UNDERTALE

Japanese style roleplaying games have earned a reputation for their regressiveness and inability to keep up with the latest trends in gaming. With their typical reliance on fantasy settings, anime tropes, and aging turn based combat, this reputation is largely warranted. Undertale is both a love letter to classic JRPGs and a subversion of some of their core values, demonstrating that the genre still has some life left in it. The story is certainly a sharp lefthand turn from the conventional tales of fated heroes that dominate the market. Drawing some bit of inspiration from Alice in Wonderland, Undertale puts you in the shoes of a human child who tumbles into an underground world of fantasy and horror. The monsters that occupy this underworld have been banished from the surface, and their history slowly unravels before you as you venture out on a journey back home. The characters are what make the story here. Practically every character has a distinct design and a personality that's as charming as it is idiosyncratic. Despite the simple Nintendo-style graphics of the game, the pixelated characters all ooze personality, and these are further enhanced by the conversational tics peppered through the game's script. Morality systems have become all the rage in roleplaying games, and while Undertale prescribes to such a system, it does so in a rather fascinating way. Other games in the genre often offer rewards for the decisions you make in game. Acting in conventionally "good" or "bad" ways with increasing frequency unlock new perks and features, encouraging characters to consistently make decisions based on the advantages they offer. Undertale's morality system is a bit more inscrutable, and significantly more tethered to the game's combat system. Every random and scripted combat encounter you engage with offers you two options. Like in most roleplaying games, you can choose to kill the monsters before you, but you also have the option to placate them through negotiation. These play out through dialogue options. The script is smartly written, and the most obvious route to friendship isn't always the best. Adapting to the dialogue of your opponents and smartly determining how best to respond becomes a mini-game in its own right. This is made significantly more complicated by Undertale's unusual combat engine. Foregoing traditional turn-based or action RPG combat, Undertale instead draws from the style of game known as "bullet hell", which typically ask you to steer ships in combat while dodging frenetic blasts of bullets and missiles. Surviving these encounters challenges your fingers and your reflexes, and finding a peaceful resolution to an encounter is often far more taxing than simply killing the monsters before you. How you choose to engage in these encounters serve as the crux of Undertale's experience. Multiple endings are available, and the layered meaning in the story practically demands that you play the game more than once. Many endings are only available on replays.