Transcript

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog book club. Just a reminder before we get started that we will be going into some story and gameplay spoilers about undertale’s neutral route. But considering the many, many endings available for this one, 85 to be exact, it is likely you had a different experience from us. So be warned, as this is one is better experience blind. And you can always come back and listen to this episode after you’ve played through undertale.

So we did a little bit of a first impressions things last time. I think that the first impressions kind of just roll on through the entire game because there’s a lot of fresh takes and interesting enemies and characters to meet and all that. But I think, you know, we went through a bit of the ruins level of details. Obviously you meet Toriel, who you can call your mother but also flirt with, which is unusual, and there it gives you an intro to some puzzle. It’s basically just a tutorial stage. There’s a dummy enemy you can fight and all that, but then once you get out, all right, you meet Sans. Sans was hilarious, I think.

[00:00:58] Speaker B: Dude, Sans was so funny.

[00:01:02] Speaker A: Such a great character, like completely subverted my expectations. I thought he was going to be some, some enemy to you that kind of just either is really quirky and just destroys you, but more like, like he ended up just being like this weird brother type guy who’s just messing with you but also having a good time the whole time.

[00:01:25] Speaker B: Yeah, he’s just such a little jokester and likes to mess with his brother Papyrus and sort of mess with you a bit. It’s a funny character. I do enjoyed Sans and his little wits and jokes. Like I think he said to his brother, oh, he’s like, he’s like, you must have spent a ton of time on this, a skeleton or whatever.

[00:01:45] Speaker A: I’m just like, oh my God.

[00:01:47] Speaker B: Just little, little jokes like that.

[00:01:51] Speaker A: Basically every time I saw Sans pop on screen, I was just thinking, get a load of this guy. What’s going to happen now?

[00:01:59] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:02:01] Speaker A: And I was always ready to kind of at least have a chuckle, if not more.

[00:02:05] Speaker B: I’m not going to lie. Papyrus, yeah, Papyrus made me chuckle.

[00:02:08] Speaker A: Papyrus is hilarious and just how idiotically stupid everything is. And just like a total try hard that is completely inept at everything. At one point, he dives out the window of a house, like just so, so good. And his boss fight is great.

You know, I don’t know how you approach that boss fight, but you can, you can in the act menu, you can flirt with him and Then set up a date, and then it’s just a battle of basically surviving many, many waves of bullet hell. But he ends up not even attacking you at one point.

So you’re just in the screen with your heart there. But if you move the heart around, he won’t hit you. And then he just gives up eventually and calls you a friend after. He’s just all gung ho about capturing a human. Super funny. Did you do that or did you end up just killing him?

[00:02:57] Speaker B: I killed him.

[00:02:58] Speaker A: You killed him. Okay.

[00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And that kind of comes back later.

[00:03:04] Speaker A: Well, I’m curious how your ending went then.

Yeah, I was. I saw how kind of goofy and dumb he was that I was just like, I don’t need to kill this guy if he’s not going to attack me, what’s the point?

So when you go actually on the. On the date, the fight screen comes up like you’re going to fight him in the date, but it has different interactions and you end up having a battle of who goes, who’s better at going on a date? Basically that he entirely kind of invents this scenario on his own.

Super funny. And the screen for that’s really different.

But even before that. So you walk into his house and a poppy. A puppy. Sorry, a puppy pops out of his cupboard and steals a bone.

And then Sans pops out right after it and he has a trumpet and he just goes, okay.

[00:03:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I missed a lot of. Okay, I missed a lot of that because I don’t. Yeah, I think his house.

[00:04:01] Speaker A: Is his house locked? No, his house might be locked when you go, because all that’s after leaving Snowden. So it might be something that you’ll. You can experience in another run, basically.

[00:04:12] Speaker B: Mm. Yeah, I will.

[00:04:15] Speaker A: I also. We did mention it briefly last time, and I think it’s funny because the. The saga of the mouse’s cheese continues throughout most of the game. It just keeps getting progressively more ridiculous. What happens? I think the. After Snowden, you come up to the block of cheese on a table and it’s formed into a crystal because it’s been sitting there so long.

[00:04:35] Speaker B: Yep. It’s a little. Yeah, it’s a funny little running gag with the cheese and the mouse and.

[00:04:41] Speaker A: The squeaking hole in the wall.

[00:04:43] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:04:44] Speaker A: There’s also the mini boss against the mad dummy with the ghost inside.

That was fun. I think for me, that was the closest reminder I had in this game to Earthbound, because its music seemed like it was ripped straight out of Earthbound.

Okay. There’s a lot of. Even I Think regular fights, but maybe some boss fights in that that have a music that are really similar to that. So there’s got to be some inspiration from there.

[00:05:13] Speaker B: Probably. I don’t know. I’m still. Yeah. I’ve just started Earthbound, so I’ll probably get to it. I’m not gonna lie though. For some of these, like, I wasn’t listening for this game. I wasn’t listening to music as much because Especially like in fights. Because when I’m in the fight, I’m so concentrated.

[00:05:27] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:05:27] Speaker B: On that box and the bullet. Hell, like I’ve kind of tuned everything else out. Out. And I’m like, please just get hit, don’t die.

[00:05:35] Speaker A: But that do for another run of listening to the soundtrack.

[00:05:39] Speaker B: Then I will for sure.

But that fight against the dummy was pretty difficult, if I remember. Yeah, that was a difficult one. I did end up. I think I killed him as well. I think there was only like one or two that I spared enemies Wise.

[00:05:56] Speaker A: Of enemies in Buffett.

[00:05:59] Speaker B: In the whole thing.

[00:06:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I think there’s. There’s just so many. So many interesting kind of funny moments once you get into that waterfall region and you get to the town. The turtle shopkeeper in one of those rooms. Basically after you go to the ghost house in the snail farm area. If you choose the talk inter. Every time I went into a shop, I started using that talk interaction just because you get a little bit of lore information or whatever. If you talk with him, it tells you about the delta rune which is the emblem of their kingdom. He says. So the plot thickens here. You know, now you have my ear, Toby. Since, you know, Obviously hindsight is 2020 and the benefit of playing this 10 years later is that we know that Deltarune is something we don’t know what it is. And it never gets explained in undertale. Besides this one turtle talking about it as far as I was able to see, at least so far. But a bunch of you.

[00:06:54] Speaker B: That was the only time I saw. Yeah.

[00:06:56] Speaker A: Deltarune explained or mentioned. And I like that you know, when you choose the talk interaction, especially on this one, it’s a bunch of new props just keep popping up in the same slot. So it explains the prophecy of an angel from above ground. Assuming this is you. The player comes down and gives freedom to all the monsters. So that must be like the best ending. You free all the monsters. Not sure. But it’s. I’m curious now even more so what the connection is between deltarune and the mention of deltarune and undertale.

[00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So am I. I know. I think didn’t. I think we’ve talked about it earlier. I think in the first impressions or when we introduced it that I think didn’t. Deltarune is it 3 and 4 just came out?

[00:07:35] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe like a month ago. Yeah. I think it was around the time that the Switch 2 released and so yeah, I mean it’s. It’s. I’m. I guess I’m also curious. Does the turtle shopkeeper show up in deltarune? I hope so. He’s the only connection so far really.

[00:07:49] Speaker B: I’m gonna have to find those games and throw them on my Switch Wishlist. See when they go on sale and get and play through them.

[00:07:57] Speaker A: Some other just random kind of entertaining things that I found in a lot of my entertainment here aside from the goofy writing came from just the very specific ways that attacks show up in the Bullet Hell. I thought it was a kind of funny thing that if you fight a Tammy which is one of those weird looking cats, one of its attacks basically obviously he just stretches his legs and kind of wanders around the other attack, it rolls its tongue out. But it’s literally just Snake and you have to avoid it. Snake, the old like Nokia cell phone game. That was funny.

[00:08:27] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah that was.

How do you remember? Yep, I thought that so.

[00:08:32] Speaker A: So this guy Toby has both a really good memory and also a lot of creativity.

[00:08:36] Speaker B: Yes he does.

[00:08:37] Speaker A: You know I gotta say despite the fact they’re mostly forms of Bullet Hell just the level of creativity and the variety of how all these Bullet Hells show up is. Is next level. You know I played a decent amount of.

[00:08:47] Speaker B: Not a.

[00:08:48] Speaker A: Not a ton I would definitely not an expert but it’s definitely a lot of.

A lot of really cool unique Bullet Hell attacks coming your way. Even Undyne’s fight right the with the arrows or the javelin’s throwing at you and having to block them. It’s basically just a rhythm game with some weird twists in it.

[00:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah it was that one was I. I started off really well on that fight like really being able to block but I’m also. I don’t know I used the stick on the Switch 2 for that. You probably use the D pad huh.

[00:09:22] Speaker A: You know what I actually in something in so Cuphead is an exception because it’s a platformer for. Well I. In my opinion in the way it plays it’s a platformer first and the Bullet Hell second.

Basically in any anything that doesn’t involve 2D platforming I actually in a Bullet Hell scenario I’m Using the stick. So I did use a stick for all of the fights here. I didn’t use it for the menus or for wandering around. I used D pad.

[00:09:51] Speaker B: Oh okay. I used it for the whole thing.

[00:09:54] Speaker A: Well maybe I think it was also.

Yeah. I had to go as quickly as possible with some of these things. So it’s just. You gotta do it.

[00:10:01] Speaker B: Mm yeah. Because on that one on the Undyne I was able to like sometimes if you can get it right, like spin it around pretty quick to get the blocks and then.

[00:10:09] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:10:09] Speaker B: And then. What is it? What is it is. I think it was. If it was yellow though. And it’s coming in one way. It would actually come in one way.

[00:10:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They come fast and quick and it’s. Yeah. I died a fair number of times to undone.

[00:10:23] Speaker B: I would say I did. I think I did as well. That was another one again though. Another boss that I did end up killing.

[00:10:31] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:10:32] Speaker B: I did not do like acts or let or live.

I think it was allowed me on this neutral. Like there was somewhere I would try. I would do act and all that. But if I was like really not sure if it was gonna go anywhere. I just kind of. And I died like I would then just be like, okay, I’m just gonna fight until I can get this through.

[00:10:50] Speaker A: I. Yeah, I would say. I mean. So after. I think it’s after Undyne you end up running into Muffet who’s like the. The spider girl. I died so many times to Buffett and I finally was said eff it. And I decided to backtrap to the fast travel Grim Reaper boat dude all the way to Snowden Rest at the inn for 30 hp total and then buy a ton of health items. That was the only way I was able to get through the spider because it has the. The spider pet or whatever that kind of comes up at you from below.

That was.

I think that was one of the most difficult bullet hell things is because it was all in lines, right. You just. Every time you moved you would move up a line and so the. The D pad wasn’t quick enough because it had the. It comes back up and the stick. If you hold the stick, it wouldn’t keep moving. You had to keep clicking it up basically. So that really annoyed me eventually.

[00:11:39] Speaker B: That was a difficult fight.

[00:11:40] Speaker A: Picked up enough health items that it was the only way I was able to get through there.

That one was really bothering me, I guess and. But you know, finally get through and all good. But Jesus.

[00:11:54] Speaker B: I just realized it actually just hit Me that her name was. Was her name Muffet?

[00:11:58] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:12:00] Speaker B: It’s the nursery rhyme, isn’t it? Little Miss Muffet sat on a.

[00:12:05] Speaker A: Is it that? I mean, this kind of thing, full of references to things.

[00:12:08] Speaker B: Maybe it’s Little Miss. Maybe it’s a Little Miss Moffat, I don’t know, eating her curds. Away, along came a spider.

[00:12:15] Speaker A: There you go. That’s gotta be.

[00:12:16] Speaker B: I wonder if it’s based off that. I wouldn’t be shocked.

I was gonna say just earlier, just a funny part for me. I think it was in the waterfall area. There was some section where you have to move certain. I think it was blocks or whatever to cover a path to get you across some water.

[00:12:35] Speaker A: Oh, yes.

[00:12:36] Speaker B: Oh, it was open flower petals and there was a sign down below and I went down first and. And a little island and I opened the sign that said, well, you failed the challenge.

[00:12:46] Speaker A: I was like, oh.

[00:12:47] Speaker B: I just started laughing at myself. I was like, that’s.

[00:12:49] Speaker A: I laughed at that one too because obviously that’s placed there in a way that you. They know you’re going to go for it because you’re so intriguing.

It’s one of the. You can’t not do it.

That was great.

[00:13:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And it’s just like, challenge failed. I was like, oh.

[00:13:08] Speaker A: That was good.

[00:13:08] Speaker B: That was just a funny. That was a funny little thing.

[00:13:10] Speaker A: I remember in that waterfall area, there’s a sign that says, okay, something’s to the right, something’s north. The snail farm and the ghost house and all that stuff. And it says Temmie Village. Which Temmie is actually the name of that person, the artist that was helping with the game development.

But there’s no real instruction on how to get there or there’s no way really to go go. So. And there’s also, on top of that, I guess the. The Grim Reaper dude sometimes will mention it when you take his fast travel boat. That’s something I’m gonna have to explore in the next run because I want to find it. I’m curious what’s there.

[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I wonder if we are able to actually find it. I would assume so, yeah.

[00:13:52] Speaker A: I mean, or is it just some meta thing like, oh, here’s a thing that you’ll never see or hear about ever again. Like the deltarune. Maybe there’s gonna be a game called Temi Village one day.

I mean, even getting further past there, you know, you meet Alphys, who looks a lot to me like a cross between like one of the nerdy scientist characters in the Simpsons it doesn’t help that it’s yellow. Everyone’s. A lot of people are yellow in this. And a dinosaur or something.

You know, the quintessential super shy, nerdy, awkward character. But of course, builds a human killing robot.

The Mettaton fight is a series of fights, really. And obviously Mettaton is this wacky showbiz type character who’s like in a. Has a cooking show and a play and just like, it’s like a variety show.

[00:14:51] Speaker B: The first one, the first battle, you just. It’s like a trivia quiz show. But then Dr. Alphys is like giving you the answers with her hands.

[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:15:00] Speaker B: To help you out, which is funny.

[00:15:02] Speaker A: There’s. I mean, there’s one where even it pulls up the keyboard and you type something in. It’s just all kinds of random. For what was really funny to me, though, if you die to Mettaton in the final Mettaton fight, something I thought was great happens. I was about to get really annoyed expecting to have to sit through so many text boxes again because I had already had the experience last time of. Right. You know, you have the repeating puzzles, so you had to redo the same puzzle like five times before just backtracking to a save point after in the snow area. You know, you already know the solution to it, but you have to keep going because you die in a fight right after it. So, no, I was not looking forward to like mashing A or I guess B and A as quickly as I can get through the conversation. But no, I was so pleasantly surprised that it says you can turn him around. Just skip the monologue and skip the first section of the fight too.

[00:15:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And then just switches. Yeah, switches.

[00:15:54] Speaker A: It goes automatically to switch on phase two. That was awesome.

[00:15:58] Speaker B: On her back. Yeah, that was good.

Did you end up killing Mettaton?

[00:16:07] Speaker A: I did kill Metaton. That guy.

[00:16:10] Speaker B: I think. I think I spared her.

I spared her because I got up to the point by doing act and like doing poses and all that, that the rating got so high that she was so impressed.

[00:16:23] Speaker A: And.

[00:16:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that was the end of the fight.

[00:16:27] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if you. If you noticed too. I did try some of those and there’s one that says Boast where if you’re able to dodge every attack in that round, it gives you bonus points if you get hit, you’ll lose points. So I quickly stopped using that because you can’t super well predict what attack is. I guess you can kind of predict what attack is next, but it’s just Bullet hell. So you never know if you’re going to dodge them all. Oh sure. Super good.

[00:16:49] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:16:52] Speaker A: But yeah, I think, yeah, I ended up killing Metaton because.

[00:16:58] Speaker B: That was, I believe, I mean, I spared her.

[00:17:03] Speaker A: He’s a damn murder bot who’s after you constantly. And just because they tried to humanize it later by obviously in the phase two, switching to the whole humanoid form thing instead of this box on claptrap type box on wheels, it didn’t fool me.

[00:17:17] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah, no thanks.

Also, you know, a nice little nod to Earthbound here. So both in one of the Metaton overworld fights. I’m not sure. Not sure which one exactly. Oh no, it was actually the one where there’s a bomb that’s going to go off and you have to go turn off all the items. I think it was six different items.

And also in the new home area before Asgore, there are wrapped present boxes, which is how most of the items are found in Earthbound.

And it was pretty much the exact same pixel art, if not the same.

So that was nice.

[00:17:54] Speaker B: That’s a nice little throwback.

[00:17:56] Speaker A: Yeah, following Mettaton too. So in the new home area, which is literally Toriel’s home area, basically a clone of it, but in a two tone sepia color or black and white.

[00:18:07] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:18:08] Speaker A: After I realized it was a copy of Toriel’s house or vice versa, and then hearing from the monsters that Asgore’s son was named Asriel, I assumed Toriel and Asgore were together at one point. If not still.

Because you can’t make it more easy to guess kid’s name than combining the two parents names.

Yeah, combining them both I did find interesting too. So expensive is not experience here. It’s like execution points and LV points.

LV is abbreviation of love, but then it’s actually an abbreviation of level of violence. That’s just such a unique commentary about most video games that have combat in them and any kind of leveling system at all. So basically all RPGs like. Yes, okay, they’re mostly monsters or enemies or bad. Something that’s out to get you. But are you the bad guy or are they?

[00:19:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that was just going along on that. The whole bad guy thing. Because as you said. Yeah, because you find out it’s sans. Right. That tells you basically at the end that their level of violence and execution points.

[00:19:16] Speaker A: Yes, it’s in that room. It’s in that sort of castle looking room before the grassy kind of throne room.

[00:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I. When he told me all that he goes along and says something of like, I forgot. Is it like, do you feel bad for what you do or do you like, do you regret or blah, blah. And I said like, yes. Or I said something and he said, then why did you kill my brother?

I felt like when he said that, I just like I read that. I was like, I feel like such a dick.

I was like, I should not have killed. I didn’t even think about it, like, oh, did I kill Papyrus like earlier?

[00:20:01] Speaker A: Well, I mean, yeah, it’s like, oh, it’s a boss fight. I have to kill this guy.

Yeah, I guess I kind of did the reverse actually. I. I spared everyone and all the bosses until Metaton.

[00:20:13] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:20:14] Speaker A: Because it, I mean it got progressively harder. I, you know, I was able to power through undyne because I. It was that sort of rhythm game type thing, which was still tricky. But eventually I just kind of clicked into, you know, enough Guitar Hero and what’s it called? What’s the other one called? Rock Band Practice got me through that, I guess.

[00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:20:31] Speaker A: But from back in the day. But once I hit medicine, I just said, no, I don’t like this dude. He’s just constantly trying to kill me. That’s rude.

But you know, I, that I didn’t get hit as hard with that talk from Sans because I didn’t kill his brother. You bastard.

[00:20:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that was. I. I legit. Like when I read that, I literally like a part of me like sunk. Like I was like, I feel really bad for what I just did because I like this character.

[00:21:01] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:21:02] Speaker B: And like he’s always just so like happy, go lucky. And jokingly. And then he just like drops this like serious thing of like, oh, well, if you felt like that or you think you’ve done right, like, why did you kill my brother?

[00:21:13] Speaker A: And I was like, well, so, so I mean, yeah, the. You’ve definitely missed also some good funny moments. Both just papyrus and papyrus with sands that are later in the game.

But hey, it’s a good thing we’re going to get to do multiple playthroughs here.

[00:21:30] Speaker B: Yep. Yes, we are.

[00:21:31] Speaker A: Another very specific enemy that I found funny. So there’s one called Astigmatism. And I thought it was great that its attacks basically look like eye floaters. I don’t know if you ever get those.

[00:21:45] Speaker B: Yes, I do.

[00:21:46] Speaker A: So it’s just hilarious that the bullet hell is just a bunch of things that are slowly floating towards you and spinning around. That’s just one of so many of these on point but unexpected attacks that show up in Undertale that is so thematically or directly related to what the enemy is called or what its personality is like. I mean, I think there was Shyren who didn’t even want any attention at all. The. The shy Siren. Mermaid.

[00:22:09] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:22:10] Speaker A: That was hilarious. There’s a seahorse that’s all buff.

[00:22:13] Speaker B: There’s like a seahorse. Yeah. I was about to say a seahorse who’s like, all buff. Was this. Actually, I’m just looking it up. It is called.

Oh, his name was Aaron. His name’s just Aaron.

[00:22:22] Speaker A: Just Aaron.

[00:22:23] Speaker B: As if he’s like a regular person. Yeah.

[00:22:26] Speaker A: Irrelevant.

[00:22:27] Speaker B: I’m wondering if that’s somebody like a friend of his or whatever. Probably wondering if he knows he’s just like made a character.

Yeah, it’s just a seahorse.

[00:22:37] Speaker A: There’s that one. There’s like the knight in shining armor that. That you can sing to sleep. Basically.

[00:22:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Called Night Night.

[00:22:45] Speaker A: Okay. I didn’t make that connection. There you go.

[00:22:48] Speaker B: It’s called Night Night. But I didn’t make it either. I think I ended up killing that one too. I killed a lot of enemies. I. I’m not gonna lie. My execution points were quite. I think it was in the 2000s plus and I didn’t realize that. Yeah, it was not good on this run for me.

[00:23:01] Speaker A: Killed a whole lot of people.

[00:23:03] Speaker B: I did.

[00:23:05] Speaker A: I spared almost everyone just because I thought I was mostly looking for the funny interactions. Many act menus and all that.

But the.

Yeah, just overall, I think the. The way that the attacks were very specific to, you know, what the character was, was really well done. And then I guess the other boss fight. Like any other notable things to mention about the bosses? Obviously, you know, Toriel’s is more tutorial. Papyrus is more. More just funny. And I think we chat about the other Undyne and Mettaton. But so as gore.

[00:23:42] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:23:42] Speaker A: Right. He’s all just chill. He’s the chill dude.

Turns fire in his eyes and then destroys your mercy button. So you can’t even spare him if you want to.

[00:23:53] Speaker B: So I’m intrigued on this. Yeah. Before his fight, though, he does like you will be judged. And he drops the containers of hearts in front of you.

Did you have that? Like how many containers of hearts did you have full?

Did you not get that?

[00:24:09] Speaker A: Yes, I pop up on the screen. Yeah, I think. Did you. Did you see just one empty?

[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw only one empty because I only spared Metaton.

[00:24:19] Speaker A: So I think it’s not related to your experience.

I don’t know if you went to the right, there’s the. You can. Basically, there’s a save point, and you can go up into his room, but to the right from there, before that throne room, you can go down and you end up seeing seven coffins or whatever. And you’re. The one with your name on it is empty. I think it said.

Yeah, I think it’s because you need. They need seven souls.

[00:24:42] Speaker B: That’s right.

[00:24:42] Speaker A: So I think. I think the hearts that you see before that fight are actually the six that he’s already gotten. And then yours is the empty one. So he’s waiting to fill that up. I think that’s what it’s referring to.

[00:24:53] Speaker B: Okay. I guess that makes more sense. I was curious. I thought it was like he. Because he’s like, you’ll be judged. I thought it was because you killed so many ones of the enemies. Yeah, I killed. And there was like, one empty. And I was like, oh, that’s Metaton.

[00:25:04] Speaker A: Well, here. So your guilt has.

[00:25:07] Speaker B: Okay, now. Yeah.

[00:25:08] Speaker A: Has hit you hard if you’re interpreting it that way.

[00:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, yeah, I know. I did feel bad. That was the point where it’s like, I probably shouldn’t have killed all these people, but.

[00:25:17] Speaker A: The Undying. I know. Sorry. The Asgore fight was tough, too. I used all of my healing items at Mettaton’s final fight, and then there’s no shop or any items at all in between Metaton’s flight and Asgore’s fight.

So I died a ton of times to Asgore while I was kind of learning his moves, but mostly just realizing there’s no way I’m gonna perfect all these so many times in a row that I.

[00:25:45] Speaker B: No, not even. Not even.

[00:25:47] Speaker A: So I ended up doing the massive backtracking and. Oh, man, that was a bit of a trek. But, you know, at least there’s that shortcut elevator that goes right to left, and then you end up going down some paths and blah, blah, blah. You end up in the right in front of the lab and you get on the Grim Reaper boat. And I ended up back in Snowden and bought a bunch of cheap healing items. I got the. I think it was. Well, I rested at the end to get the bonus health. And then I used all my inventory spaces with the bi. I forgot what it was called. Bicycle, basically. Which is just the double Popsicle.

[00:26:19] Speaker B: It’s basically a bicycle.

[00:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah, Right.

You get a healing, you get two healings. And I looked through all my items because I don’t think I had really equipped anything because I was Mostly sparing most enemies that I didn’t do much equipping. And I had a bunch of stuff in my box. So I ended up pulling one out and equipping the frying pan, the burnt pan, which instead, if you have it equipped, you end up you getting basically extra healing.

[00:26:47] Speaker B: 4 hp extra for each item you use.

[00:26:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So the 11 hp unicycle. Unicycle being 15. 15. So I just had eight of those. So basically I got, you know, 16 rounds of 15 health and that’s how I got through as score. And I eventually learned his attacks well enough with some healing in between to start attacking. And at least I don’t know if it was the same for you, but it, you know, I was fighting. You get like just under like 8090 damage and then it keeps scaling and building up as I got further along. So I think the final hit was like 600.

[00:27:23] Speaker B: Yeah, same it was for me as well.

[00:27:25] Speaker A: So he gets weaker or whatever, doesn’t defend as much.

And then the twist after he’s, you know, you can spare him at that point. You can either kill him or spare him. I don’t know what you went with.

[00:27:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I went with. I went with spare. But I’ll say though, just to go over like my fight with him, like, I texted you, like, I had tried, I was the same boat as you.

I asked through the meditation. I had no more healings, no nothing to heal me or whatever. And I went into the fight and I tried God knows however many times. His first attack with the wavy, like sort of almost figure 8 type things, I could not, not get hit on that attack. The other ones I got pretty good. Like when he’d do his spear, like figuring out like what was blue, orange, blue or orange Orange, orange, blue, like to move or stay still. I got. And I was able to like get him just down, like just below halfway health with no healing. And I was like, no, I can’t do this. And I texted you. I was like, dude, this is like getting frustrating. And I was like, I don’t want to like DNF this. Like, I don’t want to not finish this. Like, I know I can get there. And then you told me, like, yeah, I did the backtrack and I googled it and all the people were like, you need to backtrack, you need to get items.

[00:28:37] Speaker A: That’s really the only question, unless you’re perfect.

[00:28:40] Speaker B: And I hadn’t, I hadn’t used my gold in a long time, so I actually had like 1500 in gold.

So I went back and I bought. I went back to the hotel, I bought two glam burgers and I bought the legendary hero, which heals 40 and gives you like plus 10 attack or something when you use it. So I did that and then I went back, I did. I took the, the reaper back to Snowden, slept and then went and bought for the rest of my items, two, two of the bicycles because I think that was all I had left. So I had just eight healing items in my bag.

[00:29:16] Speaker A: It sounds you had killed a decent amount of enemies throughout this run. How much health did you have by the time you were done approximately with Asgore?

I mean. Yeah, like by the time you’re at the end of the game, how much. How much HP did you have a total like available?

Oh, okay, okay. So you were. Yeah, those, those giant health. The glam burger was useful then.

[00:29:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Cause they do like 20 something. And then as I said, this legendary hero thing. So I, I went back, I had to use a couple of the glam burgers. I used one, One of the bio icicles. And then when I got him to like a quarter left and I, I got a little bit low. I used the legendary hero thing which did 40, which basically got me up to like 3:50.

I was at like, I was almost at like 50 points and then gave me extra attack and I did like two attacks and I, I got him. So.

Yeah. And then after, as he was defeated, I spared him.

[00:30:16] Speaker A: Yeah, same.

But that’s all for. Not because Flowey shows back up and kills him for you. And then it devolves like this weird.

[00:30:26] Speaker B: Killer be killed world. Didn’t I tell you that?

[00:30:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it shifts into this weird, somewhat meta conversation about games and killing and killing in games and save states and resetting your save and loading back up. And then also just like weird transitions and cuts and you start feeling you’re in a twilight zone or in one of many other media properties that has all this weird kind of flashbacks and diverted attention, all that stuff. And not to mention it shifts completely from being this black and white enemy screen to wildly colorful and full of all kinds of crap with a lot of unblockable attacks. I mean, it seemed unlockable. Maybe it is actually, if you’re really good. And on top of that, I mean, you can. It’s a little bit harder to die almost because they just want you to. Want you to see it through. It seemed like.

But surviving at that point was interesting.

[00:31:24] Speaker B: Yeah. The final. Yeah, Flowey attacks and then I don’t know as we said, I sent you a text saying, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I was like, this ending is horrifying.

[00:31:36] Speaker A: Were you talking about Flowey at that point or.

[00:31:39] Speaker B: I was talking about Flowey.

[00:31:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it’s crazy.

Giant, ridiculous monstrosity.

[00:31:48] Speaker B: Monstrosity. Yeah. And then. Yeah, you get through it, and then you get the. The hearts from the other souls help you out, and you’re able to take him out. And again at the end there, you get the. With flower, you get the option of kill or spare him. I killed him.

[00:32:03] Speaker A: I actually spared him in that moment because I went with the. All right, I’m just gonna spare everyone but Mettaton.

[00:32:10] Speaker B: No, I killed him because I was like, that was horrifying.

And screw you, Flowey.

You’re dead.

[00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I figured you can keep a flower contained inside of a jar or something. I don’t know.

So what happened in your ending? Your ending itself.

[00:32:30] Speaker B: So my ending said that Mettaton took over and ruled. Is it the underworld? Yeah. And basically made it the underground and basically made it a giant game show.

[00:32:44] Speaker A: Wow. That’s some dystopian crap right there. So you basically got my worst ending possible.

[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:32:49] Speaker A: The one person I made sure didn’t exist anymore.

[00:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah, she made a giant game show with statues of her around and her beauty and. Yeah, that’s what. That’s what the ending was for me.

Wow.

[00:33:01] Speaker A: That is. That is an unusual.

[00:33:05] Speaker B: It was. It was weird reading it. It was funny.

[00:33:09] Speaker A: Did you kill Toriel in the beginning?

[00:33:12] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:33:13] Speaker A: Oh, rough.

[00:33:14] Speaker B: I didn’t spare her.

[00:33:17] Speaker A: So I have a list here of conditions to get to each of the neutral endings. Obviously, don’t want to spoil myself further than that, but. Because we definitely won’t be playing all 85 endings. So if you got Mettaton to rule over the underworld.

Yeah, it looks like you killed everyone and spared Mettaton.

Did he ask you whether your life after meeting him has been worth living?

[00:33:49] Speaker B: I don’t remember. That might have quickly.

[00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you’re in a dystopia at the end of your save, that’s for sure.

In mine, basically, Toriel takes back over. Since Asgore is dead. Toriel becomes the queen of the city and basically puts some policy that, you know, humans that fall into the underground will be treated as friends. But then Papyrus tells you that Undyne hates herself because she became friends with you. So I spared Undyne and even went to her house and became friends, actively became friends, and she becomes friends with you. But then you go off and kill someone after she was befriended, so she feels really betrayed because I killed Mettaton and then another handful of enemies towards the later stages. So Papyrus tells you Undyne’s in a really bad place. He says you should probably never come back here because Undyne will definitely destroy you and Tor El can’t prevent it. And that’s not surprising because Undyne has a freaking vengeance streak, that’s for sure. And I don’t want to face those fears if they’re faster. Screw that. When I checked just now why I got that one specifically, it’s because, yes, I killed Mettaton, which, yeah, screw that Murderbot. And I killed a few other monsters at some point, which factored into my ending. But I think in comparison, I prefer mine over yours.

[00:35:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I do too. Yeah, I, I. Looking back at this, it was a neutral run. I was very close to a genocide run, obviously. It seems like.

[00:35:12] Speaker A: Sure killed a lot.

[00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah, because I know that’s. But there was still, like, quite a few just like regular battles where I spared or flee or whatever. Like, went away.

So I didn’t kill every monster. But, yeah, that was a.

Yeah, yours sounds better than mine. Just. You’re just now in an underground world of just like a game show. Like, hey, welcome. Well, thanks for being a participant.

[00:35:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, really well. Now, for this week, we’re going to flip the script a little bit on how it went. This time, Alex will be doing the true pacifist route and I’ll be doing the genocide route. So next time, we’ll be meeting in the middle to see how drastically different those two runs are. Basically the two extremes of how you can make the story end. But first, we want to know how your neutral run ended. So let us know on Discord and see you next time.

[00:36:01] Speaker B: Yeah, please let us know. I’m excited now to do the pacifist run, since I almost did the other one. I’m hoping to see, hopefully I get a better ending and a better. I’m sure I will. Better ending, better story of not killing anybody. So.

[00:36:17] Speaker A: Well, I’m. I’m gonna take a page from Community and go into the darkest timeline.

[00:36:23] Speaker B: Yeah, you will.

[00:36:23] Speaker A: Let’s. Let’s see if it’s even.

See if it’s even worse than what you got.

[00:36:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I’m very curious on your endings. Yep. But, yeah, thank you, everybody for listening and we will talk to you next week.

[00:36:37] Speaker A: Catch you later.

[00:36:43] Speaker B: If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of games on the Gaming Backlog book club podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram under the same name. Thanks.