When I first started up Undertale it reminded me of something like Earthbound or Pokemon. It starts off pretty simple with a tutorial that you might even call painful to get through. The first character you meet, Toriel, holds your hand through a few puzzles and is too worried to allow you to do anything for yourself. Toriel also encourages you to talk to the randomly encountered enemies until she comes and helps you.
It's a fairly unique way to start the game and at least for me it had the effect of making me really want to get into it. It takes a lot of time to spell out some things that are second nature if you'd played RPGs before. However, Undertale is not like other RPGs.
I didn't really know much about Undertale going in. I knew it was an indie game with great reviews and that was about it. In Undertale's kickstarter it was called "A traditional role playing game where no one has to get hurt" which is something I wasn't aware of. When Toriel said I should be talking to the enemies in the game, I thought it was a joke.
Every enemy can be talked to and you don't actually have to do any damage to them. They will keep hitting you though while you try to talk them out of fighting. You also don't gain any experience points if you don't kill them. Wanting to level up my character I found myself monsters largely because I wanted her to be strong enough to handle the challenges ahead. This wasn't really necessary though I think a totally peaceful play-through might be more difficult than a violent one.
It's a neat and quirky for non-ethical reasons as well. For instance, when I tried to "SELL" an item in a shop, the storeowner told me that they wouldn't be in business for very long if they bought every piece of junk that was offered. It's also neat how the enemies' personalities are all complex and how the game combines a bullet hell game with RPG mechanics. There also seems to be a lot of hidden content and if you do a second playthrough, some of the dialogue will change and some decisions will persist.
It's a good game that's been getting a lot of attention lately. It's also cool that this was made by only one person (or at least mostly, there are names other than Toby Fox in the credits). I recommend this game.
