How To Save A Life: Undertale Review

Undertale is an amazing meta-commentary on RPGs…but to get the full experience, you may need a strategy guide.

This review was originally published on January 29, 2016

It’s hard for me to rectify my experience with Undertale. On one hand, it’s a brilliant game that subverts the tropes video game players take for granted by turning them inside out in a surprising and entertaining way. On the other hand, my experience probably would have been far less remarkable had I not explicitly known how to achieve it.

Here’s how Undertale works: The game begins by appearing like a standard Earthbound-esque RPG. It expects you to make assumptions about how to play based on a standard knowledge of games but, after a short time progressing through the world, certain events encourage you to start questioning those assumptions. Then finally, after you complete your first run of the game, the ending is designed to make you feel motivated to replay the entire thing and make new choices based on what you learned in your first play through.

Here’s the problem: Even on the second time around, there’s no guarantee that the player will have fully grasped how certain idiosyncratic systems work. Although Undertale bills itself as “the RPG where you don’t have to destroy anyone,” that’s easier said than done. As Julie Muncy summarized in her Kill Screen review, the game pushes you hard toward mercy, but often you won’t know how to make that happen unless you a.) perform an almost unreasonable amount of guess and check or b.) look it up on a forum or subreddit.

I took a third route. I had happened upon play throughs of Undertale on YouTube before I began playing. I started to dig into what this Undertale game was. After watching and reading, I knew there were certain rules that needed to be followed to achieve specific endings. And, most importantly, had the opposite experience of Muncy: I saw the one weird trick to get past the first boss without killing them.

But is it really a problem that you can’t do what you want to do in this game without a little extra knowledge? Undertale is this weird singular game where the meta-experience feels part and parcel with the game itself. As a kid, I remember sharing info with friends at school to help to uncover mysteries within games. Even in college, I couldn’t have started my first run of Ocarina of Time without a little help. Maybe Undertale was designed to be a game where you have to seek out the path to find all the little details and hacks behind the scenes. Maybe that’s supposed to be part of the fun.

When I examine the full picture — play through footage and wiki pages included — Undertale is one of the most interesting games of 2015. In addition to the sharp writing, engrossing music, and excellent character development (all of which can be enjoyed regardless of how you feel about the system), this strange unintuitive system does provide a fascinating and touching twist on your average RPG. I don’t know if it would be able to provide that unique experience if it did communicate properly and function intuitively. Undertale is more than a game, it’s a whole collective experience. Don’t hesitate exploring everything it has to offer, just don’t feel bad about watching a play through or consulting a strategy guide.