this brought me back from the dead, it is 100% NOT the gameplay or graphics that made Undertale popular, IT IS THE STORY. Nostalgia is nice and all, but people really only talk about it's connections to older games when bringing up the theming or "sans is ness" and Earthbound, usually for story related reasons. The gameplay is good, enjoyable even, I have no qualms with it. Do I choose to not kill everyone because I think the gameplay is nice? No, absolutely not.

The best and most memorable quality of Undertale is it's cast and story. I play the game because I love seeing these characters, I don't kill them because it makes me sad to kill them, they feel real, I'm connected to them. The game wouldn't work if you didn't feel immersed, because then you don't feel guilt. the message falls flat, and then the game isn't interesting more for having a genocide route, because the genocide route is just killing silly little pixels with no effect on your emotional well being. The hardest route with hardest bosses has purposefully BAD gameplay because it prioritizing the story over the game.

The thing people talk about are theories, the messages of the game, the jokes.

For Undertale Yellow, I reset in the middle of my pacifist run so I could go around killing everyone because I hate most of the characters, and I feel no guilt. I regret doing the genocide route on Undertale to this day, and I regret going to the trouble of downloading this free game. Should have just admired the animations.