I genuinely haven’t been this disappointed by a video game since FNAF: Security Breach, all I heard about this game when it was first released was that it was apparently the greatest thing ever made and that it reminded them of playing Undertale for the first time. However, I strongly disagree, I hated everything about this game post Ruins, the gameplay was frustrating, the story was uninteresting, the characters were either stupid or spoiled brats, there was absolutely nothing worthwhile in this game whatsoever except for a few songs. What an absolutely horrific misunderstanding of what made Undertale work. I’m gonna replay Undertale again and remind myself why I love that game.
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Warning: Very long essay
@Fatih120 even without the hype, I found the gameplay to be far inferior to Undertale, especially when it comes to the bosses, there were so many times where an attack came out of seemingly nowhere with no warning, here’s just a FEW examples
- Dalv’s lightning attack
- Guardner’s 3rd robot attack
- most of Axis’s moveset
Also attacks that (at the very least) feel impossible to dodge
- Ace’s Homing attack
- Starlo’s Slow-mo attacks
- Axis’s cloud attack
- Honestly most of Axis’s moveset honestly.
And as for the characters
Dalv- honestly, just a really nothing character in my opinion, granted I haven’t completed the entire game, but Dalv doesn’t seem to play any role in the story other then to be the main boss of the ruins. Yeah Toriel didn’t get a lot of screen time either, but she ultimately played a huge role in the backstory, both because she’s the ex-wife of Asgore; the ultimate goal that the player has to reach, and the biological mother of the main villain; Flowey, plus, the tapes in the lab, the story the monsters tell, and the conversation with Sans in the hotel, add some depth to Toriel as a character, something that Dalv just doesn’t get. He’s just some guy who happens to live in the ruins and that apparently he thinks he’s hallucinating Clover, again, I haven’t actually completed the game, but from what I’ve played, Dalv serves no purpose in the story other then being the main boss of the ruins.
Martlet- Honestly, I don’t get this character, She’s a member of the royal guard, but other than setting up 3-4 traps, makes no effort to actually capture Clover, at the end of her fight, she changes her mind about Clover and is all like “actually you don’t seem that bad” She doesn’t have any reason to think Clover isn’t secretly trying to trick her into lowering her guard, so her doing this makes no sense. Just like the Dalv-Toriel comparison, let’s compare Martlet with Papyrus. Papyrus, just like Martlet, also grows to befriend Frisk after his boss fight. But the reason why I don’t have a problem with this is because throughout Snowdin, we get to know Papyrus, and we get to see that despite him wanting to join the royal guard, he’s actually is hesitant about wanting to actually capture a human, as we see in his battle dialogue. So Papyrus befriending Frisk makes sense knowing what we know about him. Meanwhile, Martlet literally just met Clover and then changed her mind about humans… because??? Yes, we do get to learn that she’s also a nice person, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that she was still adamant about capturing a human just moments ago. Anyways, after her boss fight, Clover and Martlet travel on a raft (I forgot the name of the raft) until suddenly it speeds up and both Clover and the raft fall off a cliff, and instead of Martlet going down to see if Clover survived the fall, she just leaves?! She says that she’s leaving to go get help, which, what the fuck? If she tries to get help, that’s going to lead to Clover probably dying, considering that Clover is a human, and monsters want the human souls to break the barrier, their obviously going to try to kill Clover to steal his soul, and also, Martlet just straight up abandons Clover. For all she knows, he’s fucking dead, and instead of (god forbid) checking to see if he’s even still alive, she just leaves. One last thing I want to mention about Martlet is something really interesting I discovered in the part where you have to search Ceroba’s house. If you click on one of the items in Kanoko’s room, she mentions how apparently she was so smart, that she skipped several grades in school. This character; who didn’t have half a mind to check on Clover after almost dying, who thought of a “brilliant” idea to go get help even though getting help could wind up getting him killed, and later, when she’s imprisoned in the Wild East; doesn’t think to (oh, I don’t know) FLY OVER THE BARS, (maybe it’s just a graphical design, but it looks like the bars don’t have a top portion, so why can’t she just fly over it? Again maybe it just looks like there’s not a top portion, but it’s still something that’s very annoying to me) Oh, and speaking of Wild East…
North Star/Starlo- Starlo is a genuine asshole, he treats everyone around him like garbage (including the feisty five) and just overall, is a very unpleasant person to be around, he literally pulls a trolley problem out of his ass and forces you to choose between Ed and the other members of the Feisty Five, which inevitably makes the members that you chose to hit by the trolley feel like their so worthless, that you would let them die if it came down to the wire, yes I know the trolley turns out to be a fake, but my point still stands, and then after everything, Starlo appoints Clover as the new Sheriff, despite the fact that Clover just got there, and that he has 4 other (much more loyal) friends who knew Starlo for a lot more longer, and then, after the fight against the feisty four, the 4 of them choose to leave Starlo for being a toxic asshole, and so, after that, you know what Starlo does, this douchebag has the fucking audacity to blame CLOVER for his friends leaving him behind to a point where he tries to murder Clover despite the fact that it’s HIS fault that Clover wound up in the Wild East. Apparently, according to Ceroba, he apparently “went off the deep end” while trying to “make everyone happy” Oh really? Being an asshole to your friends and forcing them to work for 3 weeks, only to reject their hard work because god forbid a human showed up, forcing someone who wants nothing to do with the Wild East to perform in short little mini-games against their will, and then trying to murder that person because he friends left him because he was toxic was all done in an attempt to “make everyone happy”?! You know, Undyne was a hothead, but she very clearly had respect for everyone around her, to a point where she has different dialogue before her boss fight depending on which member of the royal guard you killed INDIVIDUALLY. Which is more respect than Starlo has for anyone.
Axis- Honestly, I’m not going to waste my time with Axis. Axis isn’t a character, he’s an annoying obstacle that the player has to avoid. He has none of the charm, memorability, and likability as Mettaton. The only noteworthy thing I have to say about other than his god awful boss fight is something that isn’t even focused on him, but rather, Ceroba.
Speaking of which, you’d probably expect that with this “marvelous” cast of characters, choosing one to single out as the worst would be a difficult task, right?…
Choosing which character to single out as the worst would be a difficult task, right?…
…No, no it wasn’t, it’s not even close.
But before that, a few other things I want to talk about
The one part of the game I liked- You meet Ceroba for the first time in the Wild East, and when I met her for the first time, I thought I was actually going to like this character, she talks to Clover about how she understands that Starlo is an asshole, and sympathizes with him, She’s the one who talks him down, and when she mentioned that her daughter fell down and was in THAT LAB I almost shed a tear because I knew what happened to the monsters who were experimented on in there, it was easily my favorite part of the game in terms of dialogue because it was the one part of the game I truly sympathized with both Ceroba because of the pain she went through and Starlo (for as flawed as his efforts were) for trying to make her happy, and just for that one moment, Undertale Yellow pulled me into it’s world. I found myself emotionally sympathizing with multiple characters and feeling genuine emotions because I knew what was inevitably going to happen to her daughter, plus the dialogue also implied that her husband had dead, and I felt genuinely terrible about it.
Ceroba does nothing- Anyways, everything goes downhill from there as Ceroba does absolutely nothing to help Clover navigate the Steamworks, she tries to fiddle with a machine to open a door, only for Clover to do all the work getting it open, she barely helps in the boss fights, whenever you have to walk past the hot vents, she just sits idly by while you (once again) do all of the work.
Asgore’s Character Assassination- Eventually, Clover and Ceroba enter a room with a bunch of files, Ceroba comes across a file on her husband (I forgot his name). Apparently he was the one who designed Axis, and was also apparently fired from his job by Asgore because Axis started a fire in the King’s garden, and despite the fact that the fire was put out immediately, that’s all it took to fire him apparently, which is a massive blow to Asgore as a character. Do you remember how despite the fact that Alphys screwed the pooch big time with the determination experiment and didn’t tell anyone about what she had done, Asgore let her keep her position as a royal scientist despite all of the angry callers, and still treated her with respect despite the fact that she locked the patients away from their family members, but god forbid you damage a few of Asgore’s flowers, and he’ll just fire you despite all the contributions you made to the underground. I know Asgore also didn’t have a lot of screen time, but Toby Fox still did a masterful job fleshing him out as a character, which is something that Undertale Yellow takes a giant shit on, and for the record, Ceroba’s Husband being fired is what eventually leads to a MAJOR plot point in the game. Yep, it’s finally time to talk about…
Ceroba- After Clover and Ceroba get past Axis and escape the Steamworks, they find an elevator, until suddenly, Martlet and Starlo come out of nowhere and ask Ceroba why she’s trying to take Clover to the lab, in a panic, she runs into the elevator, only for Starlo to chase behind. Martlet takes Clover back to the Wild East, where apparently the Feisty Five discovered something strange in Ceroba’s house: a trapdoor. After Clover and Martlet head through the trapdoor, they find themselves in some sort of dusty laboratory, and they end up finding a tape that reveals what happened to Ceroba’s husband. Apparently he deteriorated while to trying to experiment on a formula that involved a human soul and a boss monster soul, mixing them together, and injecting it into himself, which let me tell you, is one of the stupidest ideas imaginable. Monsters can absorb Human souls, but they can’t absorb Monster souls, meaning theoretically, Ceroba’s husband’s experiment shouldn’t work, and what do you know, it fails, and Ceroba’s husband dies. His final message is him asking Ceroba to continue his research. After viewing the tape, Clover and Martlet head to the elevator that Ceroba and Starlo went into, and try to talk it out with her. We head into the hotel, into the elevator, and to the top floor, where they soon meet Starlo and Ceroba deep in conversation. Starlo calls out the fact that Ceroba is acting just as reckless and immature as he was back in the Wild East, and her response to this? “You think I don’t know how far gone I am!? And where’s this high horse coming from?? Sounds to me like we’re in the pit together” So she knows she’s an awful person but refuses to change, and to think she had the audacity to call Starlo reckless when she’s acting arguably worse, and then she snaps at Martlet when she brings up how this isn’t what her husband wouldn’t want, AND THEN SHE NEARLY KILLS BOTH MARTLET AND STARLO BY LAUNCHING THEM INTO THE GROUND. And if you think I’m exaggerating, pay attention to how hard they were thrown, that’s one fractured chest for Martlet, and one destroyed spinal cord for Starlo, and then she has the audacity to claim that she’s more proactive then Asgore, despite the fact that she’s only attempting to kill Clover for her selfish gain rather then the sake of monster-kind, no matter how hard she tries to trick herself into believing otherwise, especially since the True Pacifist Ending of Undertale disproves her theory that monster kind will be trapped once again if they leave the underground.
I attempted Ceroba’s fight for 30 minutes before ragequitting and uninstalling the game from my PC, I had already beaten Axis that day, which took me 80 minutes to beat, and I have no plans on ever playing the game again.
To answer your question, “Would it still be a 1/10 due to the sheer over-hype or because you really hated it that much?” the answer to that question is: YES.
For the record, however, I’m actually ecstatic that I’m in minority when it comes to this game, I’m glad that people are really enjoying it, and I hope it makes other people happy as the years go by, one thing’s for certain, Undertale Yellow definitely does have a lot a passion behind it, but no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to bring myself to enjoy Undertale Yellow.
@Fatih120 even without the hype, I found the gameplay to be far inferior to Undertale, especially when it comes to the bosses, there were so many times where an attack came out of seemingly nowhere with no warning, here’s just a FEW examples
- Dalv’s lightning attack
- Guardner’s 3rd robot attack
- most of Axis’s moveset
Also attacks that (at the very least) feel impossible to dodge
- Ace’s Homing attack
- Starlo’s Slow-mo attacks
- Axis’s cloud attack
- Honestly most of Axis’s moveset honestly.
And as for the characters
Dalv- honestly, just a really nothing character in my opinion, granted I haven’t completed the entire game, but Dalv doesn’t seem to play any role in the story other then to be the main boss of the ruins. Yeah Toriel didn’t get a lot of screen time either, but she ultimately played a huge role in the backstory, both because she’s the ex-wife of Asgore; the ultimate goal that the player has to reach, and the biological mother of the main villain; Flowey, plus, the tapes in the lab, the story the monsters tell, and the conversation with Sans in the hotel, add some depth to Toriel as a character, something that Dalv just doesn’t get. He’s just some guy who happens to live in the ruins and that apparently he thinks he’s hallucinating Clover, again, I haven’t actually completed the game, but from what I’ve played, Dalv serves no purpose in the story other then being the main boss of the ruins.
Martlet- Honestly, I don’t get this character, She’s a member of the royal guard, but other than setting up 3-4 traps, makes no effort to actually capture Clover, at the end of her fight, she changes her mind about Clover and is all like “actually you don’t seem that bad” She doesn’t have any reason to think Clover isn’t secretly trying to trick her into lowering her guard, so her doing this makes no sense. Just like the Dalv-Toriel comparison, let’s compare Martlet with Papyrus. Papyrus, just like Martlet, also grows to befriend Frisk after his boss fight. But the reason why I don’t have a problem with this is because throughout Snowdin, we get to know Papyrus, and we get to see that despite him wanting to join the royal guard, he’s actually is hesitant about wanting to actually capture a human, as we see in his battle dialogue. So Papyrus befriending Frisk makes sense knowing what we know about him. Meanwhile, Martlet literally just met Clover and then changed her mind about humans… because??? Yes, we do get to learn that she’s also a nice person, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that she was still adamant about capturing a human just moments ago. Anyways, after her boss fight, Clover and Martlet travel on a raft (I forgot the name of the raft) until suddenly it speeds up and both Clover and the raft fall off a cliff, and instead of Martlet going down to see if Clover survived the fall, she just leaves?! She says that she’s leaving to go get help, which, what the fuck? If she tries to get help, that’s going to lead to Clover probably dying, considering that Clover is a human, and monsters want the human souls to break the barrier, their obviously going to try to kill Clover to steal his soul, and also, Martlet just straight up abandons Clover. For all she knows, he’s fucking dead, and instead of (god forbid) checking to see if he’s even still alive, she just leaves. One last thing I want to mention about Martlet is something really interesting I discovered in the part where you have to search Ceroba’s house. If you click on one of the items in Kanoko’s room, she mentions how apparently she was so smart, that she skipped several grades in school. This character; who didn’t have half a mind to check on Clover after almost dying, who thought of a “brilliant” idea to go get help even though getting help could wind up getting him killed, and later, when she’s imprisoned in the Wild East; doesn’t think to (oh, I don’t know) FLY OVER THE BARS, (maybe it’s just a graphical design, but it looks like the bars don’t have a top portion, so why can’t she just fly over it? Again maybe it just looks like there’s not a top portion, but it’s still something that’s very annoying to me) Oh, and speaking of Wild East…
North Star/Starlo- Starlo is a genuine asshole, he treats everyone around him like garbage (including the feisty five) and just overall, is a very unpleasant person to be around, he literally pulls a trolley problem out of his ass and forces you to choose between Ed and the other members of the Feisty Five, which inevitably makes the members that you chose to hit by the trolley feel like their so worthless, that you would let them die if it came down to the wire, yes I know the trolley turns out to be a fake, but my point still stands, and then after everything, Starlo appoints Clover as the new Sheriff, despite the fact that Clover just got there, and that he has 4 other (much more loyal) friends who knew Starlo for a lot more longer, and then, after the fight against the feisty four, the 4 of them choose to leave Starlo for being a toxic asshole, and so, after that, you know what Starlo does, this douchebag has the fucking audacity to blame CLOVER for his friends leaving him behind to a point where he tries to murder Clover despite the fact that it’s HIS fault that Clover wound up in the Wild East. Apparently, according to Ceroba, he apparently “went off the deep end” while trying to “make everyone happy” Oh really? Being an asshole to your friends and forcing them to work for 3 weeks, only to reject their hard work because god forbid a human showed up, forcing someone who wants nothing to do with the Wild East to perform in short little mini-games against their will, and then trying to murder that person because he friends left him because he was toxic was all done in an attempt to “make everyone happy”?! You know, Undyne was a hothead, but she very clearly had respect for everyone around her, to a point where she has different dialogue before her boss fight depending on which member of the royal guard you killed INDIVIDUALLY. Which is more respect than Starlo has for anyone.
Axis- Honestly, I’m not going to waste my time with Axis. Axis isn’t a character, he’s an annoying obstacle that the player has to avoid. He has none of the charm, memorability, and likability as Mettaton. The only noteworthy thing I have to say about other than his god awful boss fight is something that isn’t even focused on him, but rather, Ceroba.
Speaking of which, you’d probably expect that with this “marvelous” cast of characters, choosing one to single out as the worst would be a difficult task, right?…
Choosing which character to single out as the worst would be a difficult task, right?…
…No, no it wasn’t, it’s not even close.
But before that, a few other things I want to talk about
The one part of the game I liked- You meet Ceroba for the first time in the Wild East, and when I met her for the first time, I thought I was actually going to like this character, she talks to Clover about how she understands that Starlo is an asshole, and sympathizes with him, She’s the one who talks him down, and when she mentioned that her daughter fell down and was in THAT LAB I almost shed a tear because I knew what happened to the monsters who were experimented on in there, it was easily my favorite part of the game in terms of dialogue because it was the one part of the game I truly sympathized with both Ceroba because of the pain she went through and Starlo (for as flawed as his efforts were) for trying to make her happy, and just for that one moment, Undertale Yellow pulled me into it’s world. I found myself emotionally sympathizing with multiple characters and feeling genuine emotions because I knew what was inevitably going to happen to her daughter, plus the dialogue also implied that her husband had dead, and I felt genuinely terrible about it.
Ceroba does nothing- Anyways, everything goes downhill from there as Ceroba does absolutely nothing to help Clover navigate the Steamworks, she tries to fiddle with a machine to open a door, only for Clover to do all the work getting it open, she barely helps in the boss fights, whenever you have to walk past the hot vents, she just sits idly by while you (once again) do all of the work.
Asgore’s Character Assassination- Eventually, Clover and Ceroba enter a room with a bunch of files, Ceroba comes across a file on her husband (I forgot his name). Apparently he was the one who designed Axis, and was also apparently fired from his job by Asgore because Axis started a fire in the King’s garden, and despite the fact that the fire was put out immediately, that’s all it took to fire him apparently, which is a massive blow to Asgore as a character. Do you remember how despite the fact that Alphys screwed the pooch big time with the determination experiment and didn’t tell anyone about what she had done, Asgore let her keep her position as a royal scientist despite all of the angry callers, and still treated her with respect despite the fact that she locked the patients away from their family members, but god forbid you damage a few of Asgore’s flowers, and he’ll just fire you despite all the contributions you made to the underground. I know Asgore also didn’t have a lot of screen time, but Toby Fox still did a masterful job fleshing him out as a character, which is something that Undertale Yellow takes a giant shit on, and for the record, Ceroba’s Husband being fired is what eventually leads to a MAJOR plot point in the game. Yep, it’s finally time to talk about…
Ceroba- After Clover and Ceroba get past Axis and escape the Steamworks, they find an elevator, until suddenly, Martlet and Starlo come out of nowhere and ask Ceroba why she’s trying to take Clover to the lab, in a panic, she runs into the elevator, only for Starlo to chase behind. Martlet takes Clover back to the Wild East, where apparently the Feisty Five discovered something strange in Ceroba’s house: a trapdoor. After Clover and Martlet head through the trapdoor, they find themselves in some sort of dusty laboratory, and they end up finding a tape that reveals what happened to Ceroba’s husband. Apparently he deteriorated while to trying to experiment on a formula that involved a human soul and a boss monster soul, mixing them together, and injecting it into himself, which let me tell you, is one of the stupidest ideas imaginable. Monsters can absorb Human souls, but they can’t absorb Monster souls, meaning theoretically, Ceroba’s husband’s experiment shouldn’t work, and what do you know, it fails, and Ceroba’s husband dies. His final message is him asking Ceroba to continue his research. After viewing the tape, Clover and Martlet head to the elevator that Ceroba and Starlo went into, and try to talk it out with her. We head into the hotel, into the elevator, and to the top floor, where they soon meet Starlo and Ceroba deep in conversation. Starlo calls out the fact that Ceroba is acting just as reckless and immature as he was back in the Wild East, and her response to this? “You think I don’t know how far gone I am!? And where’s this high horse coming from?? Sounds to me like we’re in the pit together” So she knows she’s an awful person but refuses to change, and to think she had the audacity to call Starlo reckless when she’s acting arguably worse, and then she snaps at Martlet when she brings up how this isn’t what her husband wouldn’t want, AND THEN SHE NEARLY KILLS BOTH MARTLET AND STARLO BY LAUNCHING THEM INTO THE GROUND. And if you think I’m exaggerating, pay attention to how hard they were thrown, that’s one fractured chest for Martlet, and one destroyed spinal cord for Starlo, and then she has the audacity to claim that she’s more proactive then Asgore, despite the fact that she’s only attempting to kill Clover for her selfish gain rather then the sake of monster-kind, no matter how hard she tries to trick herself into believing otherwise, especially since the True Pacifist Ending of Undertale disproves her theory that monster kind will be trapped once again if they leave the underground.
I attempted Ceroba’s fight for 30 minutes before ragequitting and uninstalling the game from my PC, I had already beaten Axis that day, which took me 80 minutes to beat, and I have no plans on ever playing the game again.
To answer your question, “Would it still be a 1/10 due to the sheer over-hype or because you really hated it that much?” the answer to that question is: YES.
For the record, however, I’m actually ecstatic that I’m in minority when it comes to this game, I’m glad that people are really enjoying it, and I hope it makes other people happy as the years go by, one thing’s for certain, Undertale Yellow definitely does have a lot a passion behind it, but no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to bring myself to enjoy Undertale Yellow.
@ObscureEgg Sorry for the one-week late response since I'm not an active user of this site.
You bring up incredibly valid points, and a lot of these I've seen echoed with other reviews including mine, with some further attention to detail on your part. I feel like this is all stuff you could include in the main review - I don't have much to add on to it, aside that I think part of the Wild West events like the trolley problem were assumed to have Clover be the only one to not "be in" on the gag but I still see the point.
I do feel like if there's any difference it's your attitude about the fights themselves - I understand many people found them insane even on launch, but overall my main positives would have lied with the gameplay and fight mechanics themselves so I suppose it's the one thing that is truly subjective. I enjoyed a majority of the fights (aside from the milking of Ceroba) but it could be my seasoned status for danmaku. Admittedly Geno Martlet took me like about 10 attempts overall. Thanks for your elaboration and I hope you could include it above.
You bring up incredibly valid points, and a lot of these I've seen echoed with other reviews including mine, with some further attention to detail on your part. I feel like this is all stuff you could include in the main review - I don't have much to add on to it, aside that I think part of the Wild West events like the trolley problem were assumed to have Clover be the only one to not "be in" on the gag but I still see the point.
I do feel like if there's any difference it's your attitude about the fights themselves - I understand many people found them insane even on launch, but overall my main positives would have lied with the gameplay and fight mechanics themselves so I suppose it's the one thing that is truly subjective. I enjoyed a majority of the fights (aside from the milking of Ceroba) but it could be my seasoned status for danmaku. Admittedly Geno Martlet took me like about 10 attempts overall. Thanks for your elaboration and I hope you could include it above.
@Fatih120 nah, It’s all good
And as for further elaboration on my main problem with the trolly problem.
Let’s say you’re walking down the street one day, and then some strange eccentric man in a cowboy outfit asks you to come with him. He takes you to a place that has two train tracks, on one train track, your best friend is tied up, on the other, your other best friend is tied up. The Cowboy man say that you have to choose which one of your friends can live, so you make your choice, only for it to be revealed that this was all just one big joke set up by your friends. However, by doing this, you are letting your friends know which one of them you prefer, and that might lead to them being bitter around you.
And as for further elaboration on my main problem with the trolly problem.
Let’s say you’re walking down the street one day, and then some strange eccentric man in a cowboy outfit asks you to come with him. He takes you to a place that has two train tracks, on one train track, your best friend is tied up, on the other, your other best friend is tied up. The Cowboy man say that you have to choose which one of your friends can live, so you make your choice, only for it to be revealed that this was all just one big joke set up by your friends. However, by doing this, you are letting your friends know which one of them you prefer, and that might lead to them being bitter around you.
@ObscureEgg Yeah, I definitely see the point clearer now. I think it was an attempt to put some similar cheap-out moments like in Undertale where things were comically made to look life-or-death but that fridge logic does make sense. I think it would've been a good talking point if the Feisty Five got their proper arc with Starlo but alas.
Fatih120
4 months ago