halo 1 sucks ass tbh

i've mentioned it before but Final Fantasy 6

held up by many people as the gold standard of JRPGs even long after it wasn't one of about 5 options, and when i played it, to quote rogal dorn "5/10 it was OK". it's not bad or anything, and i can see where it got the appeal, but (especially playing spoiled) it felt like i was chugging along because it was an iconic game i was trying to finish rather than because i liked it

especially contrasted to FF5, which i loved and played through because good video game.

also agreeing with undertale, i tried playing through it a couple years back after not getting around to it until i'd been spoiled on everything and when you already know everything that happens the game itself doesn't really carry it, especially because of how there's only one option rather than the intended Fuck Around And Find Out. deltarune is actually fun to play on its own tho

This post was last modified: Oct 17, 2022 at 2:00 PM by Draku.

also agreeing with undertale, i tried playing through it a couple years back after not getting around to it until i'd been spoiled on everything and when you already know everything that happens the game itself doesn't really carry it, especially because of how there's only one option rather than the intended Fuck Around And Find Out.

undertale's method of having false choice is really frustrating tbh. there are pretty much only two ways to play it to get any meaningful content and while the game will try to mildly "excuse" players for daring to fight enemies that attacked them it also doesn't even try to pretend anything other than 100% pacifism is the "right" way which makes having a combat option virtually pointless other than for genocide which requires you to go extremely out of your way in the opposite direction to the point of knowing about the route in the first place. i get that having a pacifism option itself is novel and meant to be the central point of the game, but other media that focus around a pacifistic protagonist try to tip the scales a fair bit more and look at it from the more interesting perspective of "the protagonist COULD very well be killing some of these people and be entirely justified for it, and by taking the pacifistic route they are actively causing further difficulty and issues to develop" but undertale cops way the fuck out with "oh haha all the monsters are just being pwayful :] they didn't MEAN to kill you when they attack they don't get it tee-hee!" for 95% of its situations. so you're left with undyne, the only interesting moral option in the entire game, and asgore, who lives in pacifist route anyways despite the initial idea behind him seemingly being "you can't avoid killing EVERYONE, eventually someone will stand in your way and force only one of you to walk out of this room alive" when it's actually "actually you totally can avoid killing everyone haha monsters are great and humans are EBIL >:[[[[[[["

Yeah I think that something special about Deltarune compared to Undertale is that actually engaging with its combat systems is a legitimate choice and doesn't hinder you in the game because the option of Murder is explicitly a separate thing that you have to go out of your way to do, therefore making Murder more impactful within the game's story and development and offering more options in combat to interact beyond spamming dialogue options