Review RPG Codex Review: Undertale

[Darth Roxor]

I don't think anyone's opinion on the Codex about Undertale has changed since the publishing of this review

mine has

Spoiler

for the worse

 

[TigerKnee]

I don't think anyone's opinion on the Codex about Undertale has changed since the publishing of this review

Has there been any Codex review that DID change the nature of a man... I mean anyone's opinions?

I figure either you don't know about the game and a Codex review would interest you to try it out because of its detailing of its strengths and flaws means you can figure out whether it will appeal to you, ala Might and Magic X, or you already played the game and your opinion remains the same anyway.

Pillars of Eternity reviews joke goes here

 

[Jasede]

We only go to the Codex for the echo chamber to have people agree with us and confirm our views, dummy.

Down with the patriarchy!

 

[Vikter]

If you like a game, you will probably hate it. If you dislike it, you will probably get high on your own shit and hate it even more.
If you never played it, you will hate it more and never play it for good.

This is a good forum.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I think anyone remotely interested in the game already gave it a shot. There've been other decent reviews of it already like the one on Super Bunnyhop and plenty of discussion of the game in the jrpg forum.

Or maybe it's called an exception.

That isn't what 'always' means. Always means there are no exceptions. The sun always rises in the east, for example. The sun is not, however, always above the horizon at noon.

 

[Vikter]

Do you really need to be so pedantic about a single hyperbole? I'm not saying the game you're shilling for is terrible, yet you keep nitpicking and avoiding any actual and friendly discussion about it to post stuff like "people should play it" or "I think people played it" over and over. Dude, come on.

Edit: sorry for typos. Posting on phone.

 

[Irenaeus II]

It's hard to teach English to Brazilians. I know because I tried.

 

[V_K]

Spoilers ahead because IDGAF at this point, everyone who's willing to try the game by now already has.

Spoiler

First of all, the notion that all the enemies are entirely one dimensional and the various actions are equivalent to just fighting isn't true. While that might be the case for a portion of the enemies (and admittedly the start is bad for this because they're all simple enemies because it's a tutorial) there are examples of rather complex encounters as early as before reaching the first town. The 'Greater Dog' enemy has a large number of ways to interact with him and end the battle, like ignoring him until he becomes bored and leaves, or making him get too excited and pass out, etc. These do all just play out for gags as opposed to tangible rewards, but it's certainly much more interesting than the descriptions of 'frogs shoot flies and thats all' that people have been giving as examples of the combat.
Here's a list of all the flavour text just from this one particular enemy:
Flavor Text

• It's so excited that it thinks fighting is just play. [Check]
• It's the Greater Dog. [Encounter]
• Greater Dog is seeking affection. [Neutral]
• Greater Dog is waiting for your command. [Neutral]
• Greater Dog is watching you intently. [Neutral]
• Greater Dog is not excited enough to play with. [Play]
• You call the Greater Dog. It bounds toward you, flecking slobber into your face. [Beckon]
• Greater Dog's ears perk up. Nothing else happens. [Beckon again]
• Greater Dog curls up in your lap as it is pet by you. It gets so comfortable it falls asleep... Zzzzz... ... Then it wakes up! It's so excited! [Pet after Beckon or Ignore]
• Greater Dog's excitement is creating a power field that prevents petting. [Pet again]
• You make a snowball and throw it for the dog to fetch. It splats on the ground. Greater Dog picks up all the snow in the area and brings it to you. Now dog is very tired... It rests its head on you... [Play after Pet]
• As you pet the dog, it sinks its entire weight into you... Your movements slow. But, you still haven't pet enough...! [Pet after Play]
• You pet decisively. Pet capacity reaches 100 percent. The dog flops over with its legs hanging in the air. [Pet #2 after Play]
• Tummy rubs are forbidden. [Pet again]
• Greater Dog is too tired to play. [Play again]
• Greater Dog inches closer. [Ignore]
• Greater Dog is making puppy-dog eyes. [Ignore 3 times]
• Greater Dog decides you are too boring. [Ignore 4+ times]
• Greater Dog is patting the ground with its front paws. [Neutral after petting]
• Greater Dog wants some TLC. [Neutral after playing]
• Pet capacity is 40-percent. [Neutral after petting again]
• Greater Dog just wants affection. [Neutral after ignoring]
• Greater Dog is contented. [Neutral after meeting spare conditions]
• You threw the stick and the dog ran to get it. You played fetch for a while. [Use Stick]
• Greater Dog is panting slowly. [Low HP]

It is rather facetious to have all that available to you and then claim that there was nothing distinguishing it from the frogs.

Outside of combat, even in the tutorial portion of the game before you've left the ruins, there are things like the way the candy pillar reacts if you take more than one piece, or Flowy creepily being behind you that you can notice before he burrows away if you backtrack in many places. The game also reacts to subtle things like whether or not you were injured before reaching the house, or if you kill the frogs in the random encounters, they won't be waiting further along in the ruins to give you advice. There's like half a dozen extra pieces of dialogue written just in case you were curious enough to find out what happens if you just sit and wait for Toriel to come back after she tells you to wait for her while she runs her errand. The game is utterly crammed with details like these that most of the detractors seemed to have not noticed at all.

Comparing this to something like Skyrim where you can shove buckets on people's heads without provoking a reaction is it that hard to see why players would be enamoured with a game that actually responds to things they do?

So why exactly would you put effort to explore these interactions if all they yield is just gags? And pretty dumb ones at that?

 

[TigerKnee]

Vikter For what its worth, personally I don't believe the core mechanics of Undertale to be stellar when divorced of context, though that doesn't seem to be the popular consensus amongst its fans (looks to me that the general populace hates pure turn-based combat and the bullet dodging gameplay is considered to add enough element of manual dexterity skill to make them feel in control).

I do feel that at the end of the day though, the gameplay elements are used to aid its storytelling, as opposed to something like Planescape Torment where someone wanted to write a Visual Novel but had to wrangle the D&D rules to the point where the preferred character build is maxing dialogue stats and attempting to avoid as much combat as possible - a ruleset that's mostly focused on tactical combat.

I didn't think the storytelling was stellar either until the tail end of the game (shit, that was not an intended pun), during the part which I'll dub "The Walk of Shame" - if you make it there which takes about 5 hours, I think it'll basically cement your opinion of Undertale because that's where everything comes to a head.

 

[Viata]

My opnion for the game is still neutral. Will not play, wouldn't play, nice ost, btw. However, my opinion about the sanity of the fanbase and the people who hates the game is getting worse.

 

[Vikter]

I already like the storytelling a lot and I'm still on the beginning, I think. As far as I know if the game improves on it in the final moments I will love it. However, I still don't like how part of the storytelling happens through a flawed combat system. If it were better in this aspect I would probably take less time to actually finish it and try to replay other routes, but as of now, I want to read the dialogue, meet the characters but I don't really care about the game or the choices in it.

 

[TigerKnee]

I want to read the dialogue, meet the characters but I don't really care about the game or the choices in it.

Fair enough. I would agree that I would prefer mechanics more palatable to my tastes, but given what I feel Undertale was attempting, I don't think there's any other "easy" solution as to what one would replace the systems with.

 

[CryptRat]

This is just an insulting comparison.

First of all, in Undertale, both the genocide and pacifist approaches to combat play out almost the same. You're forced into a combat encounter and you go through one or more rounds of bullet hell minigame in both cases. It's just that some of the options you click during combat are different.

Secondly, it's very easy to write non-combat encounters with the sort of minimalist approach that Undertale has to character design, where characters are all just a random assortment of objects & animals with a singular trait that defines what sort of actions are available in the act menu. E.g. there's the sad ghost who you avoid combat with by selecting "cheer up". In comparison, Arcanum is a relatively more grounded game with believable characters in believable situations with believable dialog options to convince them to avoid combat.

I didn't even say that Undertale is a good game (I haven't finished it, my current feeling is that it is not particularly good ; I am disappointed because I really like Earthbound). What I said is that taking the approach of full dialog battle system is a good idea, considering dialog battles are cool (and I said that the dialogs battles which are actually in Arcanum are better, of course it does everything else better too), and that there are "many" games where a pacifist or almost pacifist playthrough is possible but generally not via dialogs only.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Do you really need to be so pedantic about a single hyperbole? I'm not saying the game you're shilling for is terrible, yet you keep nitpicking and avoiding any actual and friendly discussion about it to post stuff like "people should play it" or "I think people played it" over and over. Dude, come on.

Edit: sorry for typos. Posting on phone.

I mean, it's rather hard to have said discussion when I have to refute the same shit over and over again. Next page will probably be people going on about memes again. You get sick of 'discussion' of that nature pretty fast. So yeah, I snapped at you over some trivial pedantic shit that sounded like the same shit people have answered multiple times for about 20 pages now. Reading back your actual stance seems to be 'flavour text doesn't make the game interesting/fun even when well written' which isn't really something I can argue with, I just think it's plain wrong. I'd much rather have a game that reacts to many things with flavour text than one that reacts to nearly nothing but has some extra mechanics for varied gameplay like Skyrim with it's potion crafting and house construction that feel entirely tacked on and don't fit with the core gameplay at all. What kind of game do you think is best that you're comparing this with to begin with? Because to me, this game brought to mind games like Nethack where you'll do something you think is innocuous because it's a game and then suddenly get blasted by the gods for trying to eat your faithful pet. I can't think of another game that caught me off guard in that way.

 

[Fowyr]

OK, I think I got it.
Author is that Homestuck guy, so it's probably 2deep4u shit, but, looking at some fanboying Codexers, can be mildly amusing, especially when you feel low and want some adolescent FEELZ.

It's adventure game with half-arcade - half-text combat. Why it's called RPG?

Is Academagia RPG? No.
Is Hillsfar RPG? Hell, no.
Remove from Obitus DM-clone part and you again will get not-RPG.

Also, filepepe, darling, I just can't understand you. Your review, though interesting, because I play JRPG very, very rarely, is ultimately "I can't spoiler it, but just buy it, it's the best game ever or at least next best thing".

From the artwork to the soundtrack, from character design to battle systems, Undertale is easily one - if not THE - most coherent and consistent game I've ever played, where everything exists for a reason and I couldn't imagine it any other way.

 

[Azarkon]

Azarkon Seriously, nobody looks at Age of Decadence and says "This is a historical medieval/classical European turn-based tactical combat game, just like Eisenwald". How did that idea that even get in your head

(Also, is Alex Dergay a Fallout fan?)

Can you give us a list of these indie RPGs that didn't rely on existing franchise/developer hype and achieved success?

Top RPGs on Steamspy that 1) aren't AAA 2) aren't from famous developers/franchises 3) aren't action RPGs:

Legend of Grimrock - ~950,000
To the Moon - ~900,000
Undertale - ~750,000
Skyborn - ~450,000

Legend of Grimrock is a Wizardry/Dungeon Master-style game, marketed as a throw back to the old days. The other three all have RPG Maker/JRPG-inspired designs, with a heavy emphasis on story/characters.

We could throw in Banner Sage, but it's made by former Bioware developers.

Besides these games, the most popular sub-genres of RPGs are platformer+RPG hybrids and roguelikes, and obviously action RPGs, especially those with online play, but people don't think of such games as RPGs on the Codex.

It is then easy to conclude that Undertale succeeded ultimately because it was a quality game within its already lucrative sub-genre. Its uniqueness helped differentiate it from the run of the mill, but top games within the RPG Maker/JRPG-inspired market already sell very well when put besides games such as Legends of Eisenwald and Age of Decadence.

 

[Irenaeus II]

The post above has thrown me into midday depression. Might be connected to having just eaten 700g of mostly red meat and digestion being slow as fuck. Also, farts.

 

[Vikter]

Reading back your actual stance seems to be 'flavour text doesn't make the game interesting/fun even when well written'

What the fuck are you talking about? I said how much I liked the writing in this game and only tried to defend the point of view of the guy who complained about the flavor text in combat. I never said the game is not interesting, and you could see that if you read any of my posts. I am liking the game, even though I dislike the combat, but the dialogue is great and I never said the game is remotely bad, especially when it comes to game stuff.
And unlike you, I don't hold it in a high altar, mostly because I played other games which played with the fourth wall and subverted things inherent to their genres, so I'm not that impressed by yet another deconstruction/subversion.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

OK, I think I got it.
Author is that Homestuck guy,

No he isn't. He just did a couple of songs for it.

 

[Azarkon]

I am pretty sure AoD lack of success has nothing to do with the name. Even BGEE is considered hardcore and unwelcoming to average gamers, AoD is 2x that. Its lack of sales can only be attributed to its dev's stubbornness around how it was designed for the niche of the niche.

But Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition sold very well at ~500,000 copies, and all they did was upgrade an old game to a higher resolution, fix a few bugs, and add a few mediocre items/NPCs.

 

[ArchAngel]

I am pretty sure AoD lack of success has nothing to do with the name. Even BGEE is considered hardcore and unwelcoming to average gamers, AoD is 2x that. Its lack of sales can only be attributed to its dev's stubbornness around how it was designed for the niche of the niche.

But Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition sold very well at ~500,000 copies, and all they did was upgrade an old game to a higher resolution, fix a few bugs, and add a few mediocre items/NPCs.

Well that only confirms my comment. BG had a name to call upon and most of sales were to people that played it before. New players find it hard. I watched about 20-30 new players stream BG1EE on twitch in last few years and all of them had a tough time with most quitting early. And some would probably quit as well if I didn't try to help them with mechanics early (and with some that didn't help as well). People I seen stream it until the end or play it for longer, most played it before.

AoD has no name to call upon and the game is much harder (and turn based) and has no exploration element. It is a niche game even in the niche classic RPG market where games like BG and Fallout 1/2 fall into.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Having almost zero less exploration element in AoD (there is some) makes it good imo, since the game is more focused and you quickly move from quest to quest, combat to combat, instead of dilly dally walking around the mountains taking pics collecting mushrooms like in shit games like Skyrim and Skyrim with guns.

 

[Azarkon]

Just like "Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015" did. The game sold more then 176k units, so it must have a lot of merit! Everybody knows that sales has nothing to do with quality. I'm pretty sure that a lot of cRPG classics sold less than most games we talk about it, including the horrible "Pillars of Eternity". Repeating the same fallacy again and again will not make it true. Sorry. If anything, the sales numbers just prove the opposite: that great games sell less because most people are stupid.

This whole sales issue came up because of the post from the Aterdux developer. Before that it was just another armchair argument about the quality of the game. But it turns out that developers have bigger concerns. Sales do very much matter regardless of whether they match what you deem to be quality. In this respect, it is necessary to examine what made Undertale and similar indie games so successful, as there's no "AAA"/"publisher" argument to fall back on.

 

[Damned Registrations]

And unlike you, I don't hold it in a high altar, mostly because I played other games which played with the fourth wall and subverted things inherent to their genres, so I'm not that impressed by yet another deconstruction/subversion.

I mean, I've played games that try to do this stuff as well, like MGR. But they tend to fuck it up, mostly because they don't actually offer you a real choice- you can't progress in the game without killing people, so when it tries to throw that back in your face, it doesn't work. Undertale doesn't do that though; it doesn't really force anything on you in particular, so when it calls you out on what you did, it hits home because you chose to do those things, you weren't forced or even prodded into it. As George Weidman put it, the game doesn't even have the premise that combat is the default to begin with. If you play Metal Gear or Deus Ex or Iji or whatever other game with a pacifist route, you are very keenly aware of that dichotomy, that the game was designed to be beaten via a large dose of violence and you're purposefully avoiding it to earn brownie points. In Undertale, that isn't really the case. As you play through, the reward for not killing things is simply that the things aren't dead, and it feels like a natural way of interacting with your enemies.

Besides, there's no need to take that single aspect in isolation and say the game isn't special because other games did that as well. The game works as a whole. Did the other games that deconstructed things also have excellent musical design, writing, and a detailed reactive world? Is the culmination of all those factors not worth something?

 

[Irenaeus II]

In this respect, it is necessary to examine what made Undertale and similar indie games so successful, as there's no "AAA"/"publisher" argument to fall back on.

I thought we had settled in "tumblr/hipster hype"??