At long last, I have played and beaten Deltarune Chapter 5! That means it's review time. I think it's pretty clear already that I enjoy Deltarune, and this chapter did nothing to change, that's for sure. While it took me a couple days, I managed to hide from any initial spoilers and get a full run through. As with chapters 1-4, I didn't do the secret boss. I love Bullet hells, but I am god awful at them.
Starting with the narrative perspective, I think there's some potent stuff in here. I've seen some accusations that the chapter was "filler", and, if you intake media for the sole purpose of creating a synopsis... maybe? There was very little added to the overall "plot" or "lore", but I thought by now most people knew that Toby Fox's big strengths in his games are Humor and Character work, and this chapter has those in spades. From the start with the festival in the light world, with adorable moments between Noelle and Susie, the realistically stilted interactions with Kris's parents after everything that's happened so far, it's wonderful. As always, I'm going to try to be vague about spoilers, but consider this the warning.
Of course, the real star of a Deltarune chapter is the Dark World. There are layers to this one. The theming of the entire world seems to be "nostalgia", and that starts almost immediately with a new rendition of "Field of Hopes and Dreams" as "Garden of Hopes and Dreams". The first section is chock-full of calls to Chapter 1, giving our heroes some time to reflect on how far they've come in 5 days. But the focus of this dark world isn't the $#!& Gang, it's Asgore, and by extention, Kris. There's something of a running theme by now of characters who know Kris having some apprehension about the way the player acts. No matter what responses you choose, you aren't Kris. Tenna knew that, Flowery knows it, Noelle seems to know it, and that tension continues to exist. For Asgore's part, his obsession with the past twists parts of the nostalgic theming, as the flowers sttempt to give him a happier time based on his past, but his laser-focus is on that mysterious incident from before the game began. As you venture through the game, you meet and understand each of the colored flowers Asgore has been taking care of since before Kris was born. This chapter also introduced a "Break Time" segment where you can get more interactions from the flowers. I'm glad it exists, given that this is probably the only chapter where most of these characters will be able to appear. The result toward the end is some honestly pretty heartbreaking scenes as Asgore's Obsession continues to consume and isolate him. Then my goodness, the final sequence... It's great.
Now then... Mechanics. Uh, how do I say this... I'm not very good at platformers. I've always been really, like almost comedically bad at them. So needless to say, when I realized that the special gameplay mode of this chapter was a platformer, I got scared. I squeaked by, but I struggled a lot. I'm not gonna blame the game, but rather whatever curse I was given as a child to be unable to do platforming.
There is one other major gameplay thing, in the final boss. The courage soul, which as far as I know is the first new SOUL mechanic, and boy what a mechanic it was, forcing you to literally clash with your enemy to prove yourself the better. It's great, though it took some getting used to to run into bullets.
Ultimately I don't think I'm going to change my score from before, as much as I may want to dock a point for my personal gripes with platforming. The rest of the chapter reviews are below. Thanks for reading!