Games with great emotional story

And yet by the same token, LISA had the exact same kind of cringeworthy behaviour and very similar design flaws as a whole. One is a quasi-saccharine childish RPG, the other is a treadmill of misery and clashing gallows humour. These things are marmite elements, where players typically either love them or hate them, with very few of a neutral opinion. It's a shame too, because LISA had something, it just never really clicked for me. To contrast, I found the characters, interactions and resolution to be sloppy as hell in LISA, whereas Undertale made up for it with characterisation. I wished there was more content to Undertale, whereas with LISA I had to force myself to finish and ended up confirming that it really was a waste of time. In the end, one man's 1UP is another man's poison shroom. Both have a following, so they obviously have their merits even if we can be individually blind to the big appeal.

Though this should be just a cautionary tale to people who don't question hype or do research, especially when the game is a nes-styled RPG and makes no attempt to hide it's simplicity and derpishness, or an RPGmaker game selling on it's goofy depravity. Even the best executed games find it hard to trancend their core gameplay elements, and if a story or the characters don't tickle you, then the gameplay needs to make up for that slack. Neither game is particularly strong in gameplay, so if the characters are a miss, it's definitely going to be a crap experience for you.

Though as for borrowing from Iji and Space Funeral? Heh, that strikes me as a real "Terraria is ripping off Minecraft!" moment. Retro is retro. Having a limited, saturated palette doesn't mean it was leaning on SF. I can't speak for Iji's particulars, but given the way you're driving at this I'm going to err well on the side of disbelief, here. Pacifist or friendly resolutions are not unique to Iji or to Undertale, and even if Iji really was the first game to ever allow for a 100% pacifist playthrough, that doesn't mean any game to tackle the issue or use the approach would be ripping it off. I actually find your anger to be really strangely placed, TBH.

Undertale also started as a total unknown title, and only swelled in popularity because the demo got such a positive reception that it spread through word of mouth. The kickstarter was a result of that, which further helped the snowball. Now, not to shit on the other two titles in the slightest, but if they were really that great, wouldn't they have exploded in popularity due to their own merits and word of mouth? Consider Cave Story, Spelunky and La Mulana as points of contrast, which actually transitioned from free titles to pay titles due to the enthusiasm of their fans. Yeah, it's a crying shame that some titles don't get more exposure, but deciding to be angry at a later game because it shares some vague, bordering similarities in base design or genre features? That's so totally misplaced it's at the point of being like lashing out in a sour grapes reaction, like cursing a stranger for having gotten a lucky break.

I suppose I can even appreciate that to some degree, especially when the latest hit falls into your personal 'bad marmite' flavour, but seeing people react like this just makes me flinch. I even saw it in the LISA forums on steam, like, genuine anger that LISA wasn't better received or more known, while not taking any steps of their own to spread the word, y'know? I guess I just don't fully understand that attitude. When Yume Nikki totally passed under most people's radar, I didn't curse the idea of To The Moon for getting recognition. When An Untitled Story never found a single spotlight, I never got pissed at Shovel Knight. Though... again, to be fair I haven't played TTM or SK, but I know I wouldn't get bitter about it, much less conjure up rationales that they're fat parasites riding on the ass of a poor underdog, y'know? The mentality just vexes me.