LogFAQs > #968070912

Also in honor of recent announcements:

#12: Deltarune Chapter 2

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/4/1/AAA-H0AADrb1.jpg

I, as well as the rest of the entire world, was caught completely off guard by the shadow release of Deltarune Chapter 1 in 2018. The notion that the mysteriously named SURVEY_PROGRAM could possibly be an hours-long peek into Undertale's sequel wasn't something that really even crossed my mind when I started playing it, and I didn't know what to make of it at the end. It was great, almost enough content to make for a full game in its own right, but I didn't really know what to do with it for my game of the decade ranking. Was this just a demo, with the full game to come sometime in the 20's? Was it going to be episodic? At the time, I figured I would just wait and talk about it in the "Games of the 20's" ranking, but it's clearly going to be a little while longer, as it turned out to be episodic. I think with that list, I wanted a more definitive ranking that didn't include things like episodes or early access, but with this ranking, I'm just ranking all the game experiences I had the past couple of years, so I'm more open to talking about episodic things. And I think that Deltarune Chapter 2, much like 1, is worth talking about in its own right.

Like the phenomenon of Undertale before it, each episodic release of Deltarune is a weird little gift from Toby Fox that shows up once every three years. As games, they're charming enough on their own, of course, but what's really interesting to me about them is how big of a cultural event they are. The moment they spring up, everyone in all of my circles and all over the places I frequent on the internet has also played it, and a whole new set of characters and memes are born into our collective consciousness. You wake up one day, and BAM suddenly Spamton and Kris Get The Banana are things we have now.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/4/2/AAA-H0AADrb2.jpg

Chapter 2 dropped sometime in late 2021, around the time I had almost started to forget that Deltarune was a thing. I've been pretty patient and the wait is rewarding; it's exciting to go on new adventures with old friends like this. The whole cast of this game is great and it's comforting to see them all again for another few hours. I think there's a great deal of benefit to waiting all this time; I feel like I've only grown fonder of these characters over time and there's something strangely nostalgic about having to have waited 3 years for an update.

All in all, it's a damn good update. I was a little worried after the injury and the burnout that he was suffering, but Toby hasn't lost a step at all. All of the new characters and dialog and wacky events are as good as the first episode, each one a strange little gift to get to unwrap. These games never get old because of their pacing; nothing ever goes on for too long to get boring, there's always some kind of new surprise just around the corner. Here, you meet a new villain, then suddenly you're playing a Punch-Out game against her, then you're running around in a cyberworld, riding some teacups, fighting some boombox guys, driving cars, meeting some kind of weird salesperson gremlin, playing a weird strategy game in a tunnel of love ride on a river of acid, that kind of thing. It's all great. I love this stupid game.

I love the cast. Susie and Ralsei are so great that it makes playing Undertale with no party members feel strangely empty. My wish of getting more Noelle in this chapter came true; I didn't wish for more Berdly but I'm glad we also got more of him. The Queen comes in with a sort of energy that Toby Fox just KNOWS is gonna land, and he's absolutely right. Spamton is the weirdest fucking character in any of these games yet and he's perfect, somehow. All of the bit characters are great. Cute, fun characters are the fastest way to win my heart and Deltarune delivers.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/4/3/AAA-H0AADrb3.jpg

It's also great to see this game continue to build on the improved battle system that this game sports. While Undertale feels largely like a sort of RPG-themed bullet hell game, Deltarune has more of an actual RPG skeleton to it and I think that does make the game more entertaining in a lot of ways. There's a little bit of actual tactical meat to the fights, and the bosses, especially the 'secret' boss, are really great in this chapter. It's pretty easy, but just challenging enough to be fun, which is right where I want the difficulty curve of this game to be. It shouldn't be super hard; just a fun romp that occasionally makes me feel like i kick ass.

I feel like I'm at a loss to say much more about it. I just love these damn things so much. Undertale was one of my favorite games of the last decade because of its humor and its charm and its warmth and its incredibly clever deconstructions and subversions. Deltarune, so far, has hit all of the same notes, and some of the 'secret' stuff in this chapter, as well as its ending, promises some more crazy shit in the future. I don't know if this game will ever be as good as Undertale, but Undertale itself didn't become a true masterpiece for me until its final act, and we haven't gotten there with Deltarune yet, so who knows? It's really hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice, and part of what made Undertale so great was its novelty. Deltarune can never be the first game to do what it does like Undertale did, and I think Toby Fox knows that, so I'm excited to see how he tries to top himself. I don't want to get into spoiler tags today, but I think Chapter 2 showed just a little bit of how he might do that, and I'm excited.

I await future updates for this game patiently but excitedly. We just got a little update about the game the other day, and it sounds like things are progressing smoothly; I bet I'll be talking about the next few chapters the next time I decide to do one of these lists, and I'll be interested to see where the full game lands once it's time for me to sum up my Games of the 20's (which is gonna be a hella stacked list if 2020-2021 is any indicator). Can't wait to see what the next weird little gift that Toby Fox gives us is like.

Next up: The OLDEST game on my list. It's older than 2015. There is a close-but-incorrect answer that I think someone might give if they try to guess what this is.