Heya! Pengu here with a sort of bonus game in my current theme of games that center around the choices you make.
It started with books, D&D, and text-adventure games, evolved into Point and Click adventure games (Space Quest, King's Quest, etc...), and then branched off between more closer POV point and click titles (Telltale, later Sam and Max titles, etc...) and interactive adventures with multiple endings (Heavy Rain, Detroit: Become Human, Until Dawn, etc...).
But there's a third, more unusual road that was taken.
And that road belongs to Undertale.
What makes Undertale so different is the way the game plays. Like Detroit, it's a game that absolutely thrives on the concept of making choices. Everything you do from deciding to kill or not kill some random enemy to deciding to start over on a new save has a consequence that appears in the game somehow. The game's multiple endings are testament to this fact, to where the choice of simply going on a killing spree or lack of will dictate the ending you'll get right at the start. It's by far the only game I've seen that is so heavily saturated in this concept that you feel the weight of your decisions on multiple levels.
StoryYou're a young lad that finds himself wandering into a cave, only to find yourself falling as soon as you walk in. When you wake up, you find yourself in a small meadow of flowers which helped brace your landing. After meeting some unusual characters, you decide that you'll make it back to the surface world no matter what. But that "no matter what" could mean your very life, since you're not the only one seeking to cross back into your home territory in this hidden underworld of monsters.
One thing I enjoy about this game is the charm of its story. The plot is straightforward, yet different. You're in a realm of monsters, but the monsters aren't just chaotic evil beings that you have to destroy. They all have lives and personalities, and goals. If anything, you're a stranger, an alien in their world that they're slightly wary of.
The one thing this game isn't shy of, it's dialogue and lore. It's a game that looks simple at first glance, but it has a deep lore to it from the backstory of the main antagonist, to the concept of a human soul versus a monster soul, and more. The characters you meet have an interesting story to them as well as moments of development for each of the supporting characters. How you play dictates just how these characters will develop, whether they grow to love you as a friend, or hate you as an enemy. Either way, they're developed quite beautifully on either side of the fence, and it makes the game that much more entertaining.
GameplayThis by far is the game's most defining feature. To start, let's talk about the most intensive one, the battle system:
As the image shows, you have 4 options: Fight, Act, Item, and Mercy.
If you choose to fight, you'll be given this type of bar:
The more you hit in the green, the more damage you'll do.
If you choose "Act," You'll be given a menu of different commands, which will change depending on who you're fighting (outside of "check"). This can be anything from telling them a joke, to picking on them, polishing their armor, petting them, and so on. Choosing the right one can make them less likely to want to hurt you (though the corresponding action can still be a tough one), and choosing the wrong one can make them more likely to want to hurt you. Choosing the right one enough will turn the enemy's name "yellow," opening them up to be Spared. Or, if you want to be truly evil, you can build them up to this point, and then select "fight" and hit the cursor in the green. Not only will this do massive damage since they've made themselves completely vulnerable, but their ending dialogue will be remarkably different...being absolutely shocked that you stabbed them in the back after building them up so much (I refer you to the above image, where her statement comes from such an act).
Item is pretty straight forward. Some items will give you an edge in battle with healing, and some may even make the character you're fighting notice and change their stance towards you.
Mercy gives you 2 different actions: Spare, and Flee. Fleeing is pretty obvious since it means you'll run from the battle. Choosing "Spare" will also end the battle without killing the enemy, since you're choosing to let them live. This only works if you've chosen enough of the right actions from "Act" and the enemy's name has turned yellow.
The main battle itself is where things get interesting.
Going back to this image, this is the type of screen it goes to after any action you take:
If you haven't guessed, the little red heart is you. Any white objects are the enemy's attacks, which obviously if even one of them hits you, it hurts you. While every enemy has a pattern, there is no specific way this can happen (meaning most enemies don't share attacks unless they're the same enemy). Pellets can fly at you, spikes can rise and descend from the top/bottom portions, little enemies can appear and shoot lasers at you, other things can appear and shoot big lasers that take up most of the screen, it's essentially endless. Lesser enemies have obviously lesser attacks (though some have equally dangerous ones), and bosses can have more massive ones.
Another note is that not all attacks are white. If an attack comes at you when it's blue, you absolutely cannot move or it will hurt you. If it's orange, you have to move or it will hurt you. If it's green, you'll want to dash at it because it will heal you.
A hitch to this is that bosses especially can alter that little red heart into a different color. If you're blue, you no longer have free movement but are instead confined to the bottom portion of your box. You can jump (and it's absolutely necessary at times), but your free movement is gone. If you're purple, you can only move on lines. Green, you can't move at all, but can only avoid incoming projectiles with a shield-like barrier.
But it doesn't stop there. from removing the ability to act, fight, or flee, to widening or shortening your box, to persistently ignoring when you "act," each fight with a boss is absolutely delightful as well as equally frustrating at points depending on how you act both in, and out of battle. Because what you choose to do outside of battle right down to what items you may choose to or choose not to take could very well affect how a boss fight progresses.
And this goes right down to what I mentioned is the game's strongest feature: it's concept of choice.
As I mentioned, this is a game that you can choose to either kill everyone, kill some, or not kill at all. How you choose to play will affect both your overall gameplay, as well as the ending. Being a pacifist means that you'll never earn any "EXP" or gain any "LOVE," which means the game will be that much more challenging. However, by going that route you'll be rewarded with a truly satisfying ending for your actions.
Likewise, you can choose to fight enemies or just kill everyone. You'll gain "EXP" and "LOVE," but you'll be rewarded with a completely different ending...even if you only chose to kill one or two people.
As mentioned, characters will look at you differently depending on how you choose to play. By going the "True" Pacifist role, characters will look at you kindly and appreciate how difficult your journey to being such a pacifist has been, and will offer encouragement along the way. By steering off even slightly, characters may start to blame you for their troubles, angrily mourn the loss of their friend that you may have killed, casually mention how quiet it's been since a certain character doesn't stop by anymore (since you killed them), or refuse to show mercy because they see you as a heartless monster.
Kill enough people, and you'll trigger an encounter later in the game with the optional, and arguably most difficult boss in the game. To make matters worse, if you get killed by this boss and try to beat him again, he'll comment on your past defeat. And every time you're killed, he'll wrack up the number for every time he's killed you.
And speaking of save consequences, this is another interesting tidbit about the game. Right from the get-go, saving has far-reaching affects outside of just being a spot to pick up where you left off. Let's say you wanted to go the pacifist route, but you didn't realize that you killed an important boss that could have been spared. You decide after killing said boss to close the game, and reboot the save file from before you fought them.
Well, this is where the game gets interesting. Things progress as normal when you encounter them, but then something happens differently. Either they or another character you encounter before hand remark about that character being killed by you before, or how they feel like the situation is familiar to them. This is essentially the game's way of punishing you for not only killing said character previously, but thinking you could turn back time and start over. Unless you go into your system's save fold and completely delete the Undertale save file, the game will constantly mock you in different ways whenever you re-write over your save.
One boss even takes complete advantage of it, rewriting your current save so that you experience your death at their hands every time your save file is reloaded. It's amusing because along with other things the same boss does, it's very 4th wall breaking and fantastic. It actually goes quite a bit further ala Batman Arkham Asylum style, but that's all that I'll say.
Overall, this game absolutely shines in the gameplay aspect, and I've only really dented on the battle specifics. The rest of the game plays pretty simply, and plays like any RPG where you can walk around, talk to people, and face random encounters. This game knows where it shines when it comes to gameplay, and doesn't hold any punches in the area where it really matters.
GraphicsIt's simple, yet nice. Given how intricate the battle system itself is, I think the developers chose the perfect style. It's like playing through an old NES title with a bit of polish, and I actually think it works perfect. I've seen youtube videos of people trying to bring it into the 3D style, and I think this is one game that is better without it. The battle system itself looked especially horrible in any of the 3D-scale videos that I watched, essentially taking out what I felt made the battles much more compelling and intensive.
But it's colorful, simple, and works perfect. As I said, this is a game that knows where the emphasis should be, and that's not on the graphics.
AudioAgain, this is exactly where it needs to be. It's not intrusive, but at the same time the chosen soundtrack is lovely. Much of the boss music especially was particularly enjoyable, and overall the best part of the soundtrack. But the soundtrack itself has a very old-school feel that compliments the chosen graphics style, and it's one that I very much appreciate.
Likewise, even the character "voices" were a nice little touch. It's not as jarring as, say, Banjo Kazooie or similar games can be, and overall they were fine for the game. Likewise, all of the sound effects were well chosen, and overall I think they made good choices in this department.
ReplayabilityLike gameplay, this is where the game really shines. As I mentioned, there's multiple paths you can take with multiple endings as a reward. The game isn't incredibly lengthy, so playing through multiple times can be done very simply. And it's a game interesting enough to where when you finish your first playthrough, you might be curious enough to see how choosing differently in the next playthrough will go. Overall, it's a game that, as I said, shines in the department of being played multiple times for varying results. Even though the main plot will be the same, the way you progress won't always be.
OverallEven if you're not a fan of games that don't leap out like Skyrim, or aren't "triple A" titles, you'd be silly to overlook this one. Yes, it's a smaller title, but it's got some very big ambitions that it pulls off incredibly well. It's fun, amusing at points, difficult at points, aware of itself, and overall it's a game that makes you think a bit when you play it, because you never know how an action you take will affect your journey in the long-run.
Overall, it's a game I highly recommend it. It's not a long game at all, but it's one that you'll want to play more than once just because of all of the various ways it can be played. Like games such as Detroit: Become Human, it's a game that absolutely thrives on choices, and the choices you make will dictate how even the game itself will treat you.
