(2017) Undertale (PC, 2015) Revisited - The Frozen Effect
NOTE: This review was originally posted to Tumblr on March 4, 2017, and has been reposted here for archival purposes with edits to censor offensive language and remove a dead link. It may not reflect recent events or my current opinions.
For a more up to date review of Undertale, click here. Alternatively, feel free to check out my character analysis of Dr. Alphys here.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that following it’s release, this game had become the center of attention as far as indie games go. In fact, there was a point when it was essentially considered blasphemy to talk negatively about the game. Between the game’s story, characters and even down to it’s gameplay, the game became practically the talk of the town due to the concept of having an RPG where you didn’t have to kill your enemies, and the concept of how the story changed depending on your actions, leading you to either do a Pacifist Run, Neutral Run, or a Genocide Run. For a few months, this game generated a lot of hype, and ended up winning a number of awards between the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016. Heck, as someone who didn’t buy into the hype of the previous hyped indie game Five Nights at Freddy’s, I went into this game loving what I had played, and as I stated in my initial review of it in December 2015, I gave this game a 10/10, and put it in my Top 3 games of all time, which would in some time become my favorite game of all time for the time being.
With that said however, it was inevitable that sometime people would speak out against the game’s hyped, calling it “overrated” and the like, causing the game to get a bad reputation among people and for some pretty much becoming the next cool thing to hate.
This is what I would call the “Frozen” effect, which is an effect that occurs when any form of media, whether it be a TV series, video game, movie, you name it, gets tons of hype surrounding it to the point of people saying “this isn’t that good wtf” and soon enough becoming cool to hate. The name of it, as you might have guessed, is derived from one example in particular with the movie Frozen, which was a movie that demonstrated this sort of effect with an early stretch of hype surrounding the movie, only leading it to become widely hated simply for being “overrated” where, as a result, it actually becomes overhated simply due to this in mind. This, of course, has happened in cases both before with shows and games like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Call of Duty and Final Fantasy VII, and of course after with TV shows and games such as Steven Universe, Five Nights at Freddy’s (which I still don’t consider my cup of tea, but you get the idea) and Overwatch, but the one that I’m going to talk about in particular is of course Undertale. After replaying the Pacifist run at least, do my thoughts on the game now reflect my original thoughts in any way, or have I grown to not care for this game like a lot of people seem to have?
This review comes from the opinions of the poster himself. This does not reflect the opinions of the rest of the gaming community.
And in case anyone hasn’t played this game yet, might as well make it clear that this review will be of a story-heavy game, so if you haven’t already been spoiled and want there to be a surprise when playing the game, I would probably wait until you’ve played and finished the game before reading this.
Since this is a revisit, I might as well talk about my opinions of the game and how they’ve changed over the course of between when I first played and reviewed this game up until my latest playthrough of the game with how they are now. Like I said above, following my initial playthrough of the game between November to December 2015, I gave Undertale a 10/10 in my review, stating there was a lot I liked about it, namely the gameplay, the characters and the soundtrack and the like. And then after finishing the Pacifist run I was doing (which was the one I was in the process of doing when I wrote that review after first finishing a Neutral run), it became my favorite game ever made for the time being, and it would stay that way for pretty much the course of the end of 2015 and nearly all of 2016. Yet despite how much I loved the game, I pretty much expected it to hit the “Frozen” effect even at the peak of it’s popularity. The thing I didn’t expect, on the other hand, was the game to hit the “Frozen” effect as hard as it did. Not really that long after it won GameFAQ’s Best Game Ever ballot, people then started to bash this game consistently, going on about how overrated it was, saying the fandom ruined the game, calling fans of the games “Underf**s” (lol original insult amirite guys) and pretty much everything people say when something hits the “Frozen” effect. On the game’s 1 year anniversary, Toby Fox actually wrote about this, stating that all the attention stressed him out and stating that early on he was afraid of Undertale becoming tiring for people and being spoiled to the point where the story is worthless.
And, I will say that I did feel pretty similarly over the time I was really into the game. To an extent, a lot of the hate that this game got ended up pretty much stressed me out for a while, and actually made me feel bad.. just for liking this game, to the point where it was potentially ruining the game for me. I had gone back and replayed it a few times, and still enjoyed it, yet I still had this bad feeling that made the game one I loved to talk about to one that I felt like I was a bad person for still enjoying.
After getting that all out of the way, I guess it is time that, now that the game’s pretty much dying down and the hype is ending, I might as well discuss the game itself, my thoughts on it in the present day and how I feel about the game, after going back to it multiple times and after playing all three runs of the game.
As a lot of fans of the game will tell you, the game’s definitive aspect is definitely it’s story. When I first reviewed this game, all I really gave of the plot was it’s basic aspect that following a war between humans and monsters, the monsters ended up being forced to live underground whereas humans ruled the surface, and at the time of the game, a human child falls in the underground at Mt. Ebott where meets Flowey and Toriel and learns that he must escape the monsters. When you play the demo or even the game itself up to the first Toriel boss, that’s definitely what you are going to get from the game’s story at that point, so there isn’t too much to spoil. But once you get into the game, there are a lot of twists and turns that depends on how you play the game. There are a lot of characters you meet as you travel through the Underground world, between both bosses and characters that move the story along.
To start off, I might as well talk about one of my favorite aspects of this game, that being the characters. I did mention in my initial review of the game that there are a lot of characters in the game and it’s potentially the best cast of characters in a game that I had seen. Do I still agree with this? Well, maybe or maybe not, but I still feel the cast of characters you meet are indeed likable. If you haven’t guessed from my deviantART gallery and uploads over the past year or so, my favorite character in the game is Dr. Alphys (who sadly doesn’t really seem to be that popular in the Undertale community). There is a pretty simple reason for that, and that I felt her character arc in particular was well developed and in a lot of ways made me feel for her, and really, she’s just overall relatable to me once I looked into it. Like Alphys, I like to message my friends a lot, I stutter a lot, I sometimes obsess over what I enjoy (just like Undertale lol) and of course I’ve done things that looking back I feel bad for and regret doing. Oh yeah, and we both like animes such as Mew Mew Kissy Cutie, Cory in the House and Bee Movie. It’s reasons like this as to why I’m surprised she’s not as well loved as some of the other characters, because I’m pretty sure a lot of people (especially in the Undertale fandom) can relate to the adorkable dino. Then again, I’ve heard a lot of other people state that they got annoyed with her constant text messages in the Hotlands, which I can understand, but at the same time I actually found ‘em pretty funny and it’s the sort of thing I’ve both seen others and myself do.
Following Alphys, I’d probably say my other favorites were probably Undyne, as I enjoy her personality as being devoted to her job as she’s developed in the story and Toriel for her motherly personality that makes her a top-tier goat mama. I know some might be disappointed that I didn’t state Sans or Papyrus are my favorites, but I still enjoyed their antics, just that I didn’t care for them as much as those top 3. Blasphemy, I know.
But one good thing about all the characters in general is that they go through their own character arcs, and going back to the story itself, Undertale doesn’t really have one plot line that it follows in each of the three runs, but really a combination of other plot lines and character arcs that are all connected as leading up to the Pacifist ending if that’s what you’re aiming for. Each character resides in a section of the Underground as an entire world and what you learn about them leads up to a major boss at the end of each section. Some of these minor plot points in particular have a number of twists, such as at the end of the Hotland section, and as you play the Pacifist run in particular, you also learn a lot about what actually happened between Toriel and Asgore and how they were related and why they’re separated at the time of the game. There’s definitely a lot to talk about here, but since I don’t want to spoil too much, I might as well make the case that the story is generally really well-written with a likable cast of characters. As I said, this is also a game where your choices as the player really do matter, and you’ll either a Pacifist ending, a Genocide ending, or one of the many alterations of the Neutral ending. The characters you kill and spare really make those decisions (especially when discovering all forms of the Neutral ending), so it’s definitely an interesting use of this sort of genre of games, which does give a bit of replay value for discovering different endings and whatnot.
To move on from that, the thing that dictates how the story progresses is going to be one of the core parts of every game, which is the gameplay. Aside from what I already talked about as the game being formed off of your own choices, the game also is a puzzle RPG based off the likes of Mother and the Mario & Luigi series with a bullet hell based combat system. You’re able to dodge attacks of enemies you face, but this time in a little box where the heart represents your soul against bullet hell attacks based off the characters’ personalities. In the combat system as well, you have four buttons that you can press – Fight, Act, Item and Mercy. Fight and Item are really obvious if you’re a newbie, but the Act button gives you choices for ways to act toward the enemies you face in order to spare them, and once their names turn yellow (or pink if you talk to one of the frogs in the RUINS), you use the Mercy button to spare them. This does however change depending on the boss and enemy you face, where some enemies (most notably Undyne) require you to use the Mercy menu after a bit to find other commands that lead you to sparing the monsters.
One thing I’ve noticed that a lot of Undertale’s haters state is that they found the gameplay to be bland and dull, which I personally don’t really agree with. It’s not perfect and has flaws of it’s own (which I’ll get into), but honestly I thought it was at enjoyable. It is an RPG designed in the same way as games like Mother 3 and Earthbound, but at the same time there is a lot of new design elements and twists that to me make the game still entertaining even after playing it more than once. However, I’ve also noticed that a lot of the people who say the gameplay is bland also state that it’s mostly because it doesn’t have enough RPG elements like how leveling up means nothing and whatnot, but.. that’s kind of the point of the game. And if you don’t like that, then this game’s definitely not going to be your kind of thing. As someone who isn’t really into RPG games, I will say that I did find it enjoyable and that it has enough twists and new elements to the RPG gameplay formula that made me entertained even after playing it a few times. I do like how it mixes elements from a variety of different games, which said elements may have been done before, but at the same the way the game handles it is still enough for me to be entertained. The Pacifist run is of course my favorite run of the game, as there are a lot of creative ways and whatnot that allow you to do a bit of thinking on how you can spare each enemy, with some ways are pretty obvious, some that pretty much let you spare enemies right off the bat and others which are usually a lot more subtle, such as “Fleeing” from Undyne in order to spare her and move on with the game, something I wouldn’t have guessed if my friend hadn’t told me to do so. The reason why so many people start with a Neutral run, including me, is pretty obvious in that there are some creative ways for sparing enemies, which is definitely a plus of the game. The Pacifist run is easily the run I play most of the time I go back to this game, as it’s where the story really shines and the gameplay is at it’s best.
But I’m not going to act like the gameplay is completely flawless either, as unlike the Pacifist run, the Genocide run is probably my least favorite part of the game and where most of the flaws of the gameplay come in for me. There is the part that you feel bad for killing characters you like, but even with that aside, it’s just overall really boring imo. For the most part, you’re basically walking around in circles and trying to grind to kill enemies (which is really one reason I can’t get into RPGs in the first place), until you get a screen saying “But nobody came.” I will admit that when I did first play the Genocide run, it did frighten me a little but after seeing it come up after a few times, it started to get in the way and just overall annoying as hell for me. The way the game’s designed in the Genocide run feels like they’re pushing that “ono you did a bad thing” message into your face way too much, and that’s just one part of it. In the Genocide Run itself, there’s really only two bosses, with the others that you would’ve fought in a pacifist run basically going down in one hit. While I can see that one purpose of the message, I feel like they’re really could’ve been more done. Have the other bosses actually try and fight back instead of just having me grind for an hour until I get hit with dozens with “But nobody came” screens before actually fighting a boss halfway in. And what makes it even worse is that going into the Genocide run, you have to kill a certain amount of enemies in the RUINS, which is alright, but at the same time this isn’t really hinted at, so the first time I tried doing a Genocide Run, I got up to Papyrus’ boss before realizing that I was supposed to grind for 20 enemies toward the start of the game before I was really into the Genocide Run, causing me to reset the game from the start after playing it for all that time. And then the problem with the message being pushed in your face comes back after you finish a Genocide run, as following it your save file is essentially “possessed” and if you beat a Pacifist run, even after a True Reset, you basically get altered endings at the end of the end credits. It’s not really that major of a problem then, but it is annoying if you want to see how the Pacifist ending normally is following a Genocide run. For what it is though, the two bosses you face in the Genocide run, Undyne the Undying and Sans do give a good challenge and are pretty fun to play, but I wouldn’t really see myself going back to a Genocide run unless I really want to play either of those bosses.
As well, in my original review of the game, I had stated that there’s a lot of replay value that makes this game fun to go back to and, the next question is.. do I still agree with that? Well.. yes and no. I will say that after playing the game a few times, there was still a bit of secrets that I discovered and I still had a lot of fun going back, but on the other hand, after playing the Pacifist run a few times, there really isn’t that much else new to discover aside from a few secrets and different endings. The world of the Underground is still pretty linear, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but there’s also not many other areas of it to explore or anything, so I can’t necessarily say it was as replayable as I initially said it was, but I guess there is still enough to replay if I’m able to get 50 hours of a game that takes 5-6 hours to beat.
Well, now that I’ve talked a lot about those core aspects, pretty much everything I said in my original review I still slightly agree with. The graphics alone I might’ve given slightly too much credit too, as despite having that sort of thing where there’s elements of SNES and GBA along with the Atari/NES thing that’s going on the graphics of this game don’t really look that good. There’s pretty much a style of the game that reflects somewhere between the Atari 2600 and NES style (leaning a lot more toward the latter) but the sprites aren’t really designed well and the overworld while colorful doesn’t look that good. I do like the combat scenes, as they give that sort of Apple II feel that I like but other than that I can admit it’s really not the best looking game out there. On the other hand, the soundtrack I still really enjoy, and it’s essentially become one of my favorite soundtracks to play in the background (as well as remixes of the soundtrack) as I’ve been doing homework and whatnot, with my favorites being Battle Against a True Hero, CORE, Megalovania and Death by Glamour. And now that I’ve analyzed the story and gameplay, I think it’s time to come to my conclusions.
Conclusion:
My opinions of Undertale and how they’ve changed is a lot like how my opinions of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic have changed over a period of time. When I first watched MLP:FiM, I proudly considered myself a brony and for the longest time it became my favorite show ever made, but over time I have come to accept it’s flaws and while I don’t necessarily consider it a complete masterpiece and the best thing ever like I did when I was first introduced to it, I still find it fun to watch and go back to whenever a new episode’s come out. Same can really be said about Undertale. While back then I considered it the best thing ever and completely flawless so nothing can top it, I have come to accept that it’s not flawless and I will say that in some ways I have grown out of it where it has gone down a bit below games like Overwatch and Super Mario World on my favorites list but at the same time I still think it’s a good game and one that I enjoy going back to. There is a lot to like about Undertale for me, namely the gameplay, story, characters and the soundtrack, but there is some flaws that I do feel will dictate how much you enjoy the game or not. It’s definitely not a perfect game, but keeping in mind that my first experience playing the game is usually the best, I still think it’s entertaining if you’re in that kind of audience.
Would I recommend the game? Well, now that the hype is dying out for this game and the fandom hasn’t really been as active lately, I would probably check it out if you haven’t played it. There is of course a demo you can try out, so you should start with that. If you end up enjoying the game, that’s great, but if it’s not your kind of thing, I understand. Just, please, don’t be one of those guys who goes around telling everyone it’s overrated and acting like anyone who enjoys it is an SJW Underf** or anything, just let people enjoy the games they enjoy, and I’ll do the same for you. In other words,
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