They didnt try to do much of anything different other than fights. Genocide ending is a non-ending because it doesnt make sense with what comes after in Undertale. The worst part was definitely the frustrating fights (yes, those two, especially the latter), and the endings. The endings, for both pacifist and genocide suuuuuuucks. I think anyone could think of those as being the ending to the game but then quickly go "nahhh... that would be dumb and stupid and terrible...". All that said, game is actually fun and good for most of it. I just wish a lot of it wasnt boss spam fights and that there was more story.

Fantastic visuals, fantastic bosses (Especially the neutral route final boss) and a fantastic soundtrack held back as an overall package for me because it feels so sloppily written during important story beats, especially with their method of keeping it canon to the original. Some moments also feel like they rely too hard on you liking certain cast members when I only found one of the main cast likeable. Definitely give a shot if you're a fan of Undertale though since it's free and about as long as the original.

Also El Bailador wasn't that hard, you guys just suck at rhythm games. I'm not even that good at them myself and I barely had trouble with him.

Ceroba darling I think I love you more than my wife but I've been married for 26 years and unfortunately marriage is just a bond that cannot be broken. Please oh please come on down to Bobs Burgers it is my restaurant and you will love it I will make a special burger of the day just for you... we can call it the Yellow burger not that in context you would ever really understand what that means but I'd lovee it because the video gaem is called Undertale Yellow. Ceroba you're in fucking Undertale. I think my male pattern baldness is starting to worsen

It's pretty incredible that this is an unofficial fan-game because it's genuinely at the quality of the original in a lot of rights. It's been a while since I've played Undertale now but I'd say the writing of a few characters here is better or at least on par with that.

All of it's more technical qualities are madly impressive too, the soundtrack constantly blew me away and hit every emotional beat or emphasised whatever feeling necessary for the moment. Its combat is really great and keeps enough concepts from Undertale while really making its own identity and not being afraid to be different with a lot of things.

Overall, there's so much charm in the world of this game and obvious passion from the people that worked on it that it's impossible not to love.

8/10

It is the Undertale prequel that we all wished for. Everyone that played the original has wondered what was the trajectory of the other human souls before Frisk has appeared; so, Undertale Yellow does the job at showing the adventures that the justice (yellow) soul went through.

The game is filled with different and unique characters that you gradually get attached to and interested in their stories. It's a shame that the original characters from Undertale aren't as present in the prequel, which may seem kind of odd but is understandable considering the fangame wants to present something truly new; so most areas are unique as well, like snowdin, steamworks, new home, and wild east.

The battling system is pretty much the same, with the exception of the "Fight" tab that uses a revolver model instead of the old bizarre "eye" thingy. Bosses also have some unique mechanics, that even change the UI to set the mood. Talking in battles, to achieve the True Pacifist Route, it is not necessary to do a neutral route then do a pacifist one, just straight up play the pacifist and you should be fine. The game has three different routes: Pacifist (split into True Pacifist and Flawed Pacifist depending on your choices at the end), Neutral, and Genocide, just like the original, but each route has an unique boss to it (which are dope af).

The soundtrack is good though it's not as remarkable as the original, still has plenty of bangers, however. The game also has some neat accessibility options that help a lot, like an "easy mode", considering Yellow is way harder, so if you want a more casual and less stressful experience with the bosses, you should give it a try.

Overall, it's a highly impressive game, considering it was made by fans of a game that was already an indie project (now with improvements, like with the pixel art). The "Undertale feeling" is so present that it makes you wonder how it isn't an official release by Toby Fox and Temmie Chang.

10/10

They’ve got the sauce!

It’s not enough of the sauce, and it takes a little while before they actually start doling the sauce out, but by God, they’ve got the sauce! Undertale Yellow actually gets it, and what a triumph that is. It manages to avoid a lot of the pitfalls which plague fangames and have resulted in them getting such a broadly negative perception as being lesser forms of media, and it does so with an impressive amount of finesse. There are more than a couple of misfires here, and it can’t manage to be something that meets nor succeeds the original Undertale, but they’ve got the sauce. It’s a very big swing to take, and just about as big a hit.

What I appreciate most about Undertale Yellow is the sheer amount of restraint that the developers showcase. You only see Toriel for a grand total of about two minutes before she’s out of the game for good, and Mettaton, Alphys, and Asgore are mentioned a few times; apart from that, the only returning character who actually sticks around for most of the runtime is Flowey, and he acts differently enough that a large part of the narrative is trying to figure out what angle he’s playing at. There’s no Sans. He doesn’t even get namedropped! What? Can you imagine releasing an Undertale fangame and not bringing up Sans? When I got to the Snowdin Town bridge and released that Sans wasn’t going to show his face, I got pumped. It’s brave. A group far less confident in themselves would have just made this a second lap through the extant Underground, going on a little adventure to essentially experience Undertale all over again in a world where you could just play Undertale again if that was what you wanted to do.

The first impressions when the game starts branching off of Undertale aren’t especially strong. The first original NPC that you meet in the Ruins — Darv or Darm or Darl, whatever his name is — very much looks like someone’s Adventure Time self-insert that they drew to be Marceline the Vampire Queen’s boyfriend. Picture me retching as I type this. His character isn’t particularly good, mostly just muttering about some betrayal from long past and talking about how he wants to be left alone, and the game seems to agree with me in this respect; he drops off the face of the earth for the remainder of the runtime, only showing up again at the very end to make sure that the player hasn’t forgotten about him. The other new characters are significantly better: Martlet is a strong and obvious standout among the rest of the cast, North Star and his posse aren’t as consistent in their designs nor personalities but are still good, and Ceroba seems a lot like someone’s fursona but not in an especially bad way. I ended up liking more of the principle cast than I didn’t, so they’re definitely doing something right on the design and writing front.

The average enemy encounter is fine; there’s nothing especially interesting about most of them, though some do offer a couple of interesting gimmicks. Making the “floor slippery” so that the soul glides around or the music enemies blasting you with waveforms that you need to dodge are cute. Most of the boss fights don’t offer anything especially interesting, though. While Pacifist Ceroba does manage to get a few interesting gimmicks going in the form of giving the player the Big Shot, the overwhelming majority of the boss fights are just clicking Spare over and over and over again; your ACT commands often do nothing besides give the same line of flavor text every time you select them, which is a fairly boring way to handle these big encounters. I found the Guardener to be the best fight simply because it required you to hack away at vines blocking your options which then led into an ACT chain, giving you some freedom in the form of selecting which of your options you want to be available to you first. El Bailador is fine, turning the game into a rhythm section for a few minutes, but it doesn’t do much for me. So many of these fights are just about dodging bullets and slamming Mercy over and over again, and that’s never really been the draw of Undertale.

Similarly ranging from alright to forgettable are the music tracks. There’s nothing truly offensive here, and there are a couple that I like, but it's important for us to remember that Toby Fox was a composer long before he was a game designer. I can still hum the melodies to just about every track from Undertale, but I don’t think I could do the same for a single song from Undertale Yellow — at least, not from the ones that don’t lift one of Toby’s leitmotifs. While I do admire the developers’ willingness to get out from under the Undertale narrative trappings of returning characters walking in like sitcom guest stars for the audience to whoop and applaud to, I can’t extend the same praise to their composing. Ceroba’s fight plays a remix of Hopes and Dreams that the game absolutely hasn’t earned, and it took me right out of a battle that I was digging up until then. There are quite a few instances of obvious musical recycling in places where they don’t belong, and the songs that are wholly original don’t interest me much. They're far from anything terrible, but they feel a bit lazy in a game where there isn’t much else that does.

Undertale Yellow is ultimately a good fangame, and that is perhaps deserving of more celebration than anything else. It is very clearly made by a team of passionate and creative people, and I don’t think that their time spent on this would have been better spent on an original IP, instead. With that said, I would prefer for the next thing that this team releases to be something entirely of their own design; with all of the eyes that they’ve got on them now, I’m sure they’ve cultivated an audience that would be glad to see more.

And the sprites look too good. It’s all wrong. Part of the appeal of Undertale is that it looks like hot shit.

Early Game Thoughts:
This is a nice fan game with some unique characters but ultimately serves as a prequel narrative to the original. I think you have to be a fan of the OG to really appreciate what this game is going for but as a huge fan of the original I can absolutely say this was a fun time. The character writing and emotional value initially wasn't as strong as Undertale's but as a fan game this was never trying to one up the original. My best way to say how I felt about the game early on is it kinda felt like good DLC for a fantastic game, as in this game doesn't quite live up to the game it's attached to when viewed as a standalone game but when viewed as an extra it absolutely adds onto the overall experience.

Neutral Route:
Unlike Undertale where I honestly think you can just do Pacifist and Genocide, this game genuinely makes Neutral worthwhile since there's a noteworthy story segment exclusive to it. I was actually shocked at the entire ending sequence of the neutral route and looking back it is 100% necessary. The plot twists and emotional value this story holds genuinely feels essential to the lore and narrative of the game. Do not play pacifist without doing a neutral run first, I genuinely mean that. Despite how crazy neutral's ending is, the game makes it out to not be the true ending, which is kind of a good thing. The game WANTS you to play neutral and then pacifist. I'm not even sure I'd consider this an ending cause it really does just feel like its intent is to set up other paths. Admittedly this route is carried by an original Undertale character which is one of a few reasons why I think you have to be a fan of the original to truly appreciate what this game is going for.

Pacifist Route:
Again, I heavily recommend neutral before this route, because you'll be left with some questions and general confusion on why some characters are absent or seemingly not important when they should've been. Pacifist in general though offers some nice character development and backstory that adds to the lore nicely. I have mixed feelings on something after the final boss, which I think many people agree with me on, but otherwise I do think this game for the most part is a great fan made prequel to Undertale. Def the best fan game of an indie title I've ever played, although admittedly I haven't played many. If I could change anything about the game it would merely be to add an Asgore boss fight where the protag loses as an end to the game. I'd prefer a bitter sweet ending like that than the way the ending was actually handled TBH.

Neutral+Pacifist Final Thoughts:
Ceroba is my favorite new character, followed by Starlo. I didn't get super attached to anyone else TBH but Martlet had some nice moments. The cast isn't as strong as Undertale's, but again this isn't trying to one up the original. It's just a really nice extra. One thing I think it does as good as Undertale though is the battles. Some backgrounds like Starlo's fight and ESPECALLY both final bosses so far look really freaking good. The combat has some really nice diversity throughout too. It really is just more Undertale in that regard.

Genocide Route:
Honestly I didn't care much for this playthrough except for the ending which was certainly neat to see play out.

Flawed Pacifist:
Ok hang on I'm writing this part 9 days later on the 13th. I just learned something almost similar to what I wanted for Pacifist does actually exist. I don't like that you have to kill exactly one enemy for that to be the case but I am glad to see the story scenario I envisioned is actually somewhat here. Again, I do not like that a kill is forced for this, but it is genuinely the ending I wanted so yay!