Honestly even though I like the idea of the battle system on paper doing any one thing with that system more than once was just a bit too much. Like it's interesting but it makes things unnecessarily long. So doing random encounters is excruciating. And the boss battles were difficult enough that trying to master the patterns just started to become a pain in the ass.
I did get frustrated that in some cases having to dance around and convince enemies not to fight without just running away gets difficult and repetitive and such when you have to do it. I remember the Metatron battles in particular being annoyingly long.
I'm trying to think back to my playthrough, I'm pretty sure I diddnt kill Goatmom, but I can't remember. What happens when you dont? I recall her being like "I guess you're just stubborn like the others, go on then"
And then she never answers her phone. Bah
If Luke hasn't passed the waterfalls I mean, that's only maybe a bit into the game? 1/3 or so? There's lots after.
But while it's fun I got to a point near the end of my playthrough where I realised I was on the neutral path because in the training rooms I whomped one or two froggits and ate some vegetoids where I was like "I'm not gonna look up, spoilers but if I come across them that's ok too..."
I think there is one spoiler someone should know starting Undertale - the fact that all encounters, save one, can be solved non-violently. Otherwise you might think some aren't possible.
Yeah, but it comes down to a guessing game that is against a clock, even if you know the patterns really well, because you're gonna tire, you'll lose focus, your fingers will slip, and you'll run out of healing items. Killing small shit gives you a bigger buffer, but the first kill locks you out of the "best" ending.
There's a line of dialogue I think a lot of players either miss or don't give as much weight to as they should, and that results in frustration for them later when they can't figure out how to resolve battles peacefully. One of the tutorial Froggits in the Ruins explains that "Spare" is basically another way of saying "I don't want to fight", and that you may have to use that option even when the enemy's name isn't yellow. This is a key line because using the "Spare" option repeatedly is very important to solving the major boss battles once the "Act" commands have ceased being useful. Eventually you just have to keep refusing to fight despite the boss continually trying to fight you with more bullet hell attacks, and your dogged refusal to cause them harm allows you to advance through those bullet hell sections without having to attack back. For example...
As was pointed out in this great video linked earlier in the thread, you have to hit the "Spare" button nearly TWENTY TIMES in order to save Toriel's life. This is so the game really makes sure you understand how sparing works and what lengths you might have to go to in order to save everyone. After you hit "Spare" a couple times, slight changes in the dialogue & Toriel's expression indicate that something different might be happening, and so that encourages you to keep pressing the button to see more. You are rewarded with bigger strings of dialogue that advance the situation further, and thus you keep pressing that button, knowing that you're getting somewhere the more unique lines of dialogue you hear. Eventually, once you've seen all the dialogue, you've reached the end of the fight. It's a great way to make sure the player knows what they're doing, I feel. I just wish that there was a little more reinforcement before the battle to make sure the player knows that hitting "Spare" multiple times is a thing they should try.
I do agree that it's good to see where the game takes you on a first playthrough, just going by your own instincts. The Neutral Ending is still very effective in its own way, and the differences you get depending on exactly which bosses/how many other enemies you killed are very interesting to see. Also, the Neutral Ending does tell you straight-up that you can get a happier ending by playing the game again without killing anything. So even if you had no idea that 100% pacifism was a thing you could do in Undertale, you are eventually told explicitly to try playing that way, which will lead the curious player to figure out how to complete the Pacifist Route on their own, no forums or walkthroughs needed.
Still, not everyone has the luxury of time or patience to play a game multiple times, especially not with so many other competing forms of entertainment. So yeah, as interesting as doing Neutral first and then the other playthroughs is, it is more beneficial to go full Pacifist from the outset to get the most amount of content in the shortest amount of time.
Unless I'm missing something really, really great later on, I don't see much point in continuing.
Not counting the Pacifist Route stuff, I would say the really, really great something you've yet to see would be the final leg of the Neutral Route, once you reach the king's castle. Even if you never complete the Pacifist Route afterward, the story and lore elements start to ramp up there in the Neutral Route, and the final boss stuff, just... Wow. If you have any desire whatsoever to give Undertale one last shot, I'd recommend putting in a few more hours to reach the Neutral Ending. After getting through Waterfall, you basically only have one or two more major areas to get through before reaching the castle.
That said: if you really don't find the humour and story more than mildly entertaining so far, and you aren't willing to put up with more based on a promise that maybe you'll enjoy the ending(s) more? I get that. You don't have to force yourself to like something, and there's plenty of other great stuff out there to play/read/watch that you could be consuming instead. I do think Undertale is a truly great game; if you don't mind seeing all the major spoilers at this point, I'd actually recommend watching the video I linked under the spoiler tag to get a sense of what people feel are the biggest strengths of the game for them. But it's still not a game for everyone, especially if the humour style doesn't jibe with you or you don't have the time to experiment a lot with it. If you've determined by this point that it's not the game for you, that's cool.
Your whole post just goes to show what has disappointed me the most about the game. Sure, the frog told me that I didn't have to kill the monsters I encountered, and I spared or fled some along the way. I even tried to spare the bosses. I had no idea that I should be sparing them 20 times in a row.
But even knowing that, and knowing their are different possible endings in the game based on what or who I kill or spare, there's STILL no way for me to appreciate the "different-ness" of the ending I will see. First, I have nothing to compare it to. Second, the only way I could know a different ending was possible would be to reach the end and be told by the game then that I should try not killing anything. Third, I'd then have to put in another 5 hours to see a different ending? How different?
To be clear, my complaint with this game isn't that the characters aren't fun. They are! Funny and entertaining. The battles are fun, if a bit easy and repetitive. The puzzles are okay, but again, not challenging at all.
My problem is that the only way I can even appreciate that my actions mean anything within the game is through this forum thread. There is nothing within the game that lets me appreciate anything I do has any impact. Not on this first play though. And if I'm expected to play a game multiple times (see: Faster Than Light) that game should be one or two hours long at the very longest! My "reward" for taking an option that seemed like a good way to play is to remove fun from the game. And the only reason I now know that is intentional game design is, again, this forum thread.
Would agree that the game should be at least a little shorter considering that all the content lies in a minimum of two playthroughs, or three if you don't go full pacifist for your first one. Maybe take out one of the areas or shorten the lengths of each area. 5-6 hours of gameplay is definitely a flaw in a game designed to be played repeatedly.
That said, I'd say there actually is enough significant new content in a True Pacifist run to justify the second playthrough. The most obvious thing being that if you don't kill major bosses, they're around to give you big new scenes and dialogue, including extra challenges surrounding the process of befriending them. Second thing being that the game remembers what you've already done, even if you reset your save file.
You actually will get changes in dialogue acknowledging things like the fact that you've seen Toriel die once already, and how it's like seeing a ghost to see her alive again. Some parts of puzzles and scenes are also shortened a bit if you've played them already, both for convenience's sake and to play into the whole "saving is basically time travel" theme. Plus there are so many alternate dialogue choices you can make that seeing all the different lines means you won't have to sit through all the same dialogue again. The normal enemy battles are really the only thing that gets too repetitive once you've figured out how to peacefully resolve them all. And lastly: there is a whole new section to play before the castle that is unique to the Pacifist Route, and it reveals a ton of stuff about the lore that everyone talks about. After getting through that area, you're taken to the castle for the start of the Pacifist Ending, which is one hell of a ride.
The most strikingly different playthrough would definitely be the No Mercy Route. Once you trigger it, it's dramatically different and also significantly faster than the other routes. It also has the two most challenging boss battles in the entire game. To trigger, you have to kill all enemies in the Ruins until you get a screen that says "But nobody came". Continue in this manner for each new area, killing every single enemy until that screen comes up, and of course killing all bosses with a vengeance.
Again though, you wouldn't necessarily guess that playing through again would be incredibly different each time, so I concede that point as well. Not everyone is willing to gamble on playing through what they suspect might be the same content again just for a different ending. If you don't have the time or drive to experiment, you do indeed have to be assured by outside parties that the multiple playthroughs are worthwhile.
At least I tried. I laughed out loud when Papyrus revealed his random tile pattern. Then I killed him. Then I was sad.
Based on multiple videos, streams and this testimony, I feel that I'm in minority when I kept asking for the clarifications to the rules of that puzzle, until the situation resolved itself.
Mad Dummy is the first encounter where I realized the bosses in this game were for real, no offense to Papyrus. Everything from that point forward kept surprising me with how clever it was.
The difficulty ramps at such a perfect pace throughout the game. Especially if you consider Genocide the true true final ending...
I think the game could be a bit harder. I know that some people are less into the battle mini game and it's bullet dodging, but I feel that for the pacifist run to work, it should actually feel like real challenge, one that would seriously push you into considering doing some level grinding, just to make a hard boss little easier.
I'm really hoping we get a full Hard Mode at some point. Maybe with the wild success of the game Toby Fox will consider it?
There is a short Hard Mode you can get by naming the fallen human "Frisk" at the beginning. Currently it only lasts until the end of the Ruins, ending with a screen saying the full version is "Coming... Maybe. Eh, don't count on it."
Rym's link includes a quote from another review of Undertale, which I think was a brilliant interpretation of the game's fight mechanics. I'll repost here so you don't have to unearth it in the article:
Sincerity is also why I don’t love Undertale, one of the most beloved games of the year. Initially, I was excited about Undertale’s determination to challenge the flimsy kill-or-be-killed premise of so many games. But the way to avoid killing in Undertale isn’t through honest, open communication. It’s through manipulation and evasion: figuring out exactly what you have to do in order to avoid having to kill someone, and then doing it. In a confrontation with the skeleton Papyrus, this means flirting with him. A lot. You’re not flirting with him because you or your character actually have feelings for him. It’s just what you have to do to not have to kill him.
This sets up a zany and very funny date that ends with Papyrus confessing to you that he doesn’t like you “that way,” which is played for laughs because he thinks he might be breaking your heart but of course you never liked him that way, either; you just went through the motions of flirting with him a whole bunch because it was the only way to avoid actually fighting him. Time and again, encounters required me to just figure out the one thing I could do to make it so that I didn’t have to kill my would-be enemy.
This made me uncomfortable, because I don’t think violence should always be the way to solve our problems in video games, but I don’t think that insincerity and manipulation should be, either. Yes, the characters in Undertale are charming and funny and surprising, but I felt like my connections with them were founded on lies, and while that may not be as morally wrong as wholesale slaughter, it didn’t exactly feel right to me, and it’s no less gamey and artificial, either.
That's actually wrong. You don't need to flirt with papyrys and you don't need to go to the date with him. In my pacifist run I just spared him and then we hung out.
Right, the game gives you options and you choose from the options the method you like best. It is not much different from every other RPG with text trees, right?
I have no idea what Tycho is talking about but I think we agree. If you asked me why I thought Undertale was stupid I’d just tell you it looked like shit and made no fucking sense. It is the videogame equivalent of the nonsense symbols crazy people draw on their walls with shit. Maybe you super like it? That probably just means you’re cooler than me. Luckily there’s tons of other rad games to play.
Undertale is the New Game You Have To Like Or You Don’t Get It. These sanctified vessels are selected by an organization that is either lofty or subterranean, I haven’t decided, and one of the cool things about being old is that I don’t care.
These hyper-earnest teens I got on my block are way into this stuff. I’m glad that someone is teaching them new words. But I can sense a kind of invisible maze go up when they start this conversation - they want to know if I can be trusted. If I’m like the others. They want to know if they can tell me the secret, and they will, provided I already know it. So I lied. I lied and lied and lied.
There is a popular mode now I have taken to calling Double Reverse Irony, where things are real but not real but no they’re actually real, that is just one step beyond where I’m interested. My policy when the next generation “does them” is informed by 2pac’s I Ain’t Mad At Cha, and I only get mad when people transform works into litmus tests. In the case of Undertale, I can’t abstract it enough to even look at it: I can’t hold it far enough away. The thing it is dismantling is too close to me.
Parody can be revelatory of weakness in the subject, but it can also reveal strength; it can reveal what’s left after the softest parts are washed away. Even when done in love, it has a caustic quality. An extended look at metals extraction probably isn’t appropriate for this paragraph, but I’m thinking about gold cyanidation and toxicity. The game is gleeful in its cannibalism of the medium, there’s blood all over its face but it’s smiling. It’s intimate with the tropes it has on display, and at this precise moment in time I’m discomfited by what it does with that familiarity.
It is insufficiently reverent, and does not perform the proper obeisances. Others like it for precisely these reasons. I’m delighted by the iconoclasm intellectually and repulsed by it viscerally; if nothing else, it’s providing an intense psychological workout.
(CW)TB out.
I'm not the only one who thinks Undertale is a pretty straightforward game that tells a pretty straightforward story, right?
And... the methods this game uses to convey story aren't materially different from Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger.
Is this where I'm supposed to say "Jerry! Mike! Don't lose yourselves! You're overthinking it!"?
It does kind of hurt to see the same guy who enthusiastically told you about Cave Story 10 years ago intentionally turning into "Old Man Yells at Cloud" before your eyes.
Eh, I'd rather talk to them about it, than GamerGhazi. I privately predicted yesterday when I saw the strip that there'd be a rage thread on there focused entirely around the words "I don't recognize this as a game", and pretending that he meant "I don't think this is a game" not that "I don't even know what's going on here".
Of course, within a few hours of that prediction, that's exactly what happened. Ghazi is abso-fucking-loutely obsessed with painting PennyArcade and anyone associated with it as gators.
Oh, I'm sure 'Ghazi is having a field day with it.
For my part, I'm mostly confused how two adults came away from Undertale with the specific reaction that they did. Like they were scratching in the dirt this Christmas, and found a slab of basalt, "what a strange cultural artifact, communicating to us through the centuries. If only we could understand why they built it."
I realize Mike is a grump and Jerry always obscures his point with his own words, but they both worked on a series of jrpgs. I'd say they're qualified to read and understand Undertale.
Personally, I see it as kind of like Principal Skinner saying "Am I really that out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong." Creators using a character saying something entirely seriously, to make a joke with that character as the butt of it.
I think the problem might be stemming from people are confusing Tycho the character in the strip, with Jerry the person, and assuming that they're the same person with the same thoughts, rather than a character just based(increasingly loosely over time) on the real person.
After talking about it more with Juliane, I realize that Undertale is one of the first games I've played where the meta is just as integral to the game than the game itself.
In isolation, the game isn't good at rewarding you for playing without connection to a community of others who are also playing the game, or have played the game, and are willing and happy to discuss it. This is what happened to me! Going in without spoilers, or without a frame of reference for the game, or without knowing the scope of the game, isn't a rewarding experience.
Even not knowing how long the game might be is frustrating. There is no "level 1 of 8" or "world 1 level 1" to give you any idea of progress. In FTL, it shows eight ships, but only lets you pick from two for your first mission. Just that lets you understand that it expects you to play more than once to get the full experience. Undertale? Nope!
And from this thread and the podcast, all I've heard is "You should just play it, it's not very long, and I don't want to spoil it!" But that is wrong! Tell people "It is a game that takes 6 hours per play, and you'll have to play it three or four times to get all the content out of the game."
Now what I see is frustration with Mike and Jerry's experience: they don't want to engage with the discussion about the game by those who have played it, because the people who have played are of a younger generation than they are. There is a whole new scene with a new language they have to learn. They don't have the time or inclination to get involved.
I totally understand that!
So they want the game to provide all of that itself. And the game doesn't. And they haven't learned the language to communicate with the in-group of players who don't even realize the game isn't self-sustaining without the in-group itself.
Here's how I experienced Undertale the first time:
I played the game blind two weeks after it came out. Going in, I knew the game was six hours long because I checked HowLongToBeat.com (which I do before playing any game). I did not know about the multiple endings, or anything outside of the trailer that sold the game as "an rpg where no one has to get hurt." The fact that you have to dodge things in battles was a pleasant surprise!
I thought the game gave good feedback about the cause and effect of fighting versus sparing. Toriel tells you how to spare enemies in the first five screens, and gives you a little playground to try it out consequence-free with the dummy. She makes it clear that as a character, she would prefer if you chose this path.
You spend a lot of time getting comfortable with mercy vs. fight in the ruins. In the screen immediately before you reunite with Toriel, an NPC explicitly tells you the solution to the 'how to spare Toriel' puzzle. I correctly associated that solution to the fight, and was happy that the game gave me strong feedback that what I was doing was 'correct' as I executed it.
At the very end, the one boss I actually had to fight threw me for a loop, until Anthony looked it up and told me I actually had to fight them. That was the first and only time we referenced a walkthrough. The previous failed attempts to spare the boss weren't useless, because I had still learned the bullet patterns I would need to dodge while fighting.
At the end of the game, a character told me exactly what I needed to do to see a different ending. Again, at this point I'm back to only using information the game tells me. I played it a second time, and was pleased that the game went by so quickly with a few minor differences, and one significant extra area that can only be seen on the true pacifist path. With less exploration to do, and full knowledge of the boss patterns, I finished the game in half the time. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, start to finish, both times.
I complain bitterly about games that don't respect your time. I felt like Undertale respected my time and amply rewarded my curiosity.
the trailer that sold the game as "an rpg where no one has to get hurt."
Well, I missed that bit. I got the idea that I could not kill things, but started without any idea that pacifism or non violence was an aim, or the thing that would be rewarded. By not getting that, I was rewarded after two hours of play with long stretches of boredom.
There is no "level 1 of 8" or "world 1 level 1" to give you any idea of progress. In FTL, it shows eight ships, but only lets you pick from two for your first mission. Just that lets you understand that it expects you to play more than once to get the full experience. Undertale? Nope!
I think this does happen, but it expects you to beat the game, because the "you can keep progressing" events happen after you complete one cycle. Not helpful for your particular needs, but it is there.
Comments
Honestly even though I like the idea of the battle system on paper doing any one thing with that system more than once was just a bit too much. Like it's interesting but it makes things unnecessarily long. So doing random encounters is excruciating. And the boss battles were difficult enough that trying to master the patterns just started to become a pain in the ass.
I'm trying to think back to my playthrough, I'm pretty sure I diddnt kill Goatmom, but I can't remember. What happens when you dont? I recall her being like "I guess you're just stubborn like the others, go on then"
And then she never answers her phone. Bah
If Luke hasn't passed the waterfalls I mean, that's only maybe a bit into the game? 1/3 or so? There's lots after.
But while it's fun I got to a point near the end of my playthrough where I realised I was on the neutral path because in the training rooms I whomped one or two froggits and ate some vegetoids where I was like "I'm not gonna look up, spoilers but if I come across them that's ok too..."
You also get way more money to buy healing items than you actually need, no matter how you play the game.
I do agree that it's good to see where the game takes you on a first playthrough, just going by your own instincts. The Neutral Ending is still very effective in its own way, and the differences you get depending on exactly which bosses/how many other enemies you killed are very interesting to see. Also, the Neutral Ending does tell you straight-up that you can get a happier ending by playing the game again without killing anything. So even if you had no idea that 100% pacifism was a thing you could do in Undertale, you are eventually told explicitly to try playing that way, which will lead the curious player to figure out how to complete the Pacifist Route on their own, no forums or walkthroughs needed.
Still, not everyone has the luxury of time or patience to play a game multiple times, especially not with so many other competing forms of entertainment. So yeah, as interesting as doing Neutral first and then the other playthroughs is, it is more beneficial to go full Pacifist from the outset to get the most amount of content in the shortest amount of time.
Also: Not counting the Pacifist Route stuff, I would say the really, really great something you've yet to see would be the final leg of the Neutral Route, once you reach the king's castle. Even if you never complete the Pacifist Route afterward, the story and lore elements start to ramp up there in the Neutral Route, and the final boss stuff, just... Wow. If you have any desire whatsoever to give Undertale one last shot, I'd recommend putting in a few more hours to reach the Neutral Ending. After getting through Waterfall, you basically only have one or two more major areas to get through before reaching the castle.
That said: if you really don't find the humour and story more than mildly entertaining so far, and you aren't willing to put up with more based on a promise that maybe you'll enjoy the ending(s) more? I get that. You don't have to force yourself to like something, and there's plenty of other great stuff out there to play/read/watch that you could be consuming instead. I do think Undertale is a truly great game; if you don't mind seeing all the major spoilers at this point, I'd actually recommend watching the video I linked under the spoiler tag to get a sense of what people feel are the biggest strengths of the game for them. But it's still not a game for everyone, especially if the humour style doesn't jibe with you or you don't have the time to experiment a lot with it. If you've determined by this point that it's not the game for you, that's cool.
But even knowing that, and knowing their are different possible endings in the game based on what or who I kill or spare, there's STILL no way for me to appreciate the "different-ness" of the ending I will see. First, I have nothing to compare it to. Second, the only way I could know a different ending was possible would be to reach the end and be told by the game then that I should try not killing anything. Third, I'd then have to put in another 5 hours to see a different ending? How different?
To be clear, my complaint with this game isn't that the characters aren't fun. They are! Funny and entertaining. The battles are fun, if a bit easy and repetitive. The puzzles are okay, but again, not challenging at all.
My problem is that the only way I can even appreciate that my actions mean anything within the game is through this forum thread. There is nothing within the game that lets me appreciate anything I do has any impact. Not on this first play though. And if I'm expected to play a game multiple times (see: Faster Than Light) that game should be one or two hours long at the very longest! My "reward" for taking an option that seemed like a good way to play is to remove fun from the game. And the only reason I now know that is intentional game design is, again, this forum thread.
That said, I'd say there actually is enough significant new content in a True Pacifist run to justify the second playthrough. The most obvious thing being that if you don't kill major bosses, they're around to give you big new scenes and dialogue, including extra challenges surrounding the process of befriending them. Second thing being that the game remembers what you've already done, even if you reset your save file.
The most strikingly different playthrough would definitely be the No Mercy Route. Once you trigger it, it's dramatically different and also significantly faster than the other routes. It also has the two most challenging boss battles in the entire game. To trigger, you have to kill all enemies in the Ruins until you get a screen that says "But nobody came". Continue in this manner for each new area, killing every single enemy until that screen comes up, and of course killing all bosses with a vengeance.
Again though, you wouldn't necessarily guess that playing through again would be incredibly different each time, so I concede that point as well. Not everyone is willing to gamble on playing through what they suspect might be the same content again just for a different ending. If you don't have the time or drive to experiment, you do indeed have to be assured by outside parties that the multiple playthroughs are worthwhile.
http://fastkarate.tumblr.com/post/136268984413/fast-karate-game-of-the-year-2015-2-undertale
The difficulty ramps at such a perfect pace throughout the game. Especially if you consider Genocide the true true final ending...
Wow, Jerry. I don't think I know what you're trying to say, either. I am fairly certain we didn't play the same game.
Sincerity is also why I don’t love Undertale, one of the most beloved games of the year. Initially, I was excited about Undertale’s determination to challenge the flimsy kill-or-be-killed premise of so many games. But the way to avoid killing in Undertale isn’t through honest, open communication. It’s through manipulation and evasion: figuring out exactly what you have to do in order to avoid having to kill someone, and then doing it. In a confrontation with the skeleton Papyrus, this means flirting with him. A lot. You’re not flirting with him because you or your character actually have feelings for him. It’s just what you have to do to not have to kill him.
This sets up a zany and very funny date that ends with Papyrus confessing to you that he doesn’t like you “that way,” which is played for laughs because he thinks he might be breaking your heart but of course you never liked him that way, either; you just went through the motions of flirting with him a whole bunch because it was the only way to avoid actually fighting him. Time and again, encounters required me to just figure out the one thing I could do to make it so that I didn’t have to kill my would-be enemy.
This made me uncomfortable, because I don’t think violence should always be the way to solve our problems in video games, but I don’t think that insincerity and manipulation should be, either. Yes, the characters in Undertale are charming and funny and surprising, but I felt like my connections with them were founded on lies, and while that may not be as morally wrong as wholesale slaughter, it didn’t exactly feel right to me, and it’s no less gamey and artificial, either.
http://carolynpetit.tumblr.com/post/135753606130/aint-no-room-on-board-for-the-insincere-a-look
And... the methods this game uses to convey story aren't materially different from Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger.
Is this where I'm supposed to say "Jerry! Mike! Don't lose yourselves! You're overthinking it!"?
It does kind of hurt to see the same guy who enthusiastically told you about Cave Story 10 years ago intentionally turning into "Old Man Yells at Cloud" before your eyes.
Of course, within a few hours of that prediction, that's exactly what happened. Ghazi is abso-fucking-loutely obsessed with painting PennyArcade and anyone associated with it as gators.
For my part, I'm mostly confused how two adults came away from Undertale with the specific reaction that they did. Like they were scratching in the dirt this Christmas, and found a slab of basalt, "what a strange cultural artifact, communicating to us through the centuries. If only we could understand why they built it."
I realize Mike is a grump and Jerry always obscures his point with his own words, but they both worked on a series of jrpgs. I'd say they're qualified to read and understand Undertale.
I think the problem might be stemming from people are confusing Tycho the character in the strip, with Jerry the person, and assuming that they're the same person with the same thoughts, rather than a character just based(increasingly loosely over time) on the real person.
Also, first post of the New Year. Wahey!
In isolation, the game isn't good at rewarding you for playing without connection to a community of others who are also playing the game, or have played the game, and are willing and happy to discuss it. This is what happened to me! Going in without spoilers, or without a frame of reference for the game, or without knowing the scope of the game, isn't a rewarding experience.
Even not knowing how long the game might be is frustrating. There is no "level 1 of 8" or "world 1 level 1" to give you any idea of progress. In FTL, it shows eight ships, but only lets you pick from two for your first mission. Just that lets you understand that it expects you to play more than once to get the full experience. Undertale? Nope!
And from this thread and the podcast, all I've heard is "You should just play it, it's not very long, and I don't want to spoil it!" But that is wrong! Tell people "It is a game that takes 6 hours per play, and you'll have to play it three or four times to get all the content out of the game."
Now what I see is frustration with Mike and Jerry's experience: they don't want to engage with the discussion about the game by those who have played it, because the people who have played are of a younger generation than they are. There is a whole new scene with a new language they have to learn. They don't have the time or inclination to get involved.
I totally understand that!
So they want the game to provide all of that itself. And the game doesn't. And they haven't learned the language to communicate with the in-group of players who don't even realize the game isn't self-sustaining without the in-group itself.
I played the game blind two weeks after it came out. Going in, I knew the game was six hours long because I checked HowLongToBeat.com (which I do before playing any game). I did not know about the multiple endings, or anything outside of the trailer that sold the game as "an rpg where no one has to get hurt." The fact that you have to dodge things in battles was a pleasant surprise!
I thought the game gave good feedback about the cause and effect of fighting versus sparing. Toriel tells you how to spare enemies in the first five screens, and gives you a little playground to try it out consequence-free with the dummy. She makes it clear that as a character, she would prefer if you chose this path.
You spend a lot of time getting comfortable with mercy vs. fight in the ruins. In the screen immediately before you reunite with Toriel, an NPC explicitly tells you the solution to the 'how to spare Toriel' puzzle. I correctly associated that solution to the fight, and was happy that the game gave me strong feedback that what I was doing was 'correct' as I executed it.
At the very end, the one boss I actually had to fight threw me for a loop, until Anthony looked it up and told me I actually had to fight them. That was the first and only time we referenced a walkthrough. The previous failed attempts to spare the boss weren't useless, because I had still learned the bullet patterns I would need to dodge while fighting.
At the end of the game, a character told me exactly what I needed to do to see a different ending. Again, at this point I'm back to only using information the game tells me. I played it a second time, and was pleased that the game went by so quickly with a few minor differences, and one significant extra area that can only be seen on the true pacifist path. With less exploration to do, and full knowledge of the boss patterns, I finished the game in half the time. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, start to finish, both times.
I complain bitterly about games that don't respect your time. I felt like Undertale respected my time and amply rewarded my curiosity.