Deltarune (2025)

Preliminary notes: Played on pc, using controller. Written 14 June, only on weird route since it is what I primarily was interested in. Written for Steam but I played on family share and that doesn't let you write reviews for shared games. What follows is just the raw text lifted with formatting fixes for Grouvee.

tldr: It's pretty good. Had some gripes with the game, but I overall had a good time. If you want me to elaborate on my gripes, please read ahead and bear with me.

This is primarily about chapter 3&4, spoilers and all that ahead.

Deltarune is a game that does mean a good bit to me, it is a game that has influenced me a lot today, That being said it has also been years since chapter 2 released. The game kinda suffers from its episodic format, them being fragmented to be for a long time will obviously lead to complications like shifting game taste leading to less enthusiasm as it did me. I'm simply a different person from the one who played chapter 2 and 1. That said:

Deltarune chapter 3 and 4 are great times, they're fun, witty, and some of Toby Fox's best writing to date, it is where the main narrative begins to take off and with that takes a bit of a more serious tone overall, notely in chapter 4. I had a really fun time. Though it really suffers from stuff that kinda were bumps in the road in my experience. Par exemple, save points at times are kinda scare at times and a bit inconsistently placed and it inhibits gameplay at times, I found it frustrating during the rounds in the TV World where you just could not save or open the menu to go to title, it felt like it dragged there too. This kinda harms the game to a degree since you have less time to breathe and also paired with difficulty spike it can be kinda frustrating. I also didn't care too much for the final boss of chapter 4 and the preceeding sequence there since it almost felt like I would be sent back a while if I stopped then, This was during a night and I was starting to feel exhausted, wanted to stop playing but I felt like I couldn't. Additionally I was not a fan of chapter 4's slower TP gain mechanic, it also felt like it served to almost make fights drag a bit more than they should've, again with chapter 4's final boss. I also think it would have benefitted from more side character like chapter 2 did, I think deltarune is best with a more varied cast.

On a more positive note: I really enjoy how they've taken the time to finally develop Ralsei's character, for a long time I've felt he's been pretty flat of a character and it's a good direction to take them. I love the direction they are taking with the knight and I can't wait to see what happens in chapter 5. I really liked chapter 3's minigames, and I also found the climbing sections of chapter 4 fun. I LOVE Jackenstein, one of my favourite bosses so far in all of Deltarune.

I am going to write a review eventually about all of Deltarune up to Ch 5 when that happens, or either when I find the motivation to replay it again on the normal route

Spoiler tagging feature is not working when I reply to my own status. Let's try posting from the main page..! Below are spoilers for deltarune, which is an anagram of Dale Tuner

Nothing freaky is happening but I have a relatively debilitating fear of churches and therefore early chapter 4 is is the most anxious I've been playing a game for literal years. Somehow I feel the need to credit this, too, to Toby Fox's storytelling powers. How did he know?

I really liked Undertale for the most part, felt like it was charming and special in lots of ways. I wasn't really a fan of the meta part of it thrown on you at the end tho.

Deltarune feels... like a game made by a fan.
The characters are too childish, there is too much forced romance, it feels like a parody of itself, and not in a good way.

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The childish/romance thing, I think things like that were in Undertale too, but not having a fixed team made it more diluted (had a better and more enjoyable pace to it), while in this game you constantly have 10 characters interacting, showing their quirks and how special they are and stuff.

It feels like a game made for children (nothing bad to it, but not for me) if it wasn't for the horror side, which is one of the things that feels like parody.
Undertale had that creepy vibes, but I think they were more subtle, while here feels so edgy.

It feels like he gathered all the things people liked most about Undertale and made a game focused on that (characters, creepiness, meta), but it doesn't feel as good probably because everything doesn't melt in a good/genuine way as Undertale.

I know you shouldn't compare this to it but it's hard not to. Besides, if it wasn't for my enjoyment of Undertale, I would have dropped this or never tried it to begin with, and only knowing it's from the same dev as Undertale makes me hope it will get better, which I think at this point is not, for me at least.

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The combat feels more complex but it's just more shallow.
You can basically just "act" with every one of them like in the previous game, just now u have 3 people and not one.

My major issue tho is that, while in Undertale every enemy felt like funny to discover through acting, here they are just empty, not much to say (talking about normal enemies). Besides, in Undertale it was not straightforward how to spare them, here u just have 1 option, come on, is not interesting at all. At most, you can choose if u want to super act with teammates to make it faster.
I'm not sure how people can feel like the combat it's better, maybe because it shows as having more things (like magic) but it's all pointless.

What feels harder is the bullet minigame. I love it and was pretty good at it in Undertale, but here feels like it was way too challenging, just to push you to use heal. In fact, even though I was hit more than Undertale, I think I never really died cause of how easily you can recover.

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As I've already said, the fact that you constantly have a team with you, I was not a fan of it. Too much childish dialogue, romance, quotes, meta, too much all at once, ruining the pace. Don't get me wrong, there are funny things, but it's surrounded by a mountain of cringiness and fan service.

That's another issue I've had with it, it feels too much as a fan service game, which I guess is what fans wanted, but not for me.
Like that feeling when an anime is not good anymore but if u are a fan of it you still keep following it just because u like the characters here and there.

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Chapter 2 felt more enjoyable than chapter 1, despite having even more dialogues, maybe because the Queen was a funny character, probably the only one I truly liked (also a bit of Berdly).
The ending of chapter 2 made my eyes roll tho, yeah it's creepy, we understood. Another kind of thing that makes it feel like a parody/fan game honestly.

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Visually, even though there were better things, I think I liked Undertale more, especially because I liked the black and white style for enemies, and how they were animated which I think was brilliant. Here instead you have normal sprites like in every other game, maybe they were more colorful but felt less original.

The music was nice, nothing to say about it, maybe listening to it again on its own would make me enjoy it even more.

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I have been more critical of this game mostly because I searched for opinions on it that weren't over the top and could not find much, so I felt like giving mine, especially for the ones who felt like me.

At the end of the day, despite all this criticism, I kinda enjoyed the time spent with it, not a lot but enough to keep going.

Even if not as much as Undertale, which got me from the beginning (so no "it's not complete yet" argument), it still has that feeling of unexpectedly funny, and it also feels very creative.

It just loses itself in itself.