3.5/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Deltarune: Chapter 3.

Merry Deltarune Chapter 3 and 4 release to all my fellow degenerates that celebrate. I'll do a full review when I've finished Chapter 4, but so far, so good. I had a lot of fun with this. But, I'm gonna be a bit mean here, only because this is a chapter of arguably one of my favourite video game series ever. I adore this shit, so think of it like me critiquing the all benevolent father for making wasps while simultaneously understanding that he also made Greggs Sausage Rolls and the sweet smell of petrol. To roll it out in the style of an ol' compliment sandwich, let me say up front: TV land is a brilliant idea, Mr Tenna is a cracking antagonist, and the focus on sewing Mario Party style mini-games into combat is, as expected, absolutely genius. Toby even animated Tenna in the style of that little sun geezer from Mario Party 6, and I fucked with that guy, so he had me hook, line and sinker. But I played the first two chapters again leading into this because it's literally been four years and my brain is shrivelled and old, and something was a little... I dunno... off in comparison. It really feels like a filler chapter, which is honestly fine. Toby has flown down from his perch and blessed us with two chapters in this release, and so I ain't gonna complain that one of them feels like the holiday special you get from every British TV show, where you're just chilling with the characters rather than doing anything particularly meaningful. But Deltarune has been insane at pushing the pace so far. Nothing drags, lingers or feels wasted, and it's constantly walking the line between cracking jokes, teasing the core mysteries we all want solved and telling a heartfelt story in a way few other games can. But this, by comparison, is a lot less tight. It sticks to the gameshow premise almost exclusively and can't do much else because of it. And so it gets locked into goofs and gaffs for most of its runtime, with the characters just sorta chilling and playing video games. And that stuff is very funny. Of course it is. Toby Fox's writing is some of the best in the game, and his comedy somehow lands every time. But after Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 constantly loop that comedy into making you wonder what the fuck is going on in this world, I was a bit like, yeah this is great, but like, can we get moving now? It also doesn't help that it's so rigidly attached to making itself into a quasi-challenge-run that it sucks a lot of the fun out of the gameplay. Deltarune and Undertale work so well because they're games that don't expect you to be perfect. Some attacks are just incredibly hard to avoid, and the game prompts you to be smart with your resources while simultaneously baiting you into gambling with your health to pull off an action when you probably shouldn't. But during this chapter, they put such an emphasis on earning S-ranks, which require you to finish enemies quickly without getting hit... which honestly kinda blows. I like looking for the secrets in Deltarune. I like doing the hidden, lore-heavy bosses. Which means the majority of this chapter was spent sweating my little cheeks off to get that S-rank in both of its BEEFY main game show areas because you need it to access the secret boss (don't worry, no real spoilers here). And even when you do get those S-ranks, and do something beyond that which is agonisingly hard, the secret boss is triply agonisingly hard, to the point where I literally just said, I'm not having fun anymore, and gave up. Doing Jevel in Chapter 1 was challenging, but rewarding, because I felt like I was learning his patterns. Hell, same with Sans in Undertale; hard but very rewarding, largely because Sans beats your ass over a long period of time, but you can make mistakes, recover, and download him. This feels like it's hard just to be like, oooo, you're gonna spend hours trying to beat this. It's wave after wave of crazy fast attacks chained back to back that would be fine if one touch didn't send little toothpaste boy Ralsei to the goddamn Shadow Realm. And, if you'll indulge me firing out a bat signal out to the "I beat it in two tries on Donkey Konga bongos" fedora men on Reddit, I don't want to spend hours doing something that isn't feeding me back a rewarding loop. Its kinda just a tedious chapter in all regards. You aren't getting much story, the focus on perfect combat takes a lot of the wind out of its sails, and it locks the most interesting narrative stuff it does have behind a tunnel of ball-bustingly hard challenges which aren't particularly fun to conquer. But, to close this compliment sandwich, it's Deltarune baby. We've been waiting so long that chilling with these characters again is just so, so nice. Overall, I really can't be too mad. Toby Fox is truly a genius. Through and through, even in what I'd regard as his biggest miss so far, this is absolutely delightful. It may feel like a holiday special up until the last moments, but it's a damn good holiday special. Bring on Chapter 4, man. I'm locked the fuck in. Sans from Undertale. WOOOOOOOO.