Current Events > after finishing my first playthrough of Undertale, it finally clicked *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

during my initial playthrough of Undertale, I wasn't super impressed with the game. i definitely found it charming and enjoyed the music, but I really didn't get what the hype was about. after finishing the game last night, i now understand why.

i remember Toriel saying something about how I'm supposed to try talking to enemies that attack me, instead of killing them. i followed her advice during the first area, but when it came to the encounter with her, i didn't understand what i was supposed to do so i attacked her. i didn't realize there was another way. of course, doing this caused me to gain EXP and a few LVLs. after seeing that i gained EXP and thus ended the option for a "pacifist" route, i continued to just kill enemies that attacked me as i progressed through the game.

as i approached the end, i enjoyed the game as a semi-unique RPG with the battle mechanics, but still found myself unsure about why this game made so much noise. then i got to the very end and realized what the entire point of it was when Flowery explained that "EXP" is "execution points" and LVL means "level of violence". then the rest of the ending played out and i suddenly felt terrible for being a monster the entire game.

once i got through all of the ending, i restarted right away and started a "pacitifst" route to play the game the way it was intended.

Giant_Aspirin posted...

during my initial playthrough of Undertale, I wasn't super impressed with the game. i definitely found it charming and enjoyed the music, but I really didn't get what the hype was about. after finishing the game last night, i now understand why.

i remember Toriel saying something about how I'm supposed to try talking to enemies that attack me, instead of killing them. i followed her advice during the first area, but when it came to the encounter with her, i didn't understand what i was supposed to do so i attacked her. i didn't realize there was another way. of course, doing this caused me to gain EXP and a few LVLs. after seeing that i gained EXP and thus ended the option for a "pacifist" route, i continued to just kill enemies that attacked me as i progressed through the game.

as i approached the end, i enjoyed the game as a semi-unique RPG with the battle mechanics, but still found myself unsure about why this game made so much noise. then i got to the very end and realized what the entire point of it was when Flowery explained that "EXP" is "execution points" and LVL means "level of violence". then the rest of the ending played out and i suddenly felt terrible for being a monster the entire game.

once i got through all of the ending, i restarted right away and started a "pacitifst" route to play the game the way it was intended.

Bro, Undertale hits hard that way. I felt so bad when I accidentally killed Toriel the first time I reloaded (there is a whole extra scene that makes you feel even worse if you do this). When I got to the king, I couldnt kill himI had tried to do the least amount of kills possible too.

I felt so depressed after that game.

I do love me some Sans though.

You can restart, but the game knows. It knows what you've done.

s0nicfan posted...

You can restart, but the game knows. It knows what you've done.

i read about some of that in the wiki when reading about the ending i got. that's pretty neat!

ToadallyAwesome posted...

I felt so bad when I accidentally killed Toriel the first time I reloaded

i strongly considered starting over, but i really didn't wanna replay the entire introduction / tutorial again, so i brushed it off. i think going through the game the "wrong" way actually kinda makes sense, because you see the err of your ways.

I played it the same way and really enjoyed the characters and stories but I didn't actually like playing it enough to give it another go for the real or better paths, so it kinda lessened the experience I had.

i did the same my first way. killed toriel and then think i saved the rest of the bosses but i still leveled up a bit on random enemies. just went through it completely blind and enjoyed it. then restart and did a pacifist route and it's definitely makes things harder with your low hp and having to figure out how to spare everyone. plus i won't do any real spoilers but the ending changes if you didn't know. although you still have to beat the boss and then it continues after...at least i think. i kinda forget. but if you beat it and it's the same and you didn't kill anyone there is a way to continue on.

genocide route is a lot of fun as well but really hits you in the feels after you did true pacifist. just don't be discouraged if the bosses take hours to beat. almost everyone struggles a lot on them.

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can you elaborate on this? by 'fake final boss' do you mean the king? just wondering if i missed anything?

i killed the king, then Flowery showed up and consumed the human souls and turned into that weird ass monster thing and crashed my game a bunch of times. i eventually killed it (least i think so) and broke out of that cycle, so when i started up the game i saw the "normal" menu.

I actually thought Undertale was going to turn into a horror game. Once I got to the Toriel fight I couldnt bring myself to attack her though. I noticed the very slight changes in her expression and dialogue between her attacks so I kept going and never accidentally killed her

i had the reverse problem with Asgore though. I tried so hard to not attack him. I must have tried his fight 10+ times. In the end I tried resorting to bring him almost to death but give him mercy but we know what happens then

creativeme posted...

just don't be discouraged if the bosses take hours to beat. almost everyone struggles a lot on them.

Kloe_Rinz posted...

i had the reverse problem with Asgore though. I tried so hard to not attack him. I must have tried his fight 10+ times.

these comments aren't very encouraging <_<

i thought the basic idea to the pacifist route was that you just had to figure out which actions to do for each enemy to get them to back off? like how for the Froggit i need to compliment it, then it will allow me to spare it. is the order for certain bosses very specific and long?

you played it the best way. I didn't know I was SUPPOSED to not kill anyone, and got the full effect at the end.

i was talking about the neutral route. im not spoiling the pacifist route for you

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do you mean that i won't see the 'true' final boss until the end of the pacifist run? or was there something after super scary Flowey for the neutral route that i missed? i'm trying to avoid poking around the wiki too much.

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yeah lol. fuck him and his evil ways.

Kloe_Rinz posted...

I actually thought Undertale was going to turn into a horror game.

I wouldn't be shocked if earlier concepts for the game WERE more horror oriented. Flowey aside, all the cut content around Gaster definitely feels like things could have been much darker.

I killed Toriel because I thought she was going to bake me into a pie

SSJKirby posted...

I killed Toriel because I thought she was going to bake me into a pie

part of me didn't feel too bad about killing her because she made me a butterscotch and cinnamon pie, like wtf is that?

actually, no, i still felt bad. but that pie sounds awful

Kloe_Rinz posted...

I actually thought Undertale was going to turn into a horror game. Once I got to the Toriel fight I couldnt bring myself to attack her though. I noticed the very slight changes in her expression and dialogue between her attacks so I kept going and never accidentally killed her

i had the reverse problem with Asgore though. I tried so hard to not attack him. I must have tried his fight 10+ times. In the end I tried resorting to bring him almost to death but give him mercy but we know what happens then

Fun fact. If you just stand there and let toriel hit you, when your life starts getting low enough she will begin intentionally missing because she doesn't want to hurt you.

Giant_Aspirin posted...

part of me didn't feel too bad about killing her because she made me a butterscotch and cinnamon pie, like wtf is that?

actually, no, i still felt bad. but that pie sounds awful

I made that pie IRL as an experiment and it was really good.

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You can "visit the two friends" on the normal route without having to beat the game first. The only thing you can't do on your first playthrough is visit alphys lab.

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appreciate the info!

Tyranthraxus posted...

I made that pie IRL as an experiment and it was really good.

woah, really? those two flavors don't seem like they would work together at all but now im curious.

Giant_Aspirin posted...

woah, really? those two flavors don't seem like they would work together at all but now im curious.

I used this for a filling and added unflavored gelatin, cinnamon, and egg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/9/3/AARLwzAAC7xF.jpg

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I got conflicting advice about whether to play it blind or to learn more before starting. I went in blind and didn't know the full extent of the branched paths. The thing is, even if I did I wouldn't have replayed it again anyway because I didn't enjoy the actual gameplay of it. The storyline and characters, great as they were, weren't enough to make up for that. That's not a knock at the game but just my personal preferences. It would've been a slog to go through it again and not worth it, though I have been meaning to just watch the other outcomes on youtube.

Have fun, man. I recently went through all 3 main runs, and had an absolute blast. I really have been out of the gaming loop for years as I just havent had the time, but Ive had a decent amount of time to dedicate lately and once I started playing UT I just couldnt stop.

Safety spoilers coming up here, but Ill still keep kinda vague and not spoil story details

I did what I guess is the normal progression, so Neutral run first, then True Pacifist, then Genocide. Its pretty amazing how the game makes you feel like a complete and utter asshole through the Genocide run. Like you said, you really do end up feeling bad killing all the monsters.

That said, finishing Genocide was easily the most rewarding gaming accomplishment Ive had as of recently. Its hard as hell, but if you really just keep at it and learn all the patterns, you can win.

So yeah, good times.

There are a lot of amazing things in undertale but the ruins segment with Toriel has always struck me as one of the best examples in pretty much all of video games of simple yet effective storytelling.

The first person you meet is Flowey, who very simply portrays himself as very nice and then very quickly reveals himself to be very bad and tells you that the game is about killing or being killed. Then you're rescued by a genuinely nice person.

Not every single person, of course, but I would say the vast majority of people end up super on guard about Toriel though, whether consciously because of the experience of Flowey and his warning or not. She does a lot of things that on retrospect are completely innocuous yet on you first playthrough time and time again I see them setting off the same alarm bells in people's heads. Your first interaction being getting tricked and betrayed and then warned (falsely) that everyone you meet is going to do that sets a really effective tone of nervousness about who is basically like the kindest, sweetest character in the game who literally wants nothing more than to keep you safe. It even extends to the fight with her where you come to someone who you can't just outright mercy and it seems like you really do have to either kill or be killed to progress.

It's so straightforward and not dressed up in any lofty cinematic story way, just a very simple and effective way to set the tone of that whole sequence and make people paranoid.

Combat looked annoying, never bothered.

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That's nice.

I did two playthroughs and all I learned is the characters are annoying

Questionmarktarius posted...

Combat looked annoying, never bothered.

i thought it was fun with how you had to actively dodge the enemy attacks, especially if multiple enemies were attacking you at once. the whole attacking by getting the timing right was pretty meh, though.

s0nicfan posted...

I wouldn't be shocked if earlier concepts for the game WERE more horror oriented. Flowey aside, all the cut content around Gaster definitely feels like things could have been much darker.

I was actually concerned about Toriel >.>
In one of the first rooms she was like "don't move from this spot, I'm going shopping", and I thought she was going to be all like "i fucking told you not to move, you're dead kiddo". And when I got to her house, I saw the empty rooms and thought she was gonna put me in the oven
Once I got to the basement my opinion was completely reversed and I actually felt bad

Questionmarktarius posted...

Combat looked annoying, never bothered.

You can just run from all the fights. Besides the bosses you don't have to fight any of them. And even then 3 bosses can be essentially skipped.

Giant_Aspirin posted...

i thought it was fun with how you had to actively dodge the enemy attacks, especially if multiple enemies were attacking you at once. the whole attacking by getting the timing right was pretty meh, though.

I found that the attack timing mechanism wasnt too bad. The game is pretty forgiving even if youre not right on the mark.

Tyranthraxus posted...

You can just run from all the fights. Besides the bosses you don't have to fight any of them. And even then 3 bosses can be essentially skipped.

Then may as well just watch someone on youtube play it, but I don't give any shits about the story either.

Gaster is probably a holdover mostly from back when Toby had a different idea about the final boss.

Sans was basically a boss you skipped if you didn't kill anyone, meanwhile if you did kill people Sans would attack you getting stronger and stronger the more people you killed until.... Y'know...

The "neutral" Sans battle theme is "song that might play when you fight sans" which never actually plays anywhere in the game and can only be accessed by the soundtrack.

And Gaster was probably intended to be the genocide route final boss. The story around him is mostly incomplete and there's a lot of fan theories about him but he's most likely just another scrapped idea and people are overthinking things.

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Could it be the reverse? He was unsure if he would continue, and Deltarune is now a place where his unrealised ideas can be realised

Gaster is a reference to cut content in a universe where gaming mechanics are recognized by people in universe

i made it out of the ruins with zero EXP gained. was away all weekend so i didn't play at all. Elden Ring comes out on Thursday, so if I don't finish before then, this will get put on hiatus.

So easily one of the best OSTs of all time
https://youtu.be/tDuEWw648jo

I only liked the rather unique combat system. Other than that, I was not captivated.

https://youtu.be/v712NiVK5uY