"Undertale" review

If you've ever had to deal with the despicable neckbeards who call themselves "gamers" but play nothing but low-resolution old-school jrpg style games, then, like me, you'll perhaps be a little hesitant to give something like Undertale a try. You look at the screenshots and see humanoid animal things and you cringe. You see that you play as a kid and you cringe. I had read great things about Undertale, but it just looked like something meant exclusively for the realm of reddit worshipers and webcomic fanatics. Let me tell you how wrong these statements are. Undertale is an exemplary game. Let me tell you why. There will be no spoilers in this review, but after I score the game, I'm going to talk about the ending a bit. So, if you haven't already beaten the game, don't scroll past the score.
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I'll start off by talking a bit about the story. It has a stereotypically JRPG premise: Long ago, humans and monsters lived together in harmony, but then the humans declared war on the monsters and locked them underground. Humans then put a barrier over the underground that cannot be passed through by anything but a human. Human souls are incredibly powerful, but monster souls don't linger after death, and they just turn to dust. That kind of thing. This is what I would call the "overarching" backstory. Its the backstory of the world, and it is the kind of thing you always see in jrpgs. In that sense, Undertale really doesn't stand out. Where Undertale stands out is in how it handles the "inner" story. The whole monster and human thing is but a backdrop for a much more unique story. The inner story, the story that you take part in, has one of the most upsetting, devastating backstories of any game in recent memory. Jrpgs are typically made for children, so typically their stories are sunshine and rainbows and talking animals and moustache-twirling villains, but this is not the case in Undertale. I won't spoil the backstory, as part of the joy of this game is figuring it out for yourself, but it deals with much darker themes than other games of the same genre. Ok, I'm going to stop bashing jrpgs (even though they're trash) for now and just talk about what Undertale does.
Do you know what is really hard to do? Its really hard to tell a touching, emotional story when half your characters are anthropomorphic animal-monster things. You know what is even harder to do? It is even harder to tell a touching emotional story in that context while taking stretches of time to make whoever is experiencing the story howl with laughter. Undertale is a game with perfect tone balance, and I do mean perfect. There are long stretches of time in this game where I was crying from laughing so hard, and evenly interspersed with them are moments that made my stomach hurt because of how touching what was going on was. That is an incredible feat, and director Toby Fox should be commended for his stellar balance. It is a story that kept me captivated for the entire eight hours that it takes to beat the game.
I won't go into too many details, because you need to experience it for yourself (in every sense of the word. Folks who have already beaten it will know what I mean), but there are some parameters that you need to meet in order to get the "true" ending. These parameters can sometimes be a little frustrating, I will be the first to admit that. But the story remains captivating through all of it, and it all ends with the true ending; an ending that I consider to be perfect. I'll be talking about that more in depth after I score the game. So, if you've beaten the game and want to know why I think the true ending is perfect, scroll past the score when the time comes.
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Another thing that makes Undertale fantastic is its characters. Are they super three-dimensional? No. Just about every character has one character trait, but what makes that ok is how wonderfully developed every character is within the confines of that trait. Its like, despite having single character traits, every character has a well-developed backstory that somehow works its way into that single trait. Its hard to explain, so you'll just have to meet them yourself. I don't want to talk about too many of the characters, but there is one that I want to gush about right here. She is one of the first characters you meet, and her name is Toriel. She is a kind of goat thing that is, well, the scientific term for what she is is "wonderful". Never before has a character whose only character trait is "nice" been so fantastically developed. She just kind of warms your heart every time she speaks. Especially when you consider her backstory, which is just heartbreaking, you see how strong she's remained through all of the pain she's gone through, and it makes you just want to give her a big hug. I bring this up to show a point: these characters that Toby Fox has created, they are defined by single traits, but they manage to elicit emotional reactions from you if you invest yourself in their stories. That is another thing that is incredibly hard to do, and it is another thing that Mr. Fox should be commended for.
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Yet another area in which Undertale excels is in its gameplay. The premise for Undertale's gameplay is that this is a game in which you don't have to kill anybody. For every character, every boss, there is a way to win battles without killing. Your battle menu has four options: 1) Fight 2) Act 3) Item and 4) Mercy. The fight option has you attack the enemy. The act option allows you to try to talk or act your way out of conflict, and its up to you to figure out which of the act options will appease your enemy. The item option is pretty self explanatory. The mercy option allows you to flee or spare the enemy. You can only spare the enemy once they have been appeased or at least don't want to fight you anymore. If you kill an enemy, you gain EXP, which allows you to level up. If you level up, you get more HP and do more damage, but it means that you are causing more and more pain in the world. If you spare your enemies, you don't gain EXP and you don't level up, which makes things much harder going forward, but it means that you aren't hurting anybody.
The way that these battles typically work is that it takes more than one turn either to kill or spare the enemy, so, given how the combat is turn based, you spend the enemy's turn dodging their attacks. Basically there is a little box with a heart icon in it. You have to move the heart icon around to avoid attacks. No two enemies have the exact same types of attacks, and some of the bosses have attacks that are pretty meta. For instance, there is a boss that shoots attacks from various corners of the box, and you have to dodge them so that the attacks go out of the box and hit the boss. No two fights are exactly the same, and all of them require that you think outside of the box. Every kind of battle is compelling, though, and I had fun every time that I was sent into battle.
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There are just a few more things to cover quickly before I score the game and go on to talk about the ending: the world itself, the puzzles, and the soundtrack. The underground is pretty much your standard jrpg setting: You've got a magma zone, you've got a snowy area, you've got a techno-y area, and you've got a caverny area. Its nothing incredibly special, but it is still a load of fun to explore.
The puzzles are not incredibly challenging, but typically they serve as a way to serve up comedy, so that is definitely forgivable. They do their job, essentially.
The soundtrack sounds like that of an old jrpg, but it is much more varied. Every boss has its own theme, and no two themes sound exactly the same. Toby Fox, who also composed the soundtrack, explores many, many genres of music in this soundtrack, all done in an old school jrpg format. Essentially, the soundtrack stands out, and it is actually quite good.
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This has been perhaps the most vague review I've ever written, and there is a reason for that. There isn't a lot one can say about Undertale without spoiling the experience. There is, therefore, little left to say. But before I score this game, lets review. Undertale has a touching, hilarious story that is captivating from front to back, and it leaves off on a perfect ending. Its gameplay is unique and compelling, the world is fun to explore, the puzzles are entertaining, and the soundtrack is varied but always high quality. Not only that, but the replay value in Undertale is incredibly high. I'm currently halfway through my third playthrough, and it is just as good the third time as it was the first.
In the past I have been pretty liberal with my masterpiece seals and my 10/10s, but let me tell you something: Undertale is the kind of game that the masterpiece seal and the 10/10 score was made for. It is a downright perfect game, and unlike other games I've given this score to, I don't have a single complaint about Undertale. So, in case you haven't pieced it together, my score for Toby Fox's "Undertale" is:
10/10

Excellent work, Toby Fox, excellent work.



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Alright, are you ready for the ending discussion?
Please do not scroll any farther if you aren't ready.
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Here we go!
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Before I discuss the perfection of the true ending, I feel the need to discuss the backstory first. Now, Toby Fox is not super forthcoming about these things, it seems, so I could definitely be wrong at some points. Either way.
So, the backstory that the monsters give you in the neutral run is that a son was born to King Asgore and Queen Toriel, and they named him Asriel. Asriel was the sweetest, most good-hearted little boy ever to live. Then one day, a human fell into the underground, and, at the request of Asriel, the king and queen took the human child in. They were happy for a time, but then the human became sick and eventually died. His (or her) last request was that Asriel bury him in his old village. Asriel carried him back to the village of humans. The humans saw this monster carrying a dead human child, and they attacked him. But Asriel could not bring himself to do anything but good, so he just smiled and took the beatings and the stabbings. This is a little boy, let me remind you. After escaping from the village, Asriel collapsed in the palace and died in his father's arms. The king declared that he would take seven human souls, destroy the barrier, and make humanity pay for the death of his son.
That is the backstory that the monsters tell you, anyway.
In reality, the human child was the sheer embodiment of evil. He terrorized his new brother, Asriel, relentlessly, and Asriel followed the child's commands because he just wanted his brother to love him. The child poisoned the king, his adopted father, and when that didn't work, the child poisoned himself to make his new family suffer. He then requested that his naive, sweet-hearted brother bury him in his old village, knowing that the humans would attack him if they saw him carrying a human child. In the end, his plan worked, Asriel was killed, and the king sat underground even though he eventually found the power to pass through the barrier, all because he couldn't come to terms with the fact that deep in his heart, he forgave his evil human son for all the horrible things he did. Queen Toriel could not stand to hear the kind of hatred her husband was spouting, and she left him to guard the entry to the underground and protect humans from him.
When Toriel left, she took Asriel's ashes and scattered them in a field of gold flowers at the entrance to the underground.
Behind the scenes, though, Asgore instructed the royal scientist, Dr. Alphys, to try and recreate the power of a human soul in a non-human body. The experiments were largely a failure, but she did manage to grant an object with the will to live. The object was a golden flower, one of the flowers that Asriel's ashes had been spread on. The flower, who named itself "Flowey," and who is the first character the player meets, was alive and took on all of Asriel's memories, but without a soul, he had none of Asriel's sweetness. Instead, this flower had all of the terror that the human child had caused, the memory of being beaten and stabbed to death as a child, but no soul. Flowey became convinced that there was nothing but evil in the world, and so he became the most evil of them all.
At the end of a neutral playthrough, if you choose to spare King Asgore after you fight him, Flowey enters the scene and kills him instead. He then takes all the human souls the king had acquired and became godlike. If you beat him, he tells you that if you play through again without killing a single thing, then you'd get the happy ending.
At the end of such a playthrough, you start the true ending, and all of the friends you made along the way show up to stop you from fighting Asgore, and Flowey takes all of them prisoner and steals their souls. With this, he takes on his true identity: Prince Asriel as an adult. You fight Asriel and call out to the souls of your friends, causing them to come back, but then, you sense another soul inside. You realize that, even though Asriel is long dead, his soul has come back and more or less become one with flowey. You call out to Asriel, and the thing you are fighting starts to cry, but doesn't stop fighting you. You keep on calling out to Asriel's soul, and after a few more attempts, he keeps attacking you, but he refuses to kill you, and he cries progressively more. Its at this point that Asriel takes over completely. He has mistaken you for his long lost brother, and just like in life, he just wants his brother to love him. You finally reach Asriel's soul, and he once again is a little boy, now wracked by insecurity and depression. He realizes that you aren't the brother he lost, and that he will fade away again before too long and once again become flowey. He apologizes for all of the pain he has caused as the flower, and before he leaves, you give him a big hug as he cries it out a little more.

After you embrace Asriel, it is revealed that your real name is Frisk, and the name was chose at the beginning was the name of the brother. You awaken in the palace, surrounded by your friends. You destroy the barrier, and everyone goes off to live the lives they've always dreamed of. You get the option to live in your old village or live with Toriel. The credits roll, showing the kinds of lives everyone is now leading. And then, it shows you asleep in a bed. The door to your room opens, and Toriel walks in with a piece of pie. She leaves it on the floor for you, and she gently closes the door behind her.

Allow me to tell you why this ending is perfect.
I like cyclicality in my endings, I like for endings to mirror beginnings, and this is that kind of ending. In the beginning, you take a nap and Toriel leaves you a piece of pie, and in the end the same is happening. This is the kind of sunshine and rainbows ending that I love. It doesn't feel forced. It feels like this is the kind of result you've achieved by refusing to take a life.
But there is more to it than that.
This ending is perfect because of how it handles Asriel. My heart breaks for poor little Asriel. If you think about it, the entire backstory is about the darker side of unconditional love. Asriel was just a sweet little boy who loved his brother despite all the horrible things he did, and in the end, he met a gruesome fate (as a child. Most of us sobbed our eyes out wen we scraped out knees. He was beaten and stabbed to death) because he loved everybody too much. That is what I mean when I say that the backstory is absolutely devastating. The King and Queen lost two children in one day, both of them to suicides, if you really think about it.
The reason that this ending is perfect is because, even though Asriel is only alive again for a brief time, his final memories are now feeling the love that his brother would never give him. The last thing he experiences as his soul moves on for good is a hug and forgiveness instead of fear and pain.
Even though the true ending is amazing just because of how happy a note it ends on, the thing that makes it perfect is that, in the end, you get to right one of the great wrongs of this story.

Granted, like I said, the creator tends to be a little vague here, so this is an interpretation informed by some degree of research, this is by no means the be all end all interpretation. If you have your own interpretation, shoot me an email! I love discussing this game.