"Deltarune" Review - His song, continued

Available for: Microsoft Window, MacOS

Reviewed for: MacOS

In 2015, developer Toby Fox released a small indie title called Undertale. Undertale was many things: a truly innovative game that took influences from the bullet hell genre and used its medium as a way to deliver meta gameplay, a beautiful story about the power of mercy and forgiveness that brought audiences of all masculinity securities to tears, and most importantly, my game of the year for 2015. Undertale's impact on the gaming community cannot be understated: this was a game that inspired several bits of animation, fan faction out the wazoo, entire albums worth of covers from the soundtrack, fan theories concerning everything from the character Sans being a metaphor for depression to "every last character in the game is transgender," the whole nine yards. I say all this as a way to let any not-in-the-know readers know how significant it was when, out of the clear blue, Toby Fox released a surprise sequel to Undertale completely for free. Having now played this sequel, Deltarune, I'm here to report...in case you haven't already played it for some reason.

Right off the bat, it should be noted that Deltarune is a first chapter released ahead of a larger product (a demo, to use Fox's own words). With that in mind, there's a lot less story and a lot less gameplay than in Undertale, but I'm going to be judging this as a first bite rather than as a full game (though I'll be treating it as a full game come the end of the year). That being said, the story and gameplay that we have are still pretty darn good. In Deltarune, you play as Kris, a kid living with one of my favorite characters from Undertale: Toriel. At the start of the game, things seem pretty normal. Kris goes to school as kids do, has trouble finding a partner for a group project as some kids do, gets stuck with the delinquent girl, Susie, as a partner, and is asked by his teacher to go with Susie to fetch some chalk from a far-off supply room as some kids do. Once there, however, he (I've been saying he, but like with Chara from Undertale, it's ambiguous) and Susie fall into a dark world, meet a mysterious character named Ralsei, and find out that the three of them are heroes prophesied to restore the balance of light and dark in this world. Given how the game is maybe two hours long, that's all that I'll say in regards to the actual plot. It obviously isn't the tear-jerker that Undertale was, but it's still a touching and comic tale of friendship and self-worth. On the note of comedy, I have to say Deltarune had me laughing out loud quite often. I was a little worried going in that it was just going to be the same jokes over and over again (specifically, the "I have this super powerful thing I'm going to do and when I do it it's going to destroy you oh my goodness you simply won't believe how powerful and awful and devastating this thing is oh the thing exploded well I'll let you off the hook this time" brand of joke), but there's enough variety and enough surprise to make just about every comedic moment land.

When it comes to gameplay, chances are good you're only looking into this game if you played Undertale, so I'll focus on what has changed in Deltarune, rather than explain the basics of Undertale gameplay. Toby Fox could have just gone the easy route and revamped the original combat system, but instead he took that formula and implemented it in a party system. Kris is the only character with the ability to "ACT" (the action that unearths ways to spare enemies), so unless Kris specifically instructs either Susie or Ralsei to ACT, their turns will either be spent dealing damage or running support (using items, casting spells, that kind of thing). Any character can spare an enemy, and Ralsei has an ability that can spare sleeping enemies (they cannot be spared through normal means while sleeping), so every turn is a matter of choosing which character should do what in order to win the fastest. It isn't a complete upheaval of everything Undertale fans expect, but it's different enough that it'll feel fresh to veteran players.
Normally this is where I break off into the tech paragraph, but there isn't enough to support a full paragraph, so we'll shake things up a bit. One thing that I didn't like about Deltarune was its environments, strangely enough. With the exception of the town at the beginning, most of the game world just feels...uninspired. It reuses the color pallet from Undertale, but doesn't really apply it in an interesting way. Another thing I felt was a little uninspired was the bosses. Bosses in this game are either completely random, get re-used more than once, or both, and when compared to the wide myriad of interesting bosses in the previous game, Deltarune is definitely lacking. Even as a two-hour demo, it could have used more variety. On the positive side, Deltarune is a flawless technical package, otherwise. The framerate is consistent (not that it has much to slow it down, but still), the soundtrack is about as good as we've come to expect from Fox, and I never encountered any glitches, crashes, or animation issues.

Deltarune, being a two-hour first chapter of a larger product, is a little difficult to discuss in a way that avoids spoilers and makes for a decent amount of time spent reading. My Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and Red Dead Redemption 2 reviews are going to have to be real whoppers in terms of length in order to keep my tradition of overly long content going. However, Deltarune deserves to be talked about, so even if I can't get a gigantic, self-important review out, I'm content simply spelling out my thoughts on it. In the end, whether or not I recommend this to you depends entirely on whether you played and liked Undertale. Did you like Undertale? Good, this is more of it, and it's just fresh enough to be familiar without being lazy. Did you dislike Undertale? Then you won't enjoy this. Did you not play Undertale? Play Undertale, and if you like it, play this. You can get Deltarune for free at this url, so really, unless you weren't interested in the first place, there's no reason not to get it.

Let us review:
Uninspired environments - 0.4
Lack of boss variety - 0.4

The final score for Deltarune is...



9.2/10 - Fantastic
Excellent work as always, Toby Fox, excellent work as always.