(This article is based on a “True Pacifist” playthrough of Undertale. If you would like to watch my playthrough up to the “Neutral Pacifist” ending, feel free to check it out on YouTube here)
It seems like the current conversation around Undertale is about how divisive it is. Its fanbase is notoriously rabid, dominating forum conversations and flooding online surveys regarding the best games of 2015. Many people seem to have sworn the game off largely because of these fanatics, or because of its frankly ugly aesthetics. Unlike a lot of recent pixel-art games, Undertale looks like something that could have been achieved on the original NES, and plays about as well as a Flash game. This means its first impressions aren’t especially strong, and convincing somebody to spend 5-10 hours on something so visually unappealing and poorly controlled can be a hard sell (believe me, I used to try with The Secret of Monkey Island).
But here’s the thing: Undertale really is as great and as special as its fanbase would like you to believe. I’ll try to avoid any overt spoilers in this review (the game is MUCH better if you don’t know quite what to expect), but developer Toby Fox has managed to hide surprises in every layer of Undertale, from the game mechanics, to the save system, to the story, and beyond. Unlike many modern games, which feel like they’re pointing the player toward everything worth seeing and experiencing, Undertale gives off the feeling that there is always something new to discover, if you just poke around its world a bit more.