Deltarune is probably one of the video games I have anticipated among the most of any game ever, maybe next to NEO: The World Ends With You and Super Robot Wars 30. But while those two were for reasons that can stem from concern for the future, my excitement for Deltarune is and was purely for itself.
I should preface by saying that I've never played Undertale. Back when it released while I was in Middle school (That was almost 10 years ago now, oof), I didn't have a PC, or any of the modern consoles, so I resigned myself to never being able to play it and watched other people on YouTube play it. I fell in love with the game, and ended up looking through and seeing just about everything the game had to offer by the time I got my own computer. At that point, I felt like, to myself, what would be the point in playing the game now? The emotional impact of the story would be completely gone. so, to this day I've never played it myself.
However, I was determined not to have that experience with Deltarune. I stayed on top of the demos as they came out, and then all but filled my ears with wax to avoid any potential early spoilers. I barely even touched fan theories over the last year to keep myself from any expectations. So when that release date was announced in a Nintendo Direct of all places, I was PUMPED.
Obviously, this means that I picked the game up... the day after release. What can I say? I'm an adult now, other expenses come before a $20 video game, no matter how Hyped I am. And when I did the game, I jumped right into... Chapter 1 again. It'd been over a year since I played it, and I had gotten a new computer since the, so I wanted to go through it all again, just in case there are ripple effects or something. So, here are my fresh opinions on the Deltarune Chapters 1-4. 5-8 will be linked at the bottom as they happen. There will be spoilers in each chapter segment, so be warned, though I'll try to be vague with 3 and 4
Honestly I'm shocked by how much I remember from the first demo, and also... how much appears to have changed? There seem to have been a number of lines added both to Chapter 1 and 2. Or, it's entirely possible I just have a leaky brain and just thought those lines were new. Either way, it felt good to see everything again. Lancer is an amazing character, and I'm glad I was able to refresh myself as to where Ralsei and Susie were as characters at the start of all this, without the fog of memory and fanon.
The story of chapter 1 is something of a setup into a bait-and-switch, built off the legacy of Undertale. We are introduced to the Dark world in a similar way to the underground: By a nice goat person, who tells us there's no real need to fight our enemies, and that would should be able to get to the king here and talk things out with him, obviously playing up a parallel to Asgore. And like Asgore, we can't spare the King, but there's a very different tone to it. In the Underground, the monsters hyped up their king as a kind ruler. In the Card Castle, the subjects are afraid of their king. The culminating fight sets up the fact that fighting is okay sometimes (I still didn't really fight much of any of the monsters in the following chapters, I wanted to recruit everyone, and the Mercy actions are usually just... more fun to do than violence.)
I'd say this is the chapter where Deltarune really comes into its own as something born of, but distinct from, Undertale, and that starts at the stting. Where Chapter 1 and Hometown have a similar sort of "modern-ish but also fantasy" thing going on, The Cyber World is a Sci-Fi metropolis that would be at home in something like Mega Man Battle Network. Then there's the new mechanics, like the Recruitment system, the almost-not-quite levelling alternative where enemies still run away so there's no chance of a genocide run (Or is there...?). I would also say Chapter 2 escalates Puzzles. Chapter 1 kept it to a similar level that Undertale had, where puzzles were rather easy and usually a joke. Chapter 2 has a lot more of what I would actually consider to be puzzles that require solutions.
To wit, there are three forms of puzzle really in this chapter: The Mice, the lights, and the Keyboards. There are only two keyboard puzzles, and one is optional. The mice are all required, and most of them you do actually have to solve. They're fun little puzzles, though doing the last one with a time limit is brutal save for the fact that you can't actually fail. The light shapes puzzle actually stumped me at one point, but it was a fun and good puzzle form.
The story in Chapter 2 is certainly an escalation from Chapter 1, in both humor and emotional impact. Queen is a decidedly hilarious villain, and Noelle has some serious baggage and development, which doesn't appear to end in this chapter, at the very least it doesn't seem wrapped up in the least, so I hope more comes from this. Berdly is a character. I remember from the reaction to the demo of Chapter 2's final reveal with "The Roaring", that a lot of people thought Ralsei was going to be a bad guy, and even now, some still do, I see them in YouTube Comments. I personally don't believe it.
This is the chapter everyone was waiting for, hoping for some semblance of answers (Usually to their incredibly multi-stepped fan theories). Due to the time between chapter 2 and the 1-4 release, there was a lot of speculation, some of which managed to get some production value, and a lot of which were fan designs of the mysterious TV man. Uh... and they were all wrong, mostly because of tone. Given the strange way he appeared at the end of Chapter 2, many fans thought he'd be a sly, evil TV-head. But no, Mr. Tenna is an over-enthusiastic Game Show host who is incredibly lonely. There weren't many other real "answers" in this one. Although, Many fans had hoped for Toriel to have a big, cool presence in the chapter because, y'know, she was right next to everyone when the fountain opened, so it was... a little bitter when she was... asleep for the whole thing, but whatever.
The setting of the TV world is dripping with fun: Red carpets, bouncers, those velvet ropes, all very quintessentially "Hollywood". There's also a lot of... Christmas theming to certain places and sections, which does tie into the story. Then there's the game boards, which are styled kinda like Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, where the party members all move in their own ways, there's simplified sprites, and the map moves screen by screen. Also delightfully retro is that I got lost the first one for a bit.
Don't... worry about... that.
Anyway, the story here is interesting from a tone perspective, because it starts of with some serious drama and secrets, on account of Ralsei's habit of keeping secrets until the most dramatic moment to reveal it, and then that is abandoned for most of the chapter in favor of the wacky and wild TV Time game show, but then it circles back around at the end with some horror and then sad... and then there's the final battle of the chapter, which is also, apparently, the "secret" boss of the chapter? Where the secret is "You can, in fact win" (I did not)? It's an absolute roller coaster the whole time.
Holy shit, man. Susie is the actual protagonist of this game, dude. She gets a love interest, a strong emotional arc with a hinted at tragic backstory, and a fucking mentor who dies? Otherwise, the star of the show here is the interplay between light and dark worlds. It starts in the light world, where we're looking for a way into the Dark World because of the end of Chapter 3. We get some great moments between Kris and Susie, as well as Susie and Noelle, and then we meet Noelle's mom, who is... So incredibly different from Rudy, holy shit, man! There's a little bit that I can read into that gives me the thought that one of two characters is "the Knight" but this isn't the time for theorizing.
THEN we get to the first dark world, in the church. And that's where we meet Gerson, my favorite character in the whole game so far. he's such a wonderful "Old man pretending to be senile to teach the rough-and-tumble young one" and I love him and his stolen Leitmotif (Or was it Undyne who stole his leitmotif?) His dynamic with the cast, and the way he breaks the prophecy, LITERALLY, is just... SO GOOD!.
Something that makes this one strange is that the fountain itself doesn't seem to have a boss. Maybe it was supposed to be Gerson, since he's clearly the most emotionally charged "thing" in the area? Or maybe it's supposed to be Jack? Point is, no one guards the first fountain.
But then it turns out there's a second fountain inside the sanctuary of the church, but the door is locked, and Toriel's in there!again So Susie gets the bright idea to make another fountain in hopes to get the code to the lock. This has... complications, but we do get the lock code! and that leads to a Third Dark world. Going from 1 fountain per chapter to 3 in one is kinda nutty, I will not lie.
As settings, the Sanctuaries are... not all that much to see, as environments go, especially compared to the two previous chapters. There was something about it to me, though, that felt profound. Maybe it's because I grew up going to a church in a little rural town, but there was a level of specificity to the way the Sanctuaries were that felt personal, like Toby Fox had made a chapter pulling from my brain. The only thing missing is a little balcony in the Light world sanctuary that Kris would want to go to for no particular reason.
Also, last note here, this was the chapter where puzzles really started feeling "puzzling" as ther was no real assistance from the party members or auto win state to be found. You have to do the puzzles now, entirely on your own.
Fun10/10
Story 10/10
Vibes10/10
This lands Deltarune chapters 1-4 an overall 10/10!