This review contains spoilers
Undertale is an absolutely magnificent game. It was and still is one of the most influential indie titles to ever exist. And I’ve always returned to it on occasion because of that, as well as just having a love for this game. I first played Undertale back in 2017 or so, but that’s because I… accidentally pirated it. I saw on Gamejolt there was a “Undertale Russian Translation”, which got me curious. I had assumed it was just the demo, or something you could apply to the actual game, but no. It was just the entirety of Undertale translated into Russian. While I should’ve stopped there, my curiosity had gotten the better of me, and I played through its entirety. Then about 2 years ago, I got an actual copy of the game, to play proper. And about a week or two ago, I had gotten the urge to replay Undertale, knowing that October 10th was just around the corner, I also knew when I had to replay it. Now that I have, I feel as if my love and appreciation for Undertale has really grown.
While it’s kind of conventional now (mainly due to how well-known Undertale is), I love the unconventionality of Undertale. An RPG where you can avoid every single fight by talking and interacting with your enemies. Surviving enemy attacks is done in bullet hell sections. And the ability to spare anyone, no matter who it is. There’s something to the nature of Undertale in this regard that I don’t know if it could ever be replicated. There’s so many possible interactions that could be had with enemy encounters, and doing on order of interactions can change the events of a battle. In particular, I remember one enemy where you had to laugh at its jokes, but you had to wait for it to make a joke before laughing. Though there’s unique dialogue that plays only if you laugh before the joke is made, which I find really charming. This is not to forget how well crafted the bullet hell sections are either. Trying to dodge the enemy attacks is really fun, though I’m definitely not perfect at it, even now after beating the game for the third time. I absolutely love when you get put into fights where your SOUL changes colors. The changes to gameplay are really engaging, and I absolutely love it.
I have to give a massive compliment to Undertale’s writing. I’ve already loved Undertale’s writing from previous exposure and playthroughs of the game, but this time is where I grew to appreciate every single bit of dialogue. A fun thing I did for this replay was that I tried to voice every character, at least the major ones, though I did some side characters too. While reading something in your head is good, there’s really an added layer when you try to speak the dialogue aloud, in the voice of the character. Doing so, I found myself actively reacting more to the dialogue I was reading, most of it was through laughter, but that’s because Undertale for the most part is a very comedic game. But the more I played, the more I really appreciated every bit of dialogue around me. With that in mind though, my voice is definitely shot after all of this, Papyrus’ voice was definitely the toughest of my throat, and he had so much dialogue.
In a similar vein to Undertale’s writing, I really love the actual main cast of Undertale. There’s so much I can do to properly analyze them, but even through a surface level look, it’s cast is just amazing. It’s kind of sad seeing how fandom had misinterpreted a lot of Undertale’s characters for a long time after the game released. There’s so many layers to each character in Undertale, and actively taking the time to really learn and understand them, it’s really something special.
And while I don’t really talk about it much, I really have to compliment and mention just how good of a composer Toby Fox is. I know that’s already well established and known, but I have to give props anyway. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a bad Undertale track, all of the tracks are fantastic! Not only are there some absolute earworms in the game’s soundtrack, but there’s also just so much emotion put into the music. While it’s joked about due to its connection to a specific joke, Bergentrückung and ASGORE are some absolutely powerful tracks when they appear. And that’s something that I think is absolutely great about Undertale as well. So many of the tracks really amplify the scenes in which they occur far more than just “oh this is a good song” or “oh this song fits here”. There’s a resonance that only Undertale’s soundtrack is able to create.
This is all not to mention stuff that comes from the FUN value. People joke about the whole “Super Mario 64 is personalized”, but really that’s just what Undertale is. Each run of Undertale has a unique FUN value that you get, and odd events can occur or not occur depending on what FUN value you have. Each individual run is unique in that regards, which is something to really admire. I remember when I played Undertale about 2 years ago, I didn’t get the Wrong Number Song event, but when I replayed it today, I did. And who knows what other slight differences I encountered or didn’t encounter in this playthrough based off of that FUN value. Yet again, it’s something I really admire, just having that be something that exists, and can impact your time with Undertale that potentially no one else may ever see for themselves.
I’ll be clear here. I don’t think I can talk about Undertale here without going into spoilers. A large portion of Undertale is connected to things that I’d have to spoil. Though Undertale is well known, there’s still the potential that someone hasn’t experienced or seen Undertale in any form, so once this paragraph concludes, I will go directly into Undertale spoilers.
With that pretense out of the way, I really want to examine the endings of Undertale, and sort of the thematics involved with them. Undertale of course has endings tied to the actions you do in the game, most of them ultimately grouped together into the ‘neutral endings’. But the other two endings you can obtain are ‘true pacifist’ and ‘no mercy’. I’ve obtained all of the endings in the game before, but during this playthrough of the game, I only went for ‘true pacifist’.
The ‘No Mercy’ route, though I didn’t do it this time, is really something interesting to me. Going out of your way to do something cruel to the characters of Undertale, just to sate human curiosity. Even though the game gets far more tedious and less fun because of your actions, you do it to sate that curiosity. Even though the game forces hard challenges upon you, you persist, just to sate that curiosity. To find out what lies at the end of the road once you kill everything. And the big thing at the end of the day is that you chose to do it, your actions led you to where you are now, and once you finish the ‘No Mercy’ route, you can’t ever go back. The stains of your actions will persist regardless of what run you do next. To me, the ‘No Mercy’ route goes out to tell you, the player, that you don’t need to do every single thing in a game. Some things are best remained unknown, or undone. That’s why when I replayed this game, I chose to end it when I got the ‘True Pacifist’ ending. I had done ‘No Mercy’ before, but I didn’t feel the need to do it again. I got the ending I got, and that was that.
And how the ‘No Mercy’ route impacts future ‘True Pacifist’ endings is something interesting to me. At the ending after the credits, Chara appears, and that’s really it. I remember back in Undertale’s heyday, I saw a lot of people think that meant that Chara goes out to kill the friends you made. But I don’t know, that never sat right with me. To me, Chara feels as if they’re taunting you, appearing at the end of the game to remind you of the actions you did, and how even though you got a good ending this time around, it doesn’t erase your sins of doing ‘No Mercy’. For a long time, I was considering whether or not I should delete the data that stores the information of you doing ‘No Mercy’, but the more I thought about it, I decided against deleting it. Doing so undermines the whole point of why it’s there, and I can’t bring myself to undermine this game.
I also just think Chara is an easily misunderstood character. Chara is not violence, Chara is not evil, Chara is curiosity. The naïve curiosity of a child, who doesn’t fully grasp the consequences of their actions. Sure they’re violent, but that’s because they don’t really understand the consequences of violence. They want to learn about the world, and see every single possibility that could come from every possible action. To me, that’s why Chara appears at the end of the ‘No Mercy’ route. The worst possible outcome for the world, but the culmination of the player’s curiosity. The fact that Chara judges you if you do another ‘No Mercy’ route is definitely something to acknowledge here as well.
Enough about the ‘No Mercy’ route here, I think the ‘Neutral’ and ‘True Pacifist’ routes are interesting too to some regard. There’s a sort of dreariness found in the ‘Neutral’ endings, a silent phone call, where it seems that the characters can’t tell if the player is responding to them or not. But hearing how the characters’ lives are now is really interesting. And the whole ending sequence with Flowey at the end of a ‘Neutral’ ending is really something. Constantly sparing him over and over to utterly destroy his philosophy, it’s amazing. Of course, to unlock ‘True Pacifist’, you have to do ‘Neutral’ first, and just. Even going through it for the third time, the True Laboratory sequence is still something to behold. There’s an amazing atmosphere there that is unlike anything else in Undertale.
And just. I absolutely love the Asriel Dreemur fight at the end of ‘True Pacifist’. Going up against a god, something that seemingly you’d be unable to beat. Where you have to try over and over, but still seemingly get nowhere. Saving the people you care about, reminding them of who they became because of your help. And then saving the god himself, even though he doesn’t want you to. So that everyone has a happy ending, regardless of if they deserve it. It’s an amazing sequence that cap off a magnificent game.
Through and through, each time I play Undertale, I grow to love it more and more. There’s so much heart and soul put into this game. Even as each day I grow and change into a different person, Undertale is still a game I love each time. I imagine this won’t be the last time I play Undertale, I’ll definitely return to it on occasion. I think I’ll get something new out of it every time, and grow to further appreciate this game more and more. I also cant wait to see what Deltarune has in store.
While it’s kind of conventional now (mainly due to how well-known Undertale is), I love the unconventionality of Undertale. An RPG where you can avoid every single fight by talking and interacting with your enemies. Surviving enemy attacks is done in bullet hell sections. And the ability to spare anyone, no matter who it is. There’s something to the nature of Undertale in this regard that I don’t know if it could ever be replicated. There’s so many possible interactions that could be had with enemy encounters, and doing on order of interactions can change the events of a battle. In particular, I remember one enemy where you had to laugh at its jokes, but you had to wait for it to make a joke before laughing. Though there’s unique dialogue that plays only if you laugh before the joke is made, which I find really charming. This is not to forget how well crafted the bullet hell sections are either. Trying to dodge the enemy attacks is really fun, though I’m definitely not perfect at it, even now after beating the game for the third time. I absolutely love when you get put into fights where your SOUL changes colors. The changes to gameplay are really engaging, and I absolutely love it.
I have to give a massive compliment to Undertale’s writing. I’ve already loved Undertale’s writing from previous exposure and playthroughs of the game, but this time is where I grew to appreciate every single bit of dialogue. A fun thing I did for this replay was that I tried to voice every character, at least the major ones, though I did some side characters too. While reading something in your head is good, there’s really an added layer when you try to speak the dialogue aloud, in the voice of the character. Doing so, I found myself actively reacting more to the dialogue I was reading, most of it was through laughter, but that’s because Undertale for the most part is a very comedic game. But the more I played, the more I really appreciated every bit of dialogue around me. With that in mind though, my voice is definitely shot after all of this, Papyrus’ voice was definitely the toughest of my throat, and he had so much dialogue.
In a similar vein to Undertale’s writing, I really love the actual main cast of Undertale. There’s so much I can do to properly analyze them, but even through a surface level look, it’s cast is just amazing. It’s kind of sad seeing how fandom had misinterpreted a lot of Undertale’s characters for a long time after the game released. There’s so many layers to each character in Undertale, and actively taking the time to really learn and understand them, it’s really something special.
And while I don’t really talk about it much, I really have to compliment and mention just how good of a composer Toby Fox is. I know that’s already well established and known, but I have to give props anyway. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a bad Undertale track, all of the tracks are fantastic! Not only are there some absolute earworms in the game’s soundtrack, but there’s also just so much emotion put into the music. While it’s joked about due to its connection to a specific joke, Bergentrückung and ASGORE are some absolutely powerful tracks when they appear. And that’s something that I think is absolutely great about Undertale as well. So many of the tracks really amplify the scenes in which they occur far more than just “oh this is a good song” or “oh this song fits here”. There’s a resonance that only Undertale’s soundtrack is able to create.
This is all not to mention stuff that comes from the FUN value. People joke about the whole “Super Mario 64 is personalized”, but really that’s just what Undertale is. Each run of Undertale has a unique FUN value that you get, and odd events can occur or not occur depending on what FUN value you have. Each individual run is unique in that regards, which is something to really admire. I remember when I played Undertale about 2 years ago, I didn’t get the Wrong Number Song event, but when I replayed it today, I did. And who knows what other slight differences I encountered or didn’t encounter in this playthrough based off of that FUN value. Yet again, it’s something I really admire, just having that be something that exists, and can impact your time with Undertale that potentially no one else may ever see for themselves.
I’ll be clear here. I don’t think I can talk about Undertale here without going into spoilers. A large portion of Undertale is connected to things that I’d have to spoil. Though Undertale is well known, there’s still the potential that someone hasn’t experienced or seen Undertale in any form, so once this paragraph concludes, I will go directly into Undertale spoilers.
With that pretense out of the way, I really want to examine the endings of Undertale, and sort of the thematics involved with them. Undertale of course has endings tied to the actions you do in the game, most of them ultimately grouped together into the ‘neutral endings’. But the other two endings you can obtain are ‘true pacifist’ and ‘no mercy’. I’ve obtained all of the endings in the game before, but during this playthrough of the game, I only went for ‘true pacifist’.
The ‘No Mercy’ route, though I didn’t do it this time, is really something interesting to me. Going out of your way to do something cruel to the characters of Undertale, just to sate human curiosity. Even though the game gets far more tedious and less fun because of your actions, you do it to sate that curiosity. Even though the game forces hard challenges upon you, you persist, just to sate that curiosity. To find out what lies at the end of the road once you kill everything. And the big thing at the end of the day is that you chose to do it, your actions led you to where you are now, and once you finish the ‘No Mercy’ route, you can’t ever go back. The stains of your actions will persist regardless of what run you do next. To me, the ‘No Mercy’ route goes out to tell you, the player, that you don’t need to do every single thing in a game. Some things are best remained unknown, or undone. That’s why when I replayed this game, I chose to end it when I got the ‘True Pacifist’ ending. I had done ‘No Mercy’ before, but I didn’t feel the need to do it again. I got the ending I got, and that was that.
And how the ‘No Mercy’ route impacts future ‘True Pacifist’ endings is something interesting to me. At the ending after the credits, Chara appears, and that’s really it. I remember back in Undertale’s heyday, I saw a lot of people think that meant that Chara goes out to kill the friends you made. But I don’t know, that never sat right with me. To me, Chara feels as if they’re taunting you, appearing at the end of the game to remind you of the actions you did, and how even though you got a good ending this time around, it doesn’t erase your sins of doing ‘No Mercy’. For a long time, I was considering whether or not I should delete the data that stores the information of you doing ‘No Mercy’, but the more I thought about it, I decided against deleting it. Doing so undermines the whole point of why it’s there, and I can’t bring myself to undermine this game.
I also just think Chara is an easily misunderstood character. Chara is not violence, Chara is not evil, Chara is curiosity. The naïve curiosity of a child, who doesn’t fully grasp the consequences of their actions. Sure they’re violent, but that’s because they don’t really understand the consequences of violence. They want to learn about the world, and see every single possibility that could come from every possible action. To me, that’s why Chara appears at the end of the ‘No Mercy’ route. The worst possible outcome for the world, but the culmination of the player’s curiosity. The fact that Chara judges you if you do another ‘No Mercy’ route is definitely something to acknowledge here as well.
Enough about the ‘No Mercy’ route here, I think the ‘Neutral’ and ‘True Pacifist’ routes are interesting too to some regard. There’s a sort of dreariness found in the ‘Neutral’ endings, a silent phone call, where it seems that the characters can’t tell if the player is responding to them or not. But hearing how the characters’ lives are now is really interesting. And the whole ending sequence with Flowey at the end of a ‘Neutral’ ending is really something. Constantly sparing him over and over to utterly destroy his philosophy, it’s amazing. Of course, to unlock ‘True Pacifist’, you have to do ‘Neutral’ first, and just. Even going through it for the third time, the True Laboratory sequence is still something to behold. There’s an amazing atmosphere there that is unlike anything else in Undertale.
And just. I absolutely love the Asriel Dreemur fight at the end of ‘True Pacifist’. Going up against a god, something that seemingly you’d be unable to beat. Where you have to try over and over, but still seemingly get nowhere. Saving the people you care about, reminding them of who they became because of your help. And then saving the god himself, even though he doesn’t want you to. So that everyone has a happy ending, regardless of if they deserve it. It’s an amazing sequence that cap off a magnificent game.
Through and through, each time I play Undertale, I grow to love it more and more. There’s so much heart and soul put into this game. Even as each day I grow and change into a different person, Undertale is still a game I love each time. I imagine this won’t be the last time I play Undertale, I’ll definitely return to it on occasion. I think I’ll get something new out of it every time, and grow to further appreciate this game more and more. I also cant wait to see what Deltarune has in store.