WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?

However there are two things that bring it down. One is the fandom - a fair amount of them are pretty good, but the loud fuckwits who practically forced LPers to play the way they wanted by spoiling things and demanding they don't do certain things are a huge reason why a lot of people just didn't want to try it.

Another is the battles - they're really unbalanced and while it's a neat gimmick, that's really all it is. There are certain aspects of them that are really good, but there's a lot of things that make them fail. Lack of explanation or foreshadowing/instruction when basic battle mechanics change, for example, really hampered the enjoyment of the game. It was neat to be able to see the characterisation of the monsters and make them actual 'characters' but the battles were quite hard in some places, really slow paced in others and generally a pain in the ass to deal with. And then there's the boss battles.

Now, look, this stuff could have been fixed pretty goddamn easily. But it hasn't been and it likely never will be, which is a pity. But yeah, even the boss battles could have been made less tedious affairs.

Undyne is a bullshit battle. So is Metaton (for a different reason). Undyne's issue lies in that you are taught a certain way to play the game and then you are dumped in a battle that breaks all those rules without telling you that they've been removed. So, for those who haven't played before - the basic 'pacifist' way of playing is to befriend the monsters in battle until their name turns yellow, then use a command under the escape option to let them go. Easy enough to understand, right?
Then comes Undyne. Fucking Undyne. I love her character (for the most part, but the part I don't like is tied up with another reason I didn't like the game. I'll get to that) and her design. She was fucking cool. Love the hunting scenes - really well done. But that boss battle...
So firstly they tell you to run - so you go to the escape area of the menu and try to run, only to have her destroy the run option. "Right then" you think "Befriending is the only option!". Thus you play the bullet-hell minigame that serves as in-battle gameplay (unless you want to kill shit dead forever and use the jrpg version of battle - hope you've been grinding that up before this point though!) until her name turns yellow, meaning you can befriend her. Except her name doesn't turn yellow. Ever. At all. Nope, at some point in the battle - with no notification of it happening - your flee command returns and you're supposed to use it. Even if you last forever against her, the fact that you can still battle on an open field with her removes the thought that this is an unwinnable battle. You've got no reason to flee because there's no reason to check the escape menu options since she destroyed the flee command AND you've had it hammered into your head that yellow name means befriend. The only two options in the escape menu. So at what point does the game let you know you can flee or that it's worthless to fight any longer? It doesn't. :////////

As for the other reason I didn't like the game after thinking about it for a while. The main story. I love the characters and the personal story of the Prince and such, but there's this over-arching story that you're tricked into forgetting - that all these happy, friendly monsters would gladly murder you (a little kid) if given half the chance - because of racism against human kind for something that was done in the past. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the way the peace mode deals with this by having you make friends with everyone and change their hearts towards humans (oh wait, they're still racist against humans, you're just their token human friend) but the way the fandom reacts to anyone killing the monsters is sickening. Here's this kid being attacked by monsters and one of their options is to fight back - reasonable enough. But goddamn does the game and fandom slam you over the head for doing so basically making you (a little kid literally dropped into monster land with a fucking flower trying to kill you within seconds of the opening) out to be a horrible horrible person for protecting yourself against hordes of racist monsters who want to use your soul to escape and live outside of the barrier, destroying the human race (I mean, let's face it, if they're going to try and kill a little kid who has done them no wrong, then they're going to go after humans in general where possible). Granted, they have a bad history with humans but that doesn't excuse this shit. :/