Every so often something comes out that seems to invoke some kind of deep insecurity in all the other creatives I know. A genuine mania of "I will never create anything as special as this".

I can't say it's ever happened to me, but I'd put Undertale up there alongside some of Bo Burnham's absolute best as one of the very few things that has made me...Envious of its creator. Undertale didn't make me question my own worth as a creator, but it did make me frustrated that I haven't made anything on this level yet, because, jesus. The sheer passion, the raw, earnest nature, the mastery of like 4 different artistic practices that is on display on Undertale is insane.

This is a game that constantly defies and warps RPG conventions, has a branching, replayable and often deeply, existentially disturbing main story, has fun and creative combat that makes even random encounters at least enjoyable, has consistently funny and likeable characters and some of the best "bits" I can recall ever seeing in a videogame (Mettaton's cooking show and almost anything to do with Papyrus stand out) all the while having one of the Top 5 Greatest Videogame Soundtracks Of All Time, fight me on that.

I went into Undertale largely spoiled on almost everything. I knew there were 3 routes, who the final boss of each was, who most of the main characters were etc. and yet this game still had me deeply invested and enjoying every minute of it. On top of this, it's short! You get all this good shit in like, 8 hours or less if you want! Yes!! Yes!! Normalise short games!! Down with the 100+ hour JRPGs and open-world slogs!! Stop making them and playing them you freaks!!

Basically Undertale is objectively a masterpiece and deserves all the praise it's gotten. Stop hating shit out of principle of its popularity you're cringe + you're white + ratio

Undertale innovates the JRPG style of video game by taking the shocking step of occasionally introducing actual gameplay mechanics. Previous games in the genre which Undertale borrows heavily from, such as Earthbound/Mother 3, flirted with this concept but dared not tread too far upon it lest players begin asking why they couldnt just get a bit more of this "gameplay" stuff. If indie games continue to suck this game off--which it deserves, as it has a pretty decent unit once you get the pants off--we might actually get to play actual video games again. I'm sure newer games like Omori will learn this key lesson from Undertale, and not just do a slightly different iteration on what is essentially Pokemon turn-based battle mechanics.

This is Cinema.
Always heard about his game everywhere on the internet for a long time, but just now I realized what it's all about and understand its popularity.
Undertale is an entire experience, it gives you a world and a story that will get stuck in your mind after completing in, leaving you wanting for more, each character is unique and have their own personal charisma, you will most likely make them your friends for real, even if they're fictional.
Gameplay is simple but unique, this was the very first RPG I've beat and not so much comparisons I can make, but I'm satisfied with it, not that difficult tho, but I've heard there is a harder route you can go for, I just beat the first two most recommended routes, to get the "real" ending, but if you want more and if you like those "what if" type of stuff, you can always change your gaming style, changing your actions and getting different stuff, and that's awesome.
The soundtrack is an entire symphony, one of the bests I've heard in videogames, I was already a fan of Megalovania and Death by Glamour without knowing what were these about before, that's the power of the soundtrack, they managed to make every single song catchy and immersive, props to them... or should say, him? It seems like Toby Fox made this alone, and that's even more impressive.
The graphics are the only aspect that is not a highlight here, they just get the job done, for what the game is supposed to be, and that's it.
Is never late to find a new masterpiece from the past, and it showed me that.
By the way, it's the first time I managed to buy a game official soundtrack.

I first bought Undertale close to when it was released on the PS4/Vita after hearing about all the praise it had been receiving. I started playing it, but after about an hour I gave up on it as I wasn't enjoying the combat system and I couldn't see what all the hype had been about. Earlier this year I finished a few other backlogged indie games so I figured it would be a good time to give Undertale another shot.

This time around I became completely immersed into the game's bizarre and charming world right from the very start. The art design was pretty simple, but each location still felt unusual and unique, and I never could anticipate what I was going to see next. The world was filled with so many strange places and unpredictable situations which generally kept a smile on my face while I played. The game's soundtrack was incredibly catchy too with tunes that fit the diverse landscapes perfectly.

While the game's world was fantastic, what drew me in the most was the cast of zany characters. Every NPC, especially the ones you interact with regularly, were so charming, and their dialogue was so smartly written too (and generally hilarious), which imbued them each with so much personality. I absolutely adored the elaborate character headshots that were displayed on screen whenever the NPCs talked. These really amplified the characters' personification and infused more emotion into conversations than I would have expected. Lastly, the sound design for the characters was incredible. Each character makes their own unique sounds when they talk (think Banjo Kazooie), and I felt this added a great level of individuality to each character.

Undertale also had a very touching story, too, which I won't spoil here. Thankfully, I had managed to avoid spoilers before my playthrough, so it was full of great twists and surprises, and I found it to be captivating from start to finish. I know a lot of people out there say the pacifist/genocide mechanic is a gimmick, but I enjoyed this element a lot more than I had expected to. I played through the campaign twice, with my first playthrough being a completely blind run that I finished with the Neutral ending. Immediately after finishing this run, I went through the game again for the True Pacifist ending, this time with the help of a guide. Both of these endings were great, especially that of the True Pacifist playthrough. I initially planned one playing through the game a third time for the Genocide ending, but after spending so much time with these characters I don't have the heart to do that.

The only aspect of the game that I didn't truly love was the combat. That's not to say that I didn't like it, as at times I adored it, but a lot of the time I wished it had been anything other than bullet-hell dodging. I did appreciate how varied these battles were and how each enemy and boss fight felt very different from the others in the game.

Undertale was a huge surprise to me. I put off playing it for years because I figured it going to be gimmicky and that it wasn't going to live up to the acclaim it had received. I am so grateful that I decided to play it as it has quickly become one of the best indie games I have ever played, let alone one of the best video games I have ever played. I truly fell in love with the world and characters that Toby Fox has created. Undertale was an absolute gem. What a uniquely wonderful experience.

Genuinely a masterpiece, If someone asked me to recommend a game to someone that has never played a game before I would say Undertale. Every inch of the game is filled to the brim with fresh ideas, wonderful design and art. The music alone is the greatest thing I've ever heard in a video game. I love the freedom the game gives you with how you play. The story is amazingly paced and interesting. The characters and overall world building are amazing. This game is truly I must-play regardless of if you like video games or not.

I hate this game. I cannot play this game.
I don't like this game.
interacts with the nearest npc
"YOU CAN'T TOAST TOAST IT'S BREAD"
Okay but this is awesome.
interacts with another npc
"ERM.....THE CAKE IS A LIE!"
Wow that was a tidbit quirky.
I will (never) finish this game - sorry earthbound-inspired RPG chads

Whenever something is released that strikes such a massive emotional chord with hordes of people (especially kids,) judging whether its popularity is somehow “deserved” is mostly a waste of time.

The real money is in figuring out why it means so much to so many.

First, there is a good video game here. While the more Tumblrcore elements of the writing probably won’t age well and the 1-bit enemy battle graphics start to strain pretty early on, there is so much game and narrative design here that exudes a warm, gentle sophistication. And the skeleton (heh) key to it all is the jewel-box scale. A JRPG party of one enables a simple user interface that avoids even a whisper of an “Equipment” screen and a battle system that is methodically pushed to its absolute mechanical limits. A soundtrack made of nothing but variations and arrangements of 20-odd melodies would be insufferable in a longer game, but here, it’s a perfect storytelling tool. (Listen to how the Hotland, Core, and Mettaton EX themes rearrange the same melodic material to form a progression that gets both more menacing and more, um, gay.) The scale also enables a very well-managed plot/cinematic universe, complete with industrial-grade meta elements, that rarely threatens to fly off the rails even as it rolls through the traditional JRPG beats and beyond. In short, Undertale is An Actual JRPG, and probably the best since Chrono Trigger.

Culturally, this game probably marked the beginning of the end of Millennial dominance of Online. But I think it will be remembered as a good video game as much as a cultural artifact, and the two are connected. The game’s thesis statement is pretty simple: Video games (and perhaps, by extension, other things) should be considered as something more than buffets of content to consume and systems to manipulate and maximize. To people who were raised by a certain type of Boomer and/or absorbed certain types of cultural messages to approach the entire world as a mechanistic system rather than a messy collection of fellow, flawed humans, this game is an extremely powerful tonic. Forget the fanfic, the symphonic concerts, the musicals – that’s the actual glue holding the fandom together. There are people out there who earnestly say that this game made them feel seen, heard, and even loved for the first time. I don’t think they’re lying. I think this is what they mean: it showed them a way of approaching the world they had never imagined, never even been able to imagine. As a child of Boomers myself, I can sympathize.

And even if you’re not wild about the aesthetics or the fandom, the act of releasing a JRPG (let alone a good one) that can be fully experienced in about 15 mostly leisurely hours should earn Toby Fox a Nobel Prize.

This review will be focusing exclusively on the genocide route, since that is the one I went down for this replay. It fucking sucks!
In a total of about 2 and a half hours, I managed to finish the game. For this route in particular, that entails a total of two actual boss fights that are worth a damn, and the remaining two hours spent wandering in circles for way too long searching for enemies. Spawn rates are reduced tremendously while you're on the hunt, and once you finally have everything you need done, the reverse takes effect. You are now going every like 5 steps for the game to tell you that you cleared the area, by opening a battle and repeating the same dialogue box each and every time.
It sucks, too, because I really enjoyed those two bosses. I enjoyed the pacifist route way more, since there are more fights that are actually worth getting invested in, fun dialogue to read through, cool characters that you get to know throughout the story. All of that disappears for genocide, though. Again, all that's left is an empty, fittingly so, but still tedious slog of a grindfest.

i can't complain though, the only reason i even wanted to do this was because i replaced the file used for megalovania with the homestuck rendition of that same track, and i wanted to see if it would work like i hoped. lord knows i was fuckin' ecstatic when it did lmao

7/10 game, even shorter than I remembered, but certainly didn't feel like it.

So extremely filtered because I cannot stand how these bosses are structured. I am The Impatient Gamer™, and I do not want to die to a boss then just do the same string of attacks over and over. Also kind of pisses me off how long it takes, like I'm just a little guy not doing anything and Undyne cannot chill the fuck out.

Besides me being filtered due to skill issue, I kind of don't understand why I didnt feel very much playing this. I like that games made by singular person have the ability to just do whatever the fuck they want, and Toby Fox does that, I just didn't care? I found the dog stuff and the Nabtsablook laying down space chill scene charming, but like I felt disappointed I wasn't filled with glee.

Yeah I think its dope, but I guess just another game Not For Me.

I regret not finishing the game before all the hype broke out, before there were thousands of video essays on this game, before the pope got this game.

That being said, it's still pretty fun, the dialogue is enjoyable, and a lot of the characters are endearing which helps to put all of your choices into perspective.

The OST is phenomenal, it's the best aspect of the game. It can be hype, moody, mysterious, dramatic, it's Toby Fox's biggest accomplishment.

Um jogo indie simples que conseguiu revolucionar muita coisa do mundo dos jogos, esse jogo é provavelmente o maior, ou pelo menos um dos maiores indies de todos, e isso não é atoa, já que ele é uma experiência maravilhosa. É um jogo moderno, mas que traz esses elementos da quarta geração dos 16 bits, aquele esquema Earthbound, claramente inspirado, a apresentação dele é simples, mas ao mesmo tempo muito bonita, a trilha sonora dele é simplesmente incrível, uma mescla de músicas da quarta geração com instrumentos modernos, que além de ser muito variada também passa muitas emoções junto com ela. E principalmente a história que é linda, a construção dos personagens é muito boa, você se importa com cada um deles, o world building é muito bem feito, é uma trama que é simples mas é mais do que suficiente pra te cativar e fazer você ficar com vontade de continuar jogando, tem múltiplos finais, as suas escolhas podem alterar o final, e o jogo também tem várias mensagens muito bonitas e cativantes. É um jogo muito completo e muito diferente de tudo que eu já joguei, com certeza ele merece toda essa fama que ele tem.

Undertale is one of the most popular games of the last decade. Some used to herald it as one of the greatest games ever made, back when it came out. I vividly remember a girl I was really into back then cosplaying Sans - but I didn't know who that was. For my whole life, it feels like the whole world has been talking about Undertale and stuff that has been inspired by it. So, I took the plunge myself. I wanted to know why Undertale was so... important.

And on one hand, I think it's easy to see why. It's an indie darling that is subversive, humorous in tone, satirical of RPG tropes and quick to push the boundaries of the fourth wall. Those things don't really sound like too big of a deal now, I don't think. But Undertale popularised a lot of these ideas in the mainstream, and I think that caught a lot of people off-guard. Undertale is creative with its postmodern relationship with the audience, as well as in its usage of contemporary humour. While not the first game to do so - a lot of the things I've just mentioned were done by Earthbound and Metal Gear Solid 2 a decade or so before the release of Undertale - its indie darling status as well as its genuine creativity brought it to the forefront. Undertale was many people's first experience with a postmodern meta-narrative integrated into a video game. It changed the tone around video games, and presented the idea of "video games as art" in a new way to a new audience.

So, I see the appeal there. Undertale isn't lacking in things to like. Its creative manipulation of traditional battle mechanics is very interesting, and so is its willingness to reach out the screen and make things specifically about the player.

In 2021, I still find that creativity compelling, and I think a lot of the work put into Undertale pays off. However, I think a lot of things now don't really work in its favour. I think the idea of sparing enemies, or having the death of an enemy taken seriously, is very, very cool on paper. But in practice, Undertale's usage of this system results in finding every way possible to not use the core combat mechanics. Thematically, this makes sense, but gameplay wise, I think it's a waste. The battle system is good - why can't I use it without punishment? You get locked out of the true ending if you kill even one thing. So why fight, ever? I think it's a fatal flaw of the system. Even in Genocide, the opposite occurs - why spare anything, ever? I don't think it works out. I wasn't satisfied sparing enemies, and killing them would've locked into the bad endings. So I'm stuck in an unsatisfying limbo if I want to get a nice ending. I don't think that's good game design, even if it thematically proves something. The bullet hell stuff is fun, though, and it shines through in the fight against Asgore especially. The creativity of the game really works out when it comes to making unique attack patterns to dodge - especially in bosses.

Another thing I thought was quite underwhelming was the writing. A lot of the humour in this game is VERY hit or miss. Sometimes, it makes me want to roll my eyes. Too much quirky randomness humour that feels very bland and dated. Sometimes, I chuckled quite a bit. I thought Sans was consistently pretty funny. Alongside this, though, I don't think the main plot of the game is very interesting, and I think a lot of the meta elements go to waste when it comes to Chara - or Will, in my case. At first, Frisk, the main character, is introduced with your name. However, it turns out that the character bearing your name was actually the first human to fall down. This holds potential meaning, and having the final boss say that they don't want you to leave them behind, to stop playing with them, is quite emotionally powerful, I think. However, I think it falls apart when you realise the first human to fall down is like, an entire character on their own. The only thing they really have in common with you is their name, and it doesn't loop back to the player - at least in the routes I played. It felt like an underdeveloped excuse to have the characters refer to me, the real person, instead of a grand plot development - even though the former would've been much more fitting, I feel. But again, apparently Genocide does something different, so I don't want to be too mean to this character.

This writing issue does extend to the gameplay, too. I thought the puzzles had potential to be fun - but every character in the game makes it their mission to tell you the solution to each and every puzzle in the game in some sort of ironic fashion. It was funny for a bit, but eventually it just got grating. Let me play your game, please! On top of it all, I think the message of the game ends up being kind of shallow in the end. Being friends with everyone solves everything. Always be determined to be as kind to people as you can be. Killing people is always bad and you shouldn't do it. I don't know, I guess that's fine. I didn't think it was all that interesting by the end, though - especially when the backstory of characters like Alphys and Asgore open up some pretty morally complex questions about accountability for horrible actions taken by them.

Despite everything I've said, I had fun. I chuckled a bit. The boss fights were fun. I stream a lot of the games I play to my friends, and it was entertaining to play it with them. The music was awesome, a lot of the visual setpieces were very memorable, and if nothing else, Sans is still funny. It was a pleasant experience, even if it definitely showed me how much I suck at bullet hells.

So, where does that leave us? Do I understand why Undertale is so revered? I think I do. It's a generally pleasant and upbeat experience that has a darker underbelly to be explored. It was a pioneer of modern metanarratives and satire in gaming. A cast of likable characters and iconic music only bolstered this.

But at least, speaking as an adult in 2021, back to myself starting in high school in 2015, I think time has changed. I think Undertale is something that I don't think I'll ever be able to connect to in the same way that its superfans did and still do.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you had to be there - and I wasn't.

this is just not my cup of tea

I get why people like it don’t get me wrong!!! But for me it was super tedious and took me a long time to finish, I didn’t really connect with most of the cast and overall it was pretty boring.

The music is really cool tho

Genuinely never felt more insane for not falling in love with, or at the very least for not liking a video game as everyone else seems to. While I can say undertale is a good video game, I initially had a long ass review about how I didn't vibe with most of the game, and will instead spare you some time. I never liked how forced some of the mechanics felt just to draw in people who don't like jrpgs, or how simple, frankly unappealing and bland the spritework and visuals are. The dialogue and characters feel, again, forced and overly quirky for the sake of it, to the point that I struggle to take any of the major themes seriously when they actually take to the stage, and while the music is good, I can only hear megalovania or any other track in the game so many times before I get sick of it. If there's ever been a game that I've grown to dislike more and more due to overexposure, it's absolutely this one. I think it frankly is far from the best in regards to its jrpg aspects, everything it's praised and heralded for has been done better elsewhere in mostly in far less well known titles, and if you're one of those people who "doesn't usually like jrpgs, but" just play Chrono Trigger or something, I dunno.

I finally played Undertale in 2019 on Switch after hearing about it constantly for years. I didn't expect to like it, but i certainly didn't have a bad time.

THE MILDEST OF META-SPOILERS AHEAD.

I completed three playthroughs, Neutral then Pacifist then Genocide. I found Neutral to be a solid game, but not quite the life-changing experience I'd heard about. What most shocked me was how differently the game felt in dedicated Pacifist and Genocide runs. Playing Undertale as a pacifist is one of the most heartwarming, beautiful gaming experiences I've ever had, but I really wouldn't have appreciated it unless I had that Neutral, unguided playthrough first. I was constantly engaged by how the characters changed as you befriended them, and it legitimately made me want to be a kinder person IRL.

Then I played Genocide.

I wasn't prepared for how much shorter the game is. I was also unprepared for how much harder the battles got. I felt like the game was actually angry at me, punishing me for my cruelty. I can't say I enjoyed the Genocide run, but it was an incredible coda to a great game.

If you haven't played yet, make sure that you play this game three times. Play the first time without any outside influence, then look up how to do Pacifist and Genocide runs. Each time you beat the game will be completely different, and each is worth your time.