Hello everyone. I recently platinummed Undertale on PSVITA and would like to talk about it.
When I first started this game, I was worried this would be a rather long and challenging affair. The Pacifist Route requires a second playthrough and a lot of work to make sure every NPC and event is successfully completed. There are also a lot of missable and side activities like snail racing, helping Temmie go to college, hanging out with Ghosts etc. However to my pleasant surprise, that wasn't the case. Undertale is arguably one of the fasted and easiest games to platinum. I was able to do it in under 3 hours 27 minutes and 10 seconds (granted I was rushing and had played the game 7 years before. The average time to platinum the game is around 5-7 hours).
Undertale's platinum doesn't even require you complete the game itself. You essentially have to complete around 75% of the game and do some minor challenges and activities.
Here are the first set of trophies:
"Don't Worry, I Have Lots of Ideas for Trophies - Get an item."
"Like Getting Items - Get two items"
"Or Getting More Items - Get three items"
"Help Me, I'm Out of Ideas - Get four items. "
I love this little joke. In like the 3rd room there's bowl of candy and a sign tells you take only 1. It roasts you if you take more. Each candy you take gives you these trophies. However, it's possible for this joke to go wrong. According to PSNProfiles, these trophies are apparently bugged if you use the candies to get them. Apparently, since Undertale uses a secret background autosave to take note of things you do before you reset or close your game, it might accidentally think you already collected them and not give you the trophies even if you collect other items. This might be patched as I got the trophies from the candy bowl. But the recommended approach is to ignore the bowl and pick up other items throughout the game.
The other main set of trophies is "Dognation Levels". In Papyrus' House, there is a shrine to a dog that is asking for donations. Each level of donation unlocks a trophy. For example, "Dognation Level 1 - Donate 2G to the Dog Shrine", Dognation Level 2 - Donate 6G to the Dog Shrine" all the way up to level 15 with 350g.
This is arguably the most "tedious" set of trophies in the game since you have to grind money and go through a lot of textboxes.
The money isn't a huge problem. While you can't sell items, I found helping the Snowdrake and Ice Cap enemies around Snowden gave around 35g a pop. It didn't take too long to get the money needed.
The more "annoying" issue were the textboxes. Unlike every other comparable RPG, Undertale doesn't let you forward text by mashing the "accept" command. Instead you need to alternate between "Accept" and "back" to fast forward text. On top of that, you can only donate 1 coin at a time and need to exit and re-enter once you reach a new donation level to be able to donate more. This got really annoying and uncomfortable after a while. So I rebinded accept and back from X and O to R and L so it was faster to mash through. It took less than 12 minutes to get all 15 trophies here.
Interestingly, these are the only "intentionally missable" trophies in the game. On a neutral route, the shrine is in Papyrus' house. On a Genocide Run, the shrine is in the waterfall's garbage after the first encounter with Undyne (with faster text for some reason). But if you kill Papyrus during a neutral run, that locks you out of the shrine as you cannot enter his house. And the shrine doesn't appear later on in the waterfall. So yeah, don't kill Papyrus.
The final set of trophies are for reaching save points as you progress throughout the game. The final one is for reaching the second Save point in the CORE before you fight Mettaton. Funnily the trophy for it is called "Good Luck" even though you do not need to play any more to get the platinum. That is the final trophy for the platinum. You can stop right there and get 100% on Undertale lmao.
On one hand, it is a little disappointing that there isn't more to Undertale's platinum. A more typical set of trophies would probably have included stuff for the game's side quests and alternate paths. But on the other hand, this kinda suits what Undertale is going for. Toby Fox was said to not really be happy with the fact that being on PS4/PSVITA meant trophies were mandatory to include. Which is why the trophy list is so wacky. Moreover, Undertale has a theme of anti-completionism. Flowey, the game's main antagonist, is someone who has used his power to reset and save scum to do everything there is to do and has become detached and monstrous. He cannot empathize or move on. When you get the neutral ending, he even gives you tips to get a better ending in order to keep on playing. And once you get the Good Pacifist Ending, even Flowey warns you against starting a new file and undoing the happy ending you achieved for everyone. And of course, the Genocide Route is the biggest argument the game makes. This path is intentionally tedious, boring, difficult and emotionally rough to hammer home the point the only reason you're doing this is for the content and completion rather than because it is fun or enjoyable. Doing this path even permanently corrupts your save file so you cannot get a True Good ending ever again (on PC).
So the fact you can platinum Undertale despite only completing 75% of a Neutral Route does fit with this theme. Getting the final Dognation Level has a textbox that says how the Dog wasted all the money they received and there didn't seem to be any point to this. I'm reminded of a review of Undertale from back in the day that described it as like "Undertale is about how we don't need to wring out every last drop of content in order to get a satisfying experience from a game".
On the other hand, part of me wonders if Undertale could have gone the other direction. Make the trophies more tedious, arbitrary and unwieldy to hammer home the same themes as the Genocide Route. It wouldn't be out of character for Undertale to do that. The hacker ending comes up if you modify the game's files. If you're streaming the game while doing the Genocide Ending, the game will detect you're using software like OBS and call out the audience for their cowardice.
Imagine if getting the Platinum involved doing all the side content and Pacifist Routes, some dumb grinding thing like "walk exactly 5623 steps" and then do the Genocide Route to have the game roast you for being even worse than Flowey since you're only doing this for external trophies. So the Platinum becomes a permanent mark of shame. I'm glad the game didn't do that because I don't have the heart to kill anyone in this game.
Moving on from the platinum and briefly reviewing the game itself:
Undertale, to me casually, is engaging as this "Subversion of Expectations: The Game". The game takes delight in twisting the conventions typically associated with these kinds of RPGs to create a surprising experience. From little things like merchants telling you how weird it is you are trying to sell them sticks and bandages and refusing to buy them (in fact, you can only sell stuff to Temmie whose whole character is that she's something of a hoarder and needs to save money for college. So you are kinda taking advantage of her). Right from the beginning, you have Toriel bypassing some of the tutorial puzzles. The game's secret background autosave notes things you've done and tried to erase by reloading an older save and comments on it. I remember on my first playthrough back in 2016, I accidentally killed her since I didn't think you could spare her as there didn't seem to be any indication I was progressing. I did reset and went out of my way to keep sparing her until it worked.....only to have Flowey call me out on it. He knows what I truly did and it caught me off guard. Even the concept of Levels and EXP, the standard of RPGs, gets a more sinister context as it turns out, they stand for "Levels of Violence" and "Execution Points". Sans explains how the more you kill, the easier it becomes to kill more. Even the abstract stats of the game end up mattering narrativly rather than not really being an in-universe concept.
In fact, the meta/4th wall breaking was really engaging. In 2023, it does feel a bit more cliched as more recent media is attempting similar things. But I still feel Undertale's approach works well. The game tends to save them and use them sparingly for brief spurts of horror. Having Sans occasionally drop his usual chill demeanor to show he's willing to kill you before going back to normal hits harder with this contrast. The theme the game is going for is to make the player question the violence they take for granted in video games and I feel it does an effective job at that.
The gameplay was also pretty fun. The "bullet hell" style minigames that are used as enemy attacks helps make battles more than just trading attacks and can allow groups of enemies to overlay and combine their hazards in more interesting ways. Most enemies being something of a puzzle should you aim to be more of a pacifist allows the game to be more charming and fun rather than rely on straight up combat. In fact, I like the game even discourages combat from the outset by having your regular attacks do so little damage to starting enemies that it's faster to Spare them than straight up fight them. It would be rather morbid if that wasn't the case. Only later on does it become harder to spare compared to killing which really tests your pacifism.
I also like the pacing of the game. A regular Neutral Undertale playthrough is around 7-10 hours. The game speeds through sections and set pieces before they have a chance to get stale. You can choose to backtrack to earlier areas if you want for some side quests and optional material but the game almost never enforces that. Aesthetically, the game is quite charming. I love the somewhat retro SNES style aesthetic and the soundtrack. The environments and designs are all quite memorable. The story and themes of the monsters, humans and their beliefs of each other and themselves being challenged kept me hooked.
It was fun briefly revisiting the game. I'd recommend it. Next up for me is probably Sly 1 on VITA but that's going to be a long time. I have enrolled in a new Computer Systems Program which has taken all my time (7 courses a semester🥹). I actually wrote this piece back in August and have been sitting on it all this time as a result.
Take care everyone and see you then. I'll miss writing these reviews in the meantime
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