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.
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
