The Impact Factor

Filled With Determination

Review

Undertale, Toby Fox (Mac)

Abstract: Undertale is easily one of the best games I’ve played all year. Toby Fox’s old-school inspired 2D role-playing game simultaneously exceeds and subverts expectations, be they narrative, game design, or otherwise. Undertale’s emphasis on the lingering impact of violence manifests itself in a gripping story and an innovative battle system: you can talk your way out of every encounter. Undertale is a peerless experience and serves as a perfect example of the power of auteurship in games. It’s one you shouldn’t miss.

I was in a hostile world, but not one without purpose. The echoes of damp caverns, the crunching of freshly matted snow under my feet, the bubbling and whizzing of a molten research lab. I saw and heard a lot throughout my journey, during which my resolve was tested and morality questioned. Undertale’s sweeping old-school JRPG introduction let me know I was in for a tremendous odyssey. What I didn’t know was how profoundly affecting my quest would be.

Undertale had the unfortunate weight of high expectations. I was a little late to the party. The game’s release was met with a small suite of glowing reviews from some of the voices in gaming I respect the most. They all pretty much said the same thing: Undertale is a game that subverts expectations, is exceedingly charming, and offers an unexpected commentary on the nature of violence in games. So, yeah, the bar had been set pretty high. Not only that, but Undertale is also a game that draws inspiration from perhaps my favorite genre: mid 90’s 2D Japanese role-playing games (JRPG). To live up to the hype, then, Undertale had to be an exceptional RPG on top of having an excellent story and a metanarrative on gaming as whole. I’m so happy to write here that Undertale both met and exceeded expectations.

Before I get into the meat of the review, I wanted to include a quick disclaimer: Undertale is a game that’s exceedingly difficult to meaningfully talk about without revealing the game’s many excellent twists, turns, secrets, and narrative surprises. Undertale is one of those games you should know as little as possible before going in. I’m glad I did. For that reason, I paid extra attention to keeping this review spoiler free. So I apologize if parts come off a bit vague.

 

Worry not! I keep things spoiler free. Undertale is best when you know
little to nothing about the game's plot.

Undertale opens with your young protagonist falling down a gaping hole in the ground, stranding the young human child in the world of monsters. Long ago there was a terrible war between humans and monsters that tore apart a once united world. Using the power of their souls, humans killed the monsters by the thousands, handily winning the war. As a result, monsters were banished to the underground, imprisoned below the surface by a seemingly impenetrable magic barrier. The monsters rebuilt their life in the dark, tainted by a lingering hopelessness and antagonism towards their human conquerors. As a human, the player finds themselves tasked with navigating this alien world in an attempt to make your way back to the surface. Very early in your journey you learn that there is an unexpected complexity to the monsters: they’re not just bloodthirsty creatures, but rather a group of diverse, sometimes funny sometimes friendly sometimes scary, individuals. Undertale’s roughly eight hour play through will take you throughout the underground, meeting friend and foe alike, as you try to decipher exactly what’s going on and how you can find your way home.

Your time with Undertale is largely defined by one impactful choice: how do I fight against the challenges with which I’m faced? Is there a way I can achieve my goals without resorting to violence? This is Undertale’s most significant design decision: it is an RPG you can beat without killing anything. You can kill, absolutely. But for the most part, the game encourages you not to. Everything and everyone you meet has a purpose, a personality, and feels like it exists outside of your interaction with it. Unlike so many other RPGs before it, where killing is the norm and your enemies are either maniacally evil or an undefined opposing force, Undertale is different. The game asks the player to think about what violence means and the effects it can have on those on the receiving end. The typical RPG hero is a genocidal maniac, with a kill count in the hundreds or thousands by the end of the game. Undertale provided an incredible feeling that, for the first time, I had agency in how I approached a hostile world. Because I (mostly) didn’t kill, I actually felt heroic. Every decision I made had weight to it—nothing was thoughtless.

 

Yeah, I'm a hero. No biggie.

This non-violence manifests itself in a thoughtful reimaging of combat encounters. Undertale redefines the very idea of a ‘battle’. All enemies you face, be they random encounter or boss, can be approached in one of two ways. You can ‘FIGHT,’ attacking your foe with your weapon and killing them. Damage is determined by an on-screen timing mini-game, where you need to press a button when a fast moving line is at the center of the screen. The other option? ‘ACT.’ ACT gives the player the ability to talk to their enemies—ask them about their life, laugh at their jokes, applaud them, pick on them, etc. Say the right thing the right number of times and the monster will be pacified, allowing you to ‘SPARE’ them. While you’re working to either kill or subdue the monster, they attack the player. Their attacks take form as a bullet hell mini-game. You control a heart-shaped cursor within a small box on the screen, which you’ll need to move around to dodge enemy projectiles. The system isn’t explained in any great detail, but it’s something I got the hang of pretty fast. Defeating enemies is all about memorizing their pattern of projectiles, knowing how and when you can move your heart around to avoid being damaged. The bullet-hell system is clever and, for the most part, fun.

 

Guide your heart through Undertale. Will you fight or talk?

I particularly enjoyed the boss fights, during which new & novel elements were added to your standard dodging. For example, in one boss fight, instead of freely moving, your cursor is given a weight and sent to the bottom of the box. You’re not dodging in the same way anymore, as this new mini-game tests a different skill set (it felt more like a platformer). All major boss battles dramatically change up the combat experience and were fun to figure out. All the former praise aside, though, the bullet-hell system was my least favorite element of the game. Dodging can be extremely difficult—to the point where I heard several game critics gave up because it was simply not worth the trouble. I consider myself fairly skilled at bullet-hell mechanics, and even I had a few frustrating moments on my way to finishing the game. Anyone who knows me knows I love a difficult gaming experience, but it has to fit within the core design of the game. The terrifyingly tough bullet-hell sections in Undertale worked counter to what I felt was the purpose of the game: to immerse you in this fascinating world and tell you a phenomenal story. Undertale still spectacularly succeeds in it’s goals, but a slightly toned down bullet-hell system would have been a boon to the experience.

 

I hope you like dodging. It can get pretty tough.

Speaking of story and world, Undertale is an unmitigated success. The writing in particular is one of the game’s clear strong points. Dialogue is witty and sharp. Characters felt well defined, whether your interaction with them was brief or prolonged. The world is diverse but cohesive. Undertale’s story can also be appreciated on many levels—it’s a game where the truth, the full depth of the narrative, is obscured by complexity. Undertale asks the player to dive deep and pay close attention to your endeavors, as even brief interactions can shed light onto what’s truly happening in the world. Unfortunately (for some of you out there), you cannot get every single piece of information in one play though. This didn’t bother me at all, however. My time with the world was memorable and affecting. It told me a story I hadn’t quite experienced before and answered a lot of the big questions I had at the start of the game. Lingering questions remained, but I was happy to let those stay in the ether. My Undertale was compact, concise. Excellent. Maybe one day I’ll go back for the rest. To avoid getting into any spoilers here, I’ll stay vague. But Undertale is a game that tries (and succeeds) at saying something meaningful about violence, trust, loss and love. It also offers a great metanarrative about how we play games, what it means to kill in a RPG, and player expectations of core gameplay mechanics. Perhaps most impressively, Undertale accomplishes all of this while still being a game that’s actually fun to play.

 

I enjoyed my conversations with everyone in Undertale. Yes, even the
shopkeepers. The writing is so good.

Undertale isn’t content to just subvert narrative expectations, though. It messes with the very vehicle of games too. Old standbys like an experience system and save points are tweaked in new ways. Undertale also has a few moments in which it breaks the fourth wall, commenting on the experience of playing a game. The game was also designed to remember when you quit: characters in-game will sometimes change based upon how & when you exit out of Undertale. Certain actions cannot be undone, to the point where playing a certain way can permanently change the world in all future play throughs, regardless if you play differently later. Undertale also messes with its own established rules. There’s one boss fight early in the game, for example, that seems impossible to complete without resorting to violence, which goes against what the game has been trying to get across to the player. Figuring everything out, and seeing how Undertale constantly tries to make you think about the nature of games, is fascinating.

When looking at the games space as a whole, Undertale has easily been one of the most impactful games of the year. It’s a game that’s spawned so many great discussions about game design, narrative, and more. Undertale has people thinking and critiquing games on a deep level. It is an accomplishment that should not go unacknowledged. Even as I wrote this review, huge topics darted around my mind. Like the dissonance between killing and narrative in Undertale, how the game balanced childlike wonderment with tough as nails bullet-hell & what that’s trying to say, the meaning of full plot revelations being locked behind doing things the game explicitly tells you not to do, or how Undertale has an accessible maturity.

Finally, critical analysis aside, Undertale is a game that was a joy to experience. I felt a warmth inside while playing. For brief moments I felt transported back to my childhood, sitting three maybe four feet from a small CRT TV playing Tales of Destiny or Chrono Trigger. Undertale is also so, so funny. I laughed out loud more than a few times while playing. Undertale is genuine, sweet, and hilarious. It also has the best soundtrack of the year. Seriously, go listen to it. It’s a game that I didn’t want to end, like when you wake up to a cold morning and don’t want to get out of bed.

 

Not much more to say. Undertale is amazing.

Undertale blew me away. It simultaneously exceeded and subverted expectations. It’s at once funny, tragic, engaging, complex, frustrating and rewarding. Undertale is a perfect synthesis of smart game design with a story worth telling. Undertale is fantastic. Go play it.

Undertale

5/5