I was a huge Undertale fan back when the original game first released, thanks to another fandom I was big in sorta merging into it right off the bat. I mean, I was extremely in love with Undertale. At the time, it was something amazing, something new that had hit the mainstream after years and years of development. Elements that had barely been seen elsewhere, completely pacifist playthroughs, memories of old saves, it was genuinely astounding. Naturally, young me being the exuberant fan I was, I wanted to try and find more of it. Absolutely anything that was out there. One such thing being Undertale Yellow. A fanmade prequel of the original game.

Time passes. Years, pass, actually. Many, many years. Being the dumb kid I was, I wasn't exactly following it super closely, despite how interested I was. After a while, I had... completely forgotten about it. I started growing out of my Undertale phase, I slowly started distancing myself from the community, not to any fault of their own, I simply wasn't as invested in it as I used to be. Even at the release of the follow-up Deltarune, Yellow had slipped my mind entirely. I was unaware the game was even coming out, a part of me would've believed that such a project had proven too ambitious, I wouldn't have been surprised seeing it come out cancelled no offense.

But it did. Almost a decade later.

oh my fucking god it did.

Undertale Yellow could very well be the perfect encapsulation of all the charm Undertale had, while still maintaining its own identity with new characters, locations, fights, mechanics, even outdoing the original in several ways. Quality of life changes are made to make the experience that much smoother, a focus mode to allow for slower movement during combat, a sprint button for faster traversal outside of combat, changes made to the general functions of the game to make even the genocide route not an absolute slog. Topped with all of the little details and quirks you would see from Toby himself, I'm just running out of ways to say that this is as Undertale as Undertale gets.

Every route has its own unique story, as opposed to neutral just being a cut-off pacifist. This gives more than enough reason to play each of them, given that the game already isn't very long. All of the bosses are a fun and fair challenge, given enough time to learn except for one but y'know we'll get to that, and the characters shown throughout are fantastically written and entirely unique from the old cast. Something I'd like to go into more, the cast. Yellow could've absolutely played it safe, sticking to the pre-existing characters of Toriel or Sans or anything like that, but they didn't. The only recurring characters you will ever see are Flowey (obviously), Toriel, and Asgore. Even then, those last two will be on screen at most for a few minutes. And all of the new characters have their own stories, with little to no relation to any of the original's roster. Hell, a good majority of the game is spent in entirely new areas that weren't so much as mentioned in Undertale. I'm actually amazed at just how much they managed to come up with off of an already existing story, and how... perfectly it precedes what its meant to. It is its own story that does a great job keeping within the confines of what we know is to happen already.

It's amazing, is all. The soundtrack, the characters, the gameplay, it is somehow exactly what you would expect it to be, yet even better than what it set out to foretell. A beautiful, pleasant surprise that I'm sure kid me would've been even more ecstatic to experience.


... but good LORD somebody please do something about that genocide final boss, holy hell. yes, i cheated, i gave it enough tries, i did everything in my power to make things even a little easier on myself, it is simply too much. and to be told that my best attempt got me not even halfway done, aye... skill issue, call it, i don't care, i could not do it.