I am just stunned by how utterly amazing this game is. All of its characters are all so charming and well-developed; the dialogue was either so adorable i made audible 'awws' or so sad i was fighting tears to keep watching (which is saying something considering the last game that made me do that was VLR). I loved the bullet hell defense as well, it was a nice twist on the typical battle system which only added to the game's charm.
I don't have any regrets from watching the pacifist run first because the intro with goatmom, skeleton dating, any scene with mettaton or sans, tem village (colleg), were all wonderful moments I'll probably never forget, but I honestly couldn't handle the genocide run at all.
After almost pathetically weeping at Papyrus' death, I resigned to skipping most of the character battles and just focusing on the dialogue for certain parts so that I wouldn't miss the story. What really struck a nerve with me was the coldness in Papyrus' description: 'forgettable'. that cut me really deep for some reason when I watched it, and I decided I probably couldn't handle the rest of the cast being murdered if something like that was going to get to me the most. I mean, after seeing the ending and how the character you played was literally satan, that doesn't seem so bad now, but at the time I had no idea what to expect so...
It's pathetic I guess but oh well, I might go back and watch the geno run in full once I'm less sensitive to the characters. It probably wasn't a good idea to watch the pacifist and genocide runs back-to-back lol
I will say this though, after watching the genocide run, Sans is now one of my favourite video game characters, ever. I loved his laziness and horrible jokes in the pacifist run, but watching his completely badass boss battle in the genocide run and learning how self-aware and powerful he really is just makes him the most standout character to me. It was actually incredibly fitting for his character, and he and Papyrus are the best brother/skeleton duo to ever exist in gaming ever tbh. i'm like the 4th person to want to have sans as a theme lol
also joel got fucking dunked and it was incredibly sad to watch
I see this game compared to earthbound a lot and the comparisons are certainly valid, but this game entirely surpasses it in terms of batshit insanity (that flowery boss was something) and self-awareness (in fact, flowery himself is something, holy shit), which puts it on a level unlike anything else I've experienced. (Although, I could draw parallels with the genocide run and the game OFF but I'd personally consider Undertale to have handled its gameplay/dark story a bit better. However, both are still very unnerving.). I find it amazing how this game has two distinct stories that completely change the game and how it functions depending on which one you're going for, but in saying that I can't help but think that the wonder of that discovery would've been amplified had I not watched a stream where I knew what actions were going to be taken, and instead played it for myself, but that is what you get for watching the game on yt :I
all-in-all i'm extremely happy that i watched the stream and got to experience the game but a little regretful that i didn't wait until sometime next year to buy/try it myself for a more personal discovery. it'll certainly be one of the first games i buy whenever i can access steam again.
tl;dr story is good, i wish i could play the game myself. sans is best character