Welp, I just beaten Undertale, All Three Runs of it.

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Bought this game 3 days ago on my Nintendo Switch on a Discount Sale, All I can say is this:

Music was the absolute best part of the game. To the point that eclipses the Game design for me. Like I think Toby Fox should just offer himself mostly as a composer.

Fuck Sans

Combat feels like I am playing a Shoot em up game like Galaga and Geometry Wars. Which I guess makes it more engaging and unique over a more traditional JRPG Turn Based combat.

Fuck Sans

Genocide Run makes it feel like I am playing a Creepypasta of a Game with it ending with my "Character" coming to life and gaining self awareness and cursing my game forever in subsequent playthroughs on Neutral and Pacifist.

Did I mention Fuck Sans? Seriously my left thumb hurts trying to win the fight with this guy. Thank goodness I was playing on my Switch which aided me with 2 things, the Home Button which I can pause when the bones are touching the Fight and Item Icons, and the Control Stick which I can maneuver my "Soul" more precisely for certain attacks. Without these I have no idea anyone beat this skeleton dude on the PC with the Arrow Keys.

I have a lot more to say but I will just say this. Its an ok the game, but my goodness I don't know why it was EVERYWHERE on the internet. And the memes it spawned are some of the most annoying. I mean Sans is now in Smash because of a Meme. And I don't know why people like this bonehead? His fight was infuriating and Megalovania will now give me PTSD.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Oh now my game is "cursed". Since I am playing on the Nintendo Switch, all I have to do is uninstall the game and re download it to remove the "Curse" of a Post Genoicde Runs?

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Game was everywhere online because of the combination of whimsical tone and characters, the sheer "Awwwww" factor of the True Ending, the nifty twist on gameplay, the excellent music and the intensely dark lore that runs under the game, and finally the fact that a game built on exploring empathy actually allows you to be the most evil bastard imaginable while also having the appropriate consequences for it.

It was prime meme fodder and appeals to Toby's weird and probably half-mad fanbase, as well as people who felt nostalgic for Earthbound's whimsical style.

And I don't know why people like this bonehead? His fight was infuriating and Megalovania will now give me PTSD.

I like him because he's punny.

More in depth, though...:

Spoiler

I also love the idea of the slacker goofball character being the most intensely hardcore opponent in the game. It's neat that the silly goofball is also intensely broken inside because he knows about the resetting timeline and thus becomes incredibly lazy, but is also totally on board with standing in your way for the rest of time to prevent you from doing the ONE thing that will be permanent (cursing your game to never have a true happy ending again).

I also love that his entire fight has him breaking the rules of combat (evading your attacks, ignoring your invincibility frames, refusing to let you take your final turn, etc) because his actual stats are the weakest in the game, and he's just smarter than everyone else who fought you before.

The fact that his boss fight has the most awesome song in the game is a bonus.

Also, to be fair, his fight is designed to make you want to give up. The Genocide ending ruins everything and is the one thing you can't really take back. Considering the main theme of the game is empathy, the game REALLY wants to make sure you WANT to screw over all these characters and forces you to earn your unhappy ending.

Oh now my game is "cursed". Since I am playing on the Nintendo Switch, all I have to do is uninstall the game and re download it to remove the "Curse" of a Post Genoicde Runs?

Uhh...I think you might need to completely wipe the game's save data, and I'm not completely sure how one does that on switch. I know that when you delete games, the save data stays, so...

In any case, you can still play the game even with the "curse"

Spoiler

Wait 10 minutes on the black screen and the game will give you the choice to let you play it again. "Chara"/YourNameHere will chastise you for coming back to a game you've already beaten, but will offer to reset the game entirely for you in exchange for the human soul you've been controlling (Frisk's Soul).

Accepting will reset the game, and forever ruin the Pacifist ending by making the final scene suddenly go real dark.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Game was everywhere online because of the combination of whimsical tone and characters, the sheer "Awwwww" factor of the True Ending, the nifty twist on gameplay, the excellent music and the intensely dark lore that runs under the game, and finally the fact that a game built on exploring empathy actually allows you to be the most evil bastard imaginable while also having the appropriate consequences for it.

It was prime meme fodder and appeals to Toby's weird and probably half-mad fanbase, as well as people who felt nostalgic for Earthbound's whimsical style.

And I don't know why people like this bonehead? His fight was infuriating and Megalovania will now give me PTSD.

I like him because he's punny.

More in depth, though...:

Spoiler

I also love the idea of the slacker goofball character being the most intensely hardcore opponent in the game. It's neat that the silly goofball is also intensely broken inside because he knows about the resetting timeline and thus becomes incredibly lazy, but is also totally on board with standing in your way for the rest of time to prevent you from doing the ONE thing that will be permanent (cursing your game to never have a true happy ending again).

I also love that his entire fight has him breaking the rules of combat (evading your attacks, ignoring your invincibility frames, refusing to let you take your final turn, etc) because his actual stats are the weakest in the game, and he's just smarter than everyone else who fought you before.

The fact that his boss fight has the most awesome song in the game is a bonus.

Also, to be fair, his fight is designed to make you want to give up. The Genocide ending ruins everything and is the one thing you can't really take back. Considering the main theme of the game is empathy, the game REALLY wants to make sure you WANT to screw over all these characters and forces you to earn your unhappy ending.

Oh now my game is "cursed". Since I am playing on the Nintendo Switch, all I have to do is uninstall the game and re download it to remove the "Curse" of a Post Genoicde Runs?

Uhh...I think you might need to completely wipe the game's save data, and I'm not completely sure how one does that on switch. I know that when you delete games, the save data stays, so...

In any case, you can still play the game even with the "curse"

Spoiler

Wait 10 minutes on the black screen and the game will give you the choice to let you play it again. "Chara"/YourNameHere will chastise you for coming back to a game you've already beaten, but will offer to reset the game entirely for you in exchange for the human soul you've been controlling (Frisk's Soul).

Accepting will reset the game, and forever ruin the Pacifist ending by making the final scene suddenly go real dark.

I know already about the 10 minute thing and done it.

And I already deleted the save file and to make sure not back up a Cloud Save with the game. Now I just have to beat another Pacifist Run to see if the game is clean.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Ok I am confused about this whole game.

So its clearly a built in universe and its his own history and lore, but then that universe is literally shattered with one of the characters actively acknowledging that all this is just a game. Breaking the 4th Wall completely.

And how is it that Flowey knows that its in a game? All I know is he is the goat boy turned into a flower because of some weird experimentation from his dad. But then how did he came to know about all this is just a video game. He knows he is in the Matrix? And Sans also knows as well.

So what the hell is going here really?

 

[Worgen]

Now that you beat Undertale, you need to play Deltarune and discover the best fluffy boy.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Now that you beat Undertale, you need to play Deltarune and discover the best fluffy boy.

Is that game free because I got it free on the Switch?

 

[Drathnoxis]

You could still play with a gamepad on PC.

I had a lot of fun with the Sans fight, I have a save file just before that fight so I can go back and replay it occasionally. It was marvelous in how he basically broke every rule that had been put in place about how combat works in the game. He dodges your attacks, does damage with no invincibility frames, kills you if you try to spare him, changes his opening speech to catch you off guard with his first attack, has attacks in the menu. The whole fight is basically unfair and it's great! That's part of what made the game so popular when it came out, Undertale really played around with gameplay mechanics and concepts in creative and new ways and wove it into the narrative in a way that didn't feel forced.

The writing just really clicked for me and I really enjoyed talking to all the characters, even the minor side characters that had a couple lines. There was just a lot of care put into the little things, like the fact that you could carry the snowball around for the whole game and make the snowman happy when you gave it back to him at the end. Or that there's a bunch of unique dialogue for a ton of different situations like killing some bosses but not others and going through the game without saving at all. There's just a TON, look at the Dev Team Thinks of Everything page on TV Tropes. It's massive! As long as the one for Nethack. Makes the game feel really reactive with stuff like that.

 

[Worgen]

Now that you beat Undertale, you need to play Deltarune and discover the best fluffy boy.

Is that game free because I got it free on the Switch?

Yeah, Deltarune is free.

https://www.deltarune.com/

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

So what the hell is going here really?

Imma try to sum this up for you as best I remember.

Spoiler

So, the name you put in at the start, that's the name of the first fallen human child who fell down the hole into the Underground. Fallen child is adopted by the Goat family, but is unfortunately a psychopath. They realize that if a human soul merges with a monster soul (Ie, a monster consumes the human soul) they'll become incredibly powerful. So, fallen child kills themselves with poisonous flowers, and asks Goat Kid to take his soul, which he does.

Goat kid wants to fulfill Fallen kid's last wish of returning their body to their hometown, so Goat Kid uses the newly acquired human soul to escape the underground and do so. Fallen child's soul attempts a hostile takeover of Goat kid's body and go on a murder spree in the human world, but goat kid manages to resist, and runs home to the underground, where they die, and their ashes/corpse ends up tainting some of those poisonous yellow flowers. Monsters declare that all further humans who fall into their pit should be killed so they can get the 7 human souls needed to break the barrier and let all the monsters out.

Alphys starts doing experiments on Determination to see if she can fix dying monsters. This goes horribly, as most monster souls can't handle determination without melting. So she injects some into an inanimate object, ie, one of those yellow flowers. This brings back Goat Kid as a flower because enough of his corpse's ashes contaminated it to basically revive his mind/consciousness.

So, goat kid is now back as a flower, but he lacks a soul and thus can't feel any emotions. In a depression, he kills himself, but at the last second changes his mind. He respawns back at the moment he first woke up as a flower. Being a soulless flower with nothing better to do, he starts experimenting with that until he is able to tunnel deep enough that he finds the game's code and figures out how the world works (ie, save files, etc).

And that's how he (probably) knows it's a video game and uses it to troll the hell out of the player.

Sans, on the other hand doesn't know it's a game.

Sans is just a genius who has done studies on timeline manipulation and can see that the timeslines being fucked up by an "anomaly" (but Flowey never reveals himself to Sans, so he doesn't know who is doing it, hence why he blames the player in a Genocide run)

As for his understanding of Turns and so on...He just understands how the world works due to being a genius and studying it. He likely doesn't realize it's all a game, but is able to do a hell of a lot with the mechanics he has access to.

And as for HOW sans is a genius.......You have to literally mess around with game files to find some obscure lore about WD Gaster, the previous royal scientist who is reduced to speaking only in wingdings, and probably deleted himself from existence...And as a result he PROBABLY split himself accidentally into Papyrus and Sans. The fanbase still hasn't proven this is true or not, but it makes the most sense.

The TLDR of all this is:
The magic of souls and human determination and stuff is strong enough in-universe that it can literally hijack the game world and bend the 4th wall and give beings the power to screw with the literal code of the game.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Now that you beat Undertale, you need to play Deltarune and discover the best fluffy boy.

Is that game free because I got it free on the Switch?

It's only the first chapter of Deltarune that's been released (hence why it's free). Toby's still working on the rest of the game.

 

[CaitSeith]

I like games with great music.

Ok I am confused about this whole game.

So its clearly a built in universe and its his own history and lore, but then that universe is literally shattered with one of the characters actively acknowledging that all this is just a game. Breaking the 4th Wall completely.

And how is it that Flowey knows that its in a game? All I know is he is the goat boy turned into a flower because of some weird experimentation from his dad. But then how did he came to know about all this is just a video game. He knows he is in the Matrix? And Sans also knows as well.

So what the hell is going here really?

Spoiler: Putting all together you get a better glimpse of the story...

It started with a human child who fell in long before you started the game, and was adopted by the royal family (of goats). But they weren't a good child (in fact they were pretty evil), and convinced the young Asriel on a plan to cross the barrier. The child died as part of the plan and Asriel absorbed their soul and crossed the barrier to kill the humans in a nearby village; but Asriel didn't follow the plan, instead he let himself be fatally wounded, returned to the castle and died on the garden, leaving nothing but dust on the yellow flowers and on the child's dead body he was carrying.

Asgore swore revenge against all humans, while Toriel left him and went to bury the human child at the ruins. In the following time, 6 humans ended up in there and were killed; their souls stored in containers. Dr. Alphis was put in charge of researching the souls, and that lead her to discover the essence that made the human souls able to persist long after death (she named it "determination"). She used this essence in her experiments, including some yellow flowers from the castle (still carrying some of Asriel's ashes). That was Flowey's origin.

In the genocide run Flowey explains how he realized about the game. He discovered it when he tried to kill himself, but instead he returned to when he first woke as a flower. From there on he went full Groundhog Day and explored every possibility, but only violence made him feel satisfied (as he had lost all sense of empathy when he became a flower). When Fritz (the child you control) woke at the flower bed by the ruins, Flowey lost the control he had over the game.

By the way, the Internet calls the human child "Chara", but their name is actually the one you enter at the beginning.

It's funny how the game taps the 4th wall, and tries to justify it in its lore. It still leaves a lot of ambiguities open to interpretation (including Sans' origin).

Now that you beat Undertale, you need to play Deltarune and discover the best fluffy boy.

Is that game free because I got it free on the Switch?

It is 100% free in any platform where it was released. It still has cool music, and keeps the Shoot-em-up-like combat, combined with a couple of new mechanics. It also got rid of the random encounters, and instead you battle when you touch a monster patrolling the area.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Its an ok the game, but my goodness I don't know why it was EVERYWHERE on the internet

I think the writing, endearing and well done characters, excellent music, and mind-fuckery the game does were all a melting pot that hit a lot of notes for tons of people. Toby did an amazing job with this one, though I can see why it's not for everyone. But for me... I know that it had me hooked very, very quickly. And the ending made me tear up. Undertale is one of those games I wish I could experience for the first time again

 

[Casual Shinji]

I can understand the appeal, but I couldn't get too much into it myself. Sans and Papyrus were the best and Undyne was pretty cool too, but once you're past her the game takes a massive dip. I can't say I really enjoyed the shmup gameplay either. As a matter of fact, nothing in this game felt mechanically satisfying in any way.

The character writing and the humour is pretty good, but it gets way too fucking cute with itself. I could tell all the random quirkiness was suppose to endear me, but it just sorta bounced off of me. Especially once Alphys showed up. The level of 'look at me, I'm an delightfully awkward geek' got on my nerves very quickly.

So yeah, never actually finished it.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Its an ok the game, but my goodness I don't know why it was EVERYWHERE on the internet

I think the writing, endearing and well done characters, excellent music, and mind-fuckery the game does were all a melting pot that hit a lot of notes for tons of people. Toby did an amazing job with this one, though I can see why it's not for everyone. But for me... I know that it had me hooked very, very quickly. And the ending made me tear up. Undertale is one of those games I wish I could experience for the first time again

What I wanna know is how is this game remotely considered as some form of Spiritual Successor to the Mother/Earthbound series?

And I know a prototype of this game was a Rom Hack Toby did with Earthbound.

Also the meme that Sans is Ness but that came after the game released.

I have yet to play the Mother games so that is why I am asking.

 

[Drathnoxis]

What I wanna know is how is this game remotely considered as some form of Spiritual Successor to the Mother/Earthbound series?

And I know a prototype of this game was a Rom Hack Toby did with Earthbound.

Also the meme that Sans is Ness but that came after the game released.

I have yet to play the Mother games so that is why I am asking.

I think it's the writing mainly. Kind of a generally quirky lighthearted tone. I don't know, there aren't actually that many similarities that I'm aware of. Mechanically they are very different, Earthbound is very much more the typical JRPG and no experimental mixing of gameplay and story.

You definitely should play Earthbound and especially Mother 3. Mother 3 had one of the most well written stories of it's time, and I thought it was utterly fantastic. But then, I thought Undertale was fantastic as well and you were apparently not blown away by it the same as I was.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I can understand the appeal, but I couldn't get too much into it myself. Sans and Papyrus were the best and Undyne was pretty cool too, but once you're past her the game takes a massive dip. I can't say I really enjoyed the shmup gameplay either. As a matter of fact, nothing in this game felt mechanically satisfying in any way.

The character writing and the humour is pretty good, but it gets way too fucking cute with itself. I could tell all the random quirkiness was suppose to endear me, but it just sorta bounced off of me. Especially once Alphys showed up. The level of 'look at me, I'm an delightfully awkward geek' got on my nerves very quickly.

So yeah, never actually finished it.

And she text messages you way too often.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

What I wanna know is how is this game remotely considered as some form of Spiritual Successor to the Mother/Earthbound series?

And I know a prototype of this game was a Rom Hack Toby did with Earthbound.

Also the meme that Sans is Ness but that came after the game released.

I have yet to play the Mother games so that is why I am asking.

I think it's the writing mainly. Kind of a generally quirky lighthearted tone. I don't know, there aren't actually that many similarities that I'm aware of. Mechanically they are very different, Earthbound is very much more the typical JRPG and no experimental mixing of gameplay and story.

You definitely should play Earthbound and especially Mother 3. Mother 3 had one of the most well written stories of it's time, and I thought it was utterly fantastic. But then, I thought Undertale was fantastic as well and you were apparently not blown away by it the same as I was.

The best part of Undertale for me was the Genocide Run because of the Creepypasta nature of it.

 

[Dalisclock]

What I wanna know is how is this game remotely considered as some form of Spiritual Successor to the Mother/Earthbound series?

And I know a prototype of this game was a Rom Hack Toby did with Earthbound.

Also the meme that Sans is Ness but that came after the game released.

I have yet to play the Mother games so that is why I am asking.

I think it's the writing mainly. Kind of a generally quirky lighthearted tone. I don't know, there aren't actually that many similarities that I'm aware of. Mechanically they are very different, Earthbound is very much more the typical JRPG and no experimental mixing of gameplay and story.

You definitely should play Earthbound and especially Mother 3. Mother 3 had one of the most well written stories of it's time, and I thought it was utterly fantastic. But then, I thought Undertale was fantastic as well and you were apparently not blown away by it the same as I was.

The best part of Undertale for me was the Genocide Run because of the Creepypasta nature of it.

I was surprised when I found out the Sans battle is super popular for fan songs. Notably, the "Stronger then You" versions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho3GLleK2xA

Yeah, as everyone else has mentioned, it has a sense of charm and heart, not to mention the whole quirkiness that underlies the game. There'as also the fact that playing the pacifist and genocide runs feel very, very different, as opposed to most "Good/Evil" paths in most games, which tends to be more like "Saint/Petty Jerkass".

Earthbound trades heavily on the same sense of Quirky, but doesn't have a lot else. Mother 3, OTOH, made me cry for reals, and that doesn't happen very often.

 

[McElroy]

In my mind Undertale is one of the very few games that are also solid pieces of art. I mean that as a whole too, though most of the individual details are appealing as well. The contrarians just don't get it