CyberChaosV2
Lord of Altera
So! I thought back to a while ago when Immerael had an excellent idea to gather some other people and do a game review thread where multiple games were reviewed by multiple people with the intent on finding diamonds in the rough, or bringing back old classics, though I think it was just any game could be reveiwed, I don't quite remember... IN ANYCASE! I liked the idea, and it only recently hit me that some of our reviews were never posted, and seeing that Imm has a good amount on his plate, I decided to step up and do the reviews myself. I'm going to be taking a good look at games and giving my honest opinion on them. Please remember that this is exactly that, an opinion, as much as I'd want it to be fact, there are many ways for games to be taken. Now, I'm going to use facts as much as I can to explain my thoughts on why I see the games the way they are, but that doesn't mean my own personal opinion on the game will be completely neutral, some games I'll give a bit more of a positive score for personal reasons, some I'll give less. That being said, let the reviews begin! What's our first subject?
Ah Undertale, the game you've probably heard more than enough about, what with goat mom, determination memes, spaghetti, bad puns, rule 34 Tori- i mean AHEM. That being said, Undertale is a game created by Toby Fox and simply hasn't stopped being talked about for a few months now, supposedly revolutionizing the game industry with the fact that you can complete the game without killing a single thing... but is that really so revolutionary? There are many things good, and a lot of things not so good about the game, though the fanbase isn't too keen on focusing on the stuff wrong with the game, always pointing out how it seems to be the next best thing since the "Thomas the Tank Engine" Dragon mod for Skyrim... okay, maybe not that one specifically but you get what I mean. In these reviews, I'll select certain categories that the genre of the game needs to excel in (Since a game like this really shouldn't be judged on controls given how simple they are) In Undertale's case, I'll be taking a look at its Story, Combat, Characters, Music, and Design.
Story: (SPOILERS! It's been stated many times that this game is best played without knowing ANYTHING about it!)
Having said that, I'll admit I looked up quite a bit about the game, since I don't like paying $$$ for a game I know nothing about, I usually watch a lot of gameplay footage, try it out, or get games in a similar series. The story is... honestly not as good as I thought it'd be... You play Frisk (Name is found out later) a human who fell down a REALLY big hole of which should've killed or at LEAST temporarily crippled you, only to find yourself in the home of monsters, creatures that or human-esque in appearance, though with many differences making them much different appearance wise. As you journey through the underground, you choose whether to kill, spare, or run from the many monsters you encounter. The game judges you based on how many monsters you kill, mainly focusing on the "Bosses" you encounter. I honestly didn't like the story because, without saying much, the Neutral ending is unfulfilling, even if you look at the different neutral endings you can get by killing and sparing different monsters. The Genocide ending in which you kill every monster that comes your way is... strange to say the least, and quite honestly ALSO isn't really fulfilling as it basically tells you to start the game over. The peaceful ending is obviously what the other two endings are trying to push you towards, and feels so much like a darker version of a carebear story that it's not funny... I understand that they're trying to give this idea of being able to spare anyone you came across... but I highly doubt a genocidal flower that wants you to kill people would actually apologize and suddenly turn good cause you kept trying to give him a hug. I get it, it's revolutionary... but does that really make it good? No, no it doesn't, take a look at "Birth of a Nation" a film portraying KKK style beliefs, doesn't sound good does it? "Birth of a Nation" was the first movie to successfully be filmed at night without making the visuals hard for the audience to see, revolutionizing the industry... but it wasn't really acclaimed for too long, it was really only successful because there was a lot of passionate KKK members around at that time, so it was pandering to a crowd that had their thoughts voiced. In this case though... what else makes Undertale revolutionary? What about its combat system?
Combat:
Definitely not. The combat in this game is a mix of Bullet hell and Turn based RPG. It's actually quite fun in the beginning, but gets old pretty quick when you fight the same enemies over and over again. The only solace I found in my boredom and aggravation at the combat (I'm not the best at bullet hells) were the bosses who presented different ways of the combat taking place, whether by making you affected by gravity, making you block instead of dodge, giving you the ability to shoot back during a bullet hell, or testing you on what you've learned, the bosses were great! The problem is that when you fight the bosses, it's both the first and last times you get to try out these new forms of combat, making you have a hard time in the beginning, but then ditch the knowledge of how it works due to you not needing to remember. You attack in this game by pressing the "Fight" button, timing your attack, and then mashing the key to increase your damage. Your other 2 ways out of fights are the "Flee" option, which has a chance not to work, and the "Spare" option, which in order to use, you must perform the correct "Acts" in the fight. Now, I actually like how the spare option is designed, there are some characters that it makes sense in what you do, others where it's not so much. Some of your acts even affect the next bullet hell setting. So if combat isn't the best, why's this game so damn popular? The characters.
Characters:
Let's face it, if you've heard of Undertale, you've probably heard of Goat Mom, Spaghetti Skeleton, or Pun Skeleton (Toriel, Papyrus, and Sans) The characters in this game are very well made, each has their own personality and traits that make them seem a lot more real, as well as different quirks that make it so they're not strictly stereotypical. I like how you interact with each character, and the humor that comes from befriending them. Personally, my favorite character is Asgore, the king of the underground who has been killing any fallen humans that have been found to gather 7 human souls. With 7 human souls, he would be able to absorb them, gain the power equivalent to that of a god, and break the barrier that keeps monsters underground and from seeing the sun... and he hates every moment of doing it, thinking about it, and prepping for it. He's a gentle soul, likes tea, and misses his wife (Toriel) dearly, but accepts that, as a King, it's his job to care for his people, which means killing humans to help them leave the underground. He's such a tragic character, and if you spare him in the fight, you can see the relief in his face and the tears starting to come from his eyes as he sees that he doesn't have to kill you, even talking about taking you to meet his wife for a chance at being a family. He's not the brightest, as Toriel tears him a new one for things he could've done better, but it's obvious he regrets not thinking of those options and is truly regretful of what he's done. I think this song put it best for his thoughts in general-
that visual though
Music:
Speaking of songs, how's the musical score for Undertale?
FUCKING
AWESOME
Each song perfectly portrays the characters feelings, as well as the atmosphere. If you go through a peaceful run, each character song is more upbeat and kinda cheesy, save the ones that you fight to decide which path you're on/ don't get to fight in genocide run (Toriel, Asgore, and Papyrus) but even then, Toriel's song is sad and like a lullaby for a mother to put their child to sleep, Asgore's song is sad, but strong, representing how he knows his duty is to kill, something he hates. Papyrus' song is incredibly upbeat and friendly, representing fun no matter what and his desire to make you a friend even though he's supposed to capture you... but what about Genocide songs? If you go through a genocide run, songs tend to be more... dark... dark and uncaring, or determined. A perfect example of difference is between "Spear of Justice" and "Battle against a True Hero" Shown below
Played when fighting Undyne in a peaceful run.
played when fighting Undyne, the Undying in a genocide run.
I personally like the genocide run music better, but that's because I like darker and more epic music~
Though the nice part is that, no matter the run, they all have an 8 bit feel to them, which stays true to the game's design.
Design: The game is designed like an older rpg, very pixellated, though with more animations. an interesting thing to note is that with many of the fights, the entities are more animated than they're weapons, maybe symbollizing the fact that people have much more to them than fighting? That, or i'm just seeing things XD The design fits the game's setting, in that it seems to be trying to take you back to your roots of gameplay from the old days and giving a kind of "What if" for if games back then were like this one, though that seems a bit egotistical to me as it's like saying "What if games were as good and thoughtful as I am?" and just seems a bit presumtuous, but has a pretty good effect nevertheless.
Overall: Undertale is a great game, but not for attacking "Gamer Mentality" as gamer mentality isn't killing everything to reach your goal, contrary to popular belief. Gamer mentality is more of one of 2 things-
1: complete EVERYTHING, get every goal, every secret, every hidden item, every hidden scene and outcome. The game certainly doesn't punish that, rewarding you with different endings based on who you did and didn't spare, changing every time.
2: Play casually, take your time with the game and make the decisions based on what you think should happen. Kinda punishes by making some of the choices hard to accomplish, like sparing Toriel. In order to spare Toriel, you need to use the spare option about 20+ times before she'll let you finally spare her, I mean geez woman!
Also, for a game that seems to exemplify saving everything... why do they make the first boss so hard to spare? Because they want you to kill Toriel obviously, you kill her and it's supposed to bring on this feeling of guilt to make you not want to kill others, which is also why your attack does SIGNIFICANTLY more damage when she's lower in health.
In conclusion, Undertale is... not entirely worth $15 in my opinion... it's a wonderful game and can certainly help you waste away a lot of time, but has no replayability value once you've gotten the genocide and peaceful endings, as the neutrals number far too many and it's easier to just look them up on youtube. I personally give the game a 7.5/10, would've given it more, but here's probably the biggest problem Undertale has...
The Fanbase
Dear Gods the fanbase, they're the reason it took me MONTHS just to handle people talking about this game! I had someone at my college talk about it...
they
wouldn't
stop
everytime I told them I'd check it out, they'd scream at me that I had to play it blind. When I got frustrated, I told them I'd play it blind if I could do so for free, asking them to either send me a copy if it was so good, or let me play their version (This is a month into the whole "YOU GOTS TA PLAY UNDERTALE MAN, IT'S DA BEST GAME EVAR!" argument :/) knowing how they'd respond... no. So, after another week, I told them I would never check it out, and if they mentioned it one more time, I'd *Sentence omitted* that being said, it took a while, but they left me alone. I checked it out about a month back and worked my way through the genocide ending first, knowing I'm not too good at killing characters I like that aren't mine. had to restart otherwise the peaceful ending would've gotten ruined with the choice I'd made, but overall, I didn't really feel the game was worth it. It tried to make me feel sad, but that's hard to do when you're aware of the fact that you're staring at the computer screen, it's already built up it was a game, and honestly didn't really do anything new. Flowey saving over your file? Please... Psycho mantis did something scarier when he judged me on the games I play, YOU DON'T KNOW ME MANTIS! YOU HEAR ME?! all in all, good game, but fanbase REALLY needs to either shut up, or tone things down with the likeage, it's the same thing going on with Steven Universe, it's widely disliked because of how violent fans tend to get when the content is criticized, or not really liked. People have their own likes, I'm respecting this, and all others should as well.
Got any games you want me to review? Got questions to ask me about games I play? Feel free to post below! Next post that'll come out once I've finished the sets for Anhald and the Sangria Regime will be on Gauntlet: Dark Legacy. Beware! The bias is strong with this game...
Story: (SPOILERS! It's been stated many times that this game is best played without knowing ANYTHING about it!)
Having said that, I'll admit I looked up quite a bit about the game, since I don't like paying $$$ for a game I know nothing about, I usually watch a lot of gameplay footage, try it out, or get games in a similar series. The story is... honestly not as good as I thought it'd be... You play Frisk (Name is found out later) a human who fell down a REALLY big hole of which should've killed or at LEAST temporarily crippled you, only to find yourself in the home of monsters, creatures that or human-esque in appearance, though with many differences making them much different appearance wise. As you journey through the underground, you choose whether to kill, spare, or run from the many monsters you encounter. The game judges you based on how many monsters you kill, mainly focusing on the "Bosses" you encounter. I honestly didn't like the story because, without saying much, the Neutral ending is unfulfilling, even if you look at the different neutral endings you can get by killing and sparing different monsters. The Genocide ending in which you kill every monster that comes your way is... strange to say the least, and quite honestly ALSO isn't really fulfilling as it basically tells you to start the game over. The peaceful ending is obviously what the other two endings are trying to push you towards, and feels so much like a darker version of a carebear story that it's not funny... I understand that they're trying to give this idea of being able to spare anyone you came across... but I highly doubt a genocidal flower that wants you to kill people would actually apologize and suddenly turn good cause you kept trying to give him a hug. I get it, it's revolutionary... but does that really make it good? No, no it doesn't, take a look at "Birth of a Nation" a film portraying KKK style beliefs, doesn't sound good does it? "Birth of a Nation" was the first movie to successfully be filmed at night without making the visuals hard for the audience to see, revolutionizing the industry... but it wasn't really acclaimed for too long, it was really only successful because there was a lot of passionate KKK members around at that time, so it was pandering to a crowd that had their thoughts voiced. In this case though... what else makes Undertale revolutionary? What about its combat system?
Combat:
Definitely not. The combat in this game is a mix of Bullet hell and Turn based RPG. It's actually quite fun in the beginning, but gets old pretty quick when you fight the same enemies over and over again. The only solace I found in my boredom and aggravation at the combat (I'm not the best at bullet hells) were the bosses who presented different ways of the combat taking place, whether by making you affected by gravity, making you block instead of dodge, giving you the ability to shoot back during a bullet hell, or testing you on what you've learned, the bosses were great! The problem is that when you fight the bosses, it's both the first and last times you get to try out these new forms of combat, making you have a hard time in the beginning, but then ditch the knowledge of how it works due to you not needing to remember. You attack in this game by pressing the "Fight" button, timing your attack, and then mashing the key to increase your damage. Your other 2 ways out of fights are the "Flee" option, which has a chance not to work, and the "Spare" option, which in order to use, you must perform the correct "Acts" in the fight. Now, I actually like how the spare option is designed, there are some characters that it makes sense in what you do, others where it's not so much. Some of your acts even affect the next bullet hell setting. So if combat isn't the best, why's this game so damn popular? The characters.
Characters:
Let's face it, if you've heard of Undertale, you've probably heard of Goat Mom, Spaghetti Skeleton, or Pun Skeleton (Toriel, Papyrus, and Sans) The characters in this game are very well made, each has their own personality and traits that make them seem a lot more real, as well as different quirks that make it so they're not strictly stereotypical. I like how you interact with each character, and the humor that comes from befriending them. Personally, my favorite character is Asgore, the king of the underground who has been killing any fallen humans that have been found to gather 7 human souls. With 7 human souls, he would be able to absorb them, gain the power equivalent to that of a god, and break the barrier that keeps monsters underground and from seeing the sun... and he hates every moment of doing it, thinking about it, and prepping for it. He's a gentle soul, likes tea, and misses his wife (Toriel) dearly, but accepts that, as a King, it's his job to care for his people, which means killing humans to help them leave the underground. He's such a tragic character, and if you spare him in the fight, you can see the relief in his face and the tears starting to come from his eyes as he sees that he doesn't have to kill you, even talking about taking you to meet his wife for a chance at being a family. He's not the brightest, as Toriel tears him a new one for things he could've done better, but it's obvious he regrets not thinking of those options and is truly regretful of what he's done. I think this song put it best for his thoughts in general-
Music:
Speaking of songs, how's the musical score for Undertale?
FUCKING
AWESOME
Each song perfectly portrays the characters feelings, as well as the atmosphere. If you go through a peaceful run, each character song is more upbeat and kinda cheesy, save the ones that you fight to decide which path you're on/ don't get to fight in genocide run (Toriel, Asgore, and Papyrus) but even then, Toriel's song is sad and like a lullaby for a mother to put their child to sleep, Asgore's song is sad, but strong, representing how he knows his duty is to kill, something he hates. Papyrus' song is incredibly upbeat and friendly, representing fun no matter what and his desire to make you a friend even though he's supposed to capture you... but what about Genocide songs? If you go through a genocide run, songs tend to be more... dark... dark and uncaring, or determined. A perfect example of difference is between "Spear of Justice" and "Battle against a True Hero" Shown below
Played when fighting Undyne in a peaceful run.
played when fighting Undyne, the Undying in a genocide run.
I personally like the genocide run music better, but that's because I like darker and more epic music~
Though the nice part is that, no matter the run, they all have an 8 bit feel to them, which stays true to the game's design.
Design: The game is designed like an older rpg, very pixellated, though with more animations. an interesting thing to note is that with many of the fights, the entities are more animated than they're weapons, maybe symbollizing the fact that people have much more to them than fighting? That, or i'm just seeing things XD The design fits the game's setting, in that it seems to be trying to take you back to your roots of gameplay from the old days and giving a kind of "What if" for if games back then were like this one, though that seems a bit egotistical to me as it's like saying "What if games were as good and thoughtful as I am?" and just seems a bit presumtuous, but has a pretty good effect nevertheless.
Overall: Undertale is a great game, but not for attacking "Gamer Mentality" as gamer mentality isn't killing everything to reach your goal, contrary to popular belief. Gamer mentality is more of one of 2 things-
1: complete EVERYTHING, get every goal, every secret, every hidden item, every hidden scene and outcome. The game certainly doesn't punish that, rewarding you with different endings based on who you did and didn't spare, changing every time.
2: Play casually, take your time with the game and make the decisions based on what you think should happen. Kinda punishes by making some of the choices hard to accomplish, like sparing Toriel. In order to spare Toriel, you need to use the spare option about 20+ times before she'll let you finally spare her, I mean geez woman!
Also, for a game that seems to exemplify saving everything... why do they make the first boss so hard to spare? Because they want you to kill Toriel obviously, you kill her and it's supposed to bring on this feeling of guilt to make you not want to kill others, which is also why your attack does SIGNIFICANTLY more damage when she's lower in health.
In conclusion, Undertale is... not entirely worth $15 in my opinion... it's a wonderful game and can certainly help you waste away a lot of time, but has no replayability value once you've gotten the genocide and peaceful endings, as the neutrals number far too many and it's easier to just look them up on youtube. I personally give the game a 7.5/10, would've given it more, but here's probably the biggest problem Undertale has...
The Fanbase
Dear Gods the fanbase, they're the reason it took me MONTHS just to handle people talking about this game! I had someone at my college talk about it...
they
wouldn't
stop
everytime I told them I'd check it out, they'd scream at me that I had to play it blind. When I got frustrated, I told them I'd play it blind if I could do so for free, asking them to either send me a copy if it was so good, or let me play their version (This is a month into the whole "YOU GOTS TA PLAY UNDERTALE MAN, IT'S DA BEST GAME EVAR!" argument :/) knowing how they'd respond... no. So, after another week, I told them I would never check it out, and if they mentioned it one more time, I'd *Sentence omitted* that being said, it took a while, but they left me alone. I checked it out about a month back and worked my way through the genocide ending first, knowing I'm not too good at killing characters I like that aren't mine. had to restart otherwise the peaceful ending would've gotten ruined with the choice I'd made, but overall, I didn't really feel the game was worth it. It tried to make me feel sad, but that's hard to do when you're aware of the fact that you're staring at the computer screen, it's already built up it was a game, and honestly didn't really do anything new. Flowey saving over your file? Please... Psycho mantis did something scarier when he judged me on the games I play, YOU DON'T KNOW ME MANTIS! YOU HEAR ME?! all in all, good game, but fanbase REALLY needs to either shut up, or tone things down with the likeage, it's the same thing going on with Steven Universe, it's widely disliked because of how violent fans tend to get when the content is criticized, or not really liked. People have their own likes, I'm respecting this, and all others should as well.
Got any games you want me to review? Got questions to ask me about games I play? Feel free to post below! Next post that'll come out once I've finished the sets for Anhald and the Sangria Regime will be on Gauntlet: Dark Legacy. Beware! The bias is strong with this game...