Undertale

[Suikama]

Undertale is a game that is very much inspired by Earthbound, and it's being made by the guy who does most of the music for Homestuck.

Release Trailer

Oh yeah it it comes out in 4 days get hypeee

[CF7]

I remember playing the demo and it was really interesting how the game handles your time traveler shenanigans i.e. each new playthrough. And actually tracks your actions.

Spoiler:

You're empty inside. Just like me.

[Chaore]

This looks fairly interesting.

...I'm not sure if I'm sure i'll pick it  up though.

[Third Eye Lem]

Oh yeah, I remember this! I'd definitely like to pick it up and play it sometime.

[Suikama]

oh yeah it's out

i havent played it yet but from what i've watched of outer people playing its pretty great

edit: aw what a nice ending

Spoiler:

... uh what the fuck toby

[Darkness1]

I just want to say that the soundtrack for this game is the greatest thing

[Suikama]

also fish vriska tho

edit: oh what the fuck there's

Spoiler:

ANOTHER ANOTHER FINAL BOSS

10/10 ending

Spoiler:

also holy fuck ultimate secret boss

GET DUNKED ON

VRISKAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Suikama]

This game is actually legit fucking amazing and everyone should play it

_{or at least watch a playthrough of it}

[CF7]

Holy shit. MEGALOVANIA is in the game. And it's amazing. AAAAAAAA.

Spoiler:

And then you destroy the universe. THE END.

. But i guess i'll tell this tale of descending into the deepest and blackest abyss some time later. Because right now i am kind of not in a mood to do so. At all...

[Suikama]

so uh turns out even after the main two endings there's STILL MORE SECRETS???

this game is truly insane

[Sparen]

The game is self aware, manipulates your save data, remembers your choices in successive playthroughs, and blows your mind in the absolute craziest way possible. And the fact that it is a danmaku "RPG"... combined with how amazing each and every character is...

I love this game so much!

[I'm also doing a Let's Play streamed to twitch every-ish day around 9-12ish PM EST if anyone is interested. Twitch name is sparenofiria]

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Finished the True Pacifist ending tonight.

This game is a fucking masterpiece. The gameplay mechanics, the characters, the fact that all of your choices matter, the fact that you literally can complete the entire game without killing anyone and it is in fact encouraged, the clever dialogue-- all of it is wonderful. The music is stellar. The writing is clearly deeply inspired by Shigesato Itoi and that makes my heart melt with happiness.

(ending spoilers)

Spoiler:

I literally spent like 20 minutes on the "final boss" battle with Flowey, refusing to fight him, just waiting for a mercy option to show up. Every time he kills you the game shuts itself off and he taunts you every time you turn it back on and holy shit that was fucking brilliant.

Spoiler:

Oh, and I like how the bgm/battle music of True Laboratory were so obviously inspired by the bgm in the last area in Earthbound, down to nearly identical sound effects. It fit so well and that whole scene genuinely hit me like a ton of bricks. Like shit I just went through this absolutely insane bullet hell battle with Flowey and now he tells me there's more? At first I thought being held away from closure after something so fucked up was so anticlimactic and then this comes right back at you and aaaaaaaaaaa

....




...now I gotta go do a No Mercy run.

Spoiler:

"Flowey" is trying to make me not restart the game. My god, every single bit of programming that went into this game is just outright art in and of itself.

I seriously hope Toby has plans on making more games. Every last bit of this game has been absolutely brilliant and genuinely heartfelt and manages to be an interesting meta-analysis on "player" mentality in RPGs without being pretentious. I can definitely see why this has a 99% positive rating on Steam right now.

[Mew seeker]

I have not played the game but I have seen Jim Sterling playing it and it looks good. ^^
I have also seen some fanarts of the game. I should probably stop looking. XD

Toriel is cute. :3
Is it just an impression or is she somewhat similar to Ran?

[Iced Fairy]

Toriel is cute. :3
Is it just an impression or is she somewhat similar to Ran?

A little closer to Keine, but yeah, she's got the motherly thing going for her. 

Spoiler:

For obvious reasons you find out.

[AJS]

And that's not even touching on the fact that the soundtrack is MASTERFUL.  I purchased it in a bundle with the game (yay $2 discount~) and I'm absolutely loving it.  And not only are the actual songs great, but some of the song titles are hilarious.

(Minor spoilers)

Spoiler:

"Bird That Carries You Over a Disproportionately Small Gap"
"NGAHHH!!"
"Can You Really Call This A Hotel, I Didn't Receive A Mint On My Pillow Or Anything"

[pineyappled]

m u f f e t

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Spoiler:

i'm having a bad time right now

[Failure McFailFace]

I just finished the Neutral route. Took me several dozen tries on Asgore.

Spoiler:

Flowey is fucking terrifying

[Mr. Sacchi]

I wanted to play the game, but I have a pathetically weak mind towards literally anything even remotely related to horror, so the moment I got hit by Flowey's "Friendship Pellets" annd he did his signature grin I quit the game.

Spoiler:

Immediately going to research if this ever happened again in the game and being hit in the face with the existence of the Omega-Flowey fight solidified my decision to not play this game.

That said, i did watch a playthrough and I'll have to agree with people here on most things, my only real problem with the game is... (big ending spoilers here, especially towards No Mercy, you've been warned)

Spoiler:

...it takes the meta commentary too far. I can understand the idea behind it and frankly I think it's utterly glorious my problem is when the entirety of the Fallen Child's backstory (or most of it anyway) is hidden in the No Mercy Ending, along with Flowey's backstory (I mean Flowey's, not Asriel's) and the best song in the game (And an explanation towards Sans's lainess) is horrible once you consider that the game actively punishes you for going through the No Mercy Route, especially when you consider that the only way to continue after said route is to give your soul to the Fallen Child which permanently taints all of your future playthroughs. As far as I read, neither a normal reset nor a True Reset fix this, the only way to fix it is to manually delete your save file and start over. This is the definition of taking something too far. Also the game literally mocking you for not having the balls to play the No Mercy route yourself and instead watching it on youtube because "At least the actual player went ahead and did it" completely ignoring the fact that some people (like me) might be horrendously turned off from actually playing something as macabre as the No Mercy Ending and ended up watching said videos while keeping the screen away from the actual video box and just listening to it (which I didn't do, I just read about it, yeah I'm a big pussy so what). Frankly it just feels like an unnecessary insult.

That said, the game is overall great and everyone in their lives should play it/watch a playthrough of at least the Neutral and Pacifist endings, (unless they can't stomach flowey, like me). Plus, awesome soundtrack, you can't ever say no to that. :V

[Suikama]

asgore fight in a nutshell (spoilery sorta?)

[AJS]

Spoiler:

Also the game literally mocking you for not having the balls to play the No Mercy route yourself and instead watching it on youtube because "At least the actual player went ahead and did it" completely ignoring the fact that some people (like me) might be horrendously turned off from actually playing something as macabre as the No Mercy Ending and ended up watching said videos while keeping the screen away from the actual video box and just listening to it (which I didn't do, I just read about it, yeah I'm a big pussy so what). Frankly it just feels like an unnecessary insult.

Spoiler:

Honestly I saw that as more of a playfal jab at the Youtube viewers, and to prove the game was so meta that it was even aware of anyone who might be watching it on a video.  And really, I just thought of it as Flowey being a dick once again, not the game "actively insulting" anyone who didn't play the Genocide route themselves.

It wouldn't be fair to those people anyway, because getting that far takes a lot of effort and requires getting past a REALLY difficult boss fight.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

If anything Flowey says insults you or gets under your skin, that's a good thing. He's supposed to do that.

And you're not supposed to agree with him, either. It was breaking the fourth wall while remaining in character.

Spoiler:

After all, he's SUPPORTING AND ENCOURAGING you to do what you did through the genocide run, and it's something you have to be utterly committed to do to even put you on that route, to bring you to that ending. And you, the YouTube spectator, supported that behavior by watching. It's very much like Flowey to call that out.

Spoiler:

And frankly, I LIKE that the game punishes you for showing no mercy. Throughout the run you're outright murdering  monsters when you could be ending those battles peacefully. You spare nothing and no one. Do you really think that doesn't deserve to be punished?

You show no mercy. The game treats you likewise by calling you inhuman and throwing two of the most unforgivingly difficult bosses at you. And Sans warns you multiple times to reconsider your path.

You don't. You're gonna have a bad time.

[Mr. Sacchi]

If anything Flowey says insults you or gets under your skin, that's a good thing. He's supposed to do that.

Oh, it's not so much that, it's just that I feel genuinely ill when it comes to horror, especially when it comes to horror elements in non-horror genres, which is basically everything flowey is about (plus being a dick at every opportunity). It's why I didn't finish playing the game. (Or really barely started :derp:)

As an example, Flowey's laugh and nightmare face during the tutorial gave me nausea and a headache. <- That's how sensitive I am to that kind of stuff.

And I don't mind the game

Spoiler:

punishing you for going through the Genocide Route, in fact, like I said, I think it's glorious the game does that, my problem is that they took it too far by making the punishment effectively permanent. If the punishment would go away if the player would, say, do the Pacifist run 3 times in a row after that, I would be 100% okay with it.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

Spoiler:

Ah, I get what you're saying.

I dunno, I kind of like that little nuance to be honest. I liked the feeling that all of my choices matter, and they're especially remembered by the fourth-wall breaking game. It's not like you get back to old saves after you start a new game, so it's not a huge deal if you just delete the game and redownload or something for a clean slate. But having it remember is the last little laugh the game has at you, and also gives a different (and rather chilling) ending if you do True Pacifist again.

As far as horror goes, I'm much more entertained by nuance rather than blatant shock. It wasn't the way Flowey looked or sounded that got me, it's how he knew what I did as if it was the most predictable thing ever. And when you kill a whole area, the music gets all dark and tense. The music for the rest of the game was distorted and so are your actions. The snowman doesn't give you a piece of itself, you TAKE it. Until he's a pile of useless snow. When you fight Undyne, she comes back as Undyne the Undying-- and her opening text says "The Heroine appears."-- just going to show that you are definitely, without a doubt, the antagonist in this run. If you take the two items in your room at the end of a pacifist playthrough, you obtain a "worn dagger" and a "heart-shaped locket". In a genocide run, you get "real knife" and "the locket". Equip the locket, it'll say "Right where it belongs." Equip the knife, it says "About time." It just further immerses you into just how unhinged the first fallen human was. I LOVED that and it terrified me at the same time.

[Fulisha of Light]

That said, i did watch a playthrough and I'll have to agree with people here on most things, my only real problem with the game is... (big ending spoilers here, especially towards No Mercy, you've been warned)

Spoiler:

...it takes the meta commentary too far. I can understand the idea behind it and frankly I think it's utterly glorious my problem is when the entirety of the Fallen Child's backstory (or most of it anyway) is hidden in the No Mercy Ending, along with Flowey's backstory (I mean Flowey's, not Asriel's) and the best song in the game (And an explanation towards Sans's lainess) is horrible once you consider that the game actively punishes you for going through the No Mercy Route, especially when you consider that the only way to continue after said route is to give your soul to the Fallen Child which permanently taints all of your future playthroughs. As far as I read, neither a normal reset nor a True Reset fix this, the only way to fix it is to manually delete your save file and start over. This is the definition of taking something too far.

I have to agree on this, I feel like it is a bit too extreme in this regard. How unfair would it be to a person who wants to replay the game as a clean state (such as people like me who love stories and would endlessly replay them for entertainment for example)? Or someone who wants to speedrun or TAS? (maybe not, but it's a thought). But they find that they have to go and do the chore of manually deleting the save just to remove the permanent punishment for wanting to replay the story? It's really unnecessary imo, and a waste of time.

My issue is how you can not gain more than 20HP on Mercy so you can at least survive better against enemies/bosses instead of having to restart over and over again because of being unable to dodge well or not having/running low on healing items.

[MatsuriSakuragi]

It... really is not that hard to download an extra copy to play a clean run on. I think this is kind of a case of making mountains out of molehills here. <_<;

[pineyappled]

My issue is how you can not gain more than 20HP on Mercy so you can at least survive better against enemies/bosses instead of having to restart over and over again because of being unable to dodge well or not having/running low on healing items.

Buy the

Spoiler:

Temmie armor.

[Sagus]

This game is probably my favorite game ever.

The only thing that I don't particularly like was how

Spoiler:

you CAN'T get the True Pacifist ending on the first try. I mean, I can understand WHY it's like that (gives off more of the story and sets up the stage for Flowey's absorption of everyone's souls), it's just that I don't think it makes any sense for Undyne to only talk to you about her letter to Alphys after you get the Neutral-Pacifist ending. It just felt... nonsensical.

Also kinda disappointed that waiting around for Toriel to come back in the beginning of the story, when she asks you to stay still for a while, doesn't result in anything and you have to disobey her to proceed. I mean, the game has so much hidden shit in it, but not this? Feels like a genuine oversight.

Of course, both of those things are just nitpicking. The game is a goddamn masterpiece.

also,

Spoiler:

forever laughing at the people who are continuously dying at the Undyne the Undying and Sans boss fights.
serves you goddamn right, you monsters :V

[Ryuu]

This game is probably my favorite game ever.

The only thing that I don't particularly like was how

Spoiler:

you CAN'T get the True Pacifist ending on the first try.

yes you can

Spoiler:

if you fulfill the requirements for true pacifist the first time through, you can just load your save from before the asgore fight and continue from there. it felt like a single playthrough to me tbh

[Sagus]

yes you can

Spoiler:

if you fulfill the requirements for true pacifist the first time through, you can just load your save from before the asgore fight and continue from there. it felt like a single playthrough to me tbh

Spoiler:

What I meant was that I feel it'd be better to be able to befriend Alphys without having to defeat Omega Flowey first, because I don't see the logic behind Undyne only giving you the letter AFTER you defeat Flowey.