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OK, this is obviously a troll. However I will admit, Undertale is not a perfect game. It has flaws just like any other game.

I'm a troll for pointing out that an imperfect game is just that, imperfect?

Really, go look at all the rooms where the floor just gives way to a black void. That ain't amazing spritework

Just popped in real quick to mention that I started dicking around with Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and the character tile editor allows one to make a scarily accurate Undyne. There's already conveniently a merfolk race, and I was able to give her long, red hair, a bright blue spear, and plate mail without changing her actual equipment. Whether or not I can get her to survive more than 4 levels is unlikely, but this is a roguelike we're talking about here.

tfw IGN told a randomly selected Frequent Commenter regarding on this game.

IGN: This Game, Undertale. Do You Find It Good?

Frequent IGN Commenter: Is It a Good Game? A perfect game? Why? Does it have bigger exploration and more advanced photorealistic graphics? No. She just dodge the bullets, take good care of these beastly creatures and sparing them while she walks all the way to the end. If that's our standard for the enjoyment of playing video games… then no wonder the culture and this website was screwed.

IGN: And what about your taste in video games?

F.C.: What about mine? Hey… I didn't enjoy the advantages this game has. By the time this game came out, I still brag that PS4 is better, post dated reaction images and complain everything inferior to hot new video games but I overlooked this game with boring look.

IGN: And you consider them as achievements as the other else?

F.C.: These were the opportunities I had. At least I took 'em.

IGN: And where did these opportunities get you, Michael?

F.C.: They got me right… fucking here! The end of the road! With a website with Livefyre and a useless kids on comment section with less mean amount of upvotes and I'm stuck talking to you because no one else gives a shit about any game. Oh I'm living the dream, baby, and that dream is fucked! It is… fucking fucked!

IGN: Let it all out.

Oh! Is this what you want, Jarbox? Because that's how you gonna have a bad time! You will not enjoy to witness what happens next.

No, but it sounds trollish because it's such a nitpick.

If it was something that actually mattered, nobody would likely object.

If it was something that actually mattered, nobody would likely object.

What, are you blind or something? Does how a game looks actually have no effect of your opinion on it?

If you're pointing out a part of the game that is imperfect, try to point out something that is not just graphics. This is an Indie game that is meant to look like this, because it is a homage to the old Earthbound style games. Earthbound's graphics aren't the best, yet it is still herald as a sacred game to most gamers. Try to point out something that's an actual flaw, like the endings.

Pacifist: You walk to the end of the rainbow, with both of your parents in hand, with gumdrops and lollipops lining your path. Then when you make it to the end, you find a pot of gold.

Neutral: You walk to the end of the rainbow, one parent in hand, and you find a gumdrop or lollipop every now and then. When you reach the end, you find a pot of gold, but it is not as much as you were hoping for. You shrug, take what you can, and move on.

Genocide: You went through Hell. Behind you is a burning path way running red with the blood of the Demons you've faced to get here. Your parents sacrificed themselves so that you could get to the end of the rainbow. You have persevered, you have fought, and you have won. But when you get to the end of the rainbow, you find just more fire, more Demons, and your parent's severed heads on pikes.

For those you of wondering what I mean by this, think of it like this. The genocide ending is the hardest ending to get. You have to walk around every area in the game to kill every monster, which can take hours, you have to face off against the hardest bosses in the game, and what is your reward for the hard work? What do you get in return for showing off your skill at dodging, fighting, and basically mastering this game's combat? You get jipped by a demon, and the only way to get your game back is to go out of your way to delete the file in Steam Cloud. WTF?

This may just be a preference thing, but I would have thought it better if the game gave us at least one go at Chara. Like instead of just locking it off, it's the True, True Final Boss of the game. It's the boss that will take all your skill from the previous three runs to complete. You will need to plan from the very beginning of the game, saving up your healing items, using the box effectively, saving up your money so you can buy the best shit in the game. All of it leading to one final confrontation, with the one thing that seriously deserves an asswhopping.

If you’re pointing out a part of the game that is imperfect, try to point out something that is not just graphics.

It's not "just" the graphics. If that was my issue, then I'd be complaining that the game is sprite based. I'm not, since I think aesthetic can be used to make any game look great no matter what hardware it's running on. I'm saying the sprites that are there could use a lot more work.

Like how all the enemies you fight are in black and white? I don't think that was an artistic choice, or that it was merited if it was one.

Name yourself Seinfeld

No, I'm not blind (nice strawman), but I also never went "Wow, this game really needs better backgrounds.", that's just a nitpick.
Your next post has a more reasonable point, this is just nuts.

So, are you saying that the game could look better, cause I can understand that. As for the black and white battles, I think that has something to do with monster's SOULs or something. You probably find something about it on the wiki.

No, I’m not blind (nice strawman), but I also never went “Wow, this game really needs better backgrounds.”, that’s just a nitpick.
Your next post has a more reasonable point, this is just nuts.

Seeing a screen that's mostly a black block doesn't look good. It looks like the artist just used the fill bucket tool from MS paint. It's a distinct visual deformity I pointed out because it's so obvious. How is this crazy?

As for the black and white battles, I think that has something to do with monster’s SOULs or something.

There's also the reasoning that it makes the monster battle sprites much easier to animate…

Because it's not important even when it's noticeable, which it rarely is.

It's like bitching about low-red skyboxes in an otherwise great FPS.

Because it’s not important even when it’s noticeable, which it rarely is.

On the contrary, it's quite noticeable. Go look at areas like:

The long hallway going out of the ruins
Several cliffs in Snowdin, such as the one by the trees where you get a sculpture on your head
Many areas in Hotland, such as the one leading to Mettaton's cooking show, or the one where you fight the royal guards.
The long walk through the city, where the path goes up and you pass through several tower looking things.
The place right before you fight Asgore.

This isn't the only place where the visuals let the game down. Consider the sideways sprites of the player character, which will be in plain view for the whole game. They make his head incredibly large and his neck super tiny, which looks bad and contrasts a lot with how he looks in cutscenes.

Or you could compare the design of many of the random encounter monsters to Earthbound, since Undertale is supposed to be imitating it. Assuming you've played both games, ask yourself how many random encounters from Earthbound you can distinctly remember compared to Undertale? Earthbound has monsters based on abstract art paintings, surreal drawings of inanimate objects, and things that are just disgusting. I could tell you a lot about the melting clocks, the walking coffee cups, or the creepy Ego Orb (the generic zombies and mummies and fish monsters? not so much).

But if you compare it to Undertale, the general enemy design is a lot more lacking. Instead of hippies and stop signs, you have things like Froggit… and Snowdrake… and Night Knight… and Madjick… who are all much more memorable for their dialogue, assuming that they're even memorable to begin with.

All this is to say the art direction and execution for this game wasn't there in a lot of areas.

Hence "it’s not important even when it’s noticeable, which it rarely is.". Those are rare circumstances, and even then it's not important at all.

The rest are perfectly reasonable points, but this background thing remains nuts.

I don't see how it not being the most important issue ever makes it irrelevant. Backgrounds can add a lot to how the visuals look. Consider the snowy hill background in Snowdin, which is both nice to look at and conveys information about how large the area you're not exploring is and what it looks like. It shows a bigger world.

Or look at the parts of Hotland that have flowing lava in them. They give the eye something interesting to observe and make the scene a lot more dynamic and interesting then it would be otherwise.

When the artists did make backgrounds, they usually look good or good enough and provide visual information on the world, which makes their absences more jarring and easier to notice.

It's not "it not being the most important issue ever", it's that it's simply not relevant at all.
Backgrounds CAN add a lot, but "can" is not "will" or "must". The cases with basic backgrounds work just fine and are really not missing anything of substance as a result.

Backgrounds CAN add a lot, but “can” is not “will” or “must”

You could say that about A LOT of things.

Undertale could have been made with only one battle music piece and it still would have functioned just fine. But it gained a lot for adding more varied and sometimes dynamic tracks for different battles. That isn't irrelevant. I don't see how the places where they added backgrounds to good effect or didn't to bad effect are irrelevant either.

Hence, CAN and so on. It's not irrelevant that they added more complex backgrounds where needed. It IS irrelevant to bitch out them not being in places where they're not necessary, it'd be like if your opener was that you can't really it a 10/10 because of a particular minor NPC looking awkward or something. I'm sure it'd be an issue if it was widespread or happened on a significant one, but as it stands, a very minor thing and very much not relevant to anything more than an incidental "I might like it better this way", certainly not your opening argument to dispute that a game should be rated lower.

I have to agree with CrashGordon, but it is good to see that Undertale seems to be out of it's, "IT'S THE BEST GAME EVER, AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN YOU SUCK!" stage. The barrage of praise it was getting started to get a bit annoying.

Note: I am not saying it does not deserve the praise it gets, I just think people need to tone it down a notch. It's like when FNAF first came out.

To be clear I don't have an issue with criticism of the game (I might have some myself), it's just that particular argument.

I brought up the backgrounds first because they were the ones that stood out the most to me. Them being the only thing making it not a 10/10 was a bit of a flippant remark, but the visual problems alone are plenty to hold it down.

It IS irrelevant to bitch out them not being in places where they’re not necessary,

Why are you calling aesthetic improvements necessary? It's not necessary to make anything other then a bare framework for the game to work- no music, ascii characters instead of individual sprites, and nothing but the gameplay. That's what's "neccesary", but the game is a lot worse without that stuff.

That's an even worse nitpick… If anything it sounds like it's supporting my side more.
You're clearly paying far too much mind to a really minor thing, it's really best to just drop it.

Keep telling yourself that

…I don't have to, I'm not pointlessly nitpicking unimportant things. :/

Gave ya good karma cause I like ya.

Well, thank you.

If I might bring in a new subject, I'd like us to say hello to our new friend, Chisk!

Seriously though, found this in an off-hand comment on here, then when I'd looked up the source, this seems to have really taken off on Tumblr. How about that?

The true face of neutrality

My reaction to sans' dialogue during his fight:

Another new subject I'd like to bring, how does a Dark Souls/Demon Souls/Bloodborne X Undertale thing sound?

So I finally played it, it's an alright game. It's pretty much just a visual novel with a decently fun minigame in between the story but from a gameplay standpoint it's honestly hard to play for more than an hour because it gets old, fast. I'm also not a fan of some of the story choices.

Overall, I think it's a pretty good game. I like the narrative structure, some things I really like about the story, other things I don't like, eh.

I like Snowdrake obviously, lol. like come on its a bird that makes puns I think that's like the perfect fit for me.

I love the musical compositions but the inconsistency of the choices in the actual samples really frustrates me. The music choices bounce all over the place, from 8 bit music to 16 bit to something that can only be described as that crappy MIDI synth that comes with every version of Windows. I love a lot of the music in the game but when it fucks up it sticks out a lot.

I also don't like a lot of the backgrounds since they make it difficult to visualize the environment, especially in closed spaces.

Then you get dunked

So, I got the chance to play the game, got the true pacifist ending, 11/10, etc. and I'm contemplating doing a genocide run. If I may ask, how much of the game is affected if I, for some reason, decided to abort the run immediately after the bad skeleton times?

From what I've read on the wiki you're already past the point of no return if you get that far.

It won't have any effect.

It's not too late until you get into the throne room.

But if you get past Sans, feel free to finish it up, there's a program that gets rid of the "consequence" files.

Boy, Undyne is giving me one hell of a fight. I knew her fight would be difficult, but holy hell… Reminds me why I'm so crappy at bullet hells.

I'm stalled at the same point myself.

Actually, I never did the Genocide route because I got bored about half-way through. The reason I say sans is pointlessly bitching is because, at what point did I say or even indicate that I cared about his problems or what he thinks?

Holy crap, I finally beat Undyne. Guess that just leaves more grinding until I reach the bone zone, right?

Imagine this:

Chara/Frisk is fighting sans and has died about 10 times. After some thought, they walk off, and come back wearing full Havel's Set with Great Magic Barrier. They look at sans and say, "Alright, let's try this again."

The reason I say sans is pointlessly bitching is because, at what point did I say or even indicate that I cared about his problems or what he thinks?

You know you can mash through his dialogue in like a second?

I can?!

Well, I finally got to the bad skeleton times… and got my ass handed… thrice in a row… and more…

This is the fight Genocide players crave, you're in the most exciting part of the game!

Well, I will admit that this fight does get me very… determined…

I can?!

HINT: pressing x makes the text jump to the end of whatever line it's on, so you can press z to go right on to the next line. Or maybe the button order is reversed, but whatever.

So, I reached to a part where you encounter a ghost (not sure if it was the same from the beginning of the game; I'm pretty sure he is) and you lie down on the floor and when you think that nothing's happening, the universe shows up. Quite tripping.

The snail race in that same area reminded me to that Spongebob episode with the same context. At first I thought it was going to be like a Mario Party minigame where you push the button (or in this case, the key) as fast as possible. Terrible mistake. I tried three more times but with no avail.

Right now, I'm about to face Undyne. Let's see how it goes.

Well, after hours of failed attempts, I've finally gotten passed the bone zone; that final laser attack before the "nothing" attack was responsible for so much of my later deaths, but now it's over. Damn, I haven't popped off like this since beating the final level on Super Mario Galaxy 2. Well, time to pull some weeds, kill a king, and completely destroy the world!

Too bad the genocide ending is such a cop out. Feels like the end of some lousy horror movie.