Undertale Review

undertale

(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.

Also noteworthy is the way that Undertale formats itself as a JRPG, but questions the very nature of such games and expands the potential ways that the player can interact with its world. Instead of simply battling random enemies, the player can choose to engage with them on a personal level, figuring out what drives them and either assuaging their desires or correcting their flaws. In addition to playing with the concept of empathy, such a system turns every encounter into something of a puzzle, pushing the player to try different approaches to end their encounter peacefully. A timing-based battle mechanic is available too, but the game feels biased toward the more interesting peaceful mechanics.

The “combat” system is also innovative in the way that it fuses traditional turn-based RPG mechanics with those of a “bullet-hell” shooter. When enemies attack, the player controls a little heart (representative of their soul) in a box while avoiding enemy projectiles. If he or she can dodge every one of them, then no damage is taken. It avoids the somewhat cheap way that damage is inflicted in most JRPGs while making the encounters more engaging on a moment-to-moment basis.

Outside of the core gameplay and mechanics, Undertale is especially well-written. Characters all speak with their own unique voice, and its attempts at humor are frequently hilarious. It owes a great deal to classics such as the Monkey Island series and, perhaps most of all, Earthbound, but manages to stand on its own as well. If there’s one complaint I have here, it would be that Undertale sometimes does cross over into the overly-schmaltzy, or lays its “heart” on a bit too thick. But even when it falters, the game deserves credit for finding a way to gamify a peaceful experience. When even classic child-friendly affairs like Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog involve frequently “killing” enemies, something like Undertale stands out.

In a field dominated enormously ambitious and expensive AAA titles, Undertale still deserves a look. But viewing it as a tiny independent project, Undertale’s creative (and financial) success is even more remarkable and inspiring. While we can continue to decry the annual success of games like Madden and Call of Duty, surefire hits that fail to innovate, Undertale proves that, unlike most modern mediums, a game doesn’t need a budget or a publisher to be enormously successful. Any one of us could create the next big thing with nothing more than a really good idea and a bit of programming know-how.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *