Board 8 > Sell me on Undertale

(+) Yeah! (+)

I know a little about the game but still unsure why it has such a die-hard fanbase. What makes it special? Also why was Tumblr obsessed with it?

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because the main character is a little girl who is nominally gay

thats literally the only reason
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SmartMuffin posted...

because the main character is a little girl who is nominally gay

thats literally the only reason

Why does a character's sexuality even come up in the game?

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fun gameplay, great humour, and likeable characters that combine together to give lasting memorable moments

the best thing a game can do these days is give me a unique experience that i remember long after i was done playing it
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Its hardly best game ever/game of the year material but its a solid RPG with fun gameplay.

I enjoyed it but definitely wasn't ever super wowed by it.
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Why does a character's sexuality even come up in the game?

it doesn't, it's just canon or something?
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oh wait nevermind i forgot it's because of social justice
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What is the gist of the unique gameplay? From what I gather, you can choose to not kill the enemies and instead solve puzzles to defeat them without "killing" them--which leads to a more interesting ending. Is that correct?

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Ok I don't especially care whether or not you play Undertale and don't think you would like it anyways, but I feel obligated to point out that absolutely nothing in that SMuffin post is true. Like, whatever he's talking about is not something that is in the game or something that's implied by the game at all.
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Try playing the demo

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pyresword posted...

Ok I don't especially care whether or not you play Undertale and don't think you would like it anyways, but I feel obligated to point out that absolutely nothing in that SMuffin post is true. Like, whatever he's talking about is not something that is in the game or something that's implied by the game at all.

This is why I've been confused about this game for YEARS now. No one has properly explained why Tumblr loves it and why other people consider it to be SJW trash. Unless it really is just a neutral apolitical game that various factions just decided to view through their own weird lens?

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the gameplay is really an amalgamation of a lot of things. it's kind of an JRPG style game where you walk around and get into JRPG fight encounters, except your ability to do stuff in the fight depends on a succeeding at a schmup style thing where you have to dodge stuff. But also you can choose to do other things to find a way to end the battle without killing your opponent if you can figure out how to get them to stop fighting

I dunno just play the game
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I personally think that the story and characters in Undertale are kind of weak. Mostly comical and two-dimensional. It has a problem where the player character is so irrelevant to the emotional progression of the story itself that it feels kind of impersonal. A lot of the characters are only interested in you because you look similar to another character.

It has some meta-fictional commentary on how we approach RPGs and games in general but it's kind of asinine for the most part. None of the observations it makes mean much when we understand the separation between fantasy and reality. The game even admits during a monologue that its own philosophy doesn't hold up in real life.

What does work really well is the music. Toby Fox is a talented composer and he extensively re-uses certain motifs to create an emotional connection between different areas and scenes. He shows a good grasp of the techniques of scoring.

It also has a cute little hybridization of bullet hell games and menu-based RPGs. Its really skimpy as an RPG (barely qualifies, really,) but it does get a lot of mileage out of its core gameplay concept through boss fights that use neat variations on the basic mechanics. The puzzles outside of combat are pretty braindead, though.

I think a lot of Tumblr's praise for it does come from the fact that a lot of characters, including the protagonist, are of non-specific sex/gender identity and there are some half-baked gay romances. Its themes of pacifism and the value of life might have struck with them too. Personally, I found that going through the game being referred to as a "they" didn't help with the impersonal feeling.

On the whole, I don't think it's too hot unless you really like meta-fiction. Probably somewhere from a 4 to 6 out of 10 for me.

CoolCly posted...

I dunno just play the game

No. I want someone to just articulate to me how it's played and why it's good. The fact that no one can do so is very frustrating.

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it's a bad game
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It's very popular!
Seriously though, it's charming, unique (although it borrows elements from things, most notably Shin Megami Tensei) and super meta, to the point that it often seems a step ahead of your choices. It also offers one of the starkest contrasts between good and evil routes. People will argue that you shouldn't do the evil route, almost in a moral sense. That's not normal for a video game.
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

This is why I've been confused about this game for YEARS now. No one has properly explained why Tumblr loves it and why other people consider it to be SJW trash. Unless it really is just a neutral apolitical game that various factions just decided to view through their own weird lens?

It has strong characters and there's a lesbian couple and a flamboyant character. That's literally it.

There's nothing explicitly political about the game. The closest it gets is ruminating on the nature of RPGs and if killing dozens of monsters is ethical

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Nelson_Mandela posted...

What is the gist of the unique gameplay? From what I gather, you can choose to not kill the enemies and instead solve puzzles to defeat them without "killing" them--which leads to a more interesting ending. Is that correct?

This and a bullet-hell-like system where you can dodge enemy attacks in battle, kind of akin to the Mario and Luigi RPGs. A lot of the boss fights are deliberately designed so that you really have to use the dodging to win, which gives them a good sense of challenge and is where most of the fun in Undertale's gameplay comes from.

(Also, to clarify, I would agree that the gender/sexuality/social justice elements of the game really aren't important when analyzing it and can safely be ignored.)

Nelson_Mandela posted...

CoolCly posted...

I dunno just play the game

No. I want someone to just articulate to me how it's played and why it's good. The fact that no one can do so is very frustrating.

well skipping the part of my post where i told you how it's played and why it's good is probably where your frustration comes from
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It's an "SJW game" in the sense that its themes deal with kindness and acceptance of others. And I would say that's an accurate characterization, but I don't think it's ever trying to use itself as an allegory for a specific real-world issue.
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CoolCly posted...

well skipping the part of my post where i told you how it's played and why it's good is probably where your frustration comes from

You did a bad job

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Give me an example of how you can win a fight without killing an enemy

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It's a game about pacifism, but it also lets you be unimaginably cruel.

If you do decide to play it, don't look up any guides or listen to anyone's advice. Just play it all the way through how with your own choices

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DeepsPraw posted...

lets you be unimaginably cruel.

Can you give me an example of this that doesn't totally spoil the game?

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Oh, the gameplay. Basically a top-down RPG in story, pretty linear as far as areas go. Combat has you dodge enemy attacks in a shmup-ish form during their turns, with variations in boss battles. During your turn you can choose actions to try to befriend the enemies, like an adventure game or SMT, or attack using a timing-based system sort of like Shadow Hearts. It's fairly focused on story, and you can talk with NPCs and examine objects for often humorous text.
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

Give me an example of how you can win a fight without killing an enemy

You literally just select a menu option where you talk to them and encourage them to surrender. They respond with dialogue or an action, and then you have a few options as to how you want to respond. If you keep doing that correctly, in sequence, they eventually leave you alone.
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

Give me an example of how you can win a fight without killing an enemy

This part of the game is mostly menu-based. You have an "action" command that gives you several options and if you pick the right one, it will either pacify the enemy, which lets you use the "spare" command to end the battle, or change the pattern of its next attack in some way that lets you cause that effect. For example there is one enemy that you have to pacify by touching the green zone close to its actual attack. The menu-based pacification gets more complex as the game goes so that eventually you have to pick multiple options in the right sequence. Naturally, you waste a turn and have to dodge more attacks if you mess up, which is where the sense of challenge comes from.

Nelson_Mandela posted...

Give me an example of how you can win a fight without killing an enemy

punks have hung christmas decorations from a reindeer enemy. you can spend your turn to remove the decorations while dodging its enraged attacks


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Evillordexdeath posted...

This part of the game is mostly menu-based. You have an "action" command that gives you several options and if you pick the right one, it will either pacify the enemy, which lets you use the "spare" command to end the battle, or change the pattern of its next attack in some way that lets you cause that effect. For example there is one enemy that you have to pacify by touching the green zone close to its actual attack. The menu-based pacification gets more complex as the game goes so that eventually you have to pick multiple options in the right sequence. Naturally, you waste a turn and have to dodge more attacks if you mess up, which is where the sense of challenge comes from.

(SMuffin explained it way better than me lol)

Okay, that does sound interesting at least!

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Nelson_Mandela posted...

Give me an example of how you can win a fight without killing an enemy

There's a SMT-style dialogue option in battles and you can just choose to navigate dialogue "puzzles" to get the enemies to give up. While you use your turns on talking, you also dodge their attacks.

Nelson_Mandela posted...

Can you give me an example of this that doesn't totally spoil the game?

All of the bosses and even the random encounter enemies have at least some personality and so killing them in the encounter can cause other characters to react. Every fight is life or death.

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The game encourages you to not kill enemies, but nothing is stopping you from doing so. Thats as much as I can say without spoiling anything.
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the game is funny

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Yeah, speaking as someone who doesn't really like Undertale I do think the combat system is legitimately well-designed and the game does a good job of exploring the possibilities that come from it.

Nelson_Mandela posted...

Can you give me an example of this that doesn't totally spoil the game?

hmmm some people might consider this a spoiler, but it's in the demo

you have a mother figure at the beginning of the game, and you can choose to kill her rather than spare her

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Okay, that does sound interesting at least!

It's really not. For the most part, to do it effectively at all, requires either a ridiculous amount of trial and error, or using a guide.
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SmartMuffin posted...

It's really not. For the most part, to do it effectively at all, requires either a ridiculous amount of trial and error, or using a guide.

solving each enemies "puzzle" is literally gameplay, and the strategy doesn't change once you know it. making the wrong choice gets you funny dialogue as well

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SmartMuffin posted...

Okay, that does sound interesting at least!

It's really not. For the most part, to do it effectively at all, requires either a ridiculous amount of trial and error, or using a guide.

Or you could just observe the monster's personality and behaviour

if a monster is telling a joke, try laughing at the joke

if he's mad about something, try fixing that issue
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solving each enemies "puzzle" is literally gameplay

Yes, but it's boring as hell trial-and-error based gameplay. There's no real intuitive logic to most of them. It's just not very fun. The game is much more fun when you use combat, but then spoiler stuff happens and the game basically tries to make you feel like a bad person for choosing the more fun gameplay option!
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Yeah the game trying to call you out for your moral failings in a video game is kind of dumb, especially so because it encourages you to be evil by locking some of the best content to the path where you're as monstrous as possible.

SmartMuffin posted...

solving each enemies "puzzle" is literally gameplay

Yes, but it's boring as hell trial-and-error based gameplay. There's no real intuitive logic to most of them. It's just not very fun. The game is much more fun when you use combat, but then spoiler stuff happens and the game basically tries to make you feel like a bad person for choosing the more fun gameplay option!

So its like The Bible
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I am probably the games number one fanboy on the board, considering its why I came here. Im... not sure you would like it.

I will try to expand on that when I get home this evening
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Okay here's a question: in order to get the "good" ending, do you need to be a pacifist from battle one, or are there events that happen that will gradually convince your party to stop killing enemies? If it's the former I think I would find that to be very shallow and annoying.

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Nelson_Mandela posted...

Okay here's a question: in order to get the "good" ending, do you need to be a pacifist from battle one, or are there events that happen that will gradually convince your party to stop killing enemies? If it's the former I think I would find that to be very shallow and annoying.

no, to get the pacifist ending you have to literally not kill a single enemy

which, as I said, takes either a guide, or an unbelievable amount of patience/trial and error

its pretty much guaranteed that without outside help, your first playthrough will be the "neutral" ending
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Well that sucks. Wouldn't it be more effective from a narrative POV to start the game by defeating enemies the "traditional" way and then learning, through the consequences of killing, that this is the wrong tack and then righting the course from there?

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Part of the game's meta-fictional element involves likening save points in video games to time travel, so a narrative like that where you learn from your mistakes can emerge "organically" depending on how you play.

If you don't complete the game "properly" and then restart, certain characters will comment on the choices you made last time around.

Nelson_Mandela posted...

Well that sucks. Wouldn't it be more effective from a narrative POV to start the game by defeating enemies the "traditional" way and then learning, through the consequences of killing, that this is the wrong tack and then righting the course from there?

right, this is one of the most annoying parts about the game

it basically forces you to complete multiple playthroughs, and moralizes against you if you don't get things "right" on the first try
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Evillordexdeath posted...

Part of the game's meta-fictional element involves likening save points in video games to time travel, so a narrative like that where you learn from your mistakes can emerge "organically" depending on how you play.

If you don't complete the game "properly" and then restart, certain characters will comment on the choices you made last time around.

Interesting. So you're encouraged to revert to a previous save point if you are "bad" and the game will acknowledge that you restarted?

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Again, just play the demo to see if the game's style and humor jives with you

If you've got time to post on board 8, you've got time to play for an hour

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Yeah. It's mostly done through total restarts though, because the game only gives you one save at a time.

Some people play through all the little variations, which would mean playing the whole game like 20 times, but I personally found that unsatisfying because the amount of dialog that changes is kind of minimal unfortunately.