and dialogue stick out amongst the rest of the world building like a bad fanfic OC. Which is what they are but within their own game.
The mistake in the execution of these characters can be seen with a joke that is made within the game twice itself. In Toriel's house the player can click on a Cactus and get the flavour text "A Cactus, truly the most tsundere of all plants", or something to that effect. Later on in the game you fight a common monster mob called the "Tsunderplane" which is simply an airplane with a hat and manga style blush. This mob is a part of world building, it has interactions with other monsters (a lot of which are equally weird memetic themes) and it interacts with the combat system and storyline elements.
Now the flavour text is not unique to the genre. Cave Story for example has "Curly's Panties" which you can collect somehow. As an item this it is pointless and is mostly a joke between player and creator. Same with the initial cactus joke. However is Curly's Panties were required to progress the game this would be a large break in tone and theme for the game. "A large break in tone and theme" is basically what I would call Act 2 of Undertale.
(The scenes with Monster Kid and Undyne being the only real return to form)
[HEADING=2]Part 3: Combat meets Storytelling[/HEADING]
The second biggest gripe I have with Undertale is that it's combat system is so bizarrely in the way of it's storytelling. The pacifist run is where the real issue is here and it appears within the boss fights. While random monster encounters do actually have a really satisfying pace and reward, though it is only really enjoyable for one encounter before losing it's sheen, the boss fights drag on and the player is expected to endure as many rounds as the developer felt they needed to unload the exposition for that fight, before typically ending it superfluously.
The way that the combat system is temporarily turned off, including the puzzle style befriending element, for boss fights until it lets you finish them is jarring and dishonest towards the player who has built up a level of understanding with the game on what they are expected to react. It's important to engage the player so that they still feel agency even if they are simply getting wailed on freely by the boss. At the end of the day the games intentions towards pacifism itself is barely functional as the monsters typically engage or hunt you, they unapologetically try to kill you and then you just have to bare with them while you fix their problems.
This tone works well when the monsters are polpys and depressive ghosts who are characterized visually and physically as ineffectual so the pacifism comes across as genuine. Dodge spears, while almost dying multiple times, till the boss decides they might listen to you now is not engaging on a moral level.
[HEADING=2] Conclusion [/HEADING]
So yeah that is the break down on what I feel are the major weaknesses on undertale. A lot of which were summarized in sassy fashion in the Honest Game Trailer for Undertale that I just watched 5 minutes ago so I don't know why i bothered finishing this but I was already almost done so fuck it. I hope I at least come across convincingly instead of ranting.
[HEADING=3]TD:LR [/HEADING]
-The music, side-characters who aren't main-characters, the environment and the combat mechanics are all varying ranges of alright to actually really good.
-The story starts off strong before throwing it's tone out the window to devolve into fanfic level meta-humour
-Combat and story never really meet in the middle and the game has to stop one or the other which becomes jarring and inconsistent
-Sans, Papyrus, Aplhys and Metatron give me the shits so bad
Overall: Would not recommend unless I new the person's taste very well. Major disappointment.
After watching Yahtzee's top 5 list and reading all the bitching (from both sides) in the comments I thought I might give a long winded deconstruction on why I dislike the game and not just point out the rabid player-base.
This is going to be more of a article than a tradition review, which i'll put at the end as a TD:LR if you want a more practical breakdown.
WARNING I WILL BE TALKING FREELY WITH NO ATTENTION TO SPOILERS
[HEADING=2] Part 1: Expectation and Execution. [/HEADING]
My brother got me this game cause he was to lazy to play it and see if it was any good. I'd only just found it in the steam top selling new games listing and thought, this ************ looks like a Cave Story inspire rogue-like, which sounded awesome to me. I then saw a ton of people talking about how you should go in blind and that it's awesome, so shut up, play now, no really, now.
I did so and it was fantastic. The start that is, the rest fell off at break-neck speed (Barring the soundtrack).
When you are introduce to the game it is instantly memorable in that traditional indie (J)RPG way. It looks like Earthbound and Cave Story had a baby. This is great, Cave Story is in my top 5. The set-up is that perfect balance between basic (monsters, humans, feud) and complex (which comes in the form of implied lore that is set up to be unraveled). This is a very successful way to kickstart a world like Undertales and it's really solidified with Flowey. Who after playing the whole game through seems like he is in the wrong game.
Flowey begins the game seemingly as a overly saccharine tutorial character and very successfully teaches you that every character is not as they seem. This is then wonderfully followed up by Toriel who appears to be another wonderfully saccharine tutorial character. You then spend, or at least I did, a fair bit of you interactions with her wondering whether she was the bigger fish taking from Flowey or if she was genuine. This is helped along by some wonderful world building with the spiders and the house etc.
The big punch in the gut here is that she is genuine and you end up fighting her and as a new player likely killing her. This is what I would consider Act 1 of Undertale and the best part of the game.
[HEADING=2]Part 2: Sticking the landing [/HEADING]
This is where the game starts to fall off, slowly at first as your understanding of the world is still fairly small, but is falls off pretty hard. Sans and Papyrus are at the core of this I think and at the end of the day if I wanted to give a two sentence review I would probably just ask "Do you like Sans and Papyrus? Then yeah it's great". They represent the conflicting themes that the game tried and failed to balance. When first introduce they are introduced as guards of the monster border. Then we slowly learn more and more, Sans is lazy and becomes quite buddy, buddy with you and Papyrus is comically incompetent and perhaps a genuinely autistic character, which could be interesting.
They are amusing at first, an oddity that would of been a side characters in another, better game but instead they become central to the entire story line. The story is quite good, as a basis. It's pleasantly dark, has a great replayability gimmick which actually builds on the whole story as opposed to just the current version of it and some of the main players are quite balanced, interesting characters (Toriel, Asgore, Flowey, Monster Kid, Undyne and Chara (more an interesting twist than character but...)).
The most notable characters missing from that list you might have noticed are Sans, Papyrus, Metatron and Alphys. The define thing that ties these characters together is that they all realize they are in a game, or maybe they all forget they are monsters, either way their traits and dialogue stick out amongst the rest of the world building like a bad fanfic OC. Which is what they are but within their own game.
The mistake in the execution of these characters can be seen with a joke that is made within the game twice itself. In Toriel's house the player can click on a Cactus and get the flavour text "A Cactus, truly the most tsundere of all plants", or something to that effect. Later on in the game you fight a common monster mob called the "Tsunderplane" which is simply an airplane with a hat and manga style blush. This mob is a part of world building, it has interactions with other monsters (a lot of which are equally weird memetic themes) and it interacts with the combat system and storyline elements.
Now the flavour text is not unique to the genre. Cave Story for example has "Curly's Panties" which you can collect somehow. As an item this it is pointless and is mostly a joke between player and creator. Same with the initial cactus joke. However is Curly's Panties were required to progress the game this would be a large break in tone and theme for the game. "A large break in tone and theme" is basically what I would call Act 2 of Undertale.
(The scenes with Monster Kid and Undyne being the only real return to form)
[HEADING=2]Part 3: Combat meets Storytelling[/HEADING]
The second biggest gripe I have with Undertale is that it's combat system is so bizarrely in the way of it's storytelling. The pacifist run is where the real issue is here and it appears within the boss fights. While random monster encounters do actually have a really satisfying pace and reward, though it is only really enjoyable for one encounter before losing it's sheen, the boss fights drag on and the player is expected to endure as many rounds as the developer felt they needed to unload the exposition for that fight, before typically ending it superfluously.
The way that the combat system is temporarily turned off, including the puzzle style befriending element, for boss fights until it lets you finish them is jarring and dishonest towards the player who has built up a level of understanding with the game on what they are expected to react. It's important to engage the player so that they still feel agency even if they are simply getting wailed on freely by the boss. At the end of the day the games intentions towards pacifism itself is barely functional as the monsters typically engage or hunt you, they unapologetically try to kill you and then you just have to bare with them while you fix their problems.
This tone works well when the monsters are polpys and depressive ghosts who are characterized visually and physically as ineffectual so the pacifism comes across as genuine. Dodge spears, while almost dying multiple times, till the boss decides they might listen to you now is not engaging on a moral level.
[HEADING=2] Conclusion [/HEADING]
So yeah that is the break down on what I feel are the major weaknesses on undertale. A lot of which were summarized in sassy fashion in the Honest Game Trailer for Undertale that I just watched 5 minutes ago so I don't know why i bothered finishing this but I was already almost done so fuck it. I hope I at least come across convincingly instead of ranting.
[HEADING=3]TD:LR [/HEADING]
-The music, side-characters who aren't main-characters, the environment and the combat mechanics are all varying ranges of alright to actually really good.
-The story starts off strong before throwing it's tone out the window to devolve into fanfic level meta-humour
-Combat and story never really meet in the middle and the game has to stop one or the other which becomes jarring and inconsistent
-Sans, Papyrus, Aplhys and Metatron give me the shits so bad
Overall: Would not recommend unless I new the person's taste very well. Major disappointment.