5/5 ★ – EthanTheHuman's review of Deltarune: Chapter 3.

I'm going to be generous with this review because it came out at the same time as chapter 4. If this was released by itself, it'd probably be maybe just a 4, but it contrasts so well with chapter 4, you can tell they were made to release together. Chapter 3 is a shorter chapter with even lower stakes. I was already getting a little bit of an iffy feeling about the overall stories in chapter 1 and 2 about how I didn't quite feel the same urgency and sure, I'll even say the same aura as Undertale. And Chapter 3 being a little happy cheerful adventure in Kris' living room just furthered that even more, but it was all so sweet and charming that it was making me feel that the low stakes adventure was actually going to be ok! It wasn't going to be this epic grand world-ending plot I was expecting, and was instead just going to be a cute little slice of life of Kris and Susie playing make believe with random stuff they find around the time and this chapter really delivered on that end with Mr (Ant) Tenna as the main villain. My complaints about linear design were thrown out the window as this short chapter includes way more exploration and variety than the previous 2 chapters combined. The game was suddenly zelda, a beat em up, a rhythm game, an nes-styled cooking game where you dodge fire, and basically just warioware, and so many other things along with its amazing story and characters. I was having a blast! AND THEN THE TWIST HAPPENED?? The final boss encounter was a complete shock to my system. It sobered me instantly. It gave me goosebumps, the game really was playing me all along. It put me in a false sense of security just to take it away from me in its final moments of chapter 3 and it had me sooooo shook. The way the narrative of this game played with my emotions so well was honestly so crazy for a weird furry homestuck touhou dating game, and now I'm COOKED because this had me so invested that I basically had to play chapter 4 IMMEDIATELY because WHAT THE FUCK This chapter probably deserves a 6 star review but I'll remove a star because of the secret final boss of the chapter. In other chapters I was able to just load a save and have everything I needed to go and find the secret boss, but in this one I'm going to need to replay the entire chapter again to get to the secret boss stuff so that's a bummer. anyway yeah good game!