Undertale has something that a lot of publishers lost over the years: HEART. I started this review not trying to make a joke with the heart mechanic on battles but now I have to start with it. =)

The battles are unique. It's not a classic RPG but the game has some elements of it... It's really hard to describe how the battles work but I can garantiee that's different and really fun. You have your regular attacks, items or you can talk with the enemy on your turns. On enemies' turn, you can dodge their attacks controlling a small heart in a box. It doesn't sound fun but it really is. Every battle is different and you have a lot of options to end it.

The story is simple but AMAZING and UNFORGETTABLE. It's incredible how a small developer could add alternative endings. Every battle will be important to your end. I can't say much to avoid spoilers but you are a kid that fell on a underground world full of monsters and trying to escape.

One thing that I have to say it's that you can see how much this project was important to its developer. I was playing Gears 5 at the same time I was playing Undertale and I could see the difference between something made only to make money and a game that tried to give a journey.

Please, give Undertale a chance. I hope that this review makes you full of DETERMINATION!

Nearly 25 years ago, a game about raising pocket monster friends made it's way overseas to spread joy to western countries.

25 years was a long time ago, it's crazy. I can't quite get over how long it's been, and here I am wearing my Toxtricity shirt that I bought off Pokémon Center last year. I've wondered if there would ever be a time where I would grow up, but to this day I just find the concept lame outside of the realm of maintaining legitimate responsibilities. If I wanna play monster catching games, put plushies on my shelves and collect pins to put on a cork board in my living room that's my own damn business and ain't hurting anyone. The person who judges is the weakest person in the room.

25 years ago was when I begged mom to buy the new hotness that had been spreading through my elementary school like a wave of Pokérus. I didn't get a lot of new games back then, we were in a particularly rough shape financially during that time due to reasons I don't feel comfortable sharing on a public website. It took a while, I watched the anime as it began airing on Kids WB and saw Pikachu was going to be in some game called "Super Smash Bros" on Nintendo 64. My hype couldn't really be contained, especially as I learned of other Pokémon from friends I was making at school thanks to all the commotion and seeing the trading cards getting passed around. Eventually though, while I was playing something at the game kiosk in the electronics section at Wal-Mart it happened...

"Hey, you wanna get that game?"

My eyes lit up like an Eevee, and before I knew it I was playing Blue on my purple Game Boy Color. I was a part of the Pokécrew at school for reals now, and soon thereafter a fanboyism began that would involve me asking for booster packs of trading cards at Blockbuster constantly as I was renting a game every several weeks or so. My favorite was Zapdos, I wish I knew where it was, no doubt lost to many moves that were a product of the thing I didn't wanna discuss in the last paragraph. I still have the Kangaskhan keychain from the line of Burger King toys at my shelf, the lone memory that still persists out in the open as my childhood cartridge of Blue is no longer with us anymore, the battery of which has long passed away with all of my childhood Pokémon friends along with it. No point in replacing it, it's not bringing them back. I'll always remember them.

You're probably asking why I'm boring you with this.

First gen is ripe full of bugs and glitches, some of which were topics of discussion among my schoolmates. Stories of some newly discovered Pokémon called "MissingNo", and people finding Safari Zone catches off the coast of Cinnabar Island. A random invisible PC in some hotel in Celadon, what's that all about? What happened to everyone's Hall of Fame after talking to the old guy in Viridian to get 255 Master Balls? For us it was just more reason to talk about these games.

First gen is an imbalanced mess, Psychics swept way too many typings due to the overabundance of Poison being slapped on everything and were only resisted by themselves, meanwhile Body Slam and pre-nerf Hyper Beam were a ridiculous pair of moves that made Tauros an absolute unit. We didn't really give a damn about that though, because we weren't really fighting each other much. We just liked talking about our favorite Pokémon, our favorite moments in the anime or what cards we recently pulled from our packs. I remember trading a Tangela spinning toy for someone's Venonat that did the same thing, it was a way for us to trade in real life without using the link cable, because almost none of us had that shit. If you had Alakazam, Machamp or Gengar in-game you were the coolest kid in the entire school.....or someone with a Gameshark, we passed around one of those a lot....

You could pull a laundry list of reasons for why you can't get into these games or why they're not that great, and you know what?

You're right.

I can't fault that, no game is perfect, nothing is. Plenty of you are without that burden of these feelings that I have to live with, and in ways I kinda envy that. The truth is, I just can't say anything terrible about these games, they've done way too much for me personally. When I think of Red or Blue, I don't just think about the games themselves, I think of the friends I made off of it, the anime, the Burger King toys, the trading cards, Pokémon Stadium, everything. I can't just ignore all of that which was a side-effect of these games making landfall during my years of playing a Game Boy Color in my mom's car as she blared Metallica's Load album.

The chiptunes, the funny sprites, the cool sound effects... all of that combined with the social aspect that allowed me to engage with so many that continues to this day, it's just way too much.

It made me happy, it made us all happy.

Does it make me weak to just accept my prison of nostalgia? Am I weak because of how easily my heart is warmed by the past? Personally, I feel stronger for admitting it all in the face of everyone. It's done, I'm ready to be the real me, and I'm ready to continue my journey with this franchise since the very beginning of it's story.

Let's make it 25 more years, let's fuckin' go.

It feels weird to talk about this game. On the one hand, I'm able to see it as the Indiana Jones styled rip off of tomb raider that so many people claim it to be. On the other hand, it's my favorite game of all time. I think if you see Uncharted 2 as nothing more than shallow cover to cover shooting with boring climbing sections and nothing in between, then I think you're missing the point of what a cinematic action adventure game to be. This game never existed to have complicated climbing or super in depth shooting. It tries nothing more than to entertain, and it does that fully for me. Its exciting, got some of the best character writing of any game, and is legitimately the best action movie of any video game ever made. I love it