I actually started playing Undertale during the spring break before this class began. It took me until the week we discussed it in class (around 4 weeks) to get in about 10 hours of playtime – I played a lot of it on and off, mainly stumped at the boss fights where I had to wrestle the teeny up/down arrow keys on my Mac and keep dying to Undyne. An important thing to note is that I went into the game blind, knowing there was a sleuth of literature floating around but purposefully avoiding it to prevent influencing my first playthrough experience.
I was first alarmed by Flowey and was put off by it – in a sense, I think it primed me to regard characters with initial distrust. Toriel was a comforting character, but I felt that the game wanted me to push her bounds – so I kept going to places she said I shouldn’t go, and then I ended up fighting and killing her. Some people have expressed distress over doing the same thing, but surprisingly I remember thinking, perhaps this is part of the plot, and only when I learned there were different routes, I started to regret doing so.
I was keen on reading everything that every character said. My playstyle consists of a heavy interest in character story, no matter how minor. I found the initial tips from Froggit helpful and went through them twice to make sure I didn’t miss anything (i.e. yellow text meaning spare). I didn’t know that it was possible to spare every character you came across in this game (I didn’t know that Undertale was a game where you could quite literally do anything you wanted), so I only spared the mobs whose text turned yellow after I attacked. There was little incentive for me to spare, save for my own selfish reason to preserve my HP; I also noted that sparing did not give me EXP points (fair, because I later learned they stood for Execution Points). I think I naturally gravitated towards that penchant for RPG-esque, hack-and-slash, dungeon crawler games, and that hammered-in desire to see my HP, gold, and LV grow.
I found the game charming, quirky, humorous, and so entertainingly random (e.g. the Mettaton Musical). I surprisingly did not find the mobs repetitive and enjoyed the challenge of the boss fights, though I know the “right” way to play was to spare them. Learning about Asriel and Asgore made me sad (read: really sad… stuff like that is always a sore spot for me) and reluctance and gentleness with which Asgore received me made me ache. I could not bring myself to kill him, and even when Flowey appeared again to kill him himself I did not regret my choice.
It’s hard to say what has undoubtedly been said already about this game. It poses as a challenge both mechanically to players desiring mastery and morally to players who weigh their choices against another. I quickly realized why Undertale is the talk of so much of the gaming realm still. For lots of games, itseems that player choice matters, but Undertale truly takes it to the next level. Every player’s saved game file is slightly different, based on the shifts in choice, approach, and playstyle – one player could have a quiet utopia while another has a devastated wasteland.
I paused playing after reaching the Photoshop/Omega Flowey fight and I believe I was on the Neutral route. I would like to go back and play a Pacifist route when I have the time. 🙂
Reading your initial playing mentality was really interesting! I often wonder how I would have played the game without reading all the lore; I would suspect that it would be similar to your experience. The game, in my opinion, does a good job of subverting your expectations, namely that you must attack and fight your way through. It does clearly state that you can spare monsters, but you almost forget that at times if you are used to always fighting the bosses (I have personally played games where I am locked out of fleeing bosses, so I think I would have assumed the same here). Perhaps that is essential to the game’s core themes, though. Perhaps we need to make those mistakes to then see that there is always another way 🙂
I think hearing your experience of the game spoiler-free was really interesting when compared to my own experience of playing with the knowledge of all the endings and events that would occur in the game — I wonder how your reactions to Flowey and Toriel might’ve changed if you had known about the different endings/effects of certain actions. Another thing I thought was really interesting was your approach to the spare mechanic, and how you would attack first, then spare — do you think that if you had been told in-game that you were able to spare all the characters in the game from the beginning, that you would’ve done it? Or would you still treat it as an optional thing to do?