Undertale Review

Kyle Conrad

8 Kr

1-24-16

Undertale Review

        Undertale is a recent Indie game placed in an underground world filled with monsters who once battled the humans who trapped them there. An Indie game is a game made by a

single developer, and are usually the only game in a series, but are not flash games that you can just play on your computer without downloading. Indie games were HUGE last year, and Undertale was voted the best Indie/PC only game of the year by multiple video game journalists and readers, what really makes this game great is the variety and story, but I will get to that later. The vibrant characters and the changing dialogue through multiple play-throughs really make the game special. What is even better, though, is the fact that there are multiple ways to play the game. When you start the game in these underground ruins in which the monsters dwell, you meet an innocent looking flower, but I don’t want to go into details because of spoilers. You are then met by a mother like figure of a monster who shows you how to stay alive in this world, through words instead of violent actions.

        One way to play through the game is to listen to her words and not harm a single thing on your way to the core, which is where you will escape the underground, or otherwise known as the Pacifist route. You can even do more once you have beaten that route and become a True Pacifist. Another way is to not kill any of the people you meet, but you can kill some of the smaller cannon-fodder monsters that cross your path. Lastly, the third way is the Genocide route, where you kill everything you meet. What makes this game shine its brightest, is not its 32-bit graphics, or its simpleness (which is plenty of people’s negatives about the game), but the fact that the story and dialogue change with different play-throughs, with a moral/hidden message to be a peaceful person and to reflect on yourself. When you play Genocide, the characters make you feel terrible about what you are doing, with the constant reminder of the people you have killed, and the families you have harmed, but they still believe that there is good in you, even in their dying breaths. When I played through the Genocide route, I was constantly feeling bad about myself, because the game has that amount of strength on your soul and your willpower.