This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This one comes from a “video game book club” that I played with some fellow traveler nerds.

As Always, Assume Spoilers

After years, I have finished Undertale! Well, the first run anyway. I only killed one person (who the game sorta forces you to, more on that later), and got a real terrible unsatisfying ending before being told to replay the whole thing correctly - and fuck that deal.

Positives

  • There’s a lot of cleverness and charm to the game. It exudes personality in a way that we rarely see.
  • I think “what you can do with a JRPG/Bullet Hell UI” has been pushed to it’s limit. This is cool.
  • I appreciate how the base mechanics and narrative drive you to play the correct way.
  • I appreciate that the game doesn’t overtly shame you for playing it “wrong,” presenting it more as “it could be better.” (We can talk about)
  • Great fuckin’ music.

Negatives

  • Purely personally, bullet hells and to a lesser degree visual novels are not generally not my thing.
  • I’m not 100% enthralled with the Tumblr/Homestuck-esque vibes, but again - that’s purely personal, I think they’re actually executed very well here.
  • I think that the in-universe meta elements are a bit too cute without adding that much in total.
  • I shouldn’t have to play your game twice to get an ending worth a damn - and the thought of replaying a shit-ton of static narrative content is exhausting. If the gameplay was more meaningful or enjoyable, maybe I’d tolerate this better (like Nier?) - but I don’t think “watch the movie twice, but with an extra twenty minutes” is a satisfying thing to do.
  • I am always going to be extra salty when a game manipulates you by cheating its rules. I didn’t love the Toriel encounter first time I played because of the obvious rules cheating, but it feels much worse when you realize that it’s almost impossible to not kill her because there’s no clue until the second run (because the game tracks that, I had to look it up). So I feel manipulated out of my pacifist run (and thus forced to play another six hour run) rather than actually dealing with the consequences of my choices.

Misc

  • The difficulty is odd. I did not find a pacifist run to be that much harder (and actually often easier) than fighting things. There are specific boss bumps in difficulty, but by then you’ve been taught that the best way out is nonviolence. The exception to this is a genocide run, apparently, but that doesn’t sound very fun.
  • I got to watch my partner hilariously change their opinion of the game so hard. They had previously played like half the game and then watched a pacifist run. Watching a full “normal” run was irritating as hell to them, since the first run just leaves random plot threads dangling everywhere but without telling you they are plot threads.
  • If Deltarune is more of this, I’m gonna skip Deltarune.

Final verdict

A burst of creative genius, almost certainly the most important game of the year it came out, with a giant frustrating wound down the middle. Doesn’t really scratch many of my itches regardless, though. Is it weird to be like “I think this is an important and creative and influential game that earned it’s accolades but I still don’t especially want to touch it ever again?” I honestly can’t tell if I’m glad I played it or I wish I had my time back.

“Why I play games” results

  • Story - Not actually that deep on plot, extremely high on theme. Didn’t resonate like crazy (not deep themes), but the character work is strong and fun.
  • Aesthetics - Very strong, not really my tastes, but I respect it.
  • Flow State - Not really applicable here, usually isn’t to narrative games.
  • Exploration - It’s pretty damn linear, so not much.
  • Discovery - I feel mixed. I got very little sense of discovery out of it, but it’s all over the game. Both in small ways through the encounters and bigger stuff with huge time commitments that feel prohibitive.
  • Emotional Invocation - I imagine it works very well on a certain not-me crowd, although I found it fine at best.
  • Player Expression - Both valued and not valued simultaneously. You’re given a huge amount of choice and rewarded with content, but also there is very clearly only one way to play “correctly.”