Deltarune

[clairebun]

So, Toby Fox just released a spiritual successor to Undertale over the weekend, and it can be found here. Figured I wasn't the only one here who tried it, so I figured I'd open up a thread and see what everyone else thought. Of course, spoiler tags where appropriate.



My thoughts: It's a little short (I easily beat this in five hours), but it's a good weekend spent. Undertale's combat system had a lot of potential due to its SHMUP-esque dodge system, Mario-style action commands, and the novel context-specific ACT function, so I'm really glad that this was expanded on; the multiple party members and TP meter add a lot of much-needed depth to a system that clearly had lots of potential. The game is still pretty easy at its core, but part of that may have to do with the fact that I've already been warmed up to Undertale's style of gameplay.

Spoiler

I've only yet done a pacifist run, and apparently there's a secret boss that I'm missing, so I'm curious to see what other playstyles the game has to offer. It doesn't look like perma-save gimmicks play as big of a role here as it did in Undertale (the game intro certainly seems to alude to that), but maybe I'm just not digging deep enough.

I understand the creator wants to add more chapters to the game; hopefully that comes sooner than later, but I know these things take a while to develop, so I probably shouldn't hold my breath.

 

[toaster]

A delightfully charming game dripping with the power of fluffy boys and mean girls.

I think Toby said he has to form a team or else he doesn't think he could ever finish it, and it'd be the full game for sale or nothing at all, given that one chapter took him 3 years and his upper limit is 7. I hope it works out for him. He's a nice person who's enthralled many people and seems to be a bit nervous with the spotlight.

 

[Lach]

I've never played Undertale, but I picked up Deltarune when it dropped since it was free and I figured I may as well give it a try. I loved it! The visuals are a lot better than Undertale (from what I have seen of Undertale), the characters are sooooo creative and appealing (and they develop in extremely touching ways in the short lifespan of the game), the battle mechanics are really fun (I love that each of the characters have different roles in battle), and the music is godlike. I definitely recommend it even if you've never been exposed to Toby's world before.

Spoiler: Endings

Turns out the story is the same whether you do pacifist or genocide (true genocide is actually impossible; K.Round is the only boss where you NEED to ACT to defeat it, and it shows up twice mandatorily), but the endings are slightly different. I'd say it doesn't really matter which way you go but you'll likely want to play the game again anyway, so it's worth seeing both of them.

Spoiler: Secret Boss

Deltarune isn't much of a challenge, but the secret boss is. I strongly encourage trying it out though, as it really shows the potential of the new battle system more than the campaign enemies do. Took me numerous tries to beat it pacifist-style, and then on my second runthrough where I was a little more prepared I managed to defeat him genocide-style as well. It doesn't change anything except the reward you get from him (which basically doesn't matter considering the rest of the story bosses are cakewalk in comparison), but it was very rewarding to beat him both ways.

 

[clairebun]

Spoiler

The game begins with a well-presented character creation sequence, which, while lacking in appearance options (excusable since it's a demo), immediately sets your expectations high. There are a lot of traits to choose from which seem like they'd influence the game in interesting ways. This is then all immediately discarded, as if to say "you thought i actually put that much work into it? nope."

TBH I feel like this pretty much explains your entire opinion on Deltarune.

I like how you mention "the lack of appearance options is excusable", when the select screen literally has five copies of the same boots for you to choose from. All of the other options are so similar to each other not to matter anyway; that's the point. Your choices in this game don't matter.

It warned you from the offset about this, but as you were playing, you still wanted your choices to matter.

 

[BlueZero4]

Charybdizs linked me to this thread from Discord. I care deeply about Undertale and Deltarune, so I spent a good chunk of time thinking about Deltarune after I first played it.

Here's an excerpt from a document that I wrote to myself about Deltarune:

Spoiler

Deltarune doesn't work for me, and it breaks as a story in a fairly fundamental way.

Undertale had an emotional pressure on every single battle that came from the story setup. The order of the world is “Kill or be killed,” as Flowey says in the opening monologue. The rest of the world reinforces this, because the monsters all want to kill Frisk to steal his soul and take it to Asgore so that they can free the world. These stakes are the backdrop of every single boss fight in the game. The emotional burden on Frisk in the Pacifist run is to prove that he doesn't have to kill anyone and they can all have a happily-ever-after ending.

In Deltarune, not killing anyone is the order of the world. There's no story context as to why Kris would even try killing anyone. There are no stakes to answer through killing. Mercy is just a boring preservation of status quo.

 

[Jellybones]

vague spoilers

It was alright. I think the story setup was generic, disliked the 'creation' at the start because it was a rather flat joke I've definitely seen in joke games before, and I disliked Ralsei a lot because they were unbearably nice at all times.

actual gameplay was nice, felt like more of undertale but i guess i expected more development out of the combat system where it was mostly the same as before since it never really evolves. i got hopeful when susie was actively attempting to kill enemies without your command but that didn't evolve either and was short lasting. Music was good, hard to compare to Undertale though.

ending was unbearably edgy, didn't like it

I enjoyed the actual interactions even though they don't compare to the last game. If he is taking feedback it's a very strong start though and has time to change/improve things. My big concern is combat not evolving at all if this is going to be a longer title, the actual bullet hell parts are good (especially the secret boss) but when it comes to typical encounters with simpler enemies it gets stale fast. I definitely want to find out what happens next.