Why Undertale is my Favorite Game of All Time

 2015 was, quite frankly, one of the best and most interesting years of my life. This was the year where I got really into reviewing games, cartoons and well, episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - something that started in 2014 but was really in full swing by the following year. It was also the year where I took a road trip with my dad, went to Arizona and got to see family, the year where I first grew interest in Linux, and also a really good year for many of the fandoms I was in.

But 2015 was also the year where I’d say I got into PC gaming. I had made a Steam account the year prior, and after being unsure whether PC gaming was for me, by 2015 I was buying a ton of Steam games and putting a lot of hours into playing them, having new experiences that I had never really had before, especially with games like Freedom Planet, Terraria, Blockland, Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures, Team Fortress 2 and Portal 1 and 2. In December, me and my brother began building my own PC, which technically didn’t get completed until the following year (it was usable but I was using a crappy old case and a probably broken heatsink that caused that PC to get really hot until I was able to get a new case and heatsink). And of course getting into PC gaming around that time I was looking for games to play. I’ve always had pretty niche tastes and was always looking for games that people with similar tastes as I do had also liked.

And that’s where Undertale came in. To be honest, initially I sort of feel like Undertale came out of nowhere. I hadn’t heard anything about up to it’s release, but I feel like maybe a week or two after it came out I remember seeing the game being talked about everywhere. And I definitely wanted to try it myself, I had played the demo and it honestly seemed like the type of game I would enjoy, but I wasn’t too sure how I would feel about the full game.

But this game would not only become an instant favorite of mine… but would have a lasting impact on my life and worldview, and would remain a game that I kept close to me to this day.

So, in other words… here’s why Undertale is my favorite game of all time.

Background and History

Undertale was developed by a man of the name of Toby Fox - someone previously known for composing the soundtrack for the online webcomic “Homestuck,” and with prior experience of creating Earthbound ROM hacks, particularly the “Earthbound Halloween Hack” (which I actually have a repro cartridge of that I found on eBay). In 2013, he launched a kickstarter campaign for a game he was developing titled, well, “Undertale,” an RPG that drifted away from traditional gameplay mechanics and formulas and intertwined the story with the actual gameplay.

Obviously, the kickstarter was successful - very much so. Toby Fox managed to raise more than 10 times the original goal of $5000. The game was released on September 15, 2015 (oddly enough that was one day before my brother’s 18th birthday), and of course, was a massive success. The game received critical acclaim, received nominations for various game awards and GameFAQ’s 20th anniversary “Best Game Ever” poll managed to beat out previous champions Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII.

But… like many popular things - games, shows, movies, whatever, Undertale did attract quite it’s share of hype backlash, and this is where my next section comes in.

Personal Experiences

Oddly enough, I actually didn’t buy the game for myself initially. After hearing so much about it, I was planning to buy it during the Steam Winter sale. I usually ended up getting Steam cards for holidays so I just assumed I would get one and buy the game with that. Well, I did get a Steam Card for Christmas… but by then I had already played Undertale.

I actually got the game for free. Around Thanksgiving of 2015 someone on a now-defunct MLP-based forum I used to go on had mentioned he had an extra key for Undertale and was offering it to whoever messaged him. And since I wanted to play the game, and no one else had claimed it, I decided to ask. And of course I was given the Steam key, so I went ahead and activated it and proceeded to finally play this legendary game I wanted to play. My first playthrough of it was actually on a Linux laptop which I was using in my room prior to building my PC, and although Undertale didn’t have a native Linux port at the time, I was still able to play it through WINE.

My first playthrough was the Neutral ending - I didn’t entirely understand the “sparing” system and I sort of rushed my first playthrough. I spared the bosses and other monsters I knew how to spare, but the ones I didn’t (i.e. Undyne) I just decided to (regretfully) kill. I enjoyed the game overall, but by the end, I felt like I hadn’t truly “seen” what this game had to offer, so pretty much immediately I reset my save file and started a Pacifist Run. Played through it again over the next few days, and quite frankly, I was really blown away by this game’s story, characters and gameplay. I think it was either during or after my first Pacifist playthrough that I reviewed Undertale for the first time - back when I was doing on MLPForums, and I gave the game a perfect 10 out of 10, and said it was potentially one of my Top 3 games of all time. But of course, it didn’t stop there. As time passed and the end of 2015 and start of 2016, I pretty much ended up deciding that Undertale was my favorite game of all time.

But being such a fan of the game in 2016 wasn’t exactly easy. Like pretty much any sort of popular yet niche game or… really, any piece of media, Undertale was subject to some pretty bad hype backlash. I feel like it especially started after the game had won the “Best Game Ever” poll on GameFAQs, but people started to dismiss the game as being, well, “overrated,” not as good as it was being hyped up to be. I myself remember getting a ton of nasty replies and comments in places like Youtube just because I had an Undertale-related username and profile picture. Again, it’s not like this was a new phenomenon - I remember previously seeing it happen with Five Nights at Freddy’s, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and Frozen over the past few years up to that point. In fact, I re-reviewed the game in 2017 and called it “The Frozen Effect,” and there’s even a page on TV Tropes where it’s referred to as the “It’s Popular, Now It Sucks!” trope. I know this is a very shameless plug-in, but this sort of situation influenced a chapter of my “The Two Cats” series.

And I’ll be honest. Despite how much I fell in love with the game… for a long time I was embarrassed to say that I liked it. Whenever someone asked me what my favorite games were, I was slightly hesitant to mention Undertale since it had fallen to so much hate in it’s first year of existing as a full game. I felt bad for enjoying the game, and constantly felt that others looked down on me just for enjoying it, and maybe there was a chance that I was… wrong for liking the game.

As I mentioned, I re-reviewed the game in early 2017. My opinion was largely the same, I still found it to be a great game, albeit did concede to a few flaws. But for a while I stopped considering it my favorite - it was still up there but after getting Overwatch for Christmas in 2016 I instead considered that my favorite game. Unfortunately… that also went the same thing that Undertale did, but I guess that’s something I’ll write about another time.

But I think in the past year, I sort of got thinking again. After being gifted a Nintendo Switch for my graduation in 2019, I decided to buy the Switch version of the game after seeing it at Best Buy. And of course, I’ve still gone back to the game plenty of times. And with quarantine and staying home a lot, I began to think a lot about my favorite games of all time, and sort of realized that… the only reason why I stopped considering Undertale my favorite was simply because of the hate it was getting. But of course, it’s been a few years since then - not only has the hate for the game died down, but it’s also made somewhat of a comeback as a modern cult classic, largely aided by the first chapter of Deltarune being released in 2018 and the inclusion of a Sans Mii costume in Super Smash Bros Ultimate. And so with that out of the way, I decided to go back and play the game again - both the Genocide Run and the Pacifist Run. 

And honestly? I feel more confident to say that Undertale… is still my favorite game of all time. But… why is that?

Story

Alright, so first of all, if you got this far, I will warn you that if you haven’t played the game and want to check it out that there most likely will be spoilers in this review. This probably won’t be a big deal to some people - after all, the game’s five years old at this point and many people have already played it, but if for some reason you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t finished or even played this game at all, I would advise you to stop reading here, go play it, and come back when you’re done.

Second, to be honest, I don’t feel like Undertale’s story can truly be summed up with a basic run down, especially with how it’s so interconnected with the gameplay. At the surface level, Undertale’s story goes like this - a human falls into the underground, where monsters were banished to many years ago, and they must decide between sparing each monster they come across or killing them before leaving the underground. This is probably the most basic way I can explain this game’s story, so I figured I will elaborate a bit on it as I talk about the gameplay. So, with further adieu…

Gameplay

Undertale, at it’s core, is an RPG… but not exactly a traditional one. The game’s main selling point is the “Spare” mechanic - you can either choose to kill each monster you come across, or figure out how to spare them. Some monsters require a bit more experimentation than others to spare them. Ultimately the game is split into three major runs - the Neutral Run, where the player either kills some monster and spares others, spares every monster but doesn’t complete the Pacifist ending by going to Undyne’s house, or killing every monster they come across while not actively grinding for them to activate the Genocide Run. Technically, the Neutral Run itself encompasses a bunch of different endings - depending on which monsters you kill and which ones you spare the text in the Neutral Ending changes, albeit it does follow the same format. The Pacifist Run is accessed by sparing every monster, and after fighting the Asgore and Photoshop Flowey bosses, going to Undyne’s home to conclude the story. The Genocide Run is accessed by grinding kills of monsters - pretty much filling out quotas for every part of the game.

Now, the morality system isn’t necessarily a new concept that Undertale came up with on it’s own - games like Fallout: New Vegas have experimented with this, getting different endings based on your actions as you played through the game. Thing is, many games with these sort of morality systems didn’t necessarily incorporate them with the game as a whole. In many games, you can just negate your previous actions by doing things like donating to charity or whatever.

But what makes Undertale stand out from these other games is that you can’t exactly just make up for your previous actions and run away from your previous mistakes. Now, let’s just say that on your first run, you kill Toriel because you don’t know how to spare her. Your “EXP” will go up and for that entire run, regardless of what else you do, the game will remember that, and you won’t be able to make up for that previous action. You won’t be able to access the Asriel boss and “true pacifist” ending as long as you’re on that save file.

But hey, you can just reset your save file, right?

Well.. yes and no.

If you reset your save file and remember to spare Toriel (while sparing every other monster), you can still play through the Pacifist run… but the game won’t exactly forget what you did. Pretty much right after you spare Toriel, Flowey - one of the game’s characters who pops up fairly often - will still remind you of what you did.

This aspect of the game actually really surprised me the first time playing - the fact that it remembers your actions even if you reset your save. If you do a Genocide Run and agree to sell your soul to restore the underground, Chara will still end up in the Pacifist ending, making sure to remind you of the damage you caused. Hell, while playing the game again for this review, I decided to do both the Genocide and the Pacifist Run - Genocide first, Pacifist after. But during my Genocide run I ended up going away for Thanksgiving, so I decided to put my save data on a flash drive and finish it on my laptop. But on my desktop, I was still in the middle of my Genocide run, and I already knew what happens if you do a Pacifist Run following a full Genocide run, so I decided to see what happens if you reset during a Genocide run and do a Pacifist run. And I was actually surprised with how much dialogue I had never seen before, reminding me of what I had done in that previous playthrough before I reset it.

Now, one criticism I have heard towards Undertale is that it doesn’t work as a traditional RPG. And to be fair this isn’t entirely wrong. Stuff that would be common practice in more traditional RPGs - like grinding and killing - is either meaningless or outrights counts against you in this game.

But my problem with this criticism is that… well, that’s kind of the entire point of the game. Undertale is definitely not meant to be a traditional RPG, or really like any other video game out there. I feel like Undertale is more postmodern than anything. You have to remember that this was never intended as a traditional RPG, nor was it ever intended to be played as a traditional RPG. Often the game outright pokes fun at traditional RPG mechanics and functions and on multiple occasions breaks the fourth wall almost to the point where it doesn’t even exist. Some characters, particularly Flowey and Sans, know full well that they’re in a game, and it’s through those characters that Undertale makes you remember your previous actions and consider your morals in games.

And this all points to a main theme with Undertale - morality. It asks the question of if the way people generally play games is moral - almost every game in existence has you fighting some sort of enemy. But… what if you had the option not to kill them? Are you still conditioned to play like you would normally… or are you willing to try something different in order to achieve a better ending for everyone? And of course, this game will make sure to make you feel guilty for your actions - no matter what you do the game will remember who you killed and what you did, even in a previous playthrough. And I think how the mortality system is structured in Undertale makes it feel more integral and genuine - it actually feels like your actions matter here, and that’s what makes Undertale stick out. One thing that really surprised me my first playthrough was in the meetup with Sans prior to the final boss and ending - how the acronyms “LOVE” and “EXP” stood for Level of Violence and Execution Points. It actually sort of caught me off guard considering, obviously, that’s not how those acronyms were used in other RPGs or really games in general. But it’s small stuff like that that really pushes the morality system of Undertale and makes you really think about how you play video games.

And what also pushes it is how it handles it’s three different runs. After playing both the Genocide and Pacifist Run back to back, I can definitely say the feeling I get playing the Genocide Run is just a lot different compared to the feeling I get from the Pacifist Run. When I’m playing the Pacifist Run, I’m enjoying the story, and I feel sort of a connection with the all different characters - both major and minor. As the player I very much feel a part of the story, and I feel happy to know that I’m helping the monsters just by sparing them and getting to know them. 

When playing the Genocide Run, I feel… empty, to say the least. I feel disconnected from the story, I’m constantly asking myself “why am I doing this?” These are of course just fictional characters I’m killing, like you would in any other video game, but it almost feels like I’m actively causing destruction to a world, and I definitely get the impression that what I’m doing is wrong. Almost like I’m killing an actual person with feelings. I still feel a part of the plot, but not necessarily in a good way - in this case playing as the villain rather than the hero. And I can definitely say I have never played a game that’s made me feel like that in the same way Undertale has.

The biggest nail in the coffin while playing the Genocide Run for the first time was following the Undyne the Undying boss, seeing Undyne put her all against fighting me - having just enough determination to keep going and save the underground, even as she knows she’s going to die regardless. Even when you do kill her, she still holds out hope for Alphys helping to evacuate the underground. It’s a really good moment that honestly made me realize what I was doing was horrible. And yes, they are just characters, but this game does push the idea that the characters feel like real people, with personalities, backstories, flaws and everything. And when you think about that, it makes you really think about how you play games and what you’re essentially doing to the characters within the game. Another touch is how Undyne’s Genocide theme is “Battle Against a True Hero,” establishing her as the “hero” while you’re the villain, pretty much turning the tables to remind you that you’re the bad guy here.

To add to this, I also think calling the characters “monsters” works really well too. That word definitely has a negative stigma to it, but all the characters are just so likable in their own way that I forget that they’re even referred to as monsters. They just feel like other characters, other people within the game to me, with their own personalities and stories.

Of course, on the subject of characters, I do want to talk about how the game uses other elements to create a unique experience and push it’s theme. So… I’m going back to the story for a second and talk about the characters.

Story (...again)

So again, onto the characters. Throughout the game you run into a bunch of different “monsters,” some you fight, others you don’t. But I think one thing that the game does well is how it handles it’s characters. It does feel like each one has their own carefully crafted backstory and personality. I’m not just talking about the main characters here either, even for the more minor characters I still find myself liking them and wanting to get to know them. For example, Snowdrake having a desire to be a comedian or Burgerpants being unhappy at his job.

Or Jerry.

Uhhhh….

But anyway, I think this game just does a good job at making each character feel different in some way. That leads to one question though, who is the best character?

Well, I feel like in general Sans and Papyrus tend to be fan favorites - I mean, the former was even made into a Mii costume for Super Smash Bros Ultimate, but ever since I played this game for the first time, my favorite character has always been Dr. Alphys. She always just felt the most… real and relatable character to me. I mean, on probably the most basic note, I share her fangirliness trait, but going through her backstory with the True Lab and everything, it’s very clear that she suffers from depression and self-hatred. What she had done in the past as the Royal Scientist is something she’s definitely not proud of, and it can definitely be interpreted that she outright commits suicide after the neutral ending. Helping the player was pretty much her one shot at being happy about herself again, and she feels she failed at that. But she bottles it up inside to make her seem stronger to everyone else than she actually is. She wants to be accepted, yet is held back by her guilt over what she had done in her failed experiment.

And as someone who has lived with depression and anxiety through other family members, friends and even myself… I can definitely say that Alphys just always felt the most “real” character to me out of any of the others, and obviously the one I can relate to the most. To be honest, her character kind of showed me just how much value being able to relate to a fictional character can have.

And one thing that kind of makes me sad is that she’s probably the most divisive out of the main characters. I wouldn’t say she’s outright hated by the Undertale fandom or anything, but there are definitely some people that dislike her as a character, moreso than any other major character in the game. And maybe I shouldn’t be upset about that, I mean she’s just a fictional character, pixels on a screen, but I think the people who dislike her forget that… there are people like her in real life. And of course… they need help. They need support. And I feel like the people who dislike her failed to understand the point of her character and story and well… the point of Undertale in general. I may make a longer post analyzing Alphys’ character at some point, but I just wanted to get this out of way now.

...also I find her relationship with Undyne cute as fuck. OTP.

And back to Gameplay

Now, the bulk of what I’ve talked about so far with Undertale is it’s structure and morality system. But while this is the main concept Undertale is built around, there’s also more to Undertale than just this. 

I gotta say that for a game that isn’t necessarily meant as an RPG, it oddly enough has one of the most interesting and unique battle systems, even putting the whole “Spare” system aside. Prior to playing Undertale, my favorite RPG growing up was Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, and I feel like one thing that drew me to it… other than it being Mario, was because of how “interactive” the battle system was - you could still defend against moves and avoid taking damage with good timing of a jump or use of your hammer.

And Undertale uses this sort of idea of an “interactive” battle system but does it in a unique way, where now after every turn is a mini-bullet hell. Every character has a different type of attack, and if there’s multiple characters, they even pile up onto each other, which I think makes each battle feel unique. Especially in the case of the bosses where the color of your soul often changes - In Toriel and Asgore’s boss, it’s red, in Papyrus and Sans’ it’s blue, in Undyne’s it’s green, in Mettaton’s it’s yellow and even in Muffet it’s purple. And I kind of wonder if this has some sort of link with the game’s backstory - considering the colors of the souls each were a different color.

But anyway, point is, I definitely find the mini-bullet hell battle system to make Undertale all the more unique. But to get more on the Spare system, it sort of creates a puzzle game when you consider that some monsters require a bit of experimentation with how to spare them. It’s kind of an interesting element of the gameplay, with how you use the ACT menu in different ways to figure out how to spare each character. And of course it also tends to relate to their personalities. You definitely are incentivized to experiment with the tools you have on the menu in order to spare each monster, and some monsters can even be spared in multiple ways. At one point I tried heckling Snowdrake… causing him to run away and make me feel awful for what I had just done.

I guess if I did have one criticism against Undertale’s gameplay is that the Genocide Run is a bit… sparse on content. You spend most of your time grinding for enemies and only really fight two bosses - Undyne and Sans. The Hotland part of the game especially feels bad with this - you have to kill 40 monsters and I swear they hardly even show up. To be fair though, I can of understand this - I feel like the way the Genocide run is structured once again incentivizes the player not to do it, kind of leading the player to question if it’s worth it just to see two different bosses. And besides most of the time I end up just doing a Pacifist Run because I love the characters too much and don’t have it in my heart to kill them. So I can’t complain about it too much, but I think that is a reasonable criticism worth mentioning. Hell, my first time trying the Genocide run, I didn’t even realize that I was supposed to fill a quota before fighting Toriel and halfway in I realized I was just playing a no mercy neutral run.

But anyway, I think I’ve covered the bulk of what I wanted to with Undertale’s gameplay. But to touch upon one more thing real fast…

Presentation

I think it’s safe to say that I really love Undertale’s soundtrack. It replicates the same idea that Super Mario World went for with having a few tracks but remixing them to make them sound different, and honestly I can’t even tell that most of the tracks have similarities or are technically the same. Regardless though, Undertale’s soundtrack is easily one of my favorite game soundtracks out there - one I still find myself listening to on a regular basis. I feel like it’s track is just catchy as hell and fun to listen to, even when I’m not playing the game and just doing work or something. I’d probably say my favorite tracks of the game include of “Battle Against a True Hero,” “His Theme,” “Death by Glamour,” “Undertale” and “Alphys” (not because I’m biased or anything), but honestly it’s really hard to say what my favorite tracks because most of them are honestly just so damn good.

The visuals are somewhat of a divisive aspect about Undertale - even as far as retro-styled games go a lot of people don’t really care for the sprite work. But to me, it has it’s charm. To be honest I really couldn’t think of any other art style for the game that would work and I do like the style overall. I still enjoy looking at the environments and characters, and the battle scenes especially have always given me sort of a “retro computer” vibe that I really like. Overall, not one of the best looking indie games out there, but I think it works for what it is.

Conclusion

Well, I think that’s all I really want to say. To me, Undertale is just a very unique game, and one I still really find myself valuing to this day. When it came out and I played it for the first time, it just turned out to be a really unique experience in my eyes, and the story and gameplay really just stand out to me. Every time I go back to this game, I always find something new that I hadn’t found before.

The game just had a pretty big impact on me to be honest. I was 14 years old, and over the next few years I was about to go through some pretty big life changes. I was starting to deal with anxiety and depression around the time, and I found myself really being able to connect with all the characters and the game as a whole. The way the game’s morality system was structured really changed my worldview and made me think about how I play video games, which really helped it stand out to me.