I remember sitting in my college’s student center when Deltarune’s first chapter dropped. Having bounced off Undertale years prior, this slice of the game didn’t hold my attention for much longer either. It wasn’t until shortly before the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, nearly seven years later, when the third and fourth of seven planned chapters were set to drop that I gave it another chance. My tastes have changed a lot since then (and I’m a lot less stressed not having to deal with college anymore), and I was looking for something different after a pretty uninteresting year for game releases. I was burnt out, beyond belief, and I needed something new.
I don’t think I gave Toby Fox and his team enough credit. Deltarune is an earnest, heartfelt, wonderfully designed masterpiece of a video game.
In that same breath, Deltarune is a difficult game to talk about. It’s one of those. You know the ones. If there’s anything from the visuals to the music, or even a screenshot of battle UI that interests you, then just go play this game. There’s a certain pacing to this RPG that you just don’t often see in this genre these days. Deltarune is never standing in one place for long. There’s always something new and exciting around the corner. Maybe a new mechanic, or enemy design, or a bombshell story reveal. I was never once bored in my time with Deltarune, and pacing goes a long way for this. Learning about those reveals, the multiple gameplay styles, or the creepy easter eggs for myself fired off every neuron possible. Once you get in tune with the rhythm, the simple act of experiencing new things makes everything a possible spoiler.
The story starts simple, with our young protagonist Kris falling into The Dark World with their classmate Susie. They meet the Dark Prince Ralsei, who tells them that they’re heroes of light foretold in an ancient prophecy. Their journey finds them adventuring through a variety of these Dark Worlds to close them while uncovering the cryptic lore connecting this place and the real world.
Each chapter has its own Dark World to explore, which is how you spend most of the time. You’ll have a section dedicated to exploring Kris’ hometown to learn more about their background and advance the story, but the bulk of your time is spent roaming the purely unique Dark World areas. You’ll find yourself in a stagnant kingdom, a bustling city, a TV gameshow, and a desolate cathedral. They all feel dreamlike in every sense of the world. Even the most brooding places have charming moments of humor, the same way the wackiest places can suddenly find a way to completely unnerve you. The balancing act on Deltarune’s tone as it juggles its large cast is pulled off perfectly.
The biggest reason I think why this grabbed me in ways that Undertale did not is the shift from a single silent protagonist being the focus to an actual three-character-strong party. With this newfound appreciation for Toby’s style, I’ve warmed up to Undertale’s creative choices a lot, but it’s become a game I respect more than I enjoy. Without Susie and Ralsei chiming in constantly at what happens around Kris, I don’t think Deltarune would work. They’re some of the best-written video game characters I’ve seen in years. It’s more than just expertly written and endearing dialogue. Under the large amount of hilarious bits the two get into, you can tell they’re dynamic characters.
Ralsei is your innocent cute boy who wants what’s best for his friends, but clearly doesn’t care. Kris might still be a silent protagonist, but there’s enough hinted at in their past to build a really compelling character. There are justifications for their silence that are not too difficult to reach for, and speak to the overall themes brought up by the narrative. There’s a deliberate distinction being made as well between the choices you want them to make and the choices they would want to make, and I love when games are willing to examine that kind of relationship we have with video games. Susie, however, is my favorite. She starts as your typical aggressive problem child, but she warms up to this power and spends the four chapters constantly growing as a person. All of them got me deeply emotional at least several times across my time playing.
That emotional honesty and earnest reflection would be nothing without the comedy that so masterfully got me to love these three to begin with. Genuinely hilarious bits like getting Kris to eat moss (telling the party that they like eating moss, which they remember), Susie’s friendship with another Dark World Prince named Lancer, or the ads for Ralsei plush got me rooting for this ragtag group quickly. The great thing is that the supporting cast is equally hilarious and has just as much going on.
Morality plays a big role in the game, even if we don’t have a full grasp of how far they’ll take it. According to Toby Fox, the game will only have a single ending, but it’s clear that the choices you make are being tracked. Battles can be handled in a pacifist or violent manner, hinging on whether you want to spare or kill enemies in the Dark World. In addition to this, there’s a whole other route of the game hidden depending on your actions, so it’s clear that this is best described as deceptively linear.
In battle, the game mixes turn-based combat for attacking and bullet hell for defense. Attacking gives you a window to time a follow-up button press for deciding how effective your attack will be. When it’s the enemies’ turn, your targeted party member’s SOUL is shown as a heart, and you need to move it around to dodge enemy attack patterns. I’ve never been a fan of bullet hell, but this made me a convert. If you play the game as a pacifist, you have ACTs you can use to trigger minigames to slowly whittle down an enemy until you can pacify them. Bullet hell becomes something you need to master, then, as you’ll be spending a lot of your time playing defensively. Extra minigames have been added to keep things fresh as you try to deal with normal enemies and bosses non-lethally, keeping the player engaged without losing too much of the intent of pacifism. Tied to this is a theme the game gets at pretty early: There are some people you just can’t talk down. The implications of that idea have only been felt in small ways, and I cannot wait to see this further explored in later chapters.
I had initially approached Deltarune to play it violently to just mindlessly enjoy a cool turn-based RPG, but it took no time at all for me to tune into the appeal of playing this game as a pacifist. You aren’t killing monsters in this game (yet?), but the game makes a strong case to care about the residents of each world. By sparing a certain number of enemies of a specific type in the Dark World of a chapter, they’ll show up in your home base in the next chapter. There’s so much charming extra dialogue between you, them, and maybe even Dark World denizens of previous chapters. The town is a constant reminder that your actions do affect the world around you in a tangible way.
But regardless of gameplay details, I think there’s a lot of wonderful dialogue written when you play as a pacifist. Your ACTs might trigger fun minigames to play, but enemies and bosses you attempt to pacify will have to work through that change of heart during the battle. You get to see them come around slowly, and there are even clever puzzles to solve here and there that make it feel like you’re making an actual attempt to change their mind yourself. If you’re playing this for the character interactions, this seems to be the ideal way to play at the moment.
No Deltarune review would or should be able to exist without mentioning the music. Its quality can’t really be described; you really do just have to hear it. What I think is much easier to praise is just how each chapter’s music is able to improve over the previous. You’re actually getting to listen to Toby Fox (who served as composer in addition to lead developing, writing, and directing the game) get better at making music. The ones worth highlighting for each chapter have to be the secret boss themes, which are worth hunting down just to hear these songs. Sure, you could just look them up online, but there’s something special about them as you spend possibly hours fighting some of the hardest challenges available in this game.
Outside of the battles, you have puzzles to solve. That’s not just saying that there are puzzles in the game. Of course there are, it’s an RPG. What I’m getting at more though, is that it feels like the entire game is a puzzle you are interacting with. Every single part from secret hunting, progression, dialogue, and battles feels like a constant puzzle. There’s always a sense that something is hiding in plain sight. Once you find your first secret naturally, the entire game opens up wide to you.
The gameplay is more than just a battle system and top-down exploration of 2D environments, as there’s an almost constant set of minigames and gameplay diversions to keep you entertained. Chapter 3 introducing a rhythm game and Chapter 4 introducing time-sensitive platforming (both of these were in the trailer, don’t worry) is just the tip of the lavishly produced iceberg. For Switch 2 users, you even get a whole unique minigame to find that uses the system’s double mouse mode in a hilarious way. There’s just so much here to keep the gameplay experience fresh, and it’ll often iterate on ideas or move on just as they might threaten to overstay their welcome.
While I won’t spoil anything in the story itself, from where Chapter 4 leaves off, it is very clear this is only the halfway point of the story. We truly don’t know where this is going, and it’ll be a few more years until it’s all concluded. There’s so much buzz and excitement to be had in the year-long wait for the next chapter, and this speculative period is one of the reasons the game is so memorable to me. The game itself will continue to be great to anyone picking it up, but being forced to let each chapter linger with me is a blessing in disguise.
I have so many emotions brewing in my brain since finishing Chapter 4 about where this story could be going. There’s a lot we don’t know yet, but from the bits shown, it seems that thematically Deltarune is aiming to examine the effects disinterested parents can have on their children. All of the key cast have rocky relationships with their parents, clearly impacting each of them. It’s genuinely fascinating, and teeters towards harrowing, how accurately Toby Fox depicts the various relationships between the kids and their parents. To get me this emotional by the time I finished up, in a game with so many emotional peaks, had me at a loss for words.
To spare you a therapy session, this is a topic I care quite a lot about. When media approaches these serious storylines it is always worrying, because so often they just don’t have the emotional maturity to say anything truly meaningful. I don’t know (and don’t wish to assume) the details about Toby’s homelife growing up, but it’s clear he’s deeply understanding and empathetic towards kids who feel like they have no agency in their lives. There’s a deeply uncomfortable frustration just boiling to the surface that I’ve felt before. That you’re trapped and no one seems to care. This is the emotional core to the entire story, and it has me absolutely gripped so far. Whatever comes now, I’ll be here eagerly waiting.
Whether you wait for it to all be done or play the chapters as they release, Deltarune needs to be on your radar. The pure joy and passion this team has for the way the entire video game medium can tell stories radiates from every pixel. You need to have your eyes on Deltarune, because I truly believe that with the way it’s going, this will be a once-in-a-lifetime video game. I’m glad that by just making a few fundamental tweaks to the ideas Undertale had, Deltarune presents Toby Fox’s ideas at their absolute best.
Theory crafting about Undertale characters or deeplore is not why I’m invested in Deltarune. “Gaster” is not why I sit here apologizing to a man who might never read this, or care that Some Guy didn’t love an old RPG Maker game beloved by millions. Deltarune won me over because it’s complex and heart-wrenchingly earnest. This earnestness is what keeps people coming back for more. The art, music, and gameplay simply serve this earnest passion for video games. This game burns bright because of that passion, and it’s something you need to see to believe.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review copy provided by 8-4
