This review contains spoilers
After playing Undertale, I realized that there was a glaring fallacy in my Earthbound review. I commented that Earthbound can’t be “before it’s time” because Earthbound’s distinctive properties make Earthbound an unparalleled experience by anything in gaming. Only the mind of Shigesato Itoi could conjure up a masterstroke of a game so quirky, dark, absurd, and emotionally resonating. The unique concoction that makes Earthbound special is too cerebral to simply replicate and make it into a commodity. Fortunately, inspiration doesn’t exclusively extend to industry commerce. Itoi’s cult classic ostensibly struck a chord with fellow weirdo geniuses inspired to expunge their twisted gray matter onto the video game medium. One who is a part of this new breed of gaming auteurs is Toby Fox, who is most notable for being the creative force behind the 2015 indie darling Undertale. While Earthbound’s initial impact was relegated to cult classic status due to a lack of commercial attention in the west, Undertale immediately became an overnight sensation with a rabid fanbase. I guess Earthbound needed to have been released in the internet age to be fully appreciated as Undertale initially was. Undertale’s heavy sense of irreverence and quirky indie flair was perfect for the meme-centric climate of the internet in the mid-2010s. The game’s properties exploded in the internet’s cultural zeitgeist. Undertale, however, is not the answer to the hypothetical question of “what if Earthbound was released in the age of the internet?” Earthbound’s influence is very apparent, but Undertale uses Earthbound as a template to create one of the most refreshing games over the past ten years.
Due to a tighter budget and a smaller development team, indie titles tend to adopt the antiquated gameplay and style of bygone times in gaming, namely the early pixelated eras. Undertale aesthetically resembles Earthbound because the pixelated art style became the distinguishing look of the Mother series, established in the first Mother game and solidified in Mother 3 (whether or not Mother 3 was an influence on Undertale is unknown). One minor aesthetic property that made Earthbound stand out among its SNES contemporaries is that the pixels vaguely look like they were colored in with crayons. This way, the visuals support Earthbound’s sense of child-like whimsy. Undertale does not look as if a child colored in the pixelated graphics, but it also has an intentionally rough-hewn look as well. Undertale’s 21st-century version of exuding an endearingly crude pixelated aesthetic makes the graphics look like they were done in Microsoft Paint. The outlines of the characters and structures are more defined than in Earthbound, but the splotchy, muted colors that make up Undertale still convey a quirky liveliness through the visuals. The black and white sprite work during the battles, on the other hand, deviates from the amateurish look slightly as the sprites look far more meticulously textured.
Undertale’s gameplay and its connection with Earthbound can be slightly misleading. Another idiosyncratic element of Earthbound’s unconventional nature is the minimalistic JRPG combat system, and upon encountering the first enemy (or practice dummy), it seems as if Undertale follows suit. The subject of battle is presented front and center as an immobile icon, and the player’s physical presence is not seen but implied through the combat. Once the player scrolls through the menu and picks an option, they get the impression that Toby Fox cut the proverbial Earthbound umbilical cord in this regard. Undertale’s combat is not only different from Earthbound’s minimalist approach but is one of the most unique combat systems I’ve seen in any video game. Undertale’s system is an ambitious marriage of the typical turn-based combat found in JRPGs with the gameplay of a bullet hell space shooter like Gradius. The player’s combat moves are precision-based actions on a grid, and their attack(s) will be more effective if they land in the middle. On the defensive side, each opponent's attacks are displayed in a claustrophobic box with their unique array of charging, bullet-hell obstacles for the player to briefly avoid. In that same square-shaped barrier is the player’s heart/soul, a vulnerable icon representing the player on the defensive side of the battle. The main objective of defense in Undertale is to avoid the creatively diverse bullet-hell sections unique to every small enemy and boss. The natural color of the player’s heart is red, and this color allows the player to move freely around the box at a relatively standard pace. However, the various bosses in Undertale will express discontent with this base familiarity and force the player to spruce up their soul with a different color of the rainbow. In select battles, a forced changing of the soul's color will offer a unique way of making defensive maneuvers. Blue forces the player to leap in the air, purple will situate the player to move on a grid, and yellow will fully realize the bullet-hell gameplay by turning the soul into a pea shooter. Above all else, I was completely floored by Undertale’s combat system. Mixing turn-based combat and bullet-hell gameplay is executed so seamlessly here that it’s a wonder that no one had thought of merging the two before. Both gameplay styles complement each other tremendously as the bullet-hell gameplay mitigates the imminent hits that come with turn-based combat. Any damage the player takes due to the stream of bullets is entirely the player's fault. This hybrid makes for some of the most kinetic and engaging gameplay I’ve seen across all turn-based video games.
The unorthodox fusion of two different gameplay styles indicates an overall point of subversiveness that Undertale takes strides in displaying. Earthbound’s quirky ethos was made to support the game’s sense of absurd surrealism, but Undertale uses its ethos to convey something of a gaming satire. Undertale constantly pokes at video game tropes and interweaves those jabs into the fabric of the game. For one, the first section of the game functions as a tutorial, and the matriarchal figure Toriel aids the player through the first series of puzzles and enemy encounters. It’s a clever metaphor for how condescending tutorial sections can be as if an overbearing motherly unit is literally holding their hands through the process. Shops in most JRPGs have a system in which selling one’s things is as readily available as purchasing items. Undertale gives the player an option to do this, but suggesting this to the store clerk will only result in befuddlement. They even seem to be offended at the notion of the player pawning their crap off on them, and being denied a chance to sell the game’s detritus makes the player realize how absurd this system is. Undertale offers plenty of puzzles that sound intricate on paper, but their foundations hilariously crumble. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was to parody the rationale of convoluted puzzles found in gaming. However, there are some fairly interesting puzzles in the laboratory section that do not serve as a farce. Undertale conveys these various slights at gaming tropes so subtly that most gamers probably won’t notice. The game's tone is so tongue-in-cheek already that it forms a distracting mold around many of the biting, satirical elements, which Earthbound also excelled in doing.
The primary way of forming this vivacious mold is through Undertale’s kooky, eclectic cast of characters. Earthbound had the progression akin to a surrealistic odyssey through an assortment of wacky instances, and Undertale has a similar aura. However, Undertale’s odyssey is conveyed less through random events and more through introducing new characters like Alice in Wonderland. The player will dig deeper down the rabbit hole that is the Underground, all the while encountering a wide bevy of effervescent characters. Discussing each character’s place in the story would be just as roundabout and exhausting as attempting to concisely weave together the plot of Earthbound, so a highlight reel is necessary again. The first two characters the player will find upon exiting Toriel’s home are Sans and Papyrus, two skeleton brothers who reside in the wintry, perpetually Christmas-time town of Snowdin. Sans is the shorter and stockier of the two, whose glib personality amusingly contrasts with his lankier, high-strung, spaghetti-loving brother Papyrus. Papyrus makes several earnest attempts to capture the player via boobytraps and puzzles, but they all blow up in his face like he’s Wile E. Coyote. Papyrus throws a tantrum out of frustration, and Sans is always nearby to lightly rub salt in his wounds. Their bickering brother dynamic is a joy to witness. Undyne is an intense soldier who is constantly on the prowl for humans. She dons a full suit of armor, and the clicking and clanging of her metallic boots will strike terror in the hearts of any human unfortunate enough to come across her. The laboratory section involves a character named Asphys, a scientist who is responsible for the creation of the half-entertainment, half-war machine robot Mettatron. Despite her high intellect, she suffers from acute social anxiety due to low self-esteem and seems to be quite lonely because of this. She is constantly second-guessing herself, stammering for most of her text conversations, and making a variety of awkward, anguished facial expressions. Her abrupt torrent of messages will grate on the player, but she has a certain pathetic charm that keeps me from complaining about her too harshly. There are several other characters that I must skip over, but the ones left unmentioned will still leave a lasting impression on the player.
While each character in Undertale is uniquely delightful, their level of effervescence depends on the player's choices. During any battle, players can opt out of fighting their opponents by sparing them. However, doing this is not as simple as fleeing a battle. The monsters that make up the Underworld are ravenous creatures out for blood, so the player must try to charm the enemies like they’re on a first date. The “act” sequence in the battle menu will provide the player with a bevy of options that could woo the opponent and pacify them, all the while avoiding their barrage of varied projectiles. The methods of placating these creatures range from pleading with them for peace to putting them to sleep, and one of the more common tactics is to flirt with enemies, even bosses. These responses used to appease the enemies are as lively and intricately diverse as the other gameplay option. Toby Fox has stated that this method of speaking to enemies instead of fighting them is inspired by the Shin Megami Tensei series, in which demons can join the player’s team if they hit all the right notes in a conversation with them. Similarly to that series, this communication mechanic makes the RPG gameplay much more nuanced and fits both the effervescent and subversive nature of Undertale. The caveat of sparing the lives of these monsters is that the player will never gain any amount of experience, only an amount of gold upon showing mercy in battle.
Undertale will give the player a brief tutorial on the mercy mechanic early in the game on a Froggit enemy. Still, the game does not detail the importance of the mechanic and how it coincides with the story. Despite its continual wackiness, Undertale’s story is a firm tale about a person versus society and the preconceived prejudice they face. Long ago in this world, humans and monsters used to coexist peacefully until a war broke out between the two races. The monsters were banished to the underground as a result, leaving humans to preside over the surface as the dominant race. A human (the player) finds themselves in the Underground world where the monsters reside, and they uncover the lore behind the war and the monster’s civilization. Because of the bloody history, everyone will be wary of the player’s presence. Their main objective in their adventure is to defeat Asgore, the Underground king who has a plan for his people to overcome adversity. Asgore must harness seven human souls to break the barrier that divides their world and the humans. Conveniently for him, a human has fallen into his world, but the player would be damned to let him acquire it.
Once defeating Asgore, Flowey, from the very beginning will interrupt and corrupt himself further with the power of the six souls. His transformation is an almighty abomination resembling something like an H.R. Giger plant creature and television on its head with a jittering head like Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy '' video. It’s unnerving, to say the least, and has the same unsettling presence as Giygas has in Earthbound. Once Flowey is defeated, the human returns to the surface. This outcome is the “neutral ending” of Undertale, and will most likely be the first ending upon one’s first playthrough of Undertale. Unless the player has a shaman’s insight or spoiled the game for themselves, Undertale’s subversive nature will end up duping the player in the end. The player is judged for how many foes they have smote, and it’s revealed that EXP is an acronym for “execution points,” not experience points as the player might assume.
Undertale is a game that demands to be played more than once, and I implore anyone to do so. Exploring the routes to the other two other endings of Undertale not only grants the player another conclusion to the game but offer an entirely different method of playing the game in the process. The “pacifist” ending should be the next route the player takes, which involves only using the mercy mechanic for every enemy in the game. As a result, the one unfortunate setback to this is the player will never gain any experience, leaving their health and other stats at a perpetual base level. On this route, enemies and boss battles become endurance tests as players commit to using their communication skills to save and befriend the monsters. Assuming the player slays most of the main bosses upon their first playthrough, pacifying them will unlock more content involving these characters. Flirting with Papyrus instead of smiting him will result in going on a “date” with him, and the jumbled mess of nerves will give the player a tour of his home. Sparing Undyne will result in an intense cooking charade that will lead to Undyne burning her own house down because of her inability to control her emotions. The crux of this path is the “true ending,” where Flowey reveals his true form as Asriel, the son of Toriel and Asgore. By killing him with kindness (not literally), Asriel will drop a load of exposition revolving around the main character. Apparently, the ambiguously-gendered, striped-shirted protagonist’s canon name is “Frisk,” and they are also the form of the first human who was adopted by Toriel and Asgore. In this ending, all of the player’s friends see the surface world for the first time and marvel at the beauty of the sunset before the player either leaves or stays with Toriel. Given the touching result of the player’s actions, it’s no wonder why this is the “true ending” of Undertale. Despite the implied “correctness” of what a “true ending” involves, this path is still the optimal way of playing Undertale. While I commented that Undertale’s combat was exemplary and fresh, intricately divulging the nature of each monster was a more satisfying challenge. There is no concrete reward for giving these creatures clemency, but I felt much more involved and enraptured with the game by making friends rather than defeating them.
The third ending of Undertale is on the polar opposite of the spectrum. The “genocide route” is as sinister as the non-canon name implies. Instead of avoiding violence and conflict, the player must vanquish everyone in sight and refashion the Underground as a graveyard. Unfortunately, Undertale must end on a dour note as the game has a memory of an elephant, and the civil monsters of the Underground will remember your grievous deeds. I assume that many players will inadvertently forgo this path because killing enemies is more commonplace in video games than communicating a more peaceful outcome. I strongly beseech the player to spare at least one enemy before the end because the “genocide route” is no picnic. The final boss of the “genocide route” is Sans, who has discarded his typical easy-going persona in favor of one of a ruthless son-of-bitch boss battle. None of the fights leading up to Sans will prepare the player for the indescribable onslaught Sans will inflict upon them. Sans figures if the player chooses to be an immoral murderer, then the punishment fits the crime. After surviving one of the most hectic, brutal boss fights in recent memory, the player will dispose of Flowey and Asgore without impunity and become the almighty being. Essentially, Undertale’s endings represent both the best and worst-case scenarios of a human invading the Underground. Keep in mind that even though the beings in the Underground are “monsters,” the human protagonist is the real monster regardless of which ending the player chooses. The monsters are marginalized beings, and the player's choices will justly represent whether or not they should abandon their preconceived prejudices against humans or stand and fight against their cruel oppressors.
While Toby Fox will admittedly give Earthbound credit where credit is due in terms of inspiration, Undertale is not a mere successor meant to ape Itoi’s work. With Undertale, Toby Fox gifts gamers with another piece of gaming auteurism that just so happens to share the same quirky, absurd atmosphere as Earthbound. While this atmosphere is consistent, Undertale is far more jubilant than its prime source of inspiration. Undertale takes the absurd elements of Earthbound and makes them as bubbly as a glass of champagne. Even the dark, unsettling moments of Undertale have more pop and vigor than Earthbound. The varied gameplay elements that compose Undertale are unlike anything I’ve ever played, and they coexist so tightly with one another to an outstanding degree. All the while, Undertale offers some of the most memorable and poignant characters I’ve seen. Undertale is a delightful romp that had me pleasantly surprised despite becoming familiar with its ubiquitous internet fandom over the past few years. Considering this is his first output, I now have high standards for Toby Fox. Undertale shows that he might be the new shining savior of the video game medium that will put everyone else to shame.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
Due to a tighter budget and a smaller development team, indie titles tend to adopt the antiquated gameplay and style of bygone times in gaming, namely the early pixelated eras. Undertale aesthetically resembles Earthbound because the pixelated art style became the distinguishing look of the Mother series, established in the first Mother game and solidified in Mother 3 (whether or not Mother 3 was an influence on Undertale is unknown). One minor aesthetic property that made Earthbound stand out among its SNES contemporaries is that the pixels vaguely look like they were colored in with crayons. This way, the visuals support Earthbound’s sense of child-like whimsy. Undertale does not look as if a child colored in the pixelated graphics, but it also has an intentionally rough-hewn look as well. Undertale’s 21st-century version of exuding an endearingly crude pixelated aesthetic makes the graphics look like they were done in Microsoft Paint. The outlines of the characters and structures are more defined than in Earthbound, but the splotchy, muted colors that make up Undertale still convey a quirky liveliness through the visuals. The black and white sprite work during the battles, on the other hand, deviates from the amateurish look slightly as the sprites look far more meticulously textured.
Undertale’s gameplay and its connection with Earthbound can be slightly misleading. Another idiosyncratic element of Earthbound’s unconventional nature is the minimalistic JRPG combat system, and upon encountering the first enemy (or practice dummy), it seems as if Undertale follows suit. The subject of battle is presented front and center as an immobile icon, and the player’s physical presence is not seen but implied through the combat. Once the player scrolls through the menu and picks an option, they get the impression that Toby Fox cut the proverbial Earthbound umbilical cord in this regard. Undertale’s combat is not only different from Earthbound’s minimalist approach but is one of the most unique combat systems I’ve seen in any video game. Undertale’s system is an ambitious marriage of the typical turn-based combat found in JRPGs with the gameplay of a bullet hell space shooter like Gradius. The player’s combat moves are precision-based actions on a grid, and their attack(s) will be more effective if they land in the middle. On the defensive side, each opponent's attacks are displayed in a claustrophobic box with their unique array of charging, bullet-hell obstacles for the player to briefly avoid. In that same square-shaped barrier is the player’s heart/soul, a vulnerable icon representing the player on the defensive side of the battle. The main objective of defense in Undertale is to avoid the creatively diverse bullet-hell sections unique to every small enemy and boss. The natural color of the player’s heart is red, and this color allows the player to move freely around the box at a relatively standard pace. However, the various bosses in Undertale will express discontent with this base familiarity and force the player to spruce up their soul with a different color of the rainbow. In select battles, a forced changing of the soul's color will offer a unique way of making defensive maneuvers. Blue forces the player to leap in the air, purple will situate the player to move on a grid, and yellow will fully realize the bullet-hell gameplay by turning the soul into a pea shooter. Above all else, I was completely floored by Undertale’s combat system. Mixing turn-based combat and bullet-hell gameplay is executed so seamlessly here that it’s a wonder that no one had thought of merging the two before. Both gameplay styles complement each other tremendously as the bullet-hell gameplay mitigates the imminent hits that come with turn-based combat. Any damage the player takes due to the stream of bullets is entirely the player's fault. This hybrid makes for some of the most kinetic and engaging gameplay I’ve seen across all turn-based video games.
The unorthodox fusion of two different gameplay styles indicates an overall point of subversiveness that Undertale takes strides in displaying. Earthbound’s quirky ethos was made to support the game’s sense of absurd surrealism, but Undertale uses its ethos to convey something of a gaming satire. Undertale constantly pokes at video game tropes and interweaves those jabs into the fabric of the game. For one, the first section of the game functions as a tutorial, and the matriarchal figure Toriel aids the player through the first series of puzzles and enemy encounters. It’s a clever metaphor for how condescending tutorial sections can be as if an overbearing motherly unit is literally holding their hands through the process. Shops in most JRPGs have a system in which selling one’s things is as readily available as purchasing items. Undertale gives the player an option to do this, but suggesting this to the store clerk will only result in befuddlement. They even seem to be offended at the notion of the player pawning their crap off on them, and being denied a chance to sell the game’s detritus makes the player realize how absurd this system is. Undertale offers plenty of puzzles that sound intricate on paper, but their foundations hilariously crumble. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was to parody the rationale of convoluted puzzles found in gaming. However, there are some fairly interesting puzzles in the laboratory section that do not serve as a farce. Undertale conveys these various slights at gaming tropes so subtly that most gamers probably won’t notice. The game's tone is so tongue-in-cheek already that it forms a distracting mold around many of the biting, satirical elements, which Earthbound also excelled in doing.
The primary way of forming this vivacious mold is through Undertale’s kooky, eclectic cast of characters. Earthbound had the progression akin to a surrealistic odyssey through an assortment of wacky instances, and Undertale has a similar aura. However, Undertale’s odyssey is conveyed less through random events and more through introducing new characters like Alice in Wonderland. The player will dig deeper down the rabbit hole that is the Underground, all the while encountering a wide bevy of effervescent characters. Discussing each character’s place in the story would be just as roundabout and exhausting as attempting to concisely weave together the plot of Earthbound, so a highlight reel is necessary again. The first two characters the player will find upon exiting Toriel’s home are Sans and Papyrus, two skeleton brothers who reside in the wintry, perpetually Christmas-time town of Snowdin. Sans is the shorter and stockier of the two, whose glib personality amusingly contrasts with his lankier, high-strung, spaghetti-loving brother Papyrus. Papyrus makes several earnest attempts to capture the player via boobytraps and puzzles, but they all blow up in his face like he’s Wile E. Coyote. Papyrus throws a tantrum out of frustration, and Sans is always nearby to lightly rub salt in his wounds. Their bickering brother dynamic is a joy to witness. Undyne is an intense soldier who is constantly on the prowl for humans. She dons a full suit of armor, and the clicking and clanging of her metallic boots will strike terror in the hearts of any human unfortunate enough to come across her. The laboratory section involves a character named Asphys, a scientist who is responsible for the creation of the half-entertainment, half-war machine robot Mettatron. Despite her high intellect, she suffers from acute social anxiety due to low self-esteem and seems to be quite lonely because of this. She is constantly second-guessing herself, stammering for most of her text conversations, and making a variety of awkward, anguished facial expressions. Her abrupt torrent of messages will grate on the player, but she has a certain pathetic charm that keeps me from complaining about her too harshly. There are several other characters that I must skip over, but the ones left unmentioned will still leave a lasting impression on the player.
While each character in Undertale is uniquely delightful, their level of effervescence depends on the player's choices. During any battle, players can opt out of fighting their opponents by sparing them. However, doing this is not as simple as fleeing a battle. The monsters that make up the Underworld are ravenous creatures out for blood, so the player must try to charm the enemies like they’re on a first date. The “act” sequence in the battle menu will provide the player with a bevy of options that could woo the opponent and pacify them, all the while avoiding their barrage of varied projectiles. The methods of placating these creatures range from pleading with them for peace to putting them to sleep, and one of the more common tactics is to flirt with enemies, even bosses. These responses used to appease the enemies are as lively and intricately diverse as the other gameplay option. Toby Fox has stated that this method of speaking to enemies instead of fighting them is inspired by the Shin Megami Tensei series, in which demons can join the player’s team if they hit all the right notes in a conversation with them. Similarly to that series, this communication mechanic makes the RPG gameplay much more nuanced and fits both the effervescent and subversive nature of Undertale. The caveat of sparing the lives of these monsters is that the player will never gain any amount of experience, only an amount of gold upon showing mercy in battle.
Undertale will give the player a brief tutorial on the mercy mechanic early in the game on a Froggit enemy. Still, the game does not detail the importance of the mechanic and how it coincides with the story. Despite its continual wackiness, Undertale’s story is a firm tale about a person versus society and the preconceived prejudice they face. Long ago in this world, humans and monsters used to coexist peacefully until a war broke out between the two races. The monsters were banished to the underground as a result, leaving humans to preside over the surface as the dominant race. A human (the player) finds themselves in the Underground world where the monsters reside, and they uncover the lore behind the war and the monster’s civilization. Because of the bloody history, everyone will be wary of the player’s presence. Their main objective in their adventure is to defeat Asgore, the Underground king who has a plan for his people to overcome adversity. Asgore must harness seven human souls to break the barrier that divides their world and the humans. Conveniently for him, a human has fallen into his world, but the player would be damned to let him acquire it.
Once defeating Asgore, Flowey, from the very beginning will interrupt and corrupt himself further with the power of the six souls. His transformation is an almighty abomination resembling something like an H.R. Giger plant creature and television on its head with a jittering head like Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy '' video. It’s unnerving, to say the least, and has the same unsettling presence as Giygas has in Earthbound. Once Flowey is defeated, the human returns to the surface. This outcome is the “neutral ending” of Undertale, and will most likely be the first ending upon one’s first playthrough of Undertale. Unless the player has a shaman’s insight or spoiled the game for themselves, Undertale’s subversive nature will end up duping the player in the end. The player is judged for how many foes they have smote, and it’s revealed that EXP is an acronym for “execution points,” not experience points as the player might assume.
Undertale is a game that demands to be played more than once, and I implore anyone to do so. Exploring the routes to the other two other endings of Undertale not only grants the player another conclusion to the game but offer an entirely different method of playing the game in the process. The “pacifist” ending should be the next route the player takes, which involves only using the mercy mechanic for every enemy in the game. As a result, the one unfortunate setback to this is the player will never gain any experience, leaving their health and other stats at a perpetual base level. On this route, enemies and boss battles become endurance tests as players commit to using their communication skills to save and befriend the monsters. Assuming the player slays most of the main bosses upon their first playthrough, pacifying them will unlock more content involving these characters. Flirting with Papyrus instead of smiting him will result in going on a “date” with him, and the jumbled mess of nerves will give the player a tour of his home. Sparing Undyne will result in an intense cooking charade that will lead to Undyne burning her own house down because of her inability to control her emotions. The crux of this path is the “true ending,” where Flowey reveals his true form as Asriel, the son of Toriel and Asgore. By killing him with kindness (not literally), Asriel will drop a load of exposition revolving around the main character. Apparently, the ambiguously-gendered, striped-shirted protagonist’s canon name is “Frisk,” and they are also the form of the first human who was adopted by Toriel and Asgore. In this ending, all of the player’s friends see the surface world for the first time and marvel at the beauty of the sunset before the player either leaves or stays with Toriel. Given the touching result of the player’s actions, it’s no wonder why this is the “true ending” of Undertale. Despite the implied “correctness” of what a “true ending” involves, this path is still the optimal way of playing Undertale. While I commented that Undertale’s combat was exemplary and fresh, intricately divulging the nature of each monster was a more satisfying challenge. There is no concrete reward for giving these creatures clemency, but I felt much more involved and enraptured with the game by making friends rather than defeating them.
The third ending of Undertale is on the polar opposite of the spectrum. The “genocide route” is as sinister as the non-canon name implies. Instead of avoiding violence and conflict, the player must vanquish everyone in sight and refashion the Underground as a graveyard. Unfortunately, Undertale must end on a dour note as the game has a memory of an elephant, and the civil monsters of the Underground will remember your grievous deeds. I assume that many players will inadvertently forgo this path because killing enemies is more commonplace in video games than communicating a more peaceful outcome. I strongly beseech the player to spare at least one enemy before the end because the “genocide route” is no picnic. The final boss of the “genocide route” is Sans, who has discarded his typical easy-going persona in favor of one of a ruthless son-of-bitch boss battle. None of the fights leading up to Sans will prepare the player for the indescribable onslaught Sans will inflict upon them. Sans figures if the player chooses to be an immoral murderer, then the punishment fits the crime. After surviving one of the most hectic, brutal boss fights in recent memory, the player will dispose of Flowey and Asgore without impunity and become the almighty being. Essentially, Undertale’s endings represent both the best and worst-case scenarios of a human invading the Underground. Keep in mind that even though the beings in the Underground are “monsters,” the human protagonist is the real monster regardless of which ending the player chooses. The monsters are marginalized beings, and the player's choices will justly represent whether or not they should abandon their preconceived prejudices against humans or stand and fight against their cruel oppressors.
While Toby Fox will admittedly give Earthbound credit where credit is due in terms of inspiration, Undertale is not a mere successor meant to ape Itoi’s work. With Undertale, Toby Fox gifts gamers with another piece of gaming auteurism that just so happens to share the same quirky, absurd atmosphere as Earthbound. While this atmosphere is consistent, Undertale is far more jubilant than its prime source of inspiration. Undertale takes the absurd elements of Earthbound and makes them as bubbly as a glass of champagne. Even the dark, unsettling moments of Undertale have more pop and vigor than Earthbound. The varied gameplay elements that compose Undertale are unlike anything I’ve ever played, and they coexist so tightly with one another to an outstanding degree. All the while, Undertale offers some of the most memorable and poignant characters I’ve seen. Undertale is a delightful romp that had me pleasantly surprised despite becoming familiar with its ubiquitous internet fandom over the past few years. Considering this is his first output, I now have high standards for Toby Fox. Undertale shows that he might be the new shining savior of the video game medium that will put everyone else to shame.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com