The Art of the Deal

What made this game so popular compared to other Earthbound-inspired RPGs? The music? The story? The characters? What is the verdict here, lads?

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Presentation. If you look at this game objectively, it's thoroughly uninteresting besides the bosses.

a community jumping ship and spreading it through word of mouth. also helps that it came out in a time where people watch let's plays.

The guy who made it composed for Homestuck. Many Undertale fans migrated from the Homestuck fandom.

its significantly more accessible compared to other earthvanias

The fact that you had to ask this question proves that you'll never understand why, even if I told you.

story, characters
better music than earthbound
better battle system than earthbound

Toby already having an audience due to homestuck, means more people played the game to begin with meaning more people told friends about it and asked youtubers/streamers they like to play it.

take a weird, hard but sort of fun game mechanic,
throw some good characters in there with dumb gags,
make some pretty damn good music to go with it.
there you go.

>characters are fun and interesting
>meta done right because determination is an in-game power and not "the character knows it's a video game!" bullshit
At least that's what I liked about it

How does one begin to start a cult following for your product to gain more attention?

Toby himself is a chad so people naturally followed him wherever he went

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Yes.

furries

It was crowdfunded and had tons of furfag bankrolled content shoved into corners. Also had the homosuck fanbase tagging along when their shitheap died.

The game itself is mediocre in every aspect. writing is AAA quality so about 3rd grade level, the music is okay chiptunes I guess, the art is awful and lazy at all times, and the gameplay is "shmup but it's an rpg but it's also a bullet hell and it's like a rhythm game" so indecisive tripe.

Previous and very zealous following thanks to Homestuck

This.
Pretty much the fact that the game is charming, entertaining, appealing, I can understand that this may not be true to some people, but it is for me and many others. Definitely it isn't a bad game.

Nip girls gush this dawg

>implying you wouldn't

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I'm about to play it just because of the music

Cringe. Go back to Facebook

It has great presentation, soundtrack & released at a time where gaming was horrible & people were desperate for anything that wasn't a generic AAA piece of shit

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There were a few things that helped it get popular.
First, Toby already had the backing of the Homomosuck fandom, which assured his game some success.
But the game was also furry bait, with characters like Toriel, Asriel, Doggo, etc.
It was also a very easy game that autists could latch onto because the all characters are all very simple and there's very few of them.
All of that comes together in a cocktail that's a sure fire hit. And the best thing is, it's not even lighting in a bottle. There'll always be an audience for it.

As an actual game, I don't think it's very good.
I don't even know if it counts as an RPG. The entire map is a straight line and there's no strategy in the combat at all. It's more like a visual novel with battle sequences.
Now the sequel, Deltarune, is an actual game, and is pretty fun.

It really isn't very good. I find it very interesting how the Undertale audience never really moved onto other games. You didn't really see a surge in popularity for Earthbound, for example.

Music
Game has no general rules, every boss is a constant change to gameplay, so it feels fresh
Bad puns
cool moments (blue attack, no spare asgore, undyne never gives up, etc)

The autistic Homestuck fanbase. Undertale is a decent game in its own right, but if you want the reason why it blew up, it's because of the pre-existing Homestuck fanbase.

The fact that Toby has actually played Earthbound probably helped a bit.

Then how the fuck did the fandom expand beyond the regions where Homestuck was popular.

Because as with most things, word of mouth is key. Having a pre-existing (some would say rabid) fanbase to spread the word about the game helps with getting people into the game. For its continued success after it blew up, I'd go with what this user wrote more or less.

It was a fun little interesting twist on the RPG genre.
It reminds me a lot of flash games at their peak: short, but unique passion projects. Not meant to be "the next big thing" or really be replayed a lot, just an enjoyable time. Games developed under this mindset tend to be pretty good (see Katamari).
All indie devs should follow its example, it's not something you would get out of any big AAA game.

Undertale and Earthbound have different strengths though just because someone likes one doesn't mean they'll like the other