Bradandez wrote:Being exposed to Undertale on a daily base and seeing how annoying the fan base is, I just want UT to die.
Seriously, HOW the hell do you achieve that? As someone who enjoy Undertale and go check fan creation here and there, I only see Undertale-related content or discussion once or twice in a month! So…
How!?
The only conceivable answer I have is that you hate Undertale so much that you go daily on Undertale fansites, tumblr, or reddit. There's no other way.
Or your brain just focus on the negative and seek false pattern as brains always do.
Anyway, I agree on one thing: Undertale is a terrible RPG.
RPG is a genre based solely on bad ideas and awful game-design (and sometimes mediocre writing). RPG is by essence not enjoyable.
Undertale fails completely in that regards. It's a good game, which disqualifies it for being even close the RPG category.
Seriously though, I enjoyed Undertale precisely for its characters, writing and humor. Not mentioning the variety in its mechanics, which constantly bring new ideas and challenge themselves. True, some can regret the lack of central mechanic, but it create this succession of surprises that make the game great. It's kind of a narative game with lots of unexpected mini-games.
The major flaw that annoyed me was its puzzles. Some are ok, some are bad, but barely anyone is interesting. I'm talking here of course about the environmental puzzles, not the combat themselves that can be considered as puzzles (better ones). I liked by the way how the game makes sometime fun of itself for its bad puzzles. Color panel puzzle is a perfect "non-puzzle" with terrible rules in its essence, and it's a nice cirucature of puzzle-design in most video-game.
About the symbolic and message of the game, first of all, I quite disagree with Pirez opinion.
[
Maybe because I don't see that Christ and Satan analogy. 
Flowey seems more a caricature of the player: bored, and just wanting to know "what happens if I…" with a lack of empathy. A behavior maybe meaningless regarding fictional characters (even if… I'll come to that later), but that is also present on online games, and generally in virtual spaces. As for Chara, they might be more interesting seen as an inner perversion than a "Greater Evil". So, yeah, I see how there's some "Savior Angel" and "Destructive Entity" symbology about these two characters, but it's another following of RPG tropes.
Anyway, what I find the most interesting is the "lack" of hateful character. Actually it makes the point of the game more pertinent. It's obviously a game about empathy, and in that regards, this message makes complete sense with characters that all have understandable motivations. I actually enjoy when fictions don't use any antagonists, and use only characters in conflicting situations, that can make bad decisions. It's in a way closer to how the world work (even if there is sometimes jerks), and it's great to have fiction that illustrate that by avoiding "mean" characters. Kind of what Inside Out do greatly.]
With that said, there is an important point I have to agree: the game's message is
absolutely not profound. It's nice at best, little bit clever why not, but not life-changing, or challenging. While I don't think the game is really pretentious or trying more than what it is (poetry isn't pretentious guys, sometimes you can try to be beautiful, serious, or insightful and that don't mean you are condescending or narcissistic), it can be a little bit lost in its message. And it certainly don't deserve so much praise for its simplistic values.
An article from Destructoid
(The Meaning of The Witness) recently made a clever commentary on it:
Sean Han-Tani-Chen-Hogan wrote:The game, like the ones I've mentioned, has this sort of worldview that seems to believe in a kind of pacifism-will-save-us idea. One that feels nice, but doesn't really engage with the social realities of that idea, and just throws a lot of interesting stuff together and tries to pass it off as a meaningful statement as conveyed through the game's choice system and its characters moralities. Yes, it's a very meticulously constructed game with detail and nice music, clever humor, and has resonated with many, many people. But it felt insular, unwilling to try to be challenged by other ideas, wanting to hide away in its shell, sort of. It presents itself as this sort of truth about our world, without thinking about some of that world's realities.
While I love Undertale tone and ideas, I must admit it's not as profound as players like to think it is. Which apply to a lot of game and products of the geek culture: we're a little bit in this echo-chamber where we praise ideas that comfort us in our own pre-conceived ideas. And games just have to say stuff like "War is, you know, kinda bad" / "Humans are meeaaan" / "It's not cool not to be free. I like freedom better." / "The person you had to kill to proceed? Well they're DEAD now.
They were people you scum!" to be acclaimed for having an "author vision" or a "deep message".
The press is still the worse in that regards. Sometimes you don't really need a lot to have journalists thinking they are art critic for talking about some AAA that isn't
only about shooting.
and FNAF.
