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andreabandrea · 5 months

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The AndreaBandrea UTY post

I need some place to put my Undertale Yellow (UTY for short) thoughts & criticism, and this is my blog, so I might as well put them here. If you don't want to see constructive criticism about Undertale Yellow, don't click below the readmore!

Pretty much everyone I talk to really likes this game, and honestly, I'm really sad that I don't like it more. I like some parts of it quite a bit! But I have mixed feelings about other parts-- I think the writing and characterization could have been a little more impactful than they were, and I’ll be discussing that here. I don’t want to just rag on this game without expressing suggestions and parts that I do like in more detail, so those will be covered as well.

I also want to add a disclaimer that I don't have negative feelings towards the development team or fans of this game in the slightest. I have nothing but respect for the creators of Undertale Yellow. This project was obviously a massive undertaking with a lot of love behind it, and I'm glad to see that it's found success and a community of people who do enjoy it.

The reason I’m writing this post is that, again, I liked parts of this game and wish I enjoyed it more. If I didn’t like it at all, I just wouldn’t engage with it at all anymore. I also haven’t really seen any other people expressing constructive criticism on the game’s writing, so it’s felt more important for me to express these thoughts, be heard, and see if others feel the same way.

The Good

I'll start off with the things I like. The art, the animation, and the music are all fantastic. I was very impressed by the battle backgrounds and the little touches, like the way Clover runs. Clover doing things like reaching for other’s hands, giving fistbumps, drawing their weapon, changing their expression at times-- they feel very dynamic and fun to play as.

The music is really catchy and fun. I love the iterations on the battle theme-- Snowdin’s battle theme having bells, for example.

I also had fun with most of the fights in the game! I liked the unique mechanics that came into play (e.g. the lasso in North Star's battle). I think that changing the way Clover attacks compared to Frisk feels organic and fun.

I also love the mail system. Ever since you could deliver and receive letters in Paper Mario 64, I’ve been hooked on mail as a storytelling system in video games. I think the letters you receive are interesting and clever, and it’s a great way to keep past characters relevant in lieu of a cell phone.

I’m going to be discussing criticism of the characters later, so I’m going to take a moment to talk a little about things I liked about them. I really like Martlet’s optimism and belief in humans. Starlo made me laugh quite a few times and the Feisty Five have a great dynamic with each other. A lot of the background characters in the game are fun-- I like the one who serves you at the Honeydew Resort. The fact that you can go back to these vendors later on and get four new topics to talk about is fantastic and makes the world feel a lot more alive.

The Slightly Less-Good (and more disclaimers)

The writing is where the game falls short for me-- and it’s sad for me, because the writing is the heart of Undertale. I don’t think that the writing is bad by any means! I like the characters and story well enough, but- again- I just wish that I liked them more. I’ll try to incorporate suggestions so this isn’t just a total downer post without anything backing it up.

I want to express something about the ‘suggestions’ that I’ll be offering after the criticism. I know that Undertale Yellow is now out, and the team isn’t going to go back and change it now, and that’s totally fine. I don’t want to make it sound as if the team should change Undertale Yellow just because I have some reservations about it. I’m just one fan out of many. In the very off chance that a member of the Undertale Yellow development team is reading this--

First of all, hi!

Second of all, I know that changing major parts of Undertale Yellow at this point is very unrealistic, and I wouldn’t want you to. If anything, I’m honored you’re reading my ramblings at all. I’d be touched if you’d be willing to take some of my words to heart as you move onto your next creative projects.

The reason I’m including suggestions, therefore, isn’t because I think that the team should or must make these changes, but because I don’t want to just sound excessively negative about this game without offering a little feedback.

I don’t presume that my criticism and suggestions are objectively correct or better than what the Undertale Yellow team created. This is my personal blog, and these are my personal rambly thoughts about Undertale Yellow. The reason I’m including so many disclaimers is because I’ve gotten into discourse before due to poorly thought-out posts about Undertale, and I hope to avoid that this time. I don’t want to just not post something on my own blog, though, because I’m afraid it could be misconstrued or possibly upset somebody. So, I’m trying to discuss this as carefully as I can.

As one final disclaimer, I'll say that I know that it was more likely than not that I'd be at least a little disappointed by Undertale Yellow. The original Undertale was a very important game for me, and very little could reach that standard. (I think this is one reason why Toby decided to do Deltarune, a sort of AU/spinoff rather than a full-on "Undertale 2", and I respect that decision.)

I also think that quite a bit of my criticism is subjective-- several of the characters didn't fully click with me and several of the jokes just didn't land for me, personally. More people than you might think just didn’t connect with the regular Undertale, either. I’ll be talking a little about my subjective opinion on characters, but I’ll try to explain why I feel the way I do rather than just say, “XYZ character sucks because they’re lame, moving on.”

With that said, the post. I’ll be addressing my criticisms from smallest to largest. To begin, I’ll recap the plot of UTY to better analyze aspects that I do and don’t quite like. Spoilers abound.

Undertale Yellow Plot Recap!!!!

The central story of UTY, to my memory and understanding, is as follows:

In the past, a fallen human being went on a rampage in Snowdin and hurt Kanako, the daughter of Chujin, a former royal scientist and monster who happens to be a boss monster. Dalv, an unrelated monster, was also hurt in this incident and sealed himself away in the Ruins in a self-imposed isolation. Chujin’s family (presumably him or Kanako, but not Ceroba, as she doesn’t recognize Dalv) felt bad about this and left him corn from Starlo’s farm as a gift. But, when Chujin died, the corn gifts stopped coming.

Stepping back a bit, after the incident, Chujin developed a deep hatred for humanity. He invented a security robot called Axis and told it to go kill the human. Axis did this (and we will return to this later). Chujin kept the soul (at least, for a time) to experiment on.

At some point in this, Axis failed to impress Asgore and Chujin was fired as the royal scientist. At some point as well, he began to teach Martlet how to build puzzles. Martlet got a job in the royal guard and Chujin disapproved because humans are very dangerous.

Due to experimenting on his own boss monster soul in an attempt to find a way to turn regular monsters into boss monsters so that monsterkind could potentially stand up to the threat of humanity, Chujin wound up very ill and then passed away. He left video tapes to his wife, Ceroba, asking her to finish his research. However, he asked her to leave Kanako out of this so she could live a normal life.

Ceroba agreed to finish this research, but Kanako found out about it and asked to be experimented on because she, like her father, has the power of a boss monster. Ceroba agreed to experiment on her, which injured Kanako and caused her to ‘fall down’. Ceroba sent the near-death Kanako to Dr. Alphys, the new royal scientist, who was collecting ‘fallen down’ monsters for her own experiments with determination.

Plot summary over. I’ll take a closer look at some of these aspects going forward.

UTY Plot Criticism

I don’t feel like this is a bad story, necessarily. With that said, it doesn’t feel quite as tied together as Undertale’s story does, and I think certain aspects don’t land.

First, I feel that the majority of the plot elements about Chujin & Kanako get dumped on you at the last minute. You might be thinking that the story about Chara & Asriel is also dumped on you at the last minute-- and to an extent, this is true. You do get a massive amount of information regarding their story near the end of the game, in the True Lab.

However, Chara & Asriel's story is a massive part of the narrative from the very beginning. You meet 'Asriel' (Flowey) in the very beginning of the game. Toriel is in the Ruins due to the fallout of Chara & Asriel's deaths. Asgore and the monsters are trying to kill Frisk and steal their soul because of this, and the royal guard has taken it up as their mission. Sans is aware of an anomaly that will end everything (implied to be the player), and he would have 'killed Frisk where they stand' had he not made a promise to Toriel. And so on.

I’ll be reviewing criticism of the game’s plot in sections themed around each major character. I will be discussing suggestions about each character in their respective section here, as I discuss things I didn’t quite like about each character, my suggestions are intrinsically tied to why I didn’t quite like them.

Dalv

The connections between characters and the Chujin & Kanako plot feel a bit tenuous to me. Similarly to Toriel, Dalv is in a self-imposed isolation in the Ruins due to a major incident in his past. He fears humans due to the attack he suffered in Snowdin, and he suffers loneliness after losing his friend (who left him corn). When he sees Clover, he wonders if this is “some sort of haunting” (implying he knows that the human who attacked him was killed).

In the pacifist route, Clover can prove to Dalv that not all humans are evil and Dalv can move out and learn how to trust people again. This becomes a recurring theme-- Clover, pure of heart, proving to monsters that humanity isn’t that bad after all.

However, Dalv then disappears from the story. His motivation is to basically be left alone, but once you prove to him that humanity isn’t so bad, his role in the story is essentially complete.

I feel that, by comparison, Toriel’s motivation is more active-- to protect humans who fall down from Asgore. It’s this motivation that drives her to return at the end of the true pacifist route and ultimately make the true ending of Undertale possible.

Dalv’s passiveness makes him a weaker character to me. Now that you’ve proven that you’re his friend and humanity isn’t so bad, I would have liked to have seen him take an active motivation to protect his friend or help them in some way. We don’t have to copy Undertale beat for beat and have him dramatically save Clover from Asgore or anything, but it would have been nice to see him vouch for Clover in some way at some point.

Now, for the final time, I know that UTY is released and major changes aren’t likely. Some of my suggestions are “I would have liked to see this, but this change would require redoing the entire game,” which I don’t think should or could be done at this stage. This is just daydreaming and- if I’m praising myself highly- potential considerations for the devs’ future works (and the works of any other creatives who are reading this).

With this proposed major change to Dalv’s character out of the way, I’ll suggest instead the most minimal possible change that I would like to see, so my suggestions don’t feel entirely like just daydreaming.

I really like how Dalv sends Clover a letter about his moving out to Snowdin. This is active of him in terms of motivation-- Clover is his friend and he wants to keep in touch with his friend. I’d be absolutely thrilled to see a little bit of extra dialogue for him in an update. After you go back to Snowdin and see him, I think the dialogue he already has is totally fine! But, I’d be really happy if he’d take initiative and tell Clover a little more about his experience with the past human, or invite them to rely on him, too.

Martlet

Martlet felt… a bit restrained in terms of her writing, to me. I think that one aspect of Undertale’s writing is that it’s not afraid to go over the top. Papyrus isn’t just silly, he wears a costume every day and cartoon eyes pop out of his head when he’s surprised. Undyne isn’t just determined, she aspires to be a badass anime heroine. I like Martlet just fine, but she never had a moment where she really stood out to me in this way.

Martlet’s defining traits are that she likes puzzles, she loves reading and abiding by the rules of the royal guard, and she believes in humanity and wants to help Clover. As I said before, I really like this optimism and belief. I’d like to see more of it.

Near the end of the true pacifist route, Martlet says that she was taught in the royal guard that humans are scary, but Clover proved to her that humans are kind. This felt very abrupt to me at the time-- we know that Chujin disapproved of her joining the royal guard due to his own trauma, but Martlet had no personal involvement in the last human’s violent actions.

Martlet doesn’t seem to have any reason to dislike humans more than any other monster. We learn in her diary that she essentially joined the royal guard out of a desire to help people and build puzzles, and also because she needed a job.

If she’s just supposed to be a representative of the average monster and their feelings toward humanity, and her growing to like Clover is meant to represent how all of monsterkind could grow to like humankind, that would be one thing-- but I think that she specifically is meant to represent a person who wholeheartedly believes that humans can be good and that humans and monsters can live in harmony. In the no mercy route, she repeatedly pleads to Clover to do better, that they don’t have to act this way, that she wants to help them. That’s not the response of the average monster, who fights Clover or tries to flee from them.

I believe the intention is that Chujin & Martlet represent either end of an ideology axis (no pun intended). Chujin believes all humans are evil no matter what, but Martlet believes that humans can choose to be good. But why does she choose to believe in humans other than a sense of personal optimism?

I would have liked to have seen some defining event that made Martlet choose to believe in the goodness of humanity. I would have liked to have her being kind and optimistic to a fault be more of a defining trait-- to have that go over the top in an Undertale-style way. A lot of her interactions with other characters just personally weren’t very memorable to me.

Martlet spends a lot of the game sidelined. She loses you in the Mines. She gets thrown in jail in the Wild East. She has to go back to Snowdin once you're freed. Yes, she's there for you in the true pacifist route, but she's otherwise pretty absent through the neutral/true pacifist routes.

I recognize that the main characters in Undertale can be absent after you leave their respective sections of the game. However, you're able to call Papyrus & Undyne as much as you want, and you get a major hang-out (or “date”) with each of them and Alphys which gives time to expand on their backstory and character arc. Martlet doesn't get that. We even get a little bit of time to hang out with Dalv after we become his friend, but Martlet shoves us on a boat and hurries us to the next area as soon as we beat her. And sure, we get to talk to her on the boat, but it’s just a bit of silly dialogue-- it doesn’t really expand on her character. It feels like a missed opportunity.

So, yes, my major suggestion on her would be to zoom in more on her belief in you and let her be a liiiiitle sillier and more over the top, and give more opportunity for Clover to hang out with her.

At this stage, however? In this proposed minor ‘dialogue update’, I’d be really excited to see a little something more from her. Maybe a letter? She does send you one, but only in the neutral route to tell you to meet her on top of the apartments. It would be a good opportunity to either let her be silly or explain a bit about when she came to want to believe in humans-- or both, ideally.

Starlo

I honestly have very little to say on Starlo. He seems to be the fan favorite, and I did find his section fun! Ultimately, though, he's just kind of… there? I mean, he's on the periphery of Ceroba's (and Chujin and Kanako’s) story because he's her childhood friend (and his family grew the corn that Chujin gives to Dalv), and yes, he later on reminds her that she can still choose to be a better person because he also almost killed Clover! However, every monster in the game almost killed Clover.

There’s nothing wrong with having a silly character who wears a costume and isn’t a major player in the plot. I feel like Starlo is similar to Papyrus in this way. But Papyrus isn’t just a goofball, he’s the monster in Undertale who believes unerringly in Frisk & the player’s ability to do better because he firmly believes that you can make anything happen if you just try. This belief helps elevate Papyrus from comic relief to an actual rounded character.

I don’t feel like Starlo has any sort of strong conviction like that. We do learn that he wants to bring hope to the Underground by roleplaying as a sheriff in the Wild East town, giving them a slice of (supposed) surface life. I think this is fine, but I’d like to see a bit more of it. In the no mercy route, he does bravely stand against you because he’s a sheriff and it’s his job to bring justice to murderers like Clover.

My expectation when I first met him, a fellow cowboy (gender-neutral), was that he’d have his own ideas about justice. I expected that he would clash with Clover about these ideals, and neither of them would be quite right or wrong-- and this would prove that justice can’t be measured mathematically, and one outcome can’t be applied to all situations.

But, he’s not at all bad the way he is. He has a lot of fans, after all. The minor change I’d suggest now that the game is out is that I’d be interested in learning why the cowboy aesthetic specifically appealed to him. Maybe a diary in his room explaining that Westerns are the epitome of ‘justice’ to him? I’d like to see a peek into the motivation that transformed an ordinary farm boy into someone who could bravely stand against a murderous human.

Ceroba

I’ll be honest. I want to like Ceroba, but I don’t.

I understand that there's an attempt to mirror Asgore in that the war against humanity, in general, has taken Ceroba's partner and her child from her-- and ultimately, Clover forgives her and helps her learn how to move on. It's about letting go, just like Undertale. I get that. But Ceroba’s story doesn't land for me, personally. In order to talk about Ceroba, I need to talk about her husband, Chujin, because Ceroba spends so much of the story acting out Chujin's will.

Whereas monsters in Undertale do attempt to kill Frisk and steal their soul, and Asgore has killed other children before, it's framed in a very 'video game' violence sort of way (again, Undertale has these meta elements). Ultimately, in the True Pacifist route, none of Frisk's deaths have stuck, and Asgore's actions- while reprehensible- allowed for Asriel to break the barrier once and for all.

Chujin, in the video tapes he leaves for Ceroba, implies that Axis’s murder of the human- presumably a child, like Clover and Frisk- was very violent and bloody. It feels a tiny step beyond the 'video game violence' aspect, for me. While it’s shown that Chujin regrets this, it still doesn’t change the way that this violence is expressed in the game.

Instead of giving the human’s soul right to Asgore to bring monsterkind closer to freedom, Chujin- who has already been fired by Asgore, I should add- chooses to keep the soul and experiment with it.

This is very selfish, even though he has good intentions. He’s told nobody else about his experiments with his soul at this point- not even his wife- and Asgore has told him to cease all activities as the royal scientist.

While monsters do want Frisk's soul for their own selfish reasons, they notably do not butcher them violently, succeed in this, and still try to get painted with the same quirky and fun brush that the other characters get.

After Chujin dies, he leaves detailed instructions for his wife to continue his work-- and although he says "don't involve Kanako", he leaves her all the tools she would need to experiment on Kanako, and notably, no other way to finish his work except to experiment on Kanako.

As I said, Kanako finds out about this and asks to be experimented on. And while she does give consent, she is a child. I cannot stress this enough-- she is a child who just lost her father and is still wracked by grief. Kanako is a child who cannot possibly know what she is consenting to.

Ceroba chooses to experiment on Kanako and more or less kills her. And then she chooses to send her 'fallen down' daughter to Alphys's experiment, despite the fact that Kanako presumably has some sort of trace of human soul/determination left in her-- which could have compromised Alphys's work as well.

Let's return to how I said that Ceroba is a mirror for Asgore. She's made so many mistakes and it's cost her her family and she can't stop now or it will all be for nothing. She's done horrible things, just like Asgore.

But the difference is that Asgore is the king of monsterkind. Asgore has no desire to kill human beings. He declared war on humanity in a fit of anger and grief, but the Underground had lost hope due to the loss of Chara & Asriel. Believing that Asgore could gather seven human souls and free them all brought hope back to the Underground.

His actions, while wrong, are selfless-- and much less explicitly violent and more 'cartoon violence'-like. Chujin & Ceroba have the well-being of monsterkind as their own pure intentions, but their actions are far more selfish and violent. Axis, Chujin’s creation, massacred a human being. Yet we're still expected to find them silly and fun and relatable-- it just feels unusual.

I’m not someone who hates nuance or morally gray characters. One reason I’m so sad that I don’t quite like Ceroba is that I love morally gray women. It’s just that we’re not allowed to really dislike Chujin or Ceroba for what they’ve done, and instead we’re supposed to see Ceroba- and Axis- as silly and relatable like the rest of the characters.

Immediately after Ceroba’s boss battle, instead of processing what just happened to a greater extent, Clover chooses to sacrifice their soul for monsterkind.

I understand that the intention is that Ceroba's grief and Chujin's desperation to protect monsters from humanity contributed to Clover's decision to sacrifice their soul. However, the idea is- to me- abrupt. Ultimately, too, Clover's decision is just as much about how much they love their friends (and how it's impossible for them to hide out in the Underground forever) as it is about Ceroba and her family.

Chara & Asriel’s deaths, Asgore’s war on humanity, the war of humans and monsters-- these elements impact every part of Frisk’s journey. But Chujin and Ceroba’s actions, while impactful on Martlet and Dalv to varying extents, are only part of Clover’s journey. And Chujin and Ceroba did awful things for this comparatively minor impact on the plot.

EDIT: Further analysis about how Ceroba doesn't have a lot of agency and spends a lot of the plot just acting out Chujin's will, as well as the inconsistency in her characterization (and feelings about sacrificing Clover and the well-being of Kanako), with input from @carlyraejepsans. Thank you!

I would have liked to have seen a bit more from Ceroba without any influence from Chujin- maybe an interaction explaining her relationship with Martlet and an additional conversation about Martlet’s nearly unwavering belief in humans vs Ceroba’s inherited grudge against humanity- but I don’t know where this would fit in. Adding more time for Clover to process Ceroba’s boss fight before sacrificing their soul might throw off the pacing.

In general, though, Ceroba's boss fight- while flashy and fun- ultimately feels pointless with how little she learns from it and how quickly she changes her stance on using Clover's soul for the benefit of monsterkind, and what will happen to monsters after they break the barrier. To quote @carlyraejepsans in the ask linked above:

In addition, it's like the writing didn't want to commit to her delusions and little character development. She feels that her daughter is alive and thinks she can save her—wait no that was a lie—wait it wasn't. The moment she's defeated she goes "Agh, what was I thinking!" out loud (which is already a questionable writing choice imo but i digress), and recognizes that sacrificing Clover for her plans is horrible... and then 5 seconds later Clover chooses to sacrifice themself to break the barrier and whoops nevermind she's suddenly the one getting the others onboard with the idea... wait. didn't she say she was making the serum because the humans would've only slaughtered them again if they broke the barrier? oh wait wasn't that also chujin again? whoops.

I would have felt better if there were more room to view Chujin and Ceroba in a critical light (and time to view Ceroba outside of just being a mom and wife). I can’t think of any ‘minor’ suggestion that wouldn’t require a lot of editing.

Axis…

And... okay. Let's talk about Axis real quick.

I want to give the dev team the benefit of the doubt, but I need to point out that this security robot's name is "Axis 014." If you don't know what I mean by pointing this out, I'll just say that both of these terms are nazi dog whistles and allow you to look up the specifics.

I recognize that, by this point, it’s too late to change his name. I’d at least be grateful if the team would acknowledge this and confirm that they aren’t nazis.

Axis’s name makes his actions far worse in retrospect. He, as a security robot wants to kill a child, but he isn't able to anymore because his programming has changed. So, as a legal loophole, he forces them to hold 'a weapon' (a trash can lid) so he can justifiably kill them. This is the same robot that brutalized and murdered a human being in the past at Chujin's behest.

It feels tone deaf and ultimately the one thing I’d just outright call bad about UTY. I don’t think it was intentionally done this way, but I don't like that we're supposed to find this nazi-aesthetic police brutality robot "quirky and relatable" like the Undertale cast. In the true pacifist ending, he falls in love with a robot made out of a trash can and his eyes turn into cartoon hearts and etc. It’s even more jarring than viewing Chujin & Ceroba in a fun/relatable way.

In the no mercy route, Axis will defend himself and claim that his programming forced him to kill the human and he didn't want to. This "just following orders" defense feels weak to me as well, personally. Axis clearly delights in harming humans, going out of his way to try to kill Clover. But also, Axis spends a significant amount of the game displaying a very similar amount of free will to the other characters. He’s not just a janitor robot that sweeps back and forth.

He’s a nearly sentient being-- and the fact that there are these nearly sentient robots makes Alphys’s accomplishment of creating “a robot with a soul” (at least, so she claims-- Mettaton is only the ghost in a machine) much less impactful to me, personally. Yes, Asgore thinks that Chujin failed in creating a sentient robot, and so it’s impressive that Alphys supposedly did it. But I don’t know why Asgore wouldn’t be more skeptical of Alphys’s accomplishment after Chujin failed more than eight times and set fire to his flowers.

I think that Axis is ultimately a missed opportunity to make a really villainous character. This concept that he disobeys his programming- used as sort of a parallel for law, as a security robot- to attack Clover could have been explored to further the ‘justice’ theme. He doesn’t write his programming (the laws), he just carries it out (violently enforces the laws).

The ‘minor’ suggestion I’d make, though, is to just acknowledge the name.

Undertale & Meta Elements

Now, we’ll be addressing my largest criticisms-- the omission of meta elements and the way Flowey is written.

Undertale Yellow never quite stopped feeling like a fan game to me. And it is, of course-- but I think that it feels as if it tries so hard to be Undertale (in the writing style, the humor, etc) that it fails to forge an identity of its own, and that holds it back from being just a fangame to a fangame that succeeds in expanding on the original creative work.

At the same time, although UTY tries to feel like Undertale, I don’t think it captures certain elements that make Undertale be Undertale.

Whereas Undertale was ultimately about video games as a medium and the normalization of violence in them, UTY doesn’t have this level of metatextual commentary. UTY does have a running theme of 'justice'-- and I don’t think this is bad! After all, if Undertale already said all there was to say about video games and violence, why retread that path? I respect that UTY knows its limits and simply focuses on justice as a concept instead.

At the same time, Undertale isn’t just an RPG about mercy-- it’s an RPG about RPGs. The fact that you can talk to and spare enemies isn’t just a quirk of the game, it’s what the game is about. This is one thing that makes Undertale great that UTY doesn’t focus on.

UTY doesn’t completely ignore these elements, of course. Flowey takes over resetting for you, and you do have three distinct paths based on whether or not you kill enemies-- the ‘true pacifist’ path, the ‘neutral’ path, and the ‘no mercy’ path (I will not be calling it the ‘genocide’ route, especially in light of recent world events). Through whether or not you choose to kill enemies, the theme of ‘justice’ is explored-- who is Clover seeking justice for? In the true pacifist route, Clover seeks justice for the monsters, while in the no mercy route, Clover seeks justice for the fallen humans before them.

However, Flowey taking over the mechanics of saving and resetting for you makes concept of ‘the player’ obsolete. I recognize that not everyone in the Undertale/Deltarune fandom quite enjoys the concept of 'the player' and the meta elements of these games due to the fact that there can be implications that playing Deltarune (as an example, which ups the meta elements quite a bit) can actively hurt Kris and make their world a worse place. However, Deltarune isn’t a complete work and we don’t know this for certain. Additionally, I feel as if at least acknowledging Toby's intentions are important to analyzing the work, no matter what one's personal feelings are about them.

The Importance of the Player

The presence of you, the player, is important in Undertale. Frisk is a subversion of the 'blank slate protagonist' trope. You think that you're able to name them and control them, but in the True Pacifist route, Frisk begins to act on their own (they walk slowly in some parts of the True Lab because they're presumably afraid, etc). In the end, you realize that Frisk is their own person with their own name, and you as the player have to let go-- when Frisk & the monsters go to the surface, Flowey (a mirror of the player themselves) urges you to let them go. Don't treat this as a game anymore-- don't replay and wring out any last drops of content you can. You enjoyed it, now move on.

But many players want to see the No Mercy route because it’s the last thing they haven’t done in the game, and they don’t want to let go. And that's where the role of you, the player, becomes undeniable in the game's story. What is the No Mercy route except playing a 'typical' RPG in the way it's meant to be played? You grind to become stronger, killing every enemy that stands in your way. And when you've killed all the monsters and become as strong as you can be, you've won.

Many players didn't do this because they hate the characters in Undertale and want to hurt them-- if they hate them, they likely just wouldn't play the game. Many players did it because they like the characters in Undertale, and wanted to see what would happen. They couldn't stop playing. And this is exactly what Sans means in his dialogue during his boss battle-- to paraphrase, "you think that because you can, that means you have to."

This is one of the ways that Flowey is a mirror of the player. Flowey didn't start killing out of malicious intent, but because he had become so bored and isolated that he just "had to see what happens".

Chara's role at the very end of the No Mercy route is to call you out directly for this. They tell you that their power was yours. Their words were very misconstrued by fans for a long time, and they themselves wound up as a scapegoat for the No Mercy route-- but ultimately, there's no reason for Chara or Frisk to kill every monster in the Underground. The only reason is because of you, personally. You want to see what would happen. You want to grind and play it like a typical RPG.

They call you out for this if you don't want to delete the game world at the end. Why go back to that world that you've already destroyed? Why play nice with the monsters that you just massacred because you can?

Why am I talking about this at such length? Because I believe that ‘the player’ and how they interact with the world of Undertale is important. Characters lampshade the UI and battle mechanics often-- Flowey talking about the world as a game and ‘saving’ and ‘loading’, Papyrus telling you to “press C to open the dating HUD”, Sans explaining ‘LV’ and ‘EXP’, and so on.

This is my personal opinion, and I recognize this is very nitpicky, but I feel that not acknowledging this or adding to these meta elements in some way makes UTY weaker for me.

Flowey’s Role in UTY

Flowey essentially saves and resets for you because he's bored, and he wants to use Clover as a tool to access Asgore’s five stored human souls. His role as a mirror for the player becomes him essentially just acting as a stand-in for the player. While this in itself can invite self-reflection, I think that the execution of his role is a little awkward.

We learn at the end of the neutral route that Flowey has already reset the timeline hundreds of times by the time we first start playing the game. According to him, Clover always ends up at a dead end (they choose to stay in the Underground for the rest of their life) or they die (and they can’t reset of their own power). Thus, Flowey chose to set Clover on an alternate path by sabotaging a lever in the Ruins, which made them fall into the Dark Ruins and meet Dalv.

Flowey then tries to kill Clover and absorb their soul because they, again, hit a dead end. Yet he gives up on it after a while because Clover won’t stop fighting back, and he thinks he can just reset and try again anyway.

At the end of the true pacifist route, Clover instead opts to sacrifice their soul willingly to Asgore & monsterkind. Flowey comments that he could just reset (and you still can, if you want to play again), but Clover “earned their rest” and he calls them a friend.

This progression from “Clover is a tool that Flowey is using to access the 5 human souls” to “Clover is a friend and Flowey willingly lets them die and stay dead” feels undeserved and underdeveloped to me.

"But, Andrea," you might say, "Flowey went from trying to kill Frisk as Omega/Photoshop Flowey to hugging Frisk as Asriel really quickly too!"

Yes, but in that short time, Frisk and Flowey/Asriel had a Whole Thing where Frisk 'saved' him like everyone else and he learned he needs to let go, too. It was a short time, but it was a poignant time. By contrast, Flowey is pretty much absent throughout most of UTY's true pacifist route. Sure, you could easily say that he just got bored of Clover and gave up-- but that, too, doesn’t feel quite right to me.

I really hate to say this, but I feel that Flowey’s writing in UTY cheapens the original Undertale for me, which is why this is one of my major criticisms of the game.

Flowey's entire character arc in Undertale is about how he was stuck with the same places and same people for an endless amount of resets. In my opinion, the limited amount of places and characters for him to interact with in Undertale only adds to how trapped he is (and the Underground being so small really strengthens the concept of "there's overpopulation and the monsters are running out of time to find a solution/earn their freedom" that we see in the game, but I digress).

So when something finally changes and he meets Frisk, it's deeply impactful to him. Finally, someone new to play with! Finally, potential for change! Even though Flowey admits that, even if Chara came back, there's a great chance that he couldn't really love them due to his lack of soul, just experiencing something new for the first time in ages is as close to love as he can possibly get. So Flowey:

Starts to believe that Frisk is Chara, this person he ‘loves’ or wants to love, or some manifestation of Chara.

Refuses to let Frisk go, even if that means- when Asriel has the power of seven human souls- just resetting the Undertale timeline over and over instead of going to the surface or doing anything else.

For Flowey to have gone through everything that he does in UTY- all these new places, all these new people, Clover included- weakens this, in my opinion. And sure, there's very heavily implied to be lots of places that Frisk doesn't explore and people they don't meet-- 99% of New Home and its residents, for instance. But Clover themselves is the real problem for me.

No matter how many times Flowey reset with Clover, I really struggle to believe that he would get bored of a human being that easily. He even said that Clover's actions and choices would sometimes change from reset to reset, and he only recently learned how dramatically he could alter their path by sabotaging that lever in the Ruins. Clover isn't a static being-- and even if they were, they're at least a new static being.

And although we learn in the neutral route that Flowey can't really absorb Clover's soul because they fight back too much, I can't believe that would stop Flowey so easily. What about at the end of the pacifist route, where Clover has given it up willingly and it's being transported in a little jar? Clover’s body is separated from the soul, now-- could Clover still fight back?

Or, what about if Flowey tried to kill them as soon as they entered the Ruins? Or, what if Flowey played nice the entire route and then at the end tried to convince Clover that if they sacrificed their soul, he would take it to Asgore for them? With access to full control of the timeline, I don't think Flowey would give up on this. We learn in Undertale how painful it is for him to be soulless and how desperate he is to access power so that things will change.

For Flowey to acknowledge Clover as a 'friend'- maybe even a true person, not just a compilation of dialogue- suggests character growth. It suggests remorse for his resets that he isn't capable of having and doesn't have until the events of Undertale. I just don't feel like it’s earned.

Flowey is, of course, an unreliable narrator.

At the end of the no mercy route of UTY, Flowey expresses that he never saw Clover as a friend-- he only enjoyed watching them die over and over again. It should be noted that this was said while under extreme duress (Clover is LV 20 by this point and has killed everyone save for Asgore), and this route isn’t canon in the way that the neutral and pacifist routes are.

With that said, if we agree that Flowey can’t feel love as a soulless being, then I could argue that this is about as much of a ‘friend’ as anyone could be. This is how he wanted to keep Frisk (“Chara”, in his mind) for eternity when he had the six human souls + the entirety of monsterkinds’ souls-- just watch them try over and over again, for eternity.

Why am I contradicting myself? Because, let’s suppose that Flowey doesn’t mean Clover is a ‘friend’ in the traditional sense- that they earned his respect and he cares for them in some way- but Clover is a new toy that he got bored with and gave up on. I feel like this, too, makes Undertale a little weaker.

If Flowey did have some type of positive regard for Clover, but was willing to let them go, then it feels- to me- like Frisk’s role in his story isn’t that significant. Frisk helped him learn how to let go and move on, but Flowey has already demonstrated being capable of this. The circumstances are different- if Flowey gives up at the end of Undertale’s true pacifist route, it’s over for real, whereas if he gives up at the end of UTY, he can just wait for another human to fall- but I feel like the core feeling is the same. Flowey, by the start of Undertale, doesn’t strike me as someone who’s capable of letting go.

So, how would I have changed this?

I recognize that- again- Undertale already made these points about video games and violence, and Flowey has his entire character arc in that game. For Flowey to have more of an arc in this game would potentially make this game no longer line up with canon Undertale or weaken Undertale further. And why retread old ground that Undertale already talked about?

I respect the decision to tell a self-contained story, but the meta commentary about video games in Undertale is so significant for me that I personally would have liked to see a bit more of it in Undertale Yellow. I also recognize how much of my criticism of Flowey’s writing in UTY is subjective. It feels unrealistic for me, his arc feels abrupt for me, it makes Undertale less poignant for me.

A lot of people love his inclusion in this game, and it’s very novel to see Flowey as a friend throughout most of UTY and hear his snarky commentary on demand rather than having him as an enemy who’s absent through most of the game, as he is in Undertale.

The Flowey Suggestions

First, I’ll be honest. I know this is not and has never been possible, but my easiest solution to the dilemma of Flowey’s lack of a character arc- and the lack of an ability to give him a character arc- would have been to just remove him from UTY.

I think that Flowey’s inclusion in the story of the yellow soul human and his role saving and loading could have been interesting. It goes against certain story elements implied in Undertale, and popular fan theories-- and I don’t mind that, if something meaningful is done with it. But, I feel as if Flowey’s relationship to Clover isn’t impactful enough to justify including him.

To clarify on ‘implied story elements’ and ‘popular fan theories’:

While I might be misremembering, I thought that it was implied in Undertale that Flowey came into being after Asgore had already collected six human souls, and that a significant amount of time had passed since the last human had fallen down.

I won’t go into it at length because this post is long enough and I, again, am not an Undertale expert. With that said, it’s also implied that all human souls are capable of saving/loading/resetting in the Underground. If you make Frisk tell Asgore that he killed them before, he just nods as if he’s used to it-- and he’s the one character who we know has killed humans before.

Now, how did Asgore successfully kill beings that can just reset the game whenever they die? Well, Sans faces the same dilemma in Undertale’s no mercy route. There’s no way that he can permanently defeat you, the player, who is a real being. Therefore, the way he ‘wins’ is by infuriating you enough with his difficult boss fight until you give up and stop playing Undertale (or, at least, reset and make better choices).

Think about all the times you’ve played a game, got stuck on a hard boss, and never played it again. While it’s not ‘canon’ to the story- giving up on your copy of Mario doesn’t mean Bowser really wins- functionally, giving up on a game means that the story ends for you. This is how I believe Asgore captured the six human souls, even if they were also capable of resetting like Frisk is-- he fought them until they gave up.

Humans all are said to have great amounts of ‘determination’, not just red soul bearers. We don’t even know what trait the red soul exemplifies. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s determination itself.

The bottom line is that I don’t think it would be unrealistic for Clover to be able to save/load/reset on their own, or for Flowey to not exist yet during the time they fell down.

But, I get it, Flowey was in UTY’s demo that has been out for seven years. He’s in the trailers. He couldn’t be removed at any part of development, and he sure as hell can’t be removed now.

My second suggestion would have been to zoom in on him, instead. While the prequel is about Clover, the yellow soul human, I would have liked to see it be about Flowey in a significant way. I kept hoping for Clover to have an opportunity to ask Flowey at some point, “why are you helping me, anyway?”.

This is my personal interpretation, but I’ve come to believe that Flowey thinks that the reason he’s stuck as a flower is that it’s a punishment. Because he, as Asriel, refused to fight back, he failed Chara, and now they’re dead. Now he’s stuck as a rinky-dink flower with no soul, he can’t love his former family, and he can’t stop playing this game.

In the no mercy route of Undertale, Flowey feels very much like he’s trying to appeal to Frisk- the person he believes is Chara- in a way like a younger sibling trying to impress an older sibling. He says he’s impressed by how you killed everyone. He helps solves puzzles so you won’t have to slow down. He brags to you about how he’s also a heartless killer.

Notably, he talks about his past. He tells ‘Chara’ that he was afraid to start killing, at first. He said he wouldn’t enjoy it, but he just had to know what would happen.

Then, Flowey laughs and says that you (Chara) know how liberating it is to be this way-- to kill people and shape their fates. He ‘recognizes’ Frisk as being actually Chara because of how they killed everyone in the Ruins.

But we have no indication that Chara was a violent or evil person in their life. I believe that Flowey is partially projecting and partially recognizes Chara because, in the last moments of their life, they were telling him to kill. He always knew that Chara hated humanity and wanted power to better the position of monsterkind. This is why Flowey brags about how he has a plan to get the human souls, and once they do so, they can go to the surface and “finish what [they] started.”

To Flowey, in my opinion, killing people isn’t just about seeing what happens. It’s about trying to understand and appease Chara and doing what he thinks he should have done all that time ago, as Asriel.

I bring this up because I think that I would have liked to have seen this be explored in Undertale Yellow. Flowey is still a very misunderstood character today due to being an unreliable narrator. I believe that a lot of Flowey misinterpretations are due to taking him at face value-- hearing him say that he’s an unfeeling, manipulative, patient killer and agreeing with him.

But Flowey contradicts himself at several points. He gives up his “catch these friendliness pellets” trick after you dodging just a few times. These aren’t the makings of a perfect manipulative killer, but an impatient child. That’s who Flowey is at his core-- a child.

I recognize that, again, if Flowey told all of his tragic backstory to Clover and they became true friends, this wouldn’t fit with canon Undertale and his actions in that game. Flowey and Asriel distance themselves from each other, and it wouldn’t make sense for Flowey to tell this to Clover-- especially if he just views them as a tool to use and play with.

I think, however, it wouldn’t have been impossible for Clover to have learned this information about Flowey in a way that could still be canon compliant with Undertale itself. Hypothetically, maybe the “hopes and dreams” statue in the UG Apartments near the Core could have sparked intrigue in Flowey.

Maybe analysis of Flowey could have come up during his neutral route boss fight-- after all, Clover appears to peek into the minds of Ceroba and Martlet during the true pacifist and no mercy run boss fights, respectively. We already get a little of this- Clover has to run through a hallway of flowers in Flowey’s boss fight, and we hear sad and scared dialogue that’s presumably from a past version of Flowey himself. However, it’s not necessarily new and doesn’t quite add to Flowey’s character in my personal opinion.

I feel that including Flowey’s story more in some way would justify having Flowey in the game, and knowing the history of Asriel & Chara could factor into Clover’s decision to give up their soul for the sake of monsterkind. Chara, too, sacrificed themselves willingly, after all.

I don’t have a ‘realistic suggestion’ that could be implemented with a dialogue update because these suggestions are so vast-- and, ultimately, very personal and subjective. I have very strong feelings about Flowey.

Meta Elements of Undertale

In Undertale, you’re asked when you should or shouldn’t fight. As a pacifist, you can get through the Ruins without killing anyone. Flowey will then ask you what you would do if you met a relentless killer. Would you betray your morals and fight? Or would you give up and let yourself die?

Undertale is the friendly RPG where nobody has to die. While you have to kill Asgore at least once to do the neutral route, and you do have to fight back against Omega/Photoshop Flowey to end his battle, the game ultimately posits that there never is a good time to fight. You don’t beat Omega Flowey by being stronger than him, you do it by appealing to the souls and allowing them to rebel. You don’t beat God of Hyperdeath Asriel Dreemurr by beating him up, you do it by saving your friends- him included. The game, again, is about an inversion of the necessity of violence in video games to me.

I would have been interested in seeing an exploration of when it is necessary to fight, and this could be done through the lens of ‘justice’. Would Clover fight if it brought them closer to justice (on a pacifist route)? Is it morally correct to kill one person if it saves thousands?

Sparing someone is always the correct option in Undertale. In that way, the true route is quite linear-- there’s one solution that works for everyone. What if there were situations in UTY in which there is no single correct option that works for everyone? What if Clover were placed in situations in which they had to act as arbiter and decide between two outcomes and what is right? It could have been like how they get forced to solve the trolley problem in the Wild East, but with consequences.

Adding to putting a ‘twist’ on the elements that Undertale introduces with its combat system-- what if sparing someone ultimately enabled them to keep hurting others? What if fighting to weaken someone was the correct solution for once? These inversions could have built on the meta elements of Undertale, and I think that it would make Clover’s decision to sacrifice themselves to bring justice to monsterkind more poignant to me.

Again, I have no ‘realistic’ suggestion for this in the full release of UTY. I think that the plot about justice alone isn’t bad, but I would have been happy to see it tie into the gameplay a little more.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I think that UTY tries too hard to be Undertale without iterating on the aspects that made Undertale memorable. The characters feel like they fail to pop or relate to the game’s story in meaningful ways, and to me, the main story isn’t executed as well as it could have been (and far darker than the main Undertale in ways that don’t feel as if they’re handled sensitively).

I will say, again, that this project is very impressive in scope, and I applaud the dev team for finishing it and releasing it. I recognize that a lot of my distaste is subjective, and creating another Undertale is a fool's errand considering the acclaim that Undertale got. I recognize one final time that my suggestions are just daydreaming, and this game has already found a lot of success-- which I think it deserves.

I tend to criticize a lot of media I like, which might sound contradictory to some, but it makes perfect sense to me. If I don’t like something, I won’t engage with it. I think that the original Undertale has its flaws, too. At the end of the day, I like UTY, but no media is perfect. This is how I think it could have been better, and I hope that I think other creatives who want to make Undertale fanworks (or any creative works, for that matter) will take these thoughts into consideration.

Thanks for reading.

#bandrea blabbers #long post #the uty post

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loki-valeska · 7 months

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I'm gonna be posting height charts for the next couple of days while I work on finishing my other SPM project and further work on le comic. These are mostly for color pallets, and keeping the heights consistent for said comic.

Here's the Heroes to start with

Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Bowser are smaller than the rest of the cast. There's a reason for this; 1. Making them look close to canon, while being comparable to the rest of the cast's heights, made them look like mascot costumes. 2. I wanted them to look highly canon compared to the normal residents of the SPM world. This was done to make them seem more like outsiders and foreign to this world.

Merlon's design was initially made on a whim while making another piece, but luckily I felt I didn't need to alter much. Most of his shape language stayed intact during the style transition.

Merlee's design is one I really like. I wanted to incorporate design elements from her past incarnations of the Paper Mario Games. Like the hair tuft, and moon.

If anyone has questions about other design choices, I will happily answer them.

#super paper mario #paper mario #mario #Luigi #princess peach #Bowser #Merlon #Merlee #fanart #art #digital art #digital fanart #artists on tumblr #clip studio paint #super mario #mario fanart #Super mario fanart #super mario bros #Valeska's art dump

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7grandmel · 3 months

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Todays rip: 07/02/2024

Battle Emergency

Season 4 Episode 2 Featured on: Paper Jams - A High-Quality Album ~ The First Fold

Ripped by Cryptrik

youtube

Requested by circunflexo! (@circunflexonoa)

Over its life, there's been a lot of projects on SiIvaGunner where it's easy to tell they were driven by individual rippers' passions, moreso than satiating the hunger of a wider audience. There's of course Jass' excellent Genesis renditions of the soundtrack to Sonic CD, as shown in Collision Chaos Good Future JP [CD Beta Mix], there's ShonicTH's push for Kingdom Hearts content to be on the channel with rips like Trial of the Heart, and of course Chaze the Chat's legendary infatuation with pop music sensation Sean Kingston in Take You To The Desert - with no particularly strong feelings toward any other music artists of the 2000s. Yet of these projects listed, I don't think any of them felt quite as prominently featured on the channel as the three-part Paper Jams project.

Prominent channel member PinkieOats, of Live and Ooooooooooooooh, was once on an episode of the now-ended SiIvaGunner interview podcast series "The High Quality Podcast" (which, ftr was a huge inspiration for me to start this blog!). From just that one hour of time spent listening to PinkieOats alone, I could tell that the guy REALLY loved the first two Paper Mario games - hell, his profile picture since time immemorial has been of a pink Boo enemy rendered in the Paper Mario artstyle. Just a few months after said podcast episode, SiIvaGunner revealed "Paper Jams - and it thus came as no surprise to me to learn that it was a successor to a 2015 project by PinkieOats and Nape Mango, five whole years earlier. The goal of Paper Jams? To, across a collection of album, rip *every single track* from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

The tracks wouldn't all be ripped by PinkieOats and Nape Mango this time, of course - they now had the entire SiIvaGunner team collaborating with them for this rather ambitious event, and the results of that collaboration are evident as clear as day with Cryptrik's Battle Emergency. I've covered Cryptrik's work in the past with rips like Maroonbound and Give Me the Fantasy, and it was actually my coverage on the latter rip that prompted today's requestee to suggest yet more of the guy's rips for the blog. But it really cannot be stressed enough just how effortlessly Cryptrik is consistently able to make his rips just sound flat-out FUN, in large thanks to his mastery of utilizing large amounts of pure *noise* in rips. It would not surprise me one bit if I learned he was an actual DJ, but his influences are immensely clear regardless - dude rocks, basically.

Battle Emergency straddles a fantastic line in my eyes between succumbing entirely to Cryptrik's noise-driven style and still maintaining the original charm of The Thousand-Year Door's music - a balance that I believe is important to have in mind whilst working for a tribute project like Paper Jams in particular. The whimsical, energetic vibe of the Battle Theme lying underneath it all doesn't get lost, but is coated in an absolute barrage of mostly funk-related songs - primarily led by FUNK EMERGENCY, but joined by parts from Walk the Dinosaur, Uptown Funk, and the ever-memorable melody of Black Betty (bam-ba-lam), really just letting Cryptrik go wild with his signature style.

And yeah - it all works to excellent effect! The rip often reminds me of rips like Everybody's Special Course or Memey Hell in how the amount of noise and scattershot sources only aid in giving the track a fun, exciting feel - like you're at the center of two concerts playing at once and having the best time of your life. Its the kind of rip that almost leaves you exhausted after you're done listening - yet also the kind of rip that's endlessly relistenable as a result for how many phases it goes through in such a standard runtime. Althewhile the positive energy it instills also serves to spills over into my impression of Paper Jams as a whole - it truly sells the idea that, though the project was started by PinkieOats and his own passion, it is one that so many others of the SiIva team love just as much and want to celebrate just as loudly. Because really - moreso than colleagues, isn't the SiIvaGunner team really just a bunch of musicians who love jamming out to one another's music?

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justin-chapmanswers · 1 year

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was ii the oldest project you've voice acted in? if not, whats your oldest voice acting project?

Oh golly I was voice acting in all sorts of things pre-II. If you are suuuuper-interested, I have a playlist of most things I've ever voiced in that're on YouTube right here. All in reverse-chronological order, so you can scroll to the bottom and dig to the old stuff. Lots of videos have been removed from the Internet at this point, and I warn you a lot of the stuff has not aged well (and there's plenty in there that I haven't rewatched in a decade). But the fun news is that the first first thing I ever voiced in is still up! A wacky Mario 64 machinima (scripted content filmed in a videogame), Royal Escape. So you can hear my tiny-voice from 15 years ago!

I had maybe two or three years of very casual voice acting experience by the time II auditions went up, but you better believe I felt like a master of the craft when submitting my video-response, as the only person with even slight experience auditioning haha.

The first person who auditioned for Paintbrush, TotalDramaFantasy, got Paintbrush on-the-spot. And then the first person who auditioned for Balloon, Nate Groth, got Balloon on-the-spot. Same happened for me with Knife. I then advised Adam to let some more auditions come in before giving out parts lol. By the end of the audition process, I was fortunate enough to get Paper, as well. Granted, of course, Adam wanted to play fair to the voice actors and he had Paper & Baseball eliminated right-away because he and I were also voicing Knife & Nickel........ who were then immediate targets once Adam decided to switch to audience-vote. Buuuuut we had fun with it.

Gooooood silly times.

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david3096 · 6 months

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So I totally forgot about wanting to "promote" my día de muertos fanfic, but I'm going to do it now anyway lol

Honestly, so far this is the work I'm most proud of, I don't know why but it's my favorite.

There's an important warning on the beginning of the fic, but I still think you should give it a chance in case you don't want to read that.

Anyway, I'm leaving a fragment of the fic but you can read the whole thing on AO3

“Wow, I didn't thought there would be so many pictures" Buck comments when the altar is finished. A table on the opposite side of the TV is filled with food, flowers and pictures of Eddie's relatives, some family friends. A few bottles of tequila and vodka, coffee, a tennis ball and some cigarettes. Orange, purple and blue shredded paper. And a lot of orange flowers that Buck is sure he will never be able to pronounce in his life.

“I told you" Chris says from the couch, too focused on playing Mario Kart "I can't even remember all the people's names" Chris pauses his game "but I'm glad Dad can do this.”

“It feels strangely good" says Eddie, returning from the kitchen. “And don’t pretend you don’t like it”

“What are we going to make for dinner?" Buck asks, unable to take his eyes off the altar. Pictures of people he has never met before are staring at him and he doesn't know why, but he feels extremely nostalgic.

“Nothing” Chris and Buck look at Eddie in disbelief.

“What? Why?”They say at the same time and start laughing.

“Abuela y tía Pepa are coming for dinner" Buck and Chris share a look again, now a little more tense "Abuela just called me, they made tamales”.

“Dad" Chris says in a serious tone "Have you told them about Buck yet?”

“They know Buck will be dining with us" Eddie says with a half-smile.

“But do they know we're together?" Buck asked nervously "Do they know I've been living here for a month?”

“They know” And Buck doesn't know if that's better or worse.

“How did they take it?”

“You'll find out when they arrive" Eddie says with a smile and shakes his head "But trust me, you have nothing to worry about.”

After an hour and a half, abuela and tía Pepa arrive home. Eddie opens the door and Buck watches from the living room, with Chris at his side.

He feels nervous.

It's not the first time they've seen each other, they've been to multiple family gatherings but never when he’s officially being Eddie's boyfriend. And Buck tries to remember the last time he was officially introduced to someone's family.

“Hola hijo" he hears from the living room, abuela gives Eddie a kiss and a hug and tía Pepa does the same. Buck indicates to Chris that they should get up to say hello and they stand near the entrance looking at them.

“Mijo, come give me a hug" says abuela looking at Christopher, the boy responds with the same energy.

“Hi" Buck says to both of them as tía Pepa is hugging Chris. It's been a long time since he's felt so nervous and shy “I hope you had a good trip.”

“Why so much formality?” abuela asks. “You are the man who’s making my Edmundo happy" Eddie blushes really hard.

“Abuela, it's true, but don't say it so loud, he'll start using that power for evil.”

“He’s not! He's a good man" Abuela defends him and goes over to hug and kiss him. Tia Pepa watches him, looking serious, as if inspecting Buck's every move to criticize him.

“Pepa" Eddie says "Don't make him suffer.”

“I'm not making him suffer" she says,but honestly, Bucks is suffering a little. "It's just that I remembered that years ago I told Buck that I prayed that you would find what you needed to be happy, to raise your son with someone" she confesses "I'm so glad it's with you" she says straight into his eyes and Buck feels like he's going to cry. Tia Pepa hugs him and gives him a kiss on his cheek like abuela did.

“I'm happy to be in Eddie and Chris's life, too.”

“And we're glad you're with them" Abuela says "I haven't seen these two so happy since..." She pauses to think about it "Never" she jokes.

“Let's dinner, we made tamales" says Pepa "Could you bring them Edmundo? The pot is in the trunk of my truck" Eddie gives him a smile and as he is leaving his aunt says "Tienes cuidado”.

Buck doesn't quite know what to do, he guides them to the table while he and Chris arrange the dishes, they keep smiling and he feels like he's in another reality where there doesn't have to be a misfortune to be happy.

Eddie takes the pot into the kitchen and gives Buck a smile and all his insecurities fade away for a few moments.

“Chris" they hear Eddie from the kitchen "Can you help me, mijo?" Chris gets up and goes to the kitchen. And knowing Edmundo Díaz, he did it to leave Buck with his grandmother and aunt.

“Cariño, I don't mean to be impertinent" says Pepa, and there it is, just what Buck was afraid of. They don't really accept his relationship with Eddie. “Why isn't there a picture of Shannon at the altar?”

“Pepa!" Abuela scolds her. And Buck must be making a confused face because they both look at him puzzled too.

“I didn't realize" Buck says, thinking about why Eddie didn't want to put up a picture of his wife. But not only that, she was also Chris' mother and he doesn't want to be the cause of them forgetting her. “I'll talk to Eddie later.”

“Pepa, you'll cause them trouble" says Abuela.

“I didn't mean to, cariño, I thought you didn't want her picture on the altar”.

“On the contrary" says Buck, "I want them to remember her, she was special to both of them" Pepa sighs and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“The truth is that I always hated her" Buck tries to hold back the urge to laugh "And I'm so glad that finally my Edmundo has someone who deserves him" Buck smiles back and then looks at abuela who also looks at him happily.

“So when is the wedding?" abuela asks with a big smile.

“Abuela!" says Eddie finally arriving with Chris and two plates full of tamales, "I don't want him to get scared.”

“Dad, you're the one who's scared" Chris laughs, and Aunt Pepa's laughter is very contagious.

“This kid knows you very well" commented Abuela.

“Besides, it doesn't scare me," Buck says as Eddie sits down next to him "Hypothetically speaking, it sounds good to get married.”

“Hypothetically speaking, I agree with you," Eddie says, giving him a small kiss on the lips. They can hear Tía Pepa and Abuela giggling to each other, they seem as excited about their relationship as Chris.

“So, hypothetically speaking, do I have two dads or not?”

“Mijo, just eat" says Eddie, as Chris laughs

#buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #911 #911 show #911 fanfic #buddie fanfic #my writing

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snowyfrostshadows · 2 years

Text

Bit of dialogue practice/test to see if I could actually for realsies write these characters and not just. Do a bunch of doodles.

In which Mario thinks over a recent boss fight and talks with his brother.

-----

Mario leaned his head back on a tree and sighed.

The fight for the first star piece honestly hadn’t been the toughest or hardest fight he’d ever been in. In fact, if it had happened less than a week ago, he’d probably have been able to win it easily without a second thought.

As it stood though, he’d just stood there, frozen, unable to move an inch as the amalgamation of Koopas moved to rip him into shreds. If Luigi hadn’t been there, jumping in front of him to block the hit and then throw one of his own back at the...thing Dimento had presumably created, then there was a good chance that would have been his last fight.

Mario couldn’t help the bitter snort that escaped him.

It should have been obvious, what Dimento had taken from him, as revenge for beating him the last time and to use to remake himself.

His Bravery.

Somehow, even after they’d put together the aspects of the others’ that had been stolen were what was what they were best known for, the question of what that would be for Mario...had never really come up.

...well, no. It kinda had. But he’d brushed it off.

He still felt like himself. Still acted and talked like he always did, unlike Peach and Luigi. And unlike Bowser, he’d never relied on brute strength to get out of a jam so that had never been a concern.

So, maybe a small, selfish, egotistical part of himself thought he’d lucked out. Was the same hero who’d save the day and set everything back to normal as always.

Who’d have guessed that promising to save the world and actually doing it were two different things?

The sound of approaching footsteps jolted him out of his thoughts and prompted him to attempt to pull himself together enough to at least look as cool and collected as he normally did after a fight.

“So do you always dip out on the after-party or is it just cuz I’m here?”

The faux calm he’d managed to dig up promptly deserted him as his brother made his way into his little hiding spot.

It wasn’t that he was...unhappy to be traveling with him and actually working together to collect the various stars needed to stop Dimento. Big adventures like these with his brother were a rarity and somewhat of a treat. And, and, he wouldn’t even still be here if it wasn’t for Luigi!

It just.

It didn’t quite feel the same. Luigi wasn’t the same. It wasn’t his fault Mario was having a hard time connecting this new…..aggressive side to his brother to the one he was used to.

“No. I just…” Mario trailed off, not entirely sure how to articulate his feelings in a way that wouldn’t upset his brother. “...I guess. I just feel...the party’s not really for me?”

Luigi raised an eyebrow. “Didja somehow miss all the Toads coming up to thank you for personally defeating Dimento’s paper-mache project and making it safe to leave their little village again? I mean, I don’t blame you if you did, it was kinda sickening how they went on and on about it. Like. We get it, you’re too stupid to figure your way out of a paper bag let alone avoid getting captured and eaten. Move on already.”

“That’s not it.” Mario snapped before taking a deep breath. His brother didn’t really mean to say that. That was just the No-Heart-Thing talking. He normally got along great with Toads.

“Then what?”

“I just. Why did you tell them that I was the one to beat the monster? Not you? I just stood around like like-”

“An idiot?” Luigi interrupted dryly. He shrugged. “Apart from not wanting them to fawn all over me, seriously, how do you put up with that? It’s annoying; I knew if Dimento’s little arts-and-crafts project hadn’t thrown you for a loop, you’d have dealt with it easy. Like you always do. Why does it matter who the Toads think save them anyway? They’re happy and it’s another big party for you. Win-Win.”

Mario frowned. Luigi made it sound like he thought he only cared about getting rewarded for doing good and not because it was the right thing to do.

“I. I don’t. Care about the party.” Luigi snorted but Mario pressed on. “I care about being honest about who actually saved them. Which was you! And every time I tried to say anything, you spoke louder or cut me off!”

Luigi rolled his eyes. “Right. Because who’d believe The Great Mario lost a fight and his dumb loser brother had to bail him out? Toads are stupid but they’re not that stupid. But fine, if you’re being all mopey over proper credit, you can fight the next thing Dimento sends our way and I’ll stay on the sidelines. Would that work for you, Red?”

At the mention of another monstrosity rearing its’ ugly face at them, the rest of Luigi’s rant faded into the background as his heartbeat seemed to roar in his ears.

He couldn’t.

The first big fight was always the easiest but he couldn’t fight, couldn’t move.

And and it only get tougher! More teeth! More claws!

Not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not again not aga-

“-rio! Mario!”

Slowly, Mario found himself out of his sudden spiral to find himself face to face to a very familiar worried Luigi.

He wanted to laugh but found there was a sharp pressure on his chest so he ended up taking a couple of rattling breaths of air.

“Hey hey hey? You back with me?”

Numbly, Mario nodded and Luigi offered him a weak grin. “Good. That’s uh. That’s Good. I’m uh. Gonna grab your hand here. And just. Help it off your chest there so you can get some more air? Yeah?”

Oh. That. That was why that hurt. He’d been squeezing at his...heart? Why would he-?

“Sheesh you’ve got a hell of a grip. C’mon R-Mario, Easy breaths. Relax. In, out, in, out, and there we go. Why don’t we take a seat huh? Unwind a little?”

Mario felt himself being gently guided to a nearby stump and pulled down while Luigi sat down next to him and awkwardly rubbed his back.

Gradually, Mario felt his breathes become more even and his heart-rate settle back down.

“Sorry.”

Mario looked up. Luigi had pulled away from him and had his hands clasped firmly together as he stared at the ground. “I saw you were getting worked up and instead of backing off, just dug in deeper.” A hard laugh escaped him. “Some brother amiright?”

“No. It wasn’t you.”

Luigi shot him an unimpressed look. “Really. Coulda fooled me. I mean, I sent the Ma-” he grimaced, “you into a panic attack. And assumin’ you’ve never had one before and I’m the only one here…”

Mario shook his head. “It wasn’t you.” he insisted more firmly. And it wasn’t. If it was anyone’s fault it was Dimento’s for starting this whole mess.

“I was. Terrified at the thought at having to do this all again. That’s all.”

Luigi stared at him for a moment before his mouth twitched into a half smile. “You? Scared? You? I know you don’t wanna hurt my feelings Red, but you can come up with a better lie than that.”

Mario shrugged and leaned back. “It’s not a lie. Promise. Dimento took my courage and the idea of facing off against him and more of his monsters makes me want to turn back to Peach’s Castle and let someone else deal with all this for once.”

Luigi was staring at him wide-eyed. “Are you. Are you sure? Like, me sending you into a panic attack is a lot more believable than that!”

Mario shrugged again. “Is it? I mean, he took Bowser’s Strength, Peach’s Patience, y-your Heart. Why not my bravery as well? It’d definitely make things easier for him, don’t you think?”

“I guess so….” Luigi frowned and gave him a hard look. “But are you seriously just gonna throw in the towel because some color-repulsed two-bit clown says you aren’t brave?”

“I don’t know. Probably not, I don’t want to let anybody down but if I can’t even fight back-”

Luigi jumped up, furious. “Who cares what anybody thinks or expects from you! Hell! I’ll fight everyone myself so you can have a direct line to the stupid clown personally! Whatever new body he dreams up for himself will probably be as stupid and easy to hit as it was last time, no bravery needed!”

Mario felt himself smiling a little despite how off-putting it was to see Luigi of all people vow to hit as many enemies as possible.

“You think it’ll be that easy?”

Luigi gave a small sniff and scowled. “If I can get over my fears, you should be able to handle the one fight that’d make all of this shit worth it.”

Mario blinked. “Fears?”

Luigi looked at him like he was the dumbest person on the planet. And honestly, maybe at this point he was.

“Dimento took my heart not my overwhelming fear of everything.” Luigi’s scowl deepened. “Which is such a jerk move of him. ‘What-we’re-most-well-known-for’ my ass. Because when anyone thinks of me, their first thought is ‘my heart’ and totally not ‘scared-of-my-own-shadow’” Luigi threw his arms up with a look of disgust. “Stupid clown.”

Mario stared at his brother in disbelief as he mentally went over the stupid fight from earlier. How Luigi had never once faltered his step during it and seemed to take vicious delight in throwing everything he had at the monster, eerily akin to what he’d been like brainwashed into thinking he was a minion for Count Bleck.

Luigi paused at Mario’s disbelieving look. “I am! Still, y’know, scared of stuff. It’s just.” He grimaced and looked away as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Got some other emotions and junk working with it. If that makes sense.”

“...If you say so.”

Luigi frowned, and...something flickered in his expression that Mario couldn’t quite read before it was gone again.

“Believe me, don’t believe me, I don’t care. But uh. If this is gonna be a Thing where I do all your fights for you, then you should probably hold onto these.”

From a pocket, Luigi took out the small star piece that he’d recovered after the fight. It was a beautiful thing, glowing softly with a cool red light.

“If I’m doing all the jumping,” a small smirk pulled on Luigi’s face like he’d said something funny “then someone should keep these safe. And who knows, maybe with enough of them, you’d get some of your courage back.”

Mario smiled and gently took the star from his brother, marveling at the faint warmth it gave off and how it seemed to glow a little brighter in his hands than it had in Luigi’s.

“I’ll take good care of them.”

Luigi snorted. “Course you will, you’re Mario, Hero of the Mushroom Kingdom. If anyone can keep something safe it’s you. Now c’mon. There’s a party going on back in the village and if you don’t come back with me, I swear I am going to kick Toads into a tree until they get the hint to leave me alone.”

A small laugh escaped him at the mental image, even if he felt horrible at the thought. “You wouldn’t”

Luigi smirked, “I dunno Red, I don’t have a heart remember? Who knows what I’d do?”

#unnamed spm fic #*peppers in some hints that luigi may or may not be mr.l-ing this*#is this too obvious???#i feel like i'm being too blunt but boy oh boy is trying to write identity problems rough #especially when the pov character is how we say oblivious?#honestly it's all probably ooc and a smidge of a mess #mario #luigi #mr. l #sorta #one plus side to writing this out; got some better ideas for the actual fic like......what the heck the'd be fighting i guess #tw: language #my fics

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stardusttshowers · 1 year

Note

hi kat!! what does nastasia believe to be one of her biggest accomplishments?

hello ender!! this is in regards to my metamorphose project (my super paper mario canon/au), so this is in relation to my nastasia interpretation! what i'd say that nastasia believes to be one of her biggest accomplishments in general though is.. existing, still being alive.

though, she often asked herself at the beginning, "what is my purpose?" thinking that she had to have a purpose, and when she found out about her name and her role as secretary from the dark prognosticus the count read out, she accepted that so willingly because she had no idea that it was okay to just.. be! even though she's grateful to even still be alive.

nastasia was a bat before she became, well, nastasia and she found herself lost in the forest one day and then stuck in a cage, nearly about to die.. and then she was saved by the count, and she felt such deep gratitude that some sort of magic let her be reborn into a new existence, which is nastasia! this even goes to the end of the game where she sacrifices herself to save the count's life, and she finds herself reborn in flipside, confused that she was still alive yet she felt grateful, despite her other feelings of grief and feeling lost and alone.

thank you so much for asking this question!! i love nassy so much ;_; <3

#endervention #super paper mario #nastasia #metamorphose #ask to tag #kat speaks #ask

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goombasa · 4 months

Text

Thoughts on the Super Mario RPG Remake

So hey, guess what I got for Christmas?

Okay, so, to give a bit of context to this, the original Legend of the Seven Stars on the Super Nintendo is one of my favorite games of all time. I played it backwards and forward and I've probably played through it start to finish more than any other game on the SNES. I love the world it created, and felt like one of the first big proper expansions to Mario's universe, rather than just being an incidental new place where the game was taking place. I love the new characters we were introduced to, particularly Geno and Mallow, and I was always disappointed that we never saw them again. I mean, I get WHY we didn't, the game was made by Squaresoft pre-Enix merger, and as such, most, if not all of the game's original characters were the property of Square and not Nintendo.

Oh, and of course I love the fact that this would be the impetus for other Mario-themed RPGs down the line, including Paper Mario, its sequel, the Thousand-Year Door, and the Mario and Luigi series… not that either of those series are in particularly good shape these days. But this was the start of it all.

So imagine my surprise when Nintendo announced during the Nintendo Direct in June of 2023 that there was a remake of this game in the works for the Switch, AND that it was going to be released later that same year, just in time for the Holidays!

I never thought it was going to happen, but it was happening. One of my most favorite games of all time, was getting remade, from the ground up, and brought properly into the third edition! Holy crap! AND GENO AND MALLOW WERE COMING BACK, BABY!

But… the more that I thought about it, the more my excitement died down. How would the gameplay hold up? Were they going to change a bunch of stuff about the game? Would they add a bunch of superfluous fluff? Who was even making it? It wasn't made by Nintendo or Square-Enix, but by a third party called ArtePiazza, a studio that up until this game came along, I hadn't actually heard of before. I was worried, and that worry was only exacerbated by how much this game meant to me personally.

Thankfully, all my worry was for nothing. This is not only a very faithful remake that makes changes only in what I personally consider the right places, but also a reminder of how much these older games tended to be better about respecting a player's time.

And now I'm gonna talk about it all.

The Developer

As it turns out, ArtePiazza has a long history of working with Square Enix, and were actually the primary developer behind a lot of the remakes of classic Dragon Quest games, as well as the CG designs and scenario designs in others, so they definitely know what they're doing when it comes to RPG remakes. It's not really surprising that I hadn't heard of them before, as they were more a background studio that offered assistance rather than main development.

This isn't the first remake they've been responsible for, like I mentioned, and I definitely think they did a great job with it, but I kind of wish I knew a bit more about the studio as a whole now, but information on them is a little bit on the sparse side, aside from the list of projects they've worked on which mostly consists of the Dragon Quest series, and a small handful of other RPGs here and there.

The Story

Hokay, so, this is a Mario game, but it's an RPG. That basically means that you have a very typical RPG setup, and at no point does it feel like the game is treating itself very seriously. I say that as a positive, because the story is paper thin here, basically an excuse to have Mario and friends go all over the place in this weird and wonderful world that has been created here.

The story itself wasn't really changed at all from the original. It is as close to the original as possible while at the same time altering some of the weird mid-90's quirks of the script. Most of the changes are minor, like removing the Bruce Lee name drop just before the Bowyer fight, and a few of the names of certain characters and enemies were changed. The only one that I kind of wish they hadn't changed was Mack, the first commandert of Smithy's forces that you fight in the game. His name was changed to Claymorton in the remake, which does make sense, it's still a pun on his weapon of choice, but in the original, he was known as Mack. You know, as in Mack the Knife? Pun on the song? Because he's a sword, but still… kind of a knife?

Okay, I get why they changed it.

Point being, if you are a fan of the original, nothing here is going to ruin any sort of memories you have of the story, simple as it is. Whatever changes they made are negligible and it retains the same flow, and most of the sillier moments are preserved perfectly here in the remake.

The Characters

Like the story, there's not a huge amount of characterization here, so if you were expecting the remake to suddenly give more depth to anything here, you're going to be disappointed.

At the same time though, none of these characters really needed much in terms of depth. Their designs and personalities are more than enough to carry the game. The villains barely get much of an introduction in this game, simply showing up at designated points to be the antagonist for that particular chapter of the story, and yet every single one of them has such a striking design and an interesting personality (for the most part; the aforementioned Claymorton is about as generic as it gets, save for his design and pogo-sword gimmick) that I don't think ‘depth’ is every really an issue. Entertaining is probably the best way to describe the characters here. Even the most minor of characters manage to leave enough of an impression that you are never going to mistake one person for another as you journey across the Mushroom Kingdom here.

This is something that carries over beyond Smithy and his gang to the one-off minor villains you run into, like the fame-hungry Punchnello, the underwater pirate Johnny, and of course the completely detached from reality Booster and his Amusement Tower.

Also, you fight a sentient wedding cake at one point, and the ending to that fight is legitimately hilarious.

And then there are the playable characters. Mario is given more of a mischevious bent in this game, and I was really surprised to see that they kept in some of the less flattering moments for our hero. There's a point where Mario's ready to just deck a child in the face for basically saying he isn't as good as Geno. And there are the many moments where Mario, rather than just recapping past events to other characters will just mime his way through what's happened, basically playing every character at once, and it's fantastic. This was one of the first times in the series where Mario had a lot of character beyond just being a heroic jump man and I think it did a very good job at conveying that character.

Also, you can make Mario say some real mean things to people in this game and just be a dick, which doesn't really have any sort of consequence, as most of the ‘yes/no’ questions, you do have to eventually agree in order to progress, so there's generally no reason NOT to make Mario talk negatively at least once or twice, just to see the other character's reactions to him just flat out refusing to be a hero for once.

Princess Peach is how she always is. She spends the first good chunk of the game in her usual role as a damsel in distress, and even after she joins the party, she doesn't really get a chance to shine on her own. Mechanically she's one of the most important party members, but in terms of personality, she really doesn't stand out much once she joins your party. I kind of feel like she had more dialogue before she was rescued than after. It's not a terrible portrayal, but you can definitely tell that this was written during a time when Peach's role was mostly to be the damsel, and the fact that she was part of the main party was enough to celebrate, whereas steps have been taken in future games to give her a bit more personality, and to make her a more active element in the story. It's especially noticeable when you compare Peach to Bowser's portrayal.

Bowser is fantastic in this game. This was the first time Bowser was shown to be anything more than just a big, evil brute in the games. Back in 1996 this was pretty unprecedented, and it really made Bowser into the more endearing, well-loved semi-villain that he is today. Like, yeah, Bowser is evil, but at the same time, he's also a bit of a dork with self-confidence issues who thinks he's way smarter than he is, and it's just… it's just so great. It's to the point where, even in RPGs where he is the main villain, Bowser is just as much comedy relief as he is an antagonist. It's the same here. After defeating him early in the story and then slowly watching his forces dwindle down to nothing as he tries in vain to defeat smithy on his own, Bowser is just a delightful curmudgeon to have on the team… even if, in terms of mechanics, he was actually the character I ended up using the least throughout my playthrough.

But then there are the newcomers, Geno and Mallow. I love them both, from an aesthetic point of view. Mallow, being a little cloud creature does fit right into the Mario world without issue. Geno's a bit more unique looking, but his role as the guardian of the Star Road fits right in with the occasional character guarding a super powerful area or relic or long lost power source that seems to crop up, even in the regular platformers now and then. And as they aren't really Mario characters, at least not in terms of the main canon, the writers did have a bit more freedom with these two, though not a huge amount was done with that freedom. Geno is about as static as Mario, Bowser, and Peach, though he's certainly a talkative character. I never really got much of a vibe for his personality though, as much as I enjoyed his design. Mallow is unique amongst the main cast of the game in that he's really the only one of the five that has something resembling a character arc. Orphaned as a child, wanting to find his real parents, and learning to be more confident as a result. It's really simple, much like most other subplots in the game, what few there are, but it does give his character more agency in the plot beyond the shared goal of wanting to stop Smithy from taking over the world.

Speaking of Smithy, can I just say how much I love the idea behind him. He's an alien blacksmith who literally forges the enemies that you fight, making sentient weapons that are completely loyal to me. It's an intriguing idea for a villain and I kinda love it. It almost makes me a bit disappointed that he just exists to be a villain. We don't know anything about him, what he does, where he comes from, whether or not he's done this to other worlds and so forth; Like I said before, we don't really need all that stuff for this to be a great game and an enjoyable story, but the fact that I'm not disappointed and yet I'm still asking these questions about the villain does tell me that I think he's at least an interesting force, especially with how much he's built up over the course of the story before you finally confront him. He might be one of my favorite Mario villains just for his concept alone, and that extends to his minions, all of whom are based around various weapons, their names a pun on the weapon they're based on. It's great stuff.

What the characters lack in depth or complexity, they more than make up for by just being absolutely off-the-wall strange, and I am here for it.

The World

Exploring the world in this game is a pretty straightforward experience. Folks tell you where to go and what to do, and then you do it. You pretty much will never find yourself wondering what you're supposed to do next, and that's without the need of a waypoint or a radar or even anything to really remind you of what you should be doing, though the remake does give you a handy journal function to remind you of recent events and any interesting information that you've gleaned from talking to people.

While the original didn't have any journal or fast travel functions in it, moving around the map was fairly snappy (actually much snappier than in the remake) and the areas and dungeons were small enough that revisiting them for whatever reason never felt like much of a chore. However, adding in modern sensitibilities and accessibility options for the convenience of the player is something that I will always welcome, especially since they slowed down traveling on the map quite a bit for the remake.

But that's about the only thing that feels like it's been made slower. Mario no longer needs a button held down in order to run on the overworld, running is just his standard mode of movement in this remake, and his speed is a very happy medium between his walk and run speeds from the original, and it works perfectly for getting around quickly enough and avoiding enemy encounters, not that you'll really want to, as combat is really fun, but I'll get into that later. Platforming also feels better in this version as well. The original wasn't bad perse, but the sprite-based isometric layout of the game combined with the strange ascent and descent speed of the jump could make platforming a bit tricky. And yes, the game does have platforming, usually in optional mini-games

While the areas themselves are small and even somewhat linear in their layout, the isometric layout of everything does make exploring worthwhile, and of course there are always hidden treasure chests and enemies to keep a lookout for. There are even invisible treasure chests scattered all over the world, with a particular NPC in the game that will even tell you how many hidden treasures in the world you haven't found yet, how nice of them! You can find a bunch of stuff just by talking to the individuals and poking around in every nook and cranny, whether it's directions to a hidden treasure room in the forest maze, a challenge to hit a certain number of consecutive bounces using your jump attacks, or hitting a button in Booster Tower that opens up a completely new screen in the previous area. And that's to say nothing about the rush that you get when you grab an invincibility star and just plow through a ton of enemies in the overworld.

And you get Experience Points for it!

The Combat

The combat is fantastic, from all angles, and is probably the part of the game that was both the most heavily altered, and the the most improved in this remake. And make no mistake, it was already pretty solid to begin with. The timed hits mechanic, where you can push a button to either increase the strength of an attack or defend yourself against an incoming attack or spell and potentially eliminate all damages if your input is timed well enough.

However, the old game, for as good as it was, could be somewhat vague about what you could and could not block, and also what the timing was for certain attacks. It also limited you to only using three out of the five characters at a time and you couldn't change characters mid-fight. Also, Mario always has to be in your party, so party composition couldn't be super varied. The remake addresses most of these issues, and in pretty decent ways.

First off, if an attack is unblockable, it will say so in the corner when the attack name is announced. Then, whenever an attack is used against you, or you use an attack, an exclamation point will apear above the character's head, letting you know when you should be hitting the A button. While decent timing will get you a small bonus to damage or defense, if you perfectly time the button press you'll either completely eliminate any damage you take (defending) or you'll dish out extra damage AND cause a small shockwave that will cause a small amount of damage to all other enemies (attacking). It's a smart system, and encourages you to learn the tells for both your enemies and allies. to maximize your offense and defense.

Oh, and that exclamation point? It doesn't stick around all the time. After you've successfully gotten a few perfect hits and blocks, the indicator will stop appearing. However, if you start missing the timing frequently on the same attacks, it will come back to help coach you into properly hitting that sweet spot. Depending on your team composition, you'll also get bonuses to certain stats if you manage to keep a combo chain going of successful attack and defense. And speaking as such a big fan of the original, I actually needed that help getting the timing down. With the new 3D models, the animations are far smoother, and also a lot quicker too, leading to the timing feeling a lot trickier. This game also has a lot more attacks that can be blocked with a button press, and I'm not sure if they could always be blocked in the original, or if the timing was just that strange. To be fair, the timing on these particular magical attacks (Diamond Saw, Bolt, Storm), they're really tricky to get down, even with that helpful little indicator.

The ability to switch in party members from idle during battle is also more of a boon than I thought it would be. In the original game, you were stuck in combat with whatever characters you had in your party, and generally I never switched out specific party members, save for some very specific fights. I'd almost always go with Mario, Bowser, and Peach, and end up leaving Geno and Mallow behind. It isn't like the game ever forces you to use them again anyway. But in the remake, you can swap out a character without wasting their turn, something that becomes very useful for characters afflicted with status ailments or knocked out, or when you just want to experiment with other characters' abilities against certain foes.

And by far, the biggest quality of life improvement to the game's battle mechanics were with its special weapons. The system itself remains unchanged, you have a pool of flower points that is shared by all your characters that they use to utilize their special attacks. In the original game, these were, by a large, kind of useless, at least in my opinion. Apart from some specific fights, all I would use special attacks for was for Peach's healing abilities (which makes her super powerful in this game, she can basically keep everyone hale and hearty all on her own so long as you don't let her get KOed). It is true that plenty of enemies in the game have weaknesses to elemental attacks that party members have in their special attacks (Mario's fireballs, Mallow's thunderbolts and snowy powers, and so forth… also Mario's jump attacks count as their own element too), but there was very little indication about whether or not using a special attack on an enemy was actually affecting them any better than your regular attacks. Add in the fact that powering up the special attacks required more involved button inputs (pressing the D-pad in a clockwise rotation, rapidly pressing the attack button, holding it down and releasing it at a certain point, etc.) and sometimes I just wasn't sure if I was even using them right.

The remake on the other hand, gives you plenty of ways to know just what would be best to use against your enemies. First, when you use Mallow's Thought Peek ability (Psychopass in the original game), you not only get the enemy's remaining HP total, but also a list of everything they're weak against, including status ailments as well, which can also encourage you to use all those items and spells that inflict statuses on your enemies rather than just having those collect dust. When you use an attack that hits an enemy's weakness, or a resistance, it will TELL you that, letting you know that, yes, you are doing something right. And those special attack inputs I mentioned before? The game gives you a visual cue that not only makes it very clear what you're supposed to do, but gives you visual feedback on how well you performed the action, so you're always sure exactly how well you're performing them.

I don't want to say that the original was terrible in this aspect, but the original never really made special attacks feel like a necessary piece of the puzzle beyond healing abilities, and some early game fights that benefited from Mallow's screen-hitting attacks. It was balanced in such a way that using your regular attacks was still perfectly optimal. In the remake, not only was I more often switching out party members to change up my strategies during fights, but I was using special attacks a heck of a lot more often because I could be sure that it was something that would be effective this time around, which in turn made both Mallow and Geno feel much more helpful overall. This is actually the reason why I ended up using Bowser much less than I did on the SNES version, as he is a useful tank, but I found Geno's status as a glass canon and Mallow's ability to cover and reveal multiple weaknesses to be a lot more useful compared to Bowser's interesting but underutilized ability to inflict a lot of status ailments. Combat just doesn't last long enough to make status ailments useful to use.

I would even go as far as to say combat overall feels much faster than the original. Not that it was slow before, but the animations just feel much snappier and more fluid and the lack of really needing to think too hard about what you're doing from turn to turn means that most regular fights are going to be over within three turns. The game's balance is just perfect in this regard, especially if you're new to RPGs. Speaking of which…

Breezy Mode

Look, the original Mario RPG was not hard. At all. And that was by design. It was built to be an RPG for people who didn't play RPGs but were familiar with Mario as a series. Combat was simple, the numbers were kept small, the level cap was very low, and the timed hit button presses kept people engaged and alert during combat, rather than just encouraging them to mash the attack button the whole time to get through the fights quicker. You're never confused on where to go, the few puzzles the game throws at you are very easy to figure out and dungeons are relatively small, quick affairs with only the occasional gimmick to spice up a boss fight here and there, such as Bowyer's ability to lock down a button.

I've gone on record in this post saying that accessibility options are a good thing, and I mean that. More options and more difficulty settings will always be a good thing, and there, it is no different. I just personally find it funny when a game that is already built to be easy and accessible goes even further and gives you an option to make the game even easier. It's a good thing, to be sure, and it's especially helpful for those struggling with the timed button presses. Heck, if that was all this mode did, it would have been a perfect accessibility option in general, but it also decreases the EXP needed to level up, and decreases the overall battle difficulty, lowers the HP for all enemies and bosses while still keeping the story the same. They took an introductory RPG and made it even easier to get into for anyone who is even remotely curious about the genre, and with how many RPG series are transitioning into more active combat systems and leaving the old turn based systems behind, I think this is a great way to introduce the concept of how these older RPGs functioned to people who just didn't grow up with this era of games.

The Post-Game

So, this is basically the biggest thing that was added to the game. As faithful as the remake is, one thing I'm very glad to see being added is a little bit of post-game content. There's not a lot of it, but it is there, and I felt compelled to talk about it.

The original game had no post-game. At all. In fact, there wasn't even anything after the credits, which was the style at the time. Games would usually just end, and stay on their THE END screen until you reset or turned off the console. Here though, after beating the main story, you unlock a brand new questline that will take you back to past locations to rebattle harder versions of bosses you fought during the main story, like Booster, Punchnello, and Johnny, and these fights do something very interesting: they really dial up the gimmicks. I mentioned before that gimmick fights weren't really all that prevalent in the main game. I mentioned Bowyer, but off the top of my head, there are also the two fights against Belome where he'll either eat one of your party members (the first fight) or clone your party members to fight alongside him (the second fight), and the second phase in Johnny's fight which turns into a one-on-one duel with Mario. However, each of these extra fights dials up the gimmickery quite a bit, to the point where they can feel somewhat like puzzle fights, as each one has to be fought in a very particular way.

You fight Booster, and if you let him finish his work, he'll drive a train into your body, dealing max damage to everyone on screen, basically guaranteeing a party wipe if you don't interrupt him and take out the snifsters, who are going to be encouraging him the whole time. You fight Jinx, who will instantly KO a party member if you fail to land a properly timed attack. You fight Punchnello, who has built up his defenses so high that the only way he can be hurt is by turning his bombs around towards him. There's even a rematch with Johnny that is once again a one-on-one with Mario, but this time you can't even use items, meaning that surviving the fight is going to be down to learning how to defend properly against all of Johnny's attacks. All of them CAN be blocked, but he has some pretty annoying timing for all of his attacks.

This all culminates in a rematch with the game's hidden superboss, a Final Fantasy inspired villain known as Culex. You fight him in his original 2D form during the story if you find the key to his door, but during the rematch, he has achieved a perfect 3D form, and man oh man, is he a challenge, well worth it if you're craving something that's actually pretty difficult in a game meant to be more welcoming to new players.

What I like about these fights is that they are essentially tests to see how well you've mastered the game's timed hit mechanics, and it makes you feel good for properly mastering them. Even if you're at or near max level (which is pretty easy to do in even a casual playthrough), these bosses will challenge you. You even get some new equipment for each of the extra bosses, usually super-powerful golden weapons for party members that didn't really have an ‘ultimate’ weapon the way that Mario and Peach did (the Lazy Shell and the Frying Pan respectively). You don't really have a reason to use these weapons since at this point you've basically done everything else in the game at this point, but the fact that there is a tengible reward for doing this post game stuff is always fun. And your ultimate reward for beating all the extra bosses and then defeating Culex? You gain the ability to fight Culex as much as you want, and see how fast you can beat them. It's not the greatest reward, but the fact that the developers went out of their way to include something to do after the credits roll in a game that initially just ended after that? I think that's really cool, especially considering just how much tougher these fights are compared to everything else in the game. It's just nice to see something that challenges you and your knowledge of the game's mechanics beyond what is usually required during a basic playthrough.

The Future

If I haven't made it clear at this point, this is a fantastic game. The original is a fantastic game, and it isn't often that I find a remake that can stand toe to toe toe to toe with the original, and while there are differences between the two, they mostly balance each other out. Both can be played and enjoyed easily, and while the remake does have a lot of very helpful quality of life improvements, the original version's more deliberate timing with its more limited animations still makes it very fun to play, it's just a different feeling.

I hope this game continues to sell well, and my biggest wish is that this means that the future for classic style RPGs will continue to be strong, or maybe we'll see some more new Mario RPGs that are quick, snappy and simple like this one, rather than these strange pseudo-RPGs that the Paper Mario series has turned into, or the drawn out, boring slogs that the Mario and Luigi games became.

But between this remake, and the upcoming remake of The Thousand Year Door that's supposed to be coming out some time this year, I have hopes that Nintendo is using these to guage interest for another original Mario RPG game.

I'm also hopeful that we might be seeing Geno and Mallow in games beyond the one they originated from. I'm not going to pretend that I know the details of whatever agreement Nintendo and Square Enix reached to make this remake a reality, but I'm hoping there was enough wiggle room for Nintendo to actually do something with the characters and concepts contained therein. At the very least, maybe Mallow and Geno will be able to appear in games outside of their origin in a form that's a bit more than just a glorified PNG, or a little background element cameo. Again, because I don't know the details of the agreement between Square and Nintendo for these characters, I can't be sure if this is just really wishful thinking on my part (game publishers are notoriously controlling over the IP that they own, with Nintendo being cited as the biggest example when it comes to their characters), but hey, I never thought we'd ever get a remake of this game, let alone one as polished and fun as this.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this post, it ended up a lot longer than I actually meant it to be, I just couldn't help myself and needed to gush as much as possible about a remake of a game that I have held dear to my heart since childhood, and I hope that this is a sign of more RPGs of this nature from Nintendo, or featuring Nintendo characters.

Who knows, with all of these remakes, remasters, re-releases, and smaller scope games that are coming out for the Switch as of late, this might be the year that we get some ideas about what Nintendo's next console is going to be, and what sort of games might be on it. That might be something to talk about down the line.

#Super Mario RPG #Remake #Thoughts #Lotta Thoughts #Like Too Many Thoughts #I think I went on with this for a little bit too long #Sorry about that #not really #had a lot to say #really love this game #Y'all should really play it if you can!

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