Replaying Undertale After 9 Years

5/19/2025

This article has unmarked spoilers for Undertale. I warned ya'.

Ah, do not be afraid, my child.

"It can't be that good," I thought to myself, after a friend pleaded with me to play it in early 2016. I missed the original release that took the world by storm, but the immediate and overwhelming popularity is something that caused me to be skeptical. I still grapple with that response to things today, but I'd like to think other parts of me have changed in almost ten years. I was a grumpier, less open-minded person at the time.

After seeing things through to the True Pacifist ending (where Papyrus drives that car!), I had very mixed feelings on the game. I loved the music and artwork; I didn't much enjoy the story or the humor. Please bear with me here, but I had felt that the game was "trying too hard." I also wasn't huge on the whole "routes" thing, with different endings (sometimes in minuscule ways) depending on your actions.

And, truthfully, just so we're all honest here, there was a part of me that felt Undertale threatened to overshadow my beloved Earthbound/Mother series. I have a very personal connection to those games, and Undertale certainly is inspired by Mother.

As the years passed, I acknowledged that I took a lot of baggage and shitty attitudes with me into the world of Undertale. I wanted to give it another fair shake. I decided to pick the game up on Nintendo Switch (away from the distraction machine that is a desktop computer) and tried to clear my mind. I was excited to give this game another try and be serious, as my modern self.

What did I discover? Well...

Undertale's first thirty minutes or so are genuinely brilliant. I would say from the moment it begins to stepping out of the ruins into Snowdin, that is its own mini-masterpiece. As "Fallen Down" began to play, my heart began to swell. I remembered this like it was yesterday, how compelling it actually was. Flowey's appearance casts reasonable doubt on the proceedings as the truth behind Toriel's actions starts to come together. It's a fascinating mix of emotions as you yourself decide to charge ahead into the world. It's just stunning. There's fear for what could happen next, after learning about Asgore and from Flowey's warnings. There's pain to rejecting a motherly figure like Toriel.

Then, Sans and Papyrus show up.

Everything started falling apart for me all over again. All the tension is immediately sucked out of the room. They are ridiculous. Some of it is funny, but at what expense? I think for some players, it must not break from the game's more serious moments. For me, though, after this point things are on shaky ground, at least from an emotional perspective.

Flowey's threat that you may have to kill to survive becomes nonsense. Why would you ever kill anyone when everything in Snowdin is happy funny silly land? And sure, I think that kind of takeaway could be something intended. But now there's no real ambiguity or mystery. Handling things peacefully is just as easy (or easier, maybe?) as killing monsters and bosses. Trying to be fair again, most video games in my experience have trouble with morality and karma. Undertale puts itself in an unenviable spot by including it.

As all this dawned on me, I was upset. Had I really not grown? Shouldn't I be thinking about this differently? This was not too different from how I felt at the time. Am I alone in this whiplash feeling? There's more going on here than just how much I love the beginning.

Don't get me wrong, the game has its big dramatic moments that work (that I'll comment upon). They are also built up very well, as you're drip-fed information about the world and your upcoming fate. While Flowey's threats feel hollow and worthless, everyone's warnings about Asgore and your SOUL is pretty palpable.

In a "glass half full" kind of way, I'd say the game is quite successful, but sort of heavy-handed in making you not want to be a murder-hobo. That is an achievement! But you must do the "dates" to see the Pacifist ending, and the game is fairly happy to remind you that you're playing a game and being somewhat "judged" for it. Sans in the church-like hallway would be the most clear example of that. When Flowey reminds me at the end that I could reset and kill everyone if I wanted, just to see something different (and cruel), it feels a little...manipulative? The existence of divided routes means that, as soon as you know about that, you are somewhat "metagaming" the system to see the desired outcome. Not all that different from how the evil powers in say, inFamous are super cool. The feelings Undertale is going for and that mechanical aspect just don't totally mesh to me.

The Genocide route of the game is often cautioned as being distressing and feel-bad; it's also tedious. That's an interesting combination to make it, and I've never really wanted to do that playthrough because of its tedious nature. I started and stopped back then, and haven't tried in modern times. Let me know if you think I should.

It surely speaks to Undertale's power that we have inspired conversation like this at all. I just... want to be totally immersed in it the entire time, like I am at the outset, and I still can't seem to get there. This bothers me.

Before more play-by-play, I'll discuss some of Undertale's battle gameplay, which I greatly enjoy! So much so, that I decided to get another hit and start playing Undertale Yellow, a fangame. Pattern recognition can be a powerful thing; you'll gain a little bit of skill each encounter as you figure out how to dodge every bullet and attack. There's a sense of satisfaction as you "solve" each enemy and boss. I'm definitely a fan of more traditional JRPG style battles (or say, Mario & Luigi style QTEs), but Undertale's genre-mixing approach is still inventive and refreshing even today.

My only real gripe with the battles in Undertale is that sometimes it's not super clear when an enemy's attack will end. You do somehow start to get a feel for it, and of course it makes perfect sense that boss attacks are longer than standard enemies. You'll rarely get hit because of it, but just a few times I found myself wincing at a close call. The game, in a Neutral and Pacifist playthrough, is also not particularly challenging. Many of the would-be difficult fights are effectively cutscenes. Your mileage may vary there, and I've heard that Genocide is much more difficult. So, no foul there on challenge.

The game's tone continues to earthquake from then on. There are some subtle moments that still touch me, sincerely, like the famous "Despite everything, it's still you." The threat of Undyne is scary for her initial sequence, with an exciting fight to cap it off. Of course, she turns friendly, but the date where she (and you?) burns her own house down Steamed Clams style feel almost like personality rewrites.

The worst scene of all for me is Dr. Alphys' True Lab. This scene is haunting and filled with details about what was going on with SOULs and reanimating monsters into tortured, zombie-like existences...until Alphys comes back, and they are apparently more like puppies. It just doesn't make any sense to me, because the game is so good at building these different emotions and so frequently chooses comedy instead.

It's not wrong to be funny, mind you. Mother 3 is a game I just played that has a completely engrossing story with heavy emotions and funny scenes. There are, on occasion, moments that deflate a little tension. There's also outright silly stuff in Mother 3, including some stuff that would fit right in with Undertale's humor. I do feel that the Mother series has a better balance here. Undertale is much more ... loud, let's say, about when something is meant to be funny, creepy, or flashy (like Asriel).

The one section of the game where I feel absolutely everything fires on all cylinders again is King Asgore. The game spends a lot of time building up to this moment, in small, intriguing bursts over time. The battle takes away your ability to use the Mercy command, and Asgore himself is a character filled with pain and sorrow at what he has to do. He's got a lot of depth if you read into his actions and choices. There is no scene where Asgore, I don't know, slips on a banana peel and decides you're his best friend. This was my favorite character in my previous playthrough, and I think he remains that way today. Well, him or Toriel.

Photoshop Flowey is probably the simplest thing I can point to of Undertale becoming obnoxious. It's so abrasive that it rolls over from being unsettling into unintentionally funny. I've always imagined that it's meant to be somewhat like a "Giygas" moment, where things become unsettling and strange. The music is this ridiculous breakbeat thing with an ominous choir, all while in reality you can't lose or fail this scene in a way that matters. If you can, I've never had it happen to me.

As things came to a close on the main part of my playthrough, I felt a new sense of appreciation for some things, and disappointing familiarity with others. Am I some sort of heartless woman who is actively resisting the game? I don't think so. I went into Mother 3 and came out feeling religious about the experience.

...Do I have some kind of bias for Japanese over English games? I have to at least consider the possibility. It's hard to talk about this though. Do I have some kind of personal hangup when I see the funny dog enemies in the game because it reminds me of internet culture? That's the exact kind of thing I was trying to clear my mind of when I did this, but the thoughts creep in anyway. I really don't want to imagine myself as a "Place, Japan!" kind of person.

I was very young when I first played the first two Mother games, maybe 11 or 12. To me, they felt sincere, as if someone (perhaps Shigesato Itoi himself) was sharing something very personal with me. That feeling was important to me in my angstiest years, as I started to grow skeptical of everything around me. I'll tell that whole story some other day, but I think that feeling of sincerity is something that Undertale players took away, as well. I fear that had I played Mother at age 22 instead of 12, I may have had the same criticisms of it as I do Undertale. Life is funny, scary, and weird sometimes. Things aren't always as they appear. It would be wrong of me to suggest that Undertale's popularity is solely the result of youth, or some kind of naiveté. As far as I can tell, people of all ages and backgrounds love Undertale. Many of whom are probably also Mother fans, either prior to Undertale's release or afterwards.

I don't have a definitive answer for why Undertale's magic just doesn't seem to hit the same for me. Maybe it really is a complex web of life experiences and attitudes that have somehow led me to this timeline where I like it a lot, but don't love it. At least, not wholly. I do love and admire its creation and its creativity. Independent, creator-driven games can be so special, and make no mistake, this is a special game. I will say that with my whole chest. There are some scenes and moments that really are amazing, worthy of the game's lofty reputation. It's also a fun game to play in the immediate moment, which I do highly value.

I just wish it gripped me the whole way through. I wish I was enraptured in everything about it, never taken out of the story and never feeling deflated. Even now, I'm still not sure I've been entirely fair to it, but at a certain point I must concede that how I feel is how I feel. Show me Mercy.

...and yes, I will check out Deltarune at some point.

- Jane Undertale