After finishing all possible routes, I have to say it's a really cool fangame, but it's in a superposition of also being just a really alright fangame and maybe an okay video game. Incredibly minor non-spoiler systematic spoilers ahead.

I will stay my hand from making a huge overanalysis because it's been a while since I've really played and beaten a game, but to boot, there's a lot this game does right. The game system is fully faithful to Undertale, and there is a lot going on that made this game feel entirely official. I saw a startup for this game back in 2016 and didn't think it would actually get anything but abandoned as fangames tend to go, but I like the result. There are also some wonderful additions and QoL that I could go through, like big battles having MOTHER-inspired backgrounds (lovely!) - but my favourite personal thing is how there's a new effect upon sparing a major enemy - a wonderful piping sound effect with the box borders glowing yellow. It is simply a wonderful addition and I can't get enough of it, but sadly it is underutilized and I was hoping later on that there would be moments where the effect would sink in and hit different especially after some struggle.

But that's where the nitpicks come in. Essentially, a lot of these major encounters feel weak. On a usual playthrough, to spare these characters usually require just stalling out the game instead of using the Act mechanic, and a few of these battles also end automatically without the spare button. Alongside that, a lot of these characters end up never appearing again, such as the very first one despite some story implications that would make him a stand-in Toriel. I get confused at some of the other ones who do quite the same or feel like they don't have an outstanding part to play. I love the dance fight boss but he just always fades to nothing after the fact.

Part of this must be due to how short the game and story is in comparison to Undertale, in which I have to give it leeway for that reason. But unfortunately, the usage of time and resources have left myself and some other players with a lot to be desired. When it comes to variation in the Neutral and No Mercy routes, there isn't too much of it in the story, so if you abort a Genocide run, you're really only doing it to see how characters react in the very current scene - if it's the other end around, the deaths of some characters seem really inconsequential. It's not something to do a full run over. There's little in the way of re-doing sections too, as cutscenes don't get mildly changed as they do in Undertale, and route changes only affect the heat of the moment. But another thing is that No Mercy should be very emotionally powerful for the other characters, but some incredibly sad missed opportunities passed us and characters that would become more interesting or fun in that route end up being sidelined, partially because it brings us to the next big problem...

Ceroba. She is a character that has a presence upon all the routes, and a bit too much so - while Undyne in Undertale was a prominent boss in all the routes, she didn't do so as a behest to other characters. She was fought within the zone she was introduced in and later was seen again later when it was called for and the player's exploration. Ceroba is a character that doesn't belong to any particular "zone" in Yellow, is introduced early, and basically takes up the entirety of the game's plot and gameplay starting from the halfway point (if we consider all routes put together, with a mix of it if individually speaking [in which in No Mercy, my qualms are with her receiving a fight instead of another character even if it would be tough to rationalize it]). In pacifist, the player soon realizes this entire game is pretty much about her backstory, sidelining most of the other characters and finally having so much more exposure and resources dedicated to her (well, I'm not sure it's a contest with the other routes' final bosses, but let's just say pacifist felt the longest and slowest). Ceroba tended to slow down the story quite a bit, partially due to the Steamworks area feeling slow and breaking the pacing on its own. On an aside note, the Dunes area also felt like one big slog, especially on replays with the mining area. I don't know what it exactly accomplished when you don't meet anyone. Ceroba also really broke my immersion for me, considering she is a kitsune miko with her story arc and everything else really going hard with the Japanese theming when the rest of the game rides strongly on the Wild West flair. In complete honesty, she feels like an OC that was made before, not for Yellow, and shoehorned in by a creator that really really liked her and just wanted to present her story in an Undertale setting, similar to the early days of people putting their OCs in Unitale. I'm not alone in feeling that she gives several signs of this favouritism - because either way, she takes up like a third of the screen time and it doesn't leave the other already-barren characters with much. Her characterization also is hard for me to like, and I feel like the game is trying to make you sympathize over an incredibly selfish character as time goes on, making her plight seem worthless. The "gunfight" fight was the one I was expecting to be the best in the game, but it sadly didn't amount to much - I thought it was weak. Which is sad because Starlo in retrospect is a bit of a butthead and kind of gets casually excused for it, in which we don't actually SEE him redeem anything. Given this game had a reference to RED, I was hoping some pointers would have been taken on having a point to some fights.

Which is why I can't say much about the remaining major characters. I do like them in general. Quite a few of them seem to be something that could be an official character. I positively enjoy a select few. There were some narration punchlines and puns that made me laugh out loud. But some of the writing in this game seems to get quite a bit quirky and based off overly-online interactions that took me really out of the immersion of the Underground's setting. More often than not, this kind of thing was something that Undertale reserved for only a few cases, and even then, it was something mundane like anime which the monsters could very well know given the rest of their technology. Sadly, Yellow was enough to make me cringe at least twice with examples that I will pass on. Aside from that, I'm mixed on one character because she is very Papyrus-like in role but with fifty layers of uncertainty. I think she could've been more interesting, but her fights at least really made up for it to me. Another thing that I find is that I feel like there's less intent on making the NPCs more monstrous and creative and gave a lot more characters more animal designs but this could be a moot point as I don't remember a lot of Undertale NPCs by face so ignore me.

If it wasn't clear, my major problems with the game was the story and characterization, and I do kinda wish we got to a real final Asgore fight even if it was hopeless, but all this aside, I do not dislike the game, I just think it is flawed. The music is really good - not as good as Undertale's, and I personally think some of the endgame battle themes are quite underwhelming and all over the place in composition, but it is still good and there are some themes I wouldn't mind listening to on loop. Many of the monsters are designed wonderfully, attack patterns are fun (I didn't have a problem with the endgame ones everyone has been complaining about cuz uhh touhou), animated sequences are really nice, and I have to commend the efforts made nonetheless as reusing assets and music was done as little as possible in comparison to all the original content this game has. And it's a free fangame, of course. But I really do wish the story wasn't compromised some bit.

I did say I wouldn't overanalyze it but it's more like I just said a bit too much on my main complaints - I'm sure someone more attentive and hardcore than me could rip the issues to shreds and rate the plausibility of the story compared to Undertale and yadda yadda, but I do recommend this game to anyone who's beat Undertale. Yellow simply isn't the best thing ever, and while I applaud its efforts lots, it couldn't avoid characterization pitfalls and I am simply disappointed of whoever blindly says it is better than the original.

I just do not understand how this game gets so highly praised. Whether it's group hype or fan loyalty, neither would distract me from genuinely believing this is one of the worst games I've played of all time. It does not help that the only other MT game I beat was Devil Survivor, which I do not favour either.

I was wanting to write a full review at some point, but it's all so tiring. There is no point. The game started off compelling at first, and just became a generic JRPG adventure the rest of the way with horrible systems in place and an entirely immemorable, meaningless journey - in which the final section of the route I was on was the shortest bit, offering me no meaning to the finality of the story I chose. I think nothing, I feel nothing, and I do not like this nothing.
I do not like getting stuck in places for a long time with very little clear navigation or hints at where I must go, all within the same areas. I do not like (personally) spending hours in menus cherry-picking demons for very marginal gain. I do not like the illusion of side quests, equipment, and such JRPG extras if they are practically worthless. I do not like being introduced to characters only to find them less relevant in length to my last night's dinner and having less than the amount of dimensions there are to Terraria. I do not like dealing with battles every coming moment where I must examine tight surroundings, I do not like dungeons that look the same, I do not like mazes, I do not like repetitive music, and most of all, I hate it when games pretend that you're immersed.

SMTIV's story - not gameplay - moves around at a "rapid" jumpy pace, so I can barely remember the several events that happen, all blurring together. None of these beats are connected in the grand scheme of things, and they all feel like minor sidequests. Every time I ended up thinking an interesting segment would occur, I would be let down, usually just to find some boringly morbid result such as death (wow!). The writing is bland and your enemies are no better at not sounding like pushovers who looked in the Anime Quote Dictionary. There is so much you can do to offer up an atmosphere that SMTIV tries to give you only for the game mechanics and generally jank RPG nature to screw things over, once again thanks to encounters, poison, and some stupid events.

Before the final battle's terminal in my route you encounter a strange man there who is simply silly for the sake of being silly. How is he there? What is his purpose? Did I miss it somewhere? For my experience, there is no meaning behind it, like many other events in the game, characters that come and drop like nothing. Likewise there is no meaning to you, the player - it's a journey that pushes you along without feeling like you're a real part of it, and eventually I just couldn't give a damn about any of the other characters or whatever happens to the story at that point. There is no interesting backstory. There is no thrilling conclusion that awards my patience and hard work trying to sift through the game's difficulty (attributed to many resets). A short credits scene and a tiny generic epilogue... There is just... no meaning. To me it seems that fans try to pass this off as deep and intelligent, but maybe that's a special kind of intelligent. Maybe I didn't see all the endings and see everything there is to see, but I don't see the worth in replaying the entire game with pacing that's either a slog in the overworld, or with rocket-tag battles that might end your long playing session simply due to the fact that random crits or OHK moves sweep your team like dice rolls that sum up to "should've had a perfect team for the job" when part of the gameplay is trial-and-erroring weaknesses and strengths. I don't see what strategy there is aside from min-maxing and spamming de/buffs. It entirely works once you have access to all these skills, but it takes a while to get there in which the rest of the game feels like a JRPG snowball.

I already wrote too much but I just have nothing really good to say. Maybe two or three tracks are good with the other majority getting on my nerves for being too short and constantly tempting to stay in this retro, synth style that just doesn't match with the rest of the gloomy surroundings. Not to say it's awful, just very, very droning and repetitive and not music that I can "enjoy". I mention gloomy, and yes, some of the tracks feel like downers, but for this reason I don't like to passively listen to them. In other regards, Yume 2kki, for example, is a series of experiences that can make you feel, ponder, and think about things, all with most of them not being remotely entangled with each other, which is thanks to each section clearly having an identity, a place in its setting. SMTIV tries to etch together something, but it feels like a clustershit of the different ideas of 100 people who just found out about religion or theology but don't have anything to add to it. There's clearly a somewhat consistent theme, but the building blocks are made of play-dough, not bricks. I do not have any immersion to the characters, attachments to the world, and I certainly have not heard of any counterpoints or explanations for why the game itself is actually good on an analytical level. I don't claim my thoughts are very in-depth either, but that's because there's a lack to talk about for me.

So, that said, I have the unpopular opinion - thing is, though, I always used to bash Persona fans too despite not playing either series, but I spoke way too soon. It could be that both series suck after all and that Atlus should return to the Trauma series - despite that, I am incredibly certain Persona 4 is tons more interesting to look at, listen to, and probably follow along than whatever the hell you call SMTIV (which I am never going to follow up on for the other endings).
Play a real peersohna game, I guess.