one of my most defining traits as a human being is my obsession with Undertale/Deltarune. i grew up loving EarthBound, had unregulated internet access WAY too young and would browse the starmen.net forums never knowing how to post (which was a good thing!), and the ways both Undertale and Deltarune have shaped my life can't be overstated. i don't know if there's any single artist whose work has impacted me like Toby Fox's. this is all to say that i went into Undertale Yellow excited, i had heard a lot of great things, but i felt a lil cautious to see if it really had that sauce.

and Undertale Yellow does not have the sauce.

i think one of the most interesting aspects of Toby's design is how tight the pacing in his games are, Chapter 2 of Deltarune in particular being absolutely perfect. the way it builds and escalates its bits, the constant forward yet fulfilling momentum, the delicate balance of exploration to scripted events, and the way (aside from the music robots) every character is introduced and explored are my favourite in any game. you never forget walking past a dumpster and having some weird little fucker pop out at you, you can't not laugh at Berdly and Queen - two of the funniest characters ever to be coded into Gamer's History.

it's impossible for me not to compare that to Undertale Yellow. Yellow's nearly decade-long time spent in the oven shows, with its first half feeling extremely sloppy. there's not much in terms of interesting characters, story hooks, level designs, or setpieces. it gets more exciting as it goes to more original places (ie not the ruins or Snowdin) but the pacing only improves towards the end. i really like the concepts at play with the Wild East but it's a SLOG. reminiscent of the wrestling part in Thousand Year Door where you just hang around doing a half a dozen lame fights/mini-games. it feels like you spend half of the game in that town. everyone talks too much. dialogue isn't as punchy as it should be, conversations and scripted sequences tend to drag on. there's not much humour in it either.

Undertale Yellow's characters and story never come together in a satisfying way. Asriel Dreemurr made me cry and feel funny when i was 13, but the way everything ties into him and leads up to that final confrontation in Undertale is one of the greatest emotional payoffs in any game. Clover is more of a character than Frisk, they're not a kid who simply wandered into the underground - they came here for Justice. to save the souls of those other kids who died! i think this isn't very good? it never feels like a goal of the game, it never has any relevance outside of the genocide route. Flowey's aware of it but he feels like an afterthought in this (unrelated but Asgore is esp OOC and it bothered me). the real central story of the game is Ceroba's backstory, it's just that she only starts to get built up in the game's last 40%. it's not as focused as it should be, much of its time is wasted on disparate characters and segments that never satisfyingly connect or resonate with the player.

one of the only areas that Yellow gets close to Undertale in is its combat. there's some fun bullet patterns, great boss gimmicks, and the neutral/pacifist routes are pretty reasonably balanced (maybe a little too easy?). i gotta commend the unique content in its main three routes, especially the clay parts of Flowey boss fight in neutral (the parts where it looks like it came from newgrounds suck tho). genocide route also slightly makes me feel better about Martlet.

Martlet is the stand-in for Papyrus, a wannabe royal guard captain stationed outside Snowdin who's never met a human before. her first section is rough. Sans/Papyrus are possibly the most beloved characters in any indie game, it's easy to see why when you look at how well-paced their section is. they're introduced in exciting ways, have an escalating set of setpieces/mini-games, and have great designs. i can't say any of that for Martlet - who only makes an impact after her section is over, mostly in the genocide route for me. all you see of her before her fight are a couple scenes where she sets up a lame puzzle that, unlike Papyrus', are not jokes. it never builds to anything, instead it wastes time introducing the fuckass cuphead guys and the "made before Spamton but is a scummy salesman so i'm gonna think of Spamton" guy. Martlet is just Papyrus if he was a wholesome, boring furry woman without autism.

i am going to talk about Dalv now.

i don't think every character Toby cracks out is a total winner. Cap'n Cakes aren't very thrilling, Chapter 1's King is mostly there to be an evil guy you need to fight, and Alphys' dialogue in hotland can go on a bit too long (tho i do love her). they're all, at worst, a little boring but either don't have much of a major role or are merely slightly flawed. Dalv, Undertale Yellow's first major original character, does not have any redeeming factors. i straight up hate him. his design? looks like an Adventure Time OC a 16 yr old boy would self-ship with Marceline. his dialogue? boring as hell. the way he's supposed to be Yellow's Toriel stand-in? absolutely shameful. the way he's just a lame human-looking vampire and doesn't fit in? the way his only relevance to the rest of the game is that he used to hang out with little girls? the way he just has lightning powers for some reason? i had seen almost every major character in the game online in fan art at some point prior to playing EXCEPT for Dalv and i see why. despite being the game's first important new character he never shows up again or has any relevance to the game so he doesn't fuckin matter, he sucks ass bad and i hate him.

Ceroba's sorta neat, though. she's easily the strongest character in the game, her story plays off a few aspects of lore from Undertale that are fun to see explored - her having a daughter who ended up as one of the Amalgamates in the True Lab is great drama. she's also the most Toriel-like on the surface, having lost her husband and child through tragedy. she's very un-Toriel like in how she actually still loves her late husband, the ways in which she still clings to his memory and (undeserved) dignity in death is relatable. if my wife died, i'd be gassing her up constantly. her section is the stand-out portion of Yellow as well, the Steamworks have the best momentum and variety of gimmicks. i gotta ask tho - why is she japanese? how does she know what japanese culture is? monsters have been stuck underground for a millennia, she and her dead husband should not know what a kotatsu is. the game is defo too happy to reiterate her backstory but she's the sole character who has an actual motivation to fight you, which is nice. still feels horribly unearned when her boss fight theme starts incorporating aspects of Hopes and Dreams though. like you are NOT him.

that unearned feeling captures how i feel about it as a fan follow-up to Undertale. i don't think Yellow has enough ideas of its own to stand apart from Undertale, it spends 3/4 of its major areas retreading Undertale and most of its characters feel like lesser copies of Undertale's. mechanically, it harms itself by adhering too close to its inspiration. its design isn't ambitious or experimental enough. there's not many moments where i found myself surprised, feeling like i haven't already played this before. it doesn't have enough of its own identity and i found a lot of its original aspects to be really weak. it's like the Blue Shift of Undertale.

i think Undertale Yellow is okay. it's a remarkably professional feeling game. it seems like teenagers online really like it, tho it has been nearly three years since Chapter 2 dropped and UT/DR fans are starving. it's well-made but it's not cohesive or compelling, it feels more thrown together than particularly inspired. makes me appreciate Deltarune as a follow-up even more than i already did. if you're an Undertale fan and you haven't played thru some of its inspirations (ESPECIALLY MOON!!!!!! PLAY IT!!!!!!) i'd recommend you just do that over this. Undertale's writing is maybe its most important aspect and Yellow's writing simply isn't very good, there's no glue holding it together.

plus i don't remember any of its music and there was a really bad fnaf at freddy reference

People are kinda harsh on the 3DS Ace Attorney games, but to be honest, I find them extremely enjoyable. Even more than the original trilogy in places.

There might be a slight tonal shift towards more fantasy and over-the-top themes, but the characters are still solid and the Ace Attorney formula is incredibly difficult to fuck up at this point (Also the new versions of classic themes from the soundtrack are amazing).

Spirit of Justice starts a bit slow (cases one and two are a bit whatever), but once it gets past that initial hump it's kinda great. Cases three four and five all feature really creative murders which are extremely fun to unravel (as long as you have tolerance for the series leaning very hard into the whole spirit channelling thing; which I don't mind, but I get why it bothers some people), and you get some really fun character dynamics like Athena and Blackquill or Phoenix and Edgeworth investigating cases together.

Overall very entertaining with a couple of genuinely emotional moments.

My only real complaint is that the new prosecutor kinda sucks, he feels more like a plot device than a fully realized character.

As much as I enjoy sympathetic prosecutors, I feel like if they make another Ace Attorney we need a return to a Manfred Von Karma-style prosecutor. Just a real bastard of a guy that it's fun to hate. I kinda miss that.