Okay, I'm going to come out and say it. I don't like Undertale. In my opinion, it's just another bullet hell, with linear RPG elements. The dialogue and the story telling isn't that great. It tries to use feels too much to get people interested, instead of putting together a balanced story. It's full of memes and tropes and I don't think it does a good job balancing the silly and the serious. Though while I don't like it, I can still say there's some good things about it. Some of the characters are very well put together, but not all of them. And the music is fantastic. But for me, it really isn't worth the money to buy it. I can find games that I find more fun for cheaper.
I'm not looking for trolls, or for people to harass me because of my opinion. I am genuinely asking why you like Undertale. I want to know just why people think it's the best game ever. I want to understand why I can't go anywhere on the internet without seeing Undertale plastered everywhere. Give me some detail on it, don't just tell me that's the best game ever and not tell me why you think it is.
Sadly because of this Hype Train that people have about Undertale, it's actually turned me off it completely.
Same thing happened to me with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. EVERYONE was saying it was the greatest with unique mechanics, and when I played it, it just felt like another Indie Roleplaying Game.
One thing I like to ask people who mention "too many memes" as a complaint
How is anything in Undertale a "meme"? A meme is a "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture"
That means any joke or observation or action can become a meme. "Three wolf moon" t-shirts was a meme and that was just a shirt company selling the same kinds of shirts they always sold. Memes can't be "created" in fiction. You can create JOKES in a game that BECOME memes. The hoop rolling scene at the end of Portal 1 was something that the dev team thought would become a meme, they nicknamed it "hoopy" but that didn't come to pass. They were surprised when the companion cube became ridiculously popular at the time.
It's popular because A: It was created by a guy who created Homestuck and B: It's a subversion of games a lot of people my age played when they were younger. It subverts audience expectations (if you actually play the game to 100% completion and get all the endings, as we would in the Snes era of games) for the genre by personifying your enemies to be more "human" so that you question why you should be killing them to become more powerful. Bullet hell, for a lot of players who liked Undertale, is actually a 100% new concept to them. Bullethell is a super niche genre. THAT and the game doesn't just play like a bullethell, it eventually plays like a platformer and Frogger as well. Besides that, it has a lot of puns and solid humor that is satirical of anime fans (it also has subversions of tropes in a game already about subversions. A lot of characters are NOT what they appear to be. Even Asgore, the "Final boss" is the exact opposite of every Final Boss you've ever seen in a videogame).
Besides that, the main cast is also the bosses which is craaaaaaaaaazy for a rpg. So it's a combination of a lot of things for why it suddenly exploded. So, reiterating, A: Homestuck community B: Game gets better the more you understand about snes to playstation era JRPG games.
It's also $10 and that is cheaper than a full movie. You can't complain about the price of anything that's around $10, that's $5 less than a bottle of Bacardi gold and half the cost of a paperback.
I'm not sure if it's the best game ever, but it's "up there" in solid storytelling (that isn't to say the gameplay is the best ever). It's also a rare type of game that tries to spread a message to the people who play it, namely determination in the face of adversity, forgiveness, selflessness, cruelty. One example is that Determination in the setting is seen as both A: A force for achieving your goals and B: A force for achieving REALLY BAD GOALS NO MATTER WHO YOU HURT. The reason I mention this is I've met at least one Undertale player who literally revolved his entire lifestyle around the things he learned from the game. There's similar things with the Dark Souls community where Dark Souls cured their depression, but that's another story.
Another cool thing is the game basically sees you as an outside influence. That character on the screen isn't you and the game acknowledges this. You're an eldritch abomination to the inhabitants of that world. You can reverse death, delete the entire timeline, and even kill someone over and over and they might mention it.
For reference, games I consider to have really good stories: Spec Ops the Line, Planescape Torment, Bioshock 2 (IT'S GOOD OK), Portal 2, Undertale, Metal Gear Solid 1, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX game), Red Dead Redemption, Psychonauts, The Last of Us
When OP complains about memes in the game I got to wonder if he's conflating memes that have become memes after Undertale were copied by Undertale into Undertale because I didn't find anything that isn't sourced to Undertale already.
And I absolutely refuse to do a genocide run of the game because I do not want to stab Goatmom again or kill Goatgod. And no amount of genocide can bring by Goatbro.
I... Hm. This is tricky. I haven't 100% finished the game yet, but here goes. First, though, let me make a point:
Undertale is not my favorite game, nor my favorite Indie game. I only think it's a good game, not a super great game. If you want to know of a great 4X (sort of) card/survival game with good story and interesting lore (real-world Baltic folklore turned fantasy), you should look up Thea: The Awakening. THAT is a great game in my opinion. Undertale is not as great as that...
But Undertale is still a good game, and I'm happy I played it. Here's why:
It's got good storytelling. That's what it comes down to. Undertale's actual mechanics are really subpar, and the graphics style isn't something I dig, even though I did play a lot of SNES games - including, yes, a little Earthbound. But the story is fun, and it toys with player expectations.
When I accidentally killed the first "boss" - you know, the lady you can call Mom - I was mortified. I was only doing around 50 damage a hit, and I wanted to get her really low in HP so I could talk her down, but then my character dealt a whopping 200 or 300 damage hit and she DIED ON ME. So, yeah, of COURSE I loaded the game. I didn't want her to die, and I'm not playing RPGs for an Ironman-mode experience.
The worst part about having her die that first time was that she herself warned me about that, and I was actively calculating my damage so I could get her as low as I could before talking her down, assuming that's what you were supposed to do. The game threw a curveball at me, though.
And the game referenced that. The game shoved the fact that I did that in my face. And then it beat the horse dead, but in a way that actually just played with my heartstrings more. I didn't feel offended by that. I thought it was a fun approach, even though I've been exposed to games breaking the fourth wall before. It worked.
How is anything in Undertale a "meme"?
Okay. I can answer this one really easily:
Doge.
Dear God, I was actually really sick of dogs by the time I got through the snowy region. I mean it. You fight two different dogs that were specifically designed to look like Doge (who is a shiba), and THAT is an obvious meme that the developer ran with. Yeah, the game has at least one meme, and it pops up pretty early on, and it isn't all that funny.
EDIT: Two dogs that look like doge doesn't sound like much, but you also fight three other dogs in that region as minor bosses, and I had someone tell me about the whole making-his-neck-grow-infinitely-long joke with the Lesser Dog. That took a while. I was bored of them fast.
Again: the game is still a good game, and I'm happy I played it, but it has at least one meme, and I'm sure I missed others. And yes, that meme existed BEFORE the game did.
I'll also say this: if someone doesn't like the game after a few hours of play, they shouldn't be told to keep playing so they can get to the fun part. I can see why people wouldn't have fun with the game because of the gameplay. Bullet hells just aren't that interesting to me, the RPG elements are really just a flimsy Christmas present wrapping you're supposed to yank off before you get to the present inside (the story), and the art style / graphics are what I'd describe as "Indie 8-bit." Indie 8-bit is the lazier cousin of SNES 8-bit. It could be way better.
(But at least the characters aren't literally 1 pixel wide stick figures like some Indie games. Those games upset me on a deep level.)
I'll also say that my purchase/playthrough of Undertale was really delayed because it DOES have a lot of really lazy design on the surface. Again: graphics style = high-middle end Indie 8-bit. Not saying much. The combat was really boring to watch (a little more fun to play). The story's premise actually bothered me before I picked up the game ("So, I'm playing a little girl trapped in the underworld, I'm trying to escape, monsters are trying to kill me, and I'm supposed to feel bad for fighting back?"). It... Yeah, it's easy to start playing with a frown on your face.
Again, though: turned out to have a good story with subpar gameplay. It was worth the purchase. I enjoyed it. It made me think a little. I can't say much more than that.
EDIT: And I'm gonna reiterate that there are other Indie games out there I'd sooner suggest throwing money at than Undertale. I personally have poured a bunch of hours into Battle Brothers (which is like Panzer General but as a medieval mercenary RPG), and I think Thea is a really fun one, too. There's a few others of similar quality worth mentioning, but I think I've gotten my point across.
First I'd like to say that (in my opinion) Undertale is not the best game ever. It's a damn good game, but it's not the best. It has its pros and cons, but I wouldn't elevate it on a high pedestal over all others. There is a lot of hype for the game, and that did put me off from even looking into it for awhile. Hype Culture can definitely taint a game/movie/show/etc, and I feel like my opinion on Hype Culture in general is pretty negative. (This video pretty close to my own personal thoughts on Hype Culture.)
Long story short Hype Culture can definitely mess with people's heads. It gives you the illusion that something will be better than it is, and gives you incredibly high expectations upon seeing it. Of course this backfires, as nothing is perfect, and will usually make someone scorn over not having their expectations filled. Not saying that's what happened with you OP, or anyone that disliked the game. Though it is a reason that a lot of times over-hyped media gets a lot of backlash.
Onto the actual game itself, I didn't find the gameplay anything too special. I enjoy RPG-Maker esque games, so I wasn't turned off by the graphics or the gameplay. Some things were a bit finicky, though nothing to really shake a stick at. I thought that the battle concept was pretty interesting, nothing fabulous, but not shabby by any means.
The main plot was... interesting, at least I thought so. Most of my issues with it lie at the beginning and at the end. (This is assuming that I'm playing a Pacifist Run.) The ruins served as a tutorial, I get that. Though I found that it dragged on for too long, and my interest was waning by the time that the tutorial was coming to a close.
My issues with the end of the Pacifist run was how.. rushed everything felt. Not only that but the final confrontation with Flowey was absolutely off-putting. It just didn't seem to fit. It made me feel like I was playing another game entirely, and the whole thing was just so... excessive. I seriously wish that he had done something different with that fight, but hey what's done is done.
Aside from that the ending was alright. I'm not a huge fan of 'everything worked out for everyone!' I know that technically things didn't work out for Flowey/whatever his real name was. However aside from him all the monsters go up to the surface and everything seems happy with no resistance from the humans whatsoever. I wish that had of been done more realistically/with more care.
Though this is something that I've come to expect from most stories, so I was hardly surprised.
The Genocide run was a bit of another thing altogether. What I loved about the Genocide run was how much your actions really impacted your public appearance, and how others reacted to you. Sure you could play an assassin Dragonborn in Skyrim, or a renegade Shepard in Mass Effect, but above all that you were still the goddamn hero. Undertale said 'fuck that noise' and made you the villain when you decided to walk down the darker path. Which was awesome.
Honestly I'm a bit more fond of the Genocide ending, as it truly was a good wrap up to the darker road chosen. The Sans fight, while next to insufferable to beat, felt a lot more like an Undertale boss when compared to Flowey. I also liked (and in a way disliked) that if you wanted to play the game again then you had to 'sell your soul', and live with the consequences of being soulless in any playthroughs done afterwards. You, as the player are paying for the decisions you made. I don't know a lot of games that are ballsy enough to make that kind of move.
I won't get into my opinions of the various neutral endings, because (to be frank) I don't know most of them.
What really made the game for me was the characters. The fact that if you chose to do a Pacifist route, or even Neutral that you would have to interact and find out the charm of each enemy you faced. You weren't just facing 'randomly generated bandit #314' but a character with their own quirks. I'm a big character buff, and usually I don't see that kind of detail in NPCs, so I really enjoyed that. I found most of the main characters (with perhaps the exception of Toriel) to be enjoyable. Even a character like Sans, who I wasn't a huge fan of (at least not to the extent most people are), I could respect the writing that went into him.
I found that the game seemed to have character. I liked a lot of the witty dialogue and puns. I liked a lot of the hidden easter eggs that were left to be found. I liked the fact that they incorporated something like a save feature into the main story (which I was really intrigued by. Throwing a game mechanic and making it into a plot point is genius.) No, it wasn't perfect, far from it, but I still really enjoyed myself with it, and would recommend it to anyone who likes story-based games.
Not that I get huffy over other people not liking it. In fact I like it when people dislike something that I enjoy. It gives me perspective on way they feel that way, and that makes looking at the game objectively all the more clearer.
I also have mad respect for Toby Fox, as he pretty much made the entire game by himself. Damn son.
Do you know what kind of person hates things because they're popular?
HIPSTERS.
Well... With Indie games I actually err on the side of caution when a game is hyped, probably similarly to how the OP does. The Indie community can sometimes get some odd ideas about what makes something good, just as the AAA industry can get dumb ideas about how if you throw more money at a game it'll magically get better.
Undertale worked out, but let's talk about Starbound. Remember how MEGA HYPED a lot of the Indie crowd was with Starbound? How long did it take for Starbound to actually get to a point where it had some content? And then to the point where the content was properly balanced and wasn't a chore to level through? And is it yet what I'd call a good game? (The answer to the last one is "No.")
Now, the Indie industry has also produced some games that I will cherish forever. This War of Mine is one of them. Thea: The Awakening, Battle Brothers, Never Alone... Love 'em. I find Barony oddly replayable, I poured tons of hours into Terraria, and Chroma Squad is a fun little distraction. But the Indie industry also produces some games that I'd call utter crap, and people are willing to forgive the games that are utter crap because they're Indie. It's boggling.
Undertale turned out to be a really fun, really thought-provoking game, but if the OP is cautious about a hyped Indie game, I'd say that caution is wise.
Do you know what kind of person hates things because they're popular?
HIPSTERS.
I don't remember mentioning that I hated the game before playing it. In fact, I didn't. I was more cautious than anything else, more or less for the reasons that @Shorticus mentioned above. The Indie game community has given me more than a few reasons to be a bit cautious in researching a game before buying it myself.
Thankfully Undertale ended up not warranting the caution.
The game by itself isn't offensive, it's a decent novelty that erodes rather fast after a few days, but of course /those people/ do what they do with certain sorts of games, shows and so forth and you want to stay away from it for the rest of your life.
I somehow never end up frequenting places where there are insane fandoms. The entire idea I've only heard about from other people complaining. I've never met a single Five Nights at Freddies Player, A Fan of Supernatural, A Undertale Fan, Homestuck fans, fans of Star Wars, Fans of Star Trek. Where do you guys frequent, furry boards? 4chan? Reddit/undertale? (Serious question, that's where I'd imagine they'd be).
I somehow never end up frequenting places where there are insane fandoms. The entire idea I've only heard about from other people complaining. I've never met a single Five Nights at Freddies Player, A Fan of Supernatural, A Undertale Fan, Homestuck fans, fans of Star Wars, Fans of Star Trek. Where do you guys frequent, furry boards? 4chan? Reddit/undertale? (Serious question, that's where I'd imagine they'd be).
Hey, I'm glad I'm not the only one!
Thankfully, I haven't come across these type of "fans" for now, at least, and it's strange because I like a lot of popular fandoms; I guess I'm just extremely tame and lax about my passions? I mean, I can see rabid fans light years away so I guess that's why I've been able to avoid fandom drama and immature, rabid fans.
I also wanted to make a side comment on something that was brought up earlier in the thread about not liking a fandom anymore because of the people in the fan base:
You like whatever the hell you want and if you know you're not one of those people, then, who cares?
Be one of the few to actually support it and not defile it like the 99%.
From the viewpoint of someone who has literally no experience with the game beyond hearsay...I really think the whole 'actions have consequences' theme was instilled a little too much into the game, if what I hear about the game not allowing/discouraging replays because characters remember things. It limits the game to one singular playthrough, and doesn't allow you to get the ultra pacifist good ending even if you've screwed up once.
I could be talking outta the ass, though, so take what I say with a grain of salt because I really don't care enough to delve deeper into the game/themes/behind the scenes of it.
From the viewpoint of someone who has literally no experience with the game beyond hearsay...I really think the whole 'actions have consequences' theme was instilled a little too much into the game, if what I hear about the game not allowing/discouraging replays because characters remember things. It limits the game to one singular playthrough, and doesn't allow you to get the ultra pacifist good ending even if you've screwed up once.
I could be talking outta the ass, though, so take what I say with a grain of salt because I really don't care enough to delve deeper into the game/themes/behind the scenes of it.
You can still do a true pacifist run even after screwing up and killing one character the first time.
I'll tuck this into a spoiler just in case. But the dressed up skinny of it is that you reboot the game after fighting Asgore you'll end up getting the chance to do a challenge to start over.
Now more in-depth:
I don't know if it works on a Genocide run as your first run. But after fighting and beating Asgore in the end Flowey will appear and seemingly "end" the game. As soon as he appears the game closes and sends you back to desktop. It acts like a crash, but it isn't.
And this is sort of the self-aware, meta beauty of it all. Granted meta-humor may not be for anyone, but at this point it goes Deadpool.
Rebooting the game the intro sequence will be completely different than before. Asgore in the intro will be replaced by another monster, and it'll show corruption. The menu screen where you load your save will also be changed, with the name of your save (or location) being save. Click it, and cut straight to the true-final boss fight; Mega/Meta (in every sense of the "Meta" there) Flowey.
One of Flowey's gimmicks is that he has the power of save manipulation and will save the game just before you die to him and constantly reload it "forever". This may seem terrifying, but it's not. At this point the game's cranking it to twelve for amusement's sake.
Anyways, beat Flowey and you get the option to save or kill him.
Personally by this point I was on a quest for redemption after killing Toriel so kept clicking the option to save him. Eventually he'll give up, and ask why you're showing him - the worse monster of all - mercy and offers to reset the timeline, after which he *promises* you can go free if you perform a true pacifist run so he may "learn" the value of mercy.
Accept, and be on your way to do your second run.
Some characters will have dialog adjusted, namely just Toriel, Sans, and Papyrus. But it's a few lines indicating Deja Vu and doesn't dramatically alter the writing of the game.
That aside (another spoiler for a hider)...
You will have to fight Flowey again, but in his true form as Asriel who'll try to kill you so he can keep resetting the time-line. I don't think you can actually kill him (but I never tried, nor want to) so just doing a pacifist runs and partake in one of the more emotional moments of the game.
There'll be a spiel afterwards that Asriel/Flowey was bored and found your character interesting and wants you to be the eternal plaything. So uses the power of the souls to reset the time-line.
Depending on how you want to approach the ending you could fill in for yourself every play through after is a resetting of the game. Afterwards, dropping it and leaving it is like how Spec Ops: The Line seems to want its story to be approached: by simple not getting involved.
Of course, every play through changes a setting in the files so it'd go without saying that with some Googling you could find the file and change the setting back to zero for a playing experience that is like the exact same run, and I think that's what some people do.
Doge.
Dear God, I was actually really sick of dogs by the time I got through the snowy region. I mean it. You fight two different dogs that were specifically designed to look like Doge (who is a shiba), and THAT is an obvious meme that the developer ran with. Yeah, the game has at least one meme, and it pops up pretty early on, and it isn't all that funny.
Spec Ops always bothered me, though. It's like "Okay, I can see what you guys are doing. Deconstructing the big huge Jingoist War Vidya market."
But on the other hand it's like, when whats his name Developer Man was asked about all the awful stuff you do in that game and he says "well put the controller down" it's like??? but this stuff is meant to be consumed???
I haven't played Spec Ops (but since when has that ever stopped anyone from talking about anything) but I respect it.
No, they don't need to be, but what the HELL is that thing I just linked? And why have I talked to people that tried to convince me it was somehow deep?!
The guy literally walks around his house and forcibly makes himself fall down after fondling doorknobs and knocking over stacks of coins.
