Undertale - Toby Fox (2015)

How does one even begin to talk about Undertale? Perhaps we should start from the very beginning.

Undertale is, ostensibly, a JRPG. Developed by Toby Fox, formerly known for his audio work on the Homestuck soundtrack and as a game developer, the very dark EarthBound fangame The Halloween Hack.

Indeed, that very specific pedigree explains a good deal about the game. Like the second entry in the storied MOTHER series, Undertale is by turns hilarious, heartwarming, tragic, and frightening, and stars a cast of utterly bizarre–mostly lovable–characters, who include: a motherly goat woman, a “cool” skeleton and his trollish brother, and a cripplingly shy mad scientist, among many others.

Unlike EarthBound, and indeed most JRPGs, you do not actually need to fight the many bizarre monsters in Undertale. This is not to say that there is no mechanical combat system, or that it’s optional, rather, “fighting” in Undertale takes two forms. There is the traditional “Fight” option in which you attempt to land a hit on an enemy with a meter not dissimilar to the ones seen in some golf games, and, more interestingly, there are the related “Act” and “Mercy” menus. “Act” brings up an enemy-dependant series of actions our protagonist can take. These can be almost anything; they range from telling a bad joke, to politely requesting that a monster clean you, to flexing your muscles in a showboaty fashion. Determining the right combination of actions will let you “spare” monsters from the Mercy menu, ending the encounter without any loss of life on either side. This is very important to the game’s structure, as explained below.

On top of this, the actual act of engaging in these encounters is very innovative. Rather than simply trading blows via a menu, every round (whether you Act or Fight) ends with a brief shmup segment, in which you must guide the protagonists soul (which is represented by a small heart) through bullet-hell style shooter attacks. These segments last not more than a few seconds, but they’re an extremely refreshing take on the incredibly stale combat found in many of the game’s genre fellows. Critically, it also saves Undertale from falling into the Middens trap of simply renaming the standards of HP, MP, Crit Chance, etc. to random esoteric words and mistaking that for innovation. Undertale, crucially, tries to be different mechanically, not just in narrative.

Astute readers might wonder how, if you never fight anything, you ever level up. The fact of the matter is that you simply don’t have to. Selecting the Mercy option to end every encounter (and as far as I am aware, every encounter can be ended this way, though with some of the boss battles especially it’s very tricky) results in sticking at Level 1 through your entire playthrough. Many fans would even argue that this is the best way to play the game, which brings us to Undertale’s ethical concerns.

Tons of games try to grapple with the idea of player agency. Most fail miserably. Some by being too on-the-nose, some by simply being too preachy, but most by not actually giving the player much agency at all. The argument often made is that the “correct” action in these games is to not play them at all, which, if you’ve just dropped $30 on Spec Ops: The Line, is a bit of a hard pill to swallow.

Undertale, therefore, by way of its mercy option, not just allows, but challenges you to take a different path. The game is far from subtle about pushing you in the direction of pacifism, and while some characters will criticize you regardless of what you do (it is understandable that some might be suspicious of a thorough goody two-shoes, which you will be, if you’re going full-pacifist), you’re in for an absolute tongue-lashing if you simply murder everyone you come across. Which, it should be pointed out, the game doesn’t actually stop you from doing. That the game utterly refuses to make assumptions about the player is worth pointing out. Undertale is reactive, it will give out what you put in, often in equal measure. Ultimately, anyone who’d go out of their way to achieve the game’s worst ending (which taints all subsequent playthroughs), has essentially dug their own grave. The best ending, by contrast, will make you feel like a damn saint.

Relatedly, the game is very meta. Getting the worst ending and then trying to set things right on a subsequent playthrough will not be met with happy results, and many characters react to repeated runs through the game, some in less than happy ways depending on your prior actions. “People change”, indeed.

Undertale, much like life, is what you make of it. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to play the game, but Undertale, through it all, never deceives, very rarely pulls anything resembling a “gotcha!”, and only yanks the rug out from under the player in the best of ways. It takes apart (and then rebuilds) the concept of traditional heroism, and the idea that simply being the best you can be is enough to solve problems. Undertale is a narrative about the powers of kindness and cruelty, and what becomes of those who wield those powers to their fullest extent. Undertale is, in plain language, one of the best games this reviewer has ever played, and if I may peel back the veneer of detached professionalism I generally strive for when reviewing something, one of a very short list that has genuinely moved me.

I can heartily recommend Undertale to just about anyone.

