Undertale: Rhyming game review
xandermartin98 In the nearly eighteen years since I was born, an awful lot has changed in the world of Nintendo. Mario has pretty much officially become their equivalent to Call Of Duty, and the general originality of their games has even more officially plummeted to an all-time low.The same honestly be said for pretty much every major game company nowadays, most especially Capcom; I wouldn't be surprised in the least bit if those greedy, money-grubbing bastards literally charged you just to mow their lawn.
However, in the late September of last year, in 2015, something truly amazing happened in the United States...it was a world-changing event of which we all caught an early firsthand glimpse.
Toby Fox, the creator of Radiation's Halloween Hack, followed through on his previous, almost equally overrated success by creating a world-(in)famous independently developed role-playing game that is so freaking amazing that I am honestly at a loss for words to mince.
He created Undertale, a game that filled our world with a certain bittersweet happiness that it hadn't truly felt in over a decade; about the closest that any other game has ever come to being quite as emotional as this one would have to be Mother 3, which I thankfully have also played.
Undertale is a wonderfully strange, freakishly well-written, and truly one-of-a-kind game that is simply overflowing with charm, and best of all, it even allows you to play through the whole damned thing while leaving basically every single monster completely free of harm.
The storyline is absolutely freaking genius in just about every possible sense of the word. The already colossal amount of world-building accomplished within the game's dwarfishly small time span of a length is matched only by how deliciously cartoonishly its humor is served.
Whereas most big-budget triple-A games (Borderlands 2, for instance, which I also love by the way) have about as much storytelling depth as a song about a bathtub written by Stephen Lynch, this indie game is comparatively about as deep as the freaking Mariana Trench.
The characters have incredibly strong and charismatic yet lovably down-to-earth personalities, to the point where they will frequently make you feel like you're talking to real people. In fact, even the generic enemies you battle throughout the game are quite cute and charming, if a bit too feeble.
The battle system is a very creatively designed, astonishingly inventive and addictively engaging mix of standard RPG gameplay and bullet-hell madness; once a Hard Mode featuring at least three times as many enemy encounters (as well as more challenging enemies) is finally added, this game will officially complete its transition into becoming pure concentrated digital bliss.
All in all, Undertale is a short but epic tale of a blank-faced, silent robot who journeys restlessly through a huge cave and meets all these cute and cuddly little bunnies...er, I mean, monsters.
A lot of crazy stuff happens, the king of said monsters attempts to finish his collection of seven Dragon Balls...I mean, human souls, and then an incredibly disturbing plot twist or two occurs.
In the end, the Barrier preventing exit from the underworld is finally broken, and not another words of the monsters' previous lives is ever spoken.
However, just like all happy endings, this one definitely isn't going to last forever. Your inevitable curiosity as a player will eventually seduce you into inevitably attempting the Genocide Run, where the game's morality system really comes full circle and will definitely make you shiver.
If you truly have the heart (or lack thereof, for that matter) to brutally murder every single adorable and lovable thing in the entire game without even a single shred of conscience or mercy, then congratulations, my friend; you are a truly despicable person, and as a result of your utterly horrific actions, the game will consequently come to an equally despicable end.
Need I also mention that this freaking game in particular has a soundtrack like no other I've ever heard? Its profoundly wide, colorfully eccentric and phenomenally executed range of musical styles, coupled with its distinctively bittersweet tone, makes it head-and-shoulders above even most of Nintendo's music, let alone Microsoft's and Sony's generic orchestrated setpiece music herd.
If I could come up with one legitimate complaint for this game (other than the fact that the game is quite frankly way too short and easy), it would have to be the fact that the graphics are admittedly pretty dull and most certainly pitiful compared to something likeWind Waker.
Not that I didn't enjoy the art style or anything, as it is indeed a rather creative mix of the graphical capabilities of multiple different (mostly retro) game systems over the years and actually looks quite commendable for something that was made in RPG Maker.
What the game (mostly) lacks in staggering graphical detail, however, it makes up for with flying colors through its absolutely magnificent display of interactive storytelling as well as gameplay that actually requires skill, if perhaps a questionably minimal amount of said trait.
This game doesn't exactly start with a bang, but it gradually kicks into gear at an almost immaculately paced rate and will absolutely blow your socks off with its finale. By the time you reach the final boss of the True Pacifist route, I sincerely promise that you will be shedding tears of sorrowful joy from how beautifully tragic it becomes, and you will do so valiantly.
All things considered, Undertale is, without a doubt, one of the top 20 most overrated, yet also shockingly greatest, video games of all time. Don't let its obnoxiously cancerous, comically overblown, rapidly festering fanbase spawned from the deepest f*****orial depths of Tumblr deceive you; this game lives up to its name (though probably not its hype) and is anything but mere clickbait.
To make a ridiculously long story short, I freaking adore this simply fabulous role-playing masterpiece to death, and in hopes that its desperately needed Hard Mode will eventually be finished, I am most definitely giving it at least 9 out of 10 dollars just for its story alone. And I shall now take a very important and honorable vow...
A vow that every gamer who considers himself such fancy and egotistical words as "classy" and "intellectual" and all of that stupid pointless bollocks has absolutely NO excuse NOT to play this beauteous masterwork; if you're reading this and you still haven't bought the game on Steam yet, then you have my word:
Do it immediately, as soon as humanly possible, whatever, just do it NOW.
I have only one thing left to say about this game, and that is WOW. Just. WOW.
(sobs) It's BEAUTIFUL...
Comments
That moment when you are reviewing a game like Undertale and you suddenly realize that you are somehow being even MORE pretentious than the game itself (cringes internally) - xandermartin98