DELTARUNE Review

Chapters 3 and 4 of DELTARUNE  were finally released on the 4th of June this year, after an almost four-year wait since Chapter 2 was released in September 2021, and it has been almost seven years since Chapter 1 arrived in October 2018. To put it into perspective, I was 12 YEARS OLD when the first Chapter came out, and I am now an adult with a full-time job. After waiting for so long, I was very excited to try out this new title from tobyfox.

Surprising absolutely nobody, the story is super confusing, has a lot of still-unanswered mysteries, and still remains one of the best things I’ve ever experienced in a videogame. At the beginning, a mysterious voice asks you to create a Vessel: its body and traits, such as its favourite blood type! At the end of the sequence, you give the Vessel a name, as well as one for “its creator”, the player. But then, a second voice comes and says that the Vessel will be discarded, telling you no one can choose who they are in this world, setting a tone of your choices not mattering for this game, opposite to Undertale.

Once that sequence ends, the actual Chapter 1 begins, and you wake up in the body of a non-binary teenager named Kris Dreemur. Yes, Dreemur as in Toriel and Asgore Dreemur, Asriel and Chara’s parents from Undertale. Though don’t be confused, the story is neither a sequel nor a prequel to Undertale: it is a completely different continuation. Kris has a very mundane day-to-day life being late to highschool and getting bullied by a monster girl called Susie. Coincidentally, when the teacher realises she’s missing a chalk, she asks Kris and Susie to go get one from the closet together. After a fun cutscene of Susie sparing Kris for “having a nice mother”, we go together with Susie to get some chalk from the school closet, but before we manage to leave, the exit closes, and the floor disappears, making us fall down into the dark. 

This is where the true game opens us and we meet Ralsei, the third member of the party — who is a prince born of this realm — and he explains some things: we are in what is called a Dark World, which is created by a Dark Fountain. The people born from the Dark Worlds are called Darkners, while people from the regular world (the Light World) are called Lightners. Most importantly, if the balance of Light and Dark shifts too much towards the dark, a “terrible calamity will occur”, and there is a prophecy of three heroes saving the world: a human, a monster, and a prince from the dark. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we are then told that the balance started to shift towards the dark because of another fountain, which is controlled by the evil King, was opened right next to the main one.

Throughout Chapter 1, we meet some more important characters, such as Lancer, King’s son, Seam, the Shopkeeper, and a few others that are less so. This Chapter also does a lot of character building for Susie — where she originally is a bully who picks on Kris, and then, in the Dark World she immediately attacks everything and never tries to act in order to spare enemies; by the end of the Chapter, after fomenting a very close friendship with Lancer, she becomes a kinder person and considers Kris and Ralsei her friends. At the very end, King is defeated, and the Lightners have to close the fountain. Now, there are a few important missable things here: some dialogue with Seam about a Strange Knight who opened the fountain, and an entire secret boss fight.

The regular way fights work is the same as Undertale: in each encounter, you are a soul in a box in the middle of the screen and have to dodge attacks thrown at you by the enemy until their turn ends, at which point you can choose whether to FIGHT, ACT, use an ITEM, or SPARE. The gameplay of this Chapter is the simplest, with only Kris being able to ACT and basically no route deviation, but it’s short, so it doesn't ever get boring, really. As with all tobyfox games, the music is absolutely amazing throughout the entire experience. So overall, Chapter 1 is good, and being very card-themed, it sets the stage for the next Chapters to have a cool theme too.

Well, then, we get to Chapter 2, which is my favourite: it is based on the internet and mostly referred to as the Cyber World. This time, the main antagonist is a computer with the serial number Q5U4EX7YY2E9N, or Queen for short. Unlike King, who was bitter about being abandoned by the Lightners, she just wants them to be happy, and she thinks a world completely in dark and ruled by her will do so. However, near the end, Ralsei talks about why it’s bad and explains some more about the calamity spoken about in the Prophecy.

This Chapter also introduces a new mechanic — your choices mattering. Since in this one a new character is introduced to the party, Noelle, I won’t spoil how, but doing some very specific actions when she’s in the party causes a very different and considerably darker route to take place, changing basically everything. When it comes to gameplay, this is much better than the previous Chapter, with ACTing becoming something other party members can do, another entire route for the story, overall fun mechanics, and a special boss fight that is not the standard “dodge attacks with the soul” you had previously. I absolutely adore the music, and Queen’s theme — particularly the one during her fight titled “Attack of the Killer Queen” — is one of the best things I’ve listened to in a long while. Overall, this Chapter is absolutely amazing and, as I said, my favourite so far, especially because of how likeable the important characters are.

Now, Chapter 3 is next, and right at its beginning, you get a lot of lore and further explanation about what Darkners are. The rest of the Chapter contains a lot more info about who the Knight is, some info about Kris and their relationship with us and our actions, and some more things related to the Weird Route of Chapter 2, but this time, no secret boss that talks about freedom (I mean, it’s more complicated than that, but yeah). It’s only around the end of the Chapter that the story really gets interesting, though, so it’s definitely weak on this end.

Now, the gameplay is even worse — a large section is just a simulator of a classic RPG, which is a genre I despise. It’s just a lot of boring walking and interacting with things, trying to find keys to progress the story, more so than actually doing something fun. Even the music, which I can usually only praise in tobyfox’s titles, is subpar in this Chapter. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some beautiful tracks here, but not a lot, and even those are nowhere near as good as what I’ve come to expect from Toby. I also don’t like the characters in this Chapter at all; I think the main antagonist, Tenna, is super annoying and obnoxious, so if the previous two were easily good enough to get DELTARUNE into my top five games, this takes it right out of that list.

But hey, there’s Chapter 4, too, and it really improves DELTARUNE. After something happens at the end of the previous one, we want to get into the town’s Shelter, but it’s locked with three codes, the first one of which has the symbol of the town’s mayor, Noelle’s mother. Going to the Church, we learn more about the town’s religion — which, turns out, ties to the Prophecy. Eventually, we figure out we need to go to Noelle’s house, where Susie tells Kris that she will distract Noelle, whilst they go looking for the code somewhere. This Chapter’s dark world takes place in the town’s Church, where a lot of Prophecy-related information is revealed, such as the Prophecy being considerably darker and more dangerous than Ralsei first told us.

I cannot say who the main antagonist of this Chapter is without it being a major spoiler, but it is interesting. In this one, there is also a secret boss, who talks about freedom as something we can attain easily if we just act correctly and is overall just a really cool guy. Now, not only is the gameplay in this Chapter really exciting, with completely new mechanics for both regular fights and entire sections that are different, but there are straight-up full-on animation sequences here, which are beautiful. The music is again really good, with some of the tracks having been stuck in my head for multiple days afterwards. Overall, while this is not my favourite Chapter, it’s the best objectively, and it left me wanting more so badly.

So, in the end, even though DELTARUNE is not fully released yet, with Chapters 5–7 still upcoming, you should absolutely play it. Not only do you get the masterpiece that already exists, but all the future Chapters will come as free updates, meaning you pay £20.99 now for the existing content (which is already entirely worth it) and get the rest of the story as it comes out for no additional cost. And even though I talked a lot about the story here, this review barely scratches the surface of how deep and connected everything in the lore is. The only real caveat I can think of is Chapter 3, which has a lot of boring segments, but it’s not long at all compared to the rest of the game. I absolutely recommend DELTARUNE for everyone who likes a good, and I mean really good, story — and even if you don’t, the gameplay is still pretty nice, a combination of RPG and a bullet hell.