[Illusion]

Been up all night playing the bad playthrough and..

FUCK SANS. Holy shit he's hard.

[Lucid:]

Noooooooo! Illu you ruined everything! T______T You know that he knows what you did, right?!? He has a photo from the good ending! And, and, and Papyrus! D': You're a monster.

I have a friend who is also at that part and she can't get past it either. I don't think I would be able to either. Dodging too hard. Can't see the bullets on the screen through my many tears.

[Poggio]

Lmao Lucid, Illusion Stay Determined!
The person I am watching finally got to Sans though my friend kind of spoiled the ending for me. I am hella amused to see what you guys have to say about it.

[Tas]

I can't get past that part, Illusion. I'm stuck there. It's too hard. :<

[Lucid:]

Have you tried sparing him?

GEEEEEEET DUNKED ON! xD

He is second-best character. After Papyrus, of course.

[Illusion]

I just finished genocide. That was terrible. If there was no poison proc it would had been so much better.

[Tas]

eh, I dunno about that. o.o

due to the lack of invincibility frames, KR keeps you from instantly dying whenever you take damage.

[Illusion]

I have to say though... I had really bad time. xD

[Tas]

oh it is such a bad time

[Lucid:]

Well, he did warn you. :P

And yeah, I don't think it's poison at all. It's just lack of invincibility combined with an Earthbound-style rolling damage meter that lets you die a bit slower to make up for it.

[Illusion]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSTcRzpL7pQ

Needed to be shared.

[Lucid:]

That video is so glorious. It's cool to imagine how the fights would actually look playing out in real life.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

So, I'm a little late on this one, but thought I'd share my thoughts. I did the neutral and good endings, and I might go back at some point to beat Sans (only lasted 9 turns against him after like 25 tries), but at this point I feel reasonably satisfied with the time spent with the game.

I think I have a weird perspective on it, though. I have this strange sort of masochism where I enjoy experiencing art that causes me pain, so going through pacifist and coming to love all these characters only to go back and viciously murder them was a really memorable, meaningful experience for me. Not because I enjoyed killing them, but rather because it was amazing how bad the game could make me feel about doing it. The integration of the mechanics into the storytelling is such a powerful device to get you engaged into the story, and I have to say, I think my favorite moment in the entire game was the fight against Undyne the Undying. Being to able to be a part of such a phenomenal tragedy was really rewarding. Even though she was incredibly hard for me to beat, that's precisely what made it so meaningful -- she was doing everything she possibly could to stop me, because she absolutely had to, but lo and behold with DETERMINATION she fell like all the others. In a way, I almost felt proud to have brought out the best in her like that.

My favorite character, though, is by far Flowey, not only for how heart-breaking his story is, but I just love the way he functions as a player-proxy. In-universe he behaves exactly the way anyone else would when playing the usual rpg, and given his situation it's not hard to see why a position of total solipsism on his part seems completely justified. Before you come along, he's really the only thing that's real in his reality, and even when that power is stripped away from him, the way he intermediates between you the player and the linear characters of the setting is really fascinating, I find. From what I've seen, a lot of people hate him or get really scared of him in Neutral, but that was one of my favorite parts of the game. When he started crashing the program and messing with reality, the whole time I was just like "Oh my God, yes, let's do this, Flowey! Show me how deep the rabbit hole goes! Make me regret my pitiful existence!"

One of the reasons I'm not too keen to beat Sans is that I actually really don't want to kill Flowey. :/ Not even cause I feel particularly worse about hurting him compared to the other characters, just that I really don't like seeing him reduced to such a pitiful state. I know it makes sense in the canon that Chara's evil is on a whole different level from anything he conceived in boredom, but... I was kind of rooting for him the whole time. :P I know the point of genocide is to make the player feel bad with a really unsatisfying ending, but part of me would have enjoyed seeing Chara and Flowey reunite in that awful world they found themselves in after Chara's killing spree. They're the only people in that universe who can really understand each other, and I guess that's what makes Chara so damned evil, in the end.

Anyway, really more of a work of art than a game, in my opinion. Was an incredible experience. Lots of food for thought, throughout. In a way, though, I actually find Chara's role in Genocide to run counter to the message of the game. I felt more like I was just watching her carrying out the genocide, I didn't feel particularly guilty for it. If she hadn't been a thing, I might have had a harder time going along with it. She literally deprives you of agency in the end, but I kind of feel like she's been doing that the whole time.

Going to stop typing there, because there are a lot of things I can say about this game and this is getting long. :P

[Coda]

Don't feel bad about Sans. 25 turns isn't very many at all. (Tip: Use the Burnt Pan instead of the True Knife.) It took me 96 (only managed to beat him last week), another friend of mine 60, and another friend over 200 before he stopped counting.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Part of my problem is, for whatever reason, my Razer controller is just slightly imprecise with the analog stick, and being left-handed, not having WASD for keyboard controls make it that much harder for me to dodge accurately.

[Coda]

My first reaction would be to just move the keyboard over and use my left hand on the arrow keys. :P I've also been known to put both hands on the arrow keys (left ring finger on left, left middle on up, right middle on down, right ring on right, more comfortable and intuitive than it sounds).

For a few attempts, when my hands were hurting from using the keyboard too much, I tried remapping my Gravis GamePad Pro to have both the D-pad and the face buttons bound to the arrow keys. Not trying to map analog in there helps with the precision issues, and having two sets of inputs helps with quick maneuvers. It took some time getting used to, but it worked pretty well for me once I did.