I tried a couple more times to do that fight, even following a tip to buy more healing item to have on hand first. Still failed. I will probably try again another day, but it is not really fun for me, the fight mechanics. I don't get the appeal of bullet hell and some of the attacks later in the fight seem designed in such a way that it's virtually impossible to dodge everything because of the pace it goes at and things overlapping. I probably just suck at bullet hell though.

But yeah, the pacifist ideology of it kinda annoys me. I want to give it a fair shake to see it all the way through so I can properly judge what it's actually doing in design and storytelling as a whole (partly cause the game designer in me is interested to learn from what it does well in design), but I wish there was a way to play it without the bullet hell stuff. If I end up giving up again, maybe I'll just spoilers myself and watch a playthrough of the parts I haven't seen.

Personally I don't think it's very interesting to approach the game as critique of society directly, maybe because of the RPG mannerisms of kings and queens, but I think the game does have something interesting to say viewed as a media critique. What I got out of it was this postmodern parody of the narrative tropes of video games (and other media as well) wherein you are a cosmically anointed ubermensch going out to do something and you'll kill anything that gets in your way without a second thought of its interiority. So as a foil look at Hollowknight which is pretty much exactly that narrative structure, and while there are a couple bugs with interiority most of them are othered quite explicitly through a mind virus. But beyond even that there's creatures that are just set dressing like the birds, which you end up exploding without even realizing when super dashing across a map. In HK these moments are normalized through a lack of commentary while the whole point of UT is problematizing this dynamic by creating a sense of interiority in these small background creatures whose life is at your mercy. The frame of this is individual ethical choices which same may call a liberal branch of thought, but I personally think it's worth examining your personal ethics.

Interestingly, the subversive narrative of the true pacifist route not only includes pacifism which is obviously anathema to serious political leftism (but again, I'd say is a good pursuit as an individual), but this narrative also includes building together a community and transforming the society of the game. If I remember correctly it's maybe a restoration of monarchy (ew), but the narractive structure of sublimating your individual interests in order to help others and reshape society is quite radical. And the salient point: UT implicitly makes us question why this narrative structure is uncommon compared to destructive quasi colonial ones of other games. So then the question posed is not "why is society not like undertale?" but "why does society create games with violent individualistic narratives?"

I see. No wonder it feels jank then. I'd heard about the pacifism thing before playing it for the first time and so not only did I expect the game to not be so combat-heavy, I didn't know there was some thing where you can't fully be one the first time anyway?

There’s something to be said about how subversive things lose their appeal when they become so popular that they lose their subversiveness.

From the sound of it, because I knew some things about it going in (apparently too much), it became annoying in part because it doesn't expect me to know things and beeline right past its subversive ploys to try to get the "best ending".

So I'm essentially playing the game "wrong" because I didn't treat it like it's a typical "fight and level up" video game. It sure sounds like the designer did not account for a person doing that and instead designed on the basis that the player would necessarily treat it like a "normal" game.

Which enemy are you talking though?

spoiler

Muffet.

Though given what another poster said, it's seeming like the issue may be that I didn't level up at all the whole way so I'm very weak.

But yeah, it's been years since the first time I gave the game a chance, so I thought I'd give it a second chance. Just doesn't seem to be my cup of tea.

My bad, saw it mentioned in guides and made an incorrect assumption.

spoiler

Though still, "getting locked out of the best ending and having to restart the game" for doing some killing in self-defense sounds pretty blech to me.