Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Undertale: The ConnoReview (spoiler-free)

I don't think that I'll ever forget Undertale. I don't think I ever imagined that a retro-stylized RPG would make me think as much as Undertale did. Undertale is creative. Undertale is hilarious. Undertale is powerful. Toby Fox’s labor of love sets a precedent for what video games should aspire to be. Here, I'll tell you why.
Undertale’s greatest strength is how it treats the player not as the game’s protagonist, but treating them like a player, defying their expectations. The main battle system is an amalgamation of bullet hell and turn-based RPG mechanics, a system that harkens back to the days of yore while also (successfully) keeping the player directly engaged. When first meeting the game's many characters, they feel one-dimensional, albeit extremely humorous. The further encounters you have with them make them feel more like people. They feel well-rounded and I ended up actually caring about many of them by the ending. The game also has a habit of breaking the fourth wall. This is prominent due to how it weaves its inherent nuttiness into its mechanics, even going so far as to use the UI to assist its storytelling. The soundtrack is spot-on too, and I regularly find myself humming some of the jingles to myself during the day. The culmination of these things create something truly magical, something that if released in the SNES era would become an instant classic (In my opinion, it’s done so.)
And the endings. Oh, THE ENDINGS. I won't spoil them here, but when it comes to defying the expectations of the player, Undertale’s several branching paths do things I’ve never seen before in video games, one of which is in my opinion one of the coolest things in any game EVER (especially when accounting for the context). This all stems from tying story directly into mechanics and making the player feel as if they themselves are in control rather than playing the role of some character onscreen.
You may notice that this review is vague in a few spots. This is intentional. I believe that there are so many wonderful things about Undertale, and they are best experienced with as little prior knowledge as possible. It’s a game that anyone can appreciate, and at $10, why not give it a try?
Grab it DRM-free: http://undertale.com/

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