Usually, you'll need to figure out which actions will lead to a peaceful resolution before selecting mercy.Ĭhoose to fight and a small portion of the screen transforms into an arcade game, in which you must avoid enemy attacks. You might be able to flirt or to tease, or to study.

Acting opens up a new sub-menu, with verbs that are specific to the enemy you're facing. You can also 'Act' or show 'Mercy', which is somewhat unexpected. The battle music kicks in and the top-down view fades out to be replaced by a battle screen, showing the enemy from a sorta first-person perspective.Īt this point, you can choose to fight or to use an item, as you might expect. In this kind of retro-styled RPG, I'd expect combat to occur at random as I wander around the map and, sure enough, that appears to be the case as Undertale begins. Thankfully, I don't need to describe anything that happens because a swift analysis of the battle system sums up everything that I love about the entire game. What is remarkable about those setpieces is that with a seemingly limited audiovisual toolset, the game can slide from epic adventure to domestic farce with a few frames of animation. I don't want to say too much about the specifics because, as much as anything else, Undertale is a series of setpieces, some comic and some tragic, and everyone should be able to experience them fresh the first time they play. Every gesture toward the past is meaningful rather than a mere elbow in the ribs of memory. It's inventive and forward-looking, and yet it never plays on nostalgia for its own sake.

It's the funniest game of the year and it's one of the saddest games of the year. I'm going to use the word here, even if I've chipped away at its meaning through repetition, because if ever a thing deserved to wear a little badge informing the world that it is 'delightful', Undertale would be that thing. Trawl through my various writings on RPS and you can probably find a paragraph where I describe a war or the particular way that someone's limbs fall off as 'absurdly delightful'.

What's the funniest game of 2015? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games from throughout the year, and behind today's door is.Īdam: I think I use the word 'delightful' too much.

Undertale best games of 2015