• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Undertale |OT| Indie RPG with determination and spider bake sales

silva1991

Member
Now that I loved this game should I try Earthbound or Mother? I think i've seen some people compare between the too.is Mother as short as Undertale?
 

PBalfredo

Member
Now that I loved this game should I try Earthbound or Mother? I think i've seen some people compare between the too.is Mother as short as Undertale?

While Mother/EarthBound Beginnings is the shorter of the two (about 20 hours long), it's as grindy as you'd expect an NES RPG to be. EarthBound is roughly 10 hours longer, but it's much less grindy and has much more unique content to fill up those hours. I'd recommend EarthBound to people new to the series, and Mother 3 after that. And I definitely recommend EarthBound to anyone who enjoyed Undertale.

I'd say play cave story.

Game is more similar than you'd think!

Yeah, I was getting Cave Story vibes from this game too. Especially since
young Asriel's sprite
looks a lot like the Mimigas. It's a solid recommendation for anyone to play, especially if they enjoyed the bullet hell action of Undertale.
 

Kinsei

Banned
A bit LTTP considering how much this game is right up my alley, but I just started up and subsequently beat it yesterday. It's something special, for sure. I completed the pacifist route.
Funny thing playing a game that's influenced by EarthBound's ending sequence while on Steam: the rapid fire forced-quits and restarts from the Photoshop Flowey fight meant I had steam friends who could tell what part of the game I was at and started steam messaging me during the sequence. It's both surreal to see the steam chat box comment during that sequence that said "it's okay", "it's just a bad dream", " from which you will never wake". It's also highly appropriate that I was able to pound out quick calls for help between bullet hell sequences and get a little "<3" show up in the corner of my screen.

I've completed the game, got the true pacifist ending, but I got the twinge of wanting more growing inside of me. However, I am filled with DETERMINATION to let the game lie. When I finished the game the idea of turning around and doing a genocide run did not sit with me at all, and the way Frisk remembers the number of times she dies to Asgore already got me thinking down the path that the game is aware of your actions outside of your current "life". After confirming that the genocide path
does remember that you did the pacifist route before it and restarting actively undoes all the good you've done in your previous run, I'm dead set on not exploring the genocide run. While it means less Undertale for me, one of the parts that I love about the game is how it explores and recognizes the oddities of doing 100% completion for the sake of it, even when it's actively against the morals you've set for yourself in what would otherwise be your "canon" run. I love that the game builds that into itself, even though the very nature of doing so actively discourages me from exploring this game top to bottom like I do with other games I love. Can't have my cake and eat it to, so time to go and boot up my Xmas copy of Fallout 4. Maybe in the future I'll revisit the game again, but I can tell you right now it's going to be another pacifist run. Until then, thanks Undertale, and goodbye!

Rapid fire forced restarts? Flowey only shut off my game once.
 

PBalfredo

Member
Rapid fire forced restarts? Flowey only shut off my game once.

Did it? I could have sworn I had to boot up the game again at least a second time. Either way, it was enough for steam friends to deduce what part of the game I was at just from them seeing the "PBalfredo is playing Undertale" messages pop up on their end, so *shrug*
 
Did it? I could have sworn I had to boot up the game again at least a second time. Either way, it was enough for steam friends to deduce what part of the game I was at just from them seeing the "PBalfredo is playing Undertale" messages pop up on their end, so *shrug*

I honestly thought the game had genuinely crashed at that point, and when I started the game up again and saw a glitched intro sequence, I force quit the game and rebooted my computer. I was pretty damn pissed off. It was only when I Googled the"error code" I found out that it was intentional.
 

Tizoc

Member
OK i just started the game and can I spare
Toriel when i fight her?
I really wanted to try and spare her but then suddenly I hit her ith a crit and she dies T.T
 
No, Mother is pretty long-ish

You should definitely play them though, specially EB and M3

While Mother/EarthBound Beginnings is the shorter of the two (about 20 hours long), it's as grindy as you'd expect an NES RPG to be. EarthBound is roughly 10 hours longer, but it's much less grindy and has much more unique content to fill up those hours. I'd recommend EarthBound to people new to the series, and Mother 3 after that. And I definitely recommend EarthBound to anyone who enjoyed Undertale.

Yes, Earthbound has more... events, story, humor.

I notice my friends tend to drop Earthbound not long after
Moonside
and move on to other games as it's got a fair amount of backtracking and 16 bit RPG quirks about it.

Though it's not balanced to be frustrating, the most annoying part of the game is the Dragon Quest style inventory management.


Mother was the first take on an unconventional RPG and it's... pretty conventional for a late NES RPG. It's not unheard of to be wiped out by a crazed hippie shortly after leaving home. It's balanced to be grindy, when it's not almost unfair with some of the random encounters. Kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy III for the Famicom in that way, not a good way.

And the story is... not really there. Apart from text in the early game and some major developments in the late game, it's very very different from all the other games we compare it to.

But you will notice things from Earthbound that are clear references to Mother, many things. It's worth playing if you're really fond of Earthbound. I'm not sure I'd give it a strong recommendation otherwise.


OK i just started the game and can I spare
Toriel when i fight her?
I really wanted to try and spare her but then suddenly I hit her ith a crit and she dies T.T

This is why I hate the spoiler tags. I answered this exact question two pages ago!

Maybe we should have a sticky for saving Toriel.
 

Tizoc

Member
Yes, Earthbound has more... events, story, humor.

I notice my friends tend to drop Earthbound not long after
Moonside
and move on to other games as it's got a fair amount of backtracking and 16 bit RPG quirks about it.

Though it's not balanced to be frustrating, the most annoying part of the game is the Dragon Quest style inventory management.


Mother was the first take on an unconventional RPG and it's... pretty conventional for a late NES RPG. It's not unheard of to be wiped out by a crazed hippie shortly after leaving home. It's balanced to be grindy, when it's not almost unfair with some of the random encounters. Kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy III for the Famicom in that way, not a good way.

And the story is... not really there. Apart from text in the early game and some major developments in the late game, it's very very different from all the other games we compare it to.

But you will notice things from Earthbound that are clear references to Mother, many things. It's worth playing if you're really fond of Earthbound. I'm not sure I'd give it a strong recommendation otherwise.




This is why I hate the spoiler tags. I answered this exact question two pages ago!

Maybe we should have a sticky for saving Toriel.

Hah the game did hint about it early on, but I thought that'd be something End game like XP

How long is a single playthrough? 5ish hours? Cuz I wouldn't mind a replay knowing what I know now.
 
Hah the game did hint about it early on, but I thought that'd be something End game like XP

How long is a single playthrough? 5ish hours? Cuz I wouldn't mind a replay knowing what I know now.

Six, yeah. You can play it casually in a weekend, if you've got the reflexes for it.

The one bit I really wish this game had was an alternative to the bullet hell combat for players with a physical handicap, who can't clear the game otherwise. I suppose there's LPs, but that's kind of a shallow solution.

There's some people I'd love to recommend this game to that can't play it because of that. I'd suggest maybe something in the same spirit like Zork-like combat to Toby, if I was important enough and he was interested in going back to this game.


EDIT: Just mashed out an e-mail in less than a minute about this. Might as well put in the effort to suggest it. :)
 
The one bit I really wish this game had was an alternative to the bullet hell combat for players with a physical handicap, who can't clear the game otherwise. I suppose there's LPs, but that's kind of a shallow solution.

There's some people I'd love to recommend this game to that can't play it because of that. I'd suggest maybe something in the same spirit like Zork-like combat to Toby, if I was important enough and he was interested in going back to this game.

The bullet-hell aspect of the game is great, but yes, it makes the game completely inaccessible to some people. Not just those with physical handicaps, but people who don't play videogames much, or even those who do, but don't have good hand-eye co-ordination/reactions/etc.

I definitely feel like the game would benefit from having an option that disabled the bullet hell element, or made it *significantly* easier. I know it's a big part of the game in places, but that's why it would be optional. Better for some people to experience a slightly inferior of the game than to be unable to experience it at all.
 
Just finished a Pacifist run. What an amazing game. So glad I finally got around to it.

I agree with whoever it was that said they don't have it in them to
do a subsequent Genocide run. Firstly, I'm not all that interested in running around each area just to grind enemies until they're all dead. But even that aside, I feel like I got a "true" ending, and don't want to "undo" that. Flowey even outright said that's what you're doing if you reset. And I know that after finishing a Genocide run, the ending for the Pacifist run changes slightly, which would bug me.

I'll probably watch a playthrough of a Genocide run online.




OK i just started the game and can I spare
Toriel when i fight her?
I really wanted to try and spare her but then suddenly I hit her ith a crit and she dies T.T

That happened to me too.
It seems the second half of her health just gets taken out in one hit. I reloaded my save. If you want to do a Pacifist run, then do the same, as otherwise you've already failed.

To spare her, just keep selecting spare or an action repeatedly. She'll eventually let you go, but it takes a while.
 

Saikyo

Member
I honestly thought the game had genuinely crashed at that point, and when I started the game up again and saw a glitched intro sequence, I force quit the game and rebooted my computer. I was pretty damn pissed off. It was only when I Googled the"error code" I found out that it was intentional.

oh hahahaha but when you loaded again the glitched intro played again or it goes directly to the photoshop flowey intro?
 
I'm currently watching a video of
all the differences in a Genocide run
. Good thing I had already decided against doing it, as
that fight against Sans looks far too frustrating for me. The guy who made video I'm watching says it took him 5 hours of reattempting it. It's epic as all hell, but I'm glad I'm watching it rather than playing it.




oh hahahaha but when you loaded again the glitched intro played again or it goes directly to the photoshop flowey intro?

The glitched intro played/I shut the game down multiple times before I knew what was going on. Actually, the first time I saw the "load save" screen, I thought my save file had glitched (due to the weird text), and I was ready to rage.
 
There's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said, but I went into this game very reluctantly/skeptically and was almost immediately turned into a fan. I binged on it during my free time over the course of two days and ended up getting the true pacifist ending on my second go. Now I've spent all day today watching YouTube videos and fan theories about it.

Definitely one of the best games I've ever played and goddamnit I've played a lot of games.
 
I want to try and convince some of my friends to give it a try. Does anybody have any suggestions for YouTube videos that do a good job of showing it off without spoiling anything too significant, or where the creator comes across as annoying ?
 

PBalfredo

Member
The more I reflect on it, Undertale succeeds in critiquing how we experience/participate in violence in games in every way that Spec Ops: The Line fails. I've long held that Spec Ops' message isn't as strong as it thinks it is because there is no possible option but to partake in the game's violence, often in a tightly scripted fashion. Undertale seems to exist to put the opposite approach to the test and it succeeds spectacularly. In Spec Ops, I could
drop white phosphorous on a bunch of nobodies who only exist to die in scripted sequences
all day long, but the very thought of throwing away my golden ending to embark on a genocide run is downright abhorrent to me.
 

Jintor

Member
agreed

i love spec ops but the fact that you literally can't in-story back away from violence is in my opinion a failing on its part. the designers said in interviews that you can just 'stop playing' but imho that's not a valid 'player choice' since it's not a meaningful choice taken by the player-character avatar so much as it is by the player-person
 
I want to try and convince some of my friends to give it a try. Does anybody have any suggestions for YouTube videos that do a good job of showing it off without spoiling anything too significant, or where the creator comes across as annoying ?

I'm a fan of the release trailer. It spoils(?) a couple of characters, later enemies, and maybe one late-game room, but that's about it.

You could also play them some music.
 
I want to try and convince some of my friends to give it a try. Does anybody have any suggestions for YouTube videos that do a good job of showing it off without spoiling anything too significant, or where the creator comes across as annoying ?

I'll give another nod to TieTuesday's Let's Appreciate of the Undertale Demo. Guest starring
Toby Fox
at the very very end.

That LP sold a few gaffers on it, so I know it works. Even though it's supposed to be watched after playing the demo once, and that's probably a good idea.
 
agreed

i love spec ops but the fact that you literally can't in-story back away from violence is in my opinion a failing on its part. the designers said in interviews that you can just 'stop playing' but imho that's not a valid 'player choice' since it's not a meaningful choice taken by the player-character avatar so much as it is by the player-person

That in itself isn't a problem at all; in fact that's one of the reasons Undertale is so special; because it involves you as a player rather than you just assuming the role of the avatar. The issue with Spec Ops is that it doesn't give you a choice at all. Claiming that "not playing" is a choice is ridiculous. If abandoning an entertainment medium is preferable to continuing with it, that medium has failed.

This doesn't apply to Undertale.
A Genocide run does indeed try to make things as unpleasant as possible for you the player. Wandering around to find all enemies in each area to kill is dull, you miss out on a lot of setpieces/character interactions, the game becomes quite bleak and empty towards the end, Undyne and (especially) Sans are designed to be intentionally frustrating, and finishing it will forever "tarnish" subsequent endings in Pacifist runs. On top of that, Sans and Flowey even points out the mentality of playing that way just because you can, and how it's just a means of seeing everything. So you as a player would start to question yourself.

But unlike the ridiculous notion put forth by the Spec Ops developers, Undertale's Genocide run isn't trying to make you reconsider playing at all. It's designed to give the Pacifist run more meaning, and to get you to play that way instead. I wouldn't be surprised if Toby toyed with the idea of making the fight with Sans literally unbeatable, forcing you to make the decision of quitting and restarting.

I love that the Genocide run exists, and though I doubt I'll bother with it myself, I watched a video of it (which Toby Fox even foresaw, as there's even a part where Flowey comments on people watching rather than actually playing), and I now appreciate the whole experience even more. It's why I (and most other people, apparently) view the Pacifist ending as not just the "best" ending, but the "true" ending. As far as I'm concerned, everybody should aim for a Pacifist run on their first playthrough.
 

PBalfredo

Member
agreed

i love spec ops but the fact that you literally can't in-story back away from violence is in my opinion a failing on its part. the designers said in interviews that you can just 'stop playing' but imho that's not a valid 'player choice' since it's not a meaningful choice taken by the player-character avatar so much as it is by the player-person

The stop playing "option" drives me up the wall when I see it in defense of Spec Ops because it's the equivalent of throwing the game disc out the window and writing fan fiction.

Spec Ops likes to equate participation in the game's violence with condoning it. Which I feel is a false equivalence when it is the only possible option. It's like blaming the actors on stage for Romeo and Juliet's bloody demise because they did not walk off the stage abruptly in Act 1. Meanwhile, there is no question who is at fault for a genocide run coming to pass in Undertale.
 
The stop playing "option" drives me up the wall when I see it in defense of Spec Ops because it's the equivalent of throwing the game disc out the window and writing fan fiction.

Spec Ops likes to equate participation in the game's violence with condoning it. Which I feel is a false equivalence when it is the only possible option. It's like blaming the actors on stage for Romeo and Juliet's bloody demise because they did not walk off the stage abruptly in Act 1. Meanwhile, there is no question who is at fault for a genocide run coming to pass in Undertale.

Exactly. And where do we draw the line? How is it any more acceptable to excuse the lack of choice in a game by saying people can choose not to play it, than it is to excuse shitty gameplay for the same reason? That argument just doesn't work. If I'd rather not play your game than play it, then you have failed as a game developer, so that's the last thing you should be encouraging.
 

Corpekata

Banned
I want to try and convince some of my friends to give it a try. Does anybody have any suggestions for YouTube videos that do a good job of showing it off without spoiling anything too significant, or where the creator comes across as annoying ?

There is a gif of the first fight that I think works wonder for this. It is the one where the player dodges all of the "LOVE" and he reacts to them. It's the first encounter in the game, so even if it's a bit spoilerish, it's only 5 minutes, and it sets the tone of what to expect from the game.

Been posted in the thread a handful of times by now, but can't find it offhand.
 

mbpm1

Member
I thought just the first encounter where you meet Flowey and then get hit by his Friendliness Pellets to be fairly groundsetting
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Well, I powered through it, and while I do think the game got somewhat better after moving past having to deal with the two
skeleton bros
, the game never really grabbed me. I'm now at the final boss on what I assume is what people are calling a "neutral" playthrough, and fuck this. I do not have the patience for nonsense like this.

Honestly, the combat throughout was pretty frustrating in ever encounter, whether I chose to kill or not.

At least I can say the music was incredibly good.
 

Kinsei

Banned
Well, I powered through it, and while I do think the game got somewhat better after moving past having to deal with the two
skeleton bros
, the game never really grabbed me. I'm now at the final boss on what I assume is what people are calling a "neutral" playthrough, and fuck this. I do not have the patience for nonsense like this.

Honestly, the combat throughout was pretty frustrating in ever encounter, whether I chose to kill or not.

At least I can say the music was incredibly good.

Flowey
? I thought you were invincible in that fight.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Turns out I just wasn't trying hard enough, and
I assumed you were just supposed to die and restart over and over since he kept saying different things upon rebooting the game.
If you get past the first phase, the rest is easy. Still, that was ridiculously dragged out and lame, in my opinion.
 

Acerac

Banned
If only I found that funny or charming in the slightest =/

I did. :)

Gonna have to accept that not all games are for everyone.

I'm not huge on Fallout 4 and apparently that game was the bee's knees. This isn't a problem with me or the game, it just happens sometimes.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I did. :)

Gonna have to accept that not all games are for everyone.

I'm not huge on Fallout 4 and apparently that game was the bee's knees. This isn't a problem with me or the game, it just happens sometimes.

For sure!

Don't get me wrong, though, I do like parts of Undertale a whole lot. The humor portion just falls really flat for me.
 

dLMN8R

Member
I played the game and got the neutral ending when it came out. I then spend a couple hours reading about the alternate endings and watching True Pacifist on YouTube. Really really loved it.

But then I heard the soundtrack today, months later, and immediately got the urge to play through the game again.

I never play games for hours straight. But I played Undertale for 6+ hours straight today, beating True Pacifist for myself. Damn what an amazing ending to play.
 

kami_sama

Member
I played the game and got the neutral ending when it came out. I then spend a couple hours reading about the alternate endings and watching True Pacifist on YouTube. Really really loved it.

But then I heard the soundtrack today, months later, and immediately got the urge to play through the game again.

I never play games for hours straight. But I played Undertale for 6+ hours straight today, beating True Pacifist for myself. Damn what an amazing ending to play.

Yeah, it's a great game. And True Pacifist is even greater. (Greater Dog anyone?)
 

Ludens

Banned
Completed
pacifist run
, but the game
didn't end :D I need to backtrack and discover stuff, this title is amazing.
 

Saikyo

Member
I have one question regarding
genocide run: do I need to kill EVERYTHING? I mean, I see there's one boss who only appear in October, I need to kill him too?

Search the steam guide with the "crossed papyrus" icon but no, you dont need to kill "sosorry"
 
Top Bottom