(Stealing this from someone else)
I finished this game yesterday. Did four routes: pacifist, flawed pacifist, genocide and neutral. I am surprised to see a thread for this game here so I am going to drop my thoughts completely unsolicited.
Before I started, people told me the characters were written much better than the original Undertale cast. What the fuck were they talking about? The game completely ignores Undertale’s metanarrative, probably because it would’ve been impossible to top, fair enough. Instead, it goes for a more narrative-driven approach, but the result is that it constantly lives in Undertale’s shadow. The original’s metanarrative is what made it incredible.
I struggled to care about the characters. Going pacifist first, all I could think about was how they’d react if I killed them. To be fair, the main writer was 16 when they started making Undertale Yellow, so they likely didn’t have much literature or life experience to draw from. The first character is some vampire guy whose name I’ve forgotten. He’s written like a socially inept, anxious teenager. Martlet in Snowdin? Same thing, also written like a socially inept, anxious teenager. No unique traits, no meaningful development. The game is missing date scenes or specific character interaction moments for growth like in Undertale.
Starlo was probably the one I liked most. His arc was simple but effective, despite being surrounded by a shopping cart of characters we’re apparently meant to see as our best friends. Why do the Feisty Five exist? Who even are they? They just become completely irrelevant 10 minutes after meeting with them.
Then the game shoves Ceroba at you. Sure, you hang out with her in the Steamworks and learn a bit about her, but then the plot dumps a whole heap of drama on you. Her daughter, her husband’s evil plan… honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to care. The writing nosedives at the end of Steamworks, just when it seemed like it might turn around. I thought we’d head to the lab, meet the daughter, maybe help her. Instead, Ceroba runs off to a rooftop and you get thrown into a FOUR-PHASE boss fight. The final phase uses Hopes and Dreams as a completely undeserved leitmotif.
The game tells rather than shows, to a painful degree. You get clunky flashbacks and constant cutscenes instead of subtle environmental storytelling like in Undertale. The Waterfall area and True Lab used understated lore to craft a world. Here, its just endless cutscenes of characters you just met trauma dumping. You beat Ceroba and suddenly the game claims you were friends all along and that she deserves pity and you hug and cry together. I would be crying about how much I want to leave and go home. You've known Ceroba for all of close to an hour, from a diegetic perspective, Clover wouldn’t have seen all those flashbacks. It feels forced.
Then for some reason, your character decides to kill themself, and your so-called friends are just fine with it. Happy, even. You end up doing what Ceroba wanted to do to you, just on your own terms. I get that Clover is doomed to die, but the pacifist ending could’ve been so much more satisfying. And that’s it. Beat Ceroba and the game’s over. No post-fight gameplay, which honestly shocked me. If you kill her instead, you get an alternate ending where you fight Asgore in an abridged cutscene, just dodging attacks until you die. It’s “satisfying” only in the sense that Clover learns the fate of the humans and gets revenge on Ceroba.
The genocide route drops Undertale’s metanarrative “don’t you have anything better to do” theme and instead gives you an oddly hollow “justice” arc. It finally explores the justice theme and missing human souls, and frames you as a vengeful force repaying the monsters. Ironically, it’s the most satisfying ending. You survive, and you “free” the five humans. It’s the inverse of Undertale’s genocide route. Yellow rewards you for it. You get new lore. The game makes it easy to do a genocide route which probably is again, about the fact that they're not bothering with the metanarrative part. The game also forgoes the powerscaling funness of Undertale, as bosses except for when you are at LV 20 don't get struck down in one hit. You are supposed to feel emptiness in the original Undertale for killing Toriel, Mettaton, Papyrus in one strike.
And yet, even in this route, it still feels bland. The game could've dived into the whole moral philosophy and grey area of what 'justice' is but they only do it in Genocide to a shallow degree. Ceroba also gets special treatment. A bespoke boss fight with mechanics she doesn’t deserve. Why is she Japanese, anyway? I never got why a Japanese family shows up in a desert. Didn’t know the monsters had different cultures underground. Martlet is also just pathetic, she takes on a 'sans' figure without any of the coolness along with a combination of Papyrus without any of the endearment. You can’t kill her in any route except genocide where she is the final boss.
The game would've been much better if it was focused more on the neutral route, there are exclusive scenes to it and it's not a prerequisite for the pacifist ending. The boss fight with Flowey is cool. They had such a good way to talk about how to properly achieve 'justice' for you, the monsters or whatever but the game just blows it. I do feel *bad* about some neutral killings and people's reactions to other people dying, which is a good thing and the game needed more moments to explore that kind of emotion within the player. The original Undertale would've had blind players killing people like Toriel and Undyne on their first playthroughs because they didn't know how to spare them, as the game makes sparing a puzzle. Those characters are given some of the most tragic and saddest scenes that make you feel really bad about killing them. I felt bad about sparing the characters in Yellow because that means they wouldn't shut the fuck up. The pacifist route falls into a predictable "just wait until the bosses finish their dialogue" with ACTs that do nothing at all.
In the end, the gameplay is solid, but the writing? Absolute rubbish. The pacing is bad. Reads like teenage fanfiction. Anyone who praised it as the best thing since sliced bread probably needs to read more actual literature and branch out into different mediums