With the release of Chapter 5, we’ve updated this Deltarune review with our impressions of the new content – scroll down and you’ll find them above the conclusion.
It’s going on seven years since the first chapter of Deltarune became available and after the release of Chapter 2 in 2021, we’re now finally past the halfway mark of the story with the simultaneous release of Chapters 3 and 4. To mark the occasion, Toby Fox has decided to give the game an ‘official’ paid release, including all chapters to this point, plus the final upcoming chapters whenever they complete development, and it feels like it was the right choice to do so now. Deltarune is an incomplete, but ultimately satisfying experience that already feels like a worthy successor to the legacy of Undertale.
The story follows Kris, a quiet teenager living in a small town populated mostly with monsters, and their adventures in a mysterious Dark World they discover in the hall closet at their school with their friend, Susie. The two are told that they are prophesied heroes who will restore balance between the Light and Dark Worlds, and they soon learn that their main means of doing so is through finding and sealing various Dark Fountains that act as a sort of source of power for the Dark World. Joined by Ralsei, a native of the Dark World, the heroes set out to battle the forces defending the Dark Fountains and ultimately fulfil their destiny as the prophecy lays out.
It may sound like a rather clichéd premise, but Deltarune excels in defying expectations and keeping the player guessing. This is the kind of narrative that you quickly realise isn’t actually as simple as it initially appears, but answers about what’s really going on are trickled out slowly while new mysteries are continually introduced left and right.
Perhaps best of all, a sardonic and satirical sense of humour permeates the writing, keeping the tone lighthearted and airy until another sudden heel-turn where things get real fast. And while the jury’s still out on how this is all going to resolve, the latest chapters start building some welcome momentum as this narrative hurtles towards a conclusion.
Gameplay could be most closely described as that of a JRPG, but Deltarune bucks genre trends with some remarkably interesting and fresh gameplay ideas. For example, the turn-based battles you find yourself often drawn into not only include rhythm-based elements (like you’d find in something like Super Mario RPG) but also include creative bullet hell segments when your party is on the defensive. Here, you must manoeuvre a heart around a small box as enemy attacks come at it from all sides.
Then there’s the matter of how pacifism is still pitched as a legitimate response to enemy encounters—you can choose to spare your foes instead of killing them, and this can even have later implications for the story.
It may be borrowing a lot of its combat elements from Undertale, but Deltarune generally does a great job of giving you plenty of combat agency while keeping you on your toes in those bullet hell sections. This certainly isn’t the kind of RPG that you mostly do on autopilot, dealing with the same enemies in the same boring ways, and the dynamism in battles is what helps the experience stay interesting and innovative.
To keep things fresh, Chapter 3 also introduces some minigames that totally change up the gameplay. Here, you can do arcade-like activities like dishing out food to hungry customers, defending a statue from waves of attacking foes, or exploring a brief and weird version of a top-down Zelda game. Though Chapter 3 itself had some mild pacing issues, I really enjoyed the gameplay gimmicks that it explored and appreciated the variety that it injected into the overall loop.
Visually, Deltarune employs a very basic, but charming art style that ultimately goes for a lot of sight gags that play into the comical nature of most of the writing. My particular favourite instance was Tenna, a game show host with a TV for a head introduced in Chapter 3. Not only do most of his sentences contain phrases written in WordArt and accompanied by goofy sounds, but the character himself is drawn and animated in a completely different style from the world around him that intentionally clashes with everything else. Deltarune doesn’t necessarily impress with its otherwise simple visuals, but there’s something about its rudimentary spritework that fits well with the script’s often silly tone.
As for the soundtrack, Toby Fox proves himself yet again to be a master of creating atmosphere. Whether it be the eerie ambient sounds that play when exploring a desolate hallway in the dark world or the intense chiptune tracks that punctuate many of the battle sequences, this is an effective soundtrack that manages to be both deep and varied.
Though it now feels like Deltarune has finally begun to establish for itself a more distinct identity from its predecessor with the addition of Chapters 3 and 4, the biggest issue with it at the time of writing is simply that it clearly isn’t yet a finished game. It feels like the available content certainly justifies the sticker price now being charged, yet there’s a lingering feeling of dissatisfaction upon reaching the end of Chapter 4 and recognising that it’ll be who knows how long before the concluding chapter is finally completed.
I wouldn’t say this is reason enough to skip playing Deltarune now, but just keep in mind that it’ll probably be years before development finally reaches completion.
As for the Switch 2 port itself, one of the key headlining features is a special room that allows you to utilize the new Mouse Mode for some cute mini-games. Here, you save a couple “Maice” from a cat statue, eventually leading to a battle with a cat in which you use both Joy-Con to move the pointers around to do things like dodge attacks or play a version of Simon Says.
It’s not particularly innovative or game-changing, but this special room is a fun little distraction and it gives the Switch 2 version a bit of distinctive content to differentiate it from other versions.
Those of you who have played the earlier chapters on the original Switch will be pleased to note, too, that there’s a built-in save import feature for this full release of Deltarune. If your old save data is loaded on the same console as Deltarune when you first boot it up, this will be automatically detected and you’ll be given the option to carry over your save data for chapters three and four. Alternatively, you can simply start fresh and play any of the four available chapters in any order you want.
I appreciated that Toby Fox thought to include this feature, as it ensures the transition to new hardware and the ‘full’ release goes as smoothly as possible.
Chapter 5 Impressions (June 2026)
With the release of Chapter 5, we now have all the content that was initially planned for the launch of the paid game last year, and while it’s a bit underwhelming as a standalone chapter, there’s still plenty to love about this new addition.
From a storytelling perspective, Chapter 5 is a bit of a mixed bag. (Note. Skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want any details whatsoever.) It initially begins with Susie and Noelle going on a cute date together at Hometown Festival, then things ratchet up a notch when Asgore gets pulled into the Dark World and the party has to go after him.
On one hand, the ensuing five or so hours lead to some excellent character development and introduce some interesting details that will likely become more critical as the ongoing mystery unfolds. On the other, the overarching plot is increasingly meandering as it juggles a lot of disparate threads that may or may not all resolve cleanly when the whole thing wraps up.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call this chapter ‘filler’, but it doesn’t answer nearly as many questions or further the overall storyline as much as it should, given that there are now two episodes left for this project. All the same, it’s just as goofy, charming, and occasionally dark as you’d hope—the writing quality has stayed satisfyingly consistent.
From a gameplay perspective, the big gimmick here is that various sections introduce an interesting 2D platforming gameplay style that turns the game into a bit more of an Ys-esque action RPG. Taking a page from the books of games like FEZ and Super Paper Mario, various statues you interact with will shift the camera perspective slightly and allow the party to overcome obstacles that they couldn’t from the top-down perspective. The controls feel satisfyingly tight and the action combat for these sections is engaging, playing out a bit like Hollow Knight with bullet-hell elements.
Hopefully the future chapters will incorporate this new system in some fashion, as it meaningfully mixes up the gameplay without deviating too strongly from what makes this Deltarune. Even if it’s just a one-off concept, I think the platforming helps Chapter 5 feel a bit stronger—what it lacks in storytelling heft, it more than makes up for in simple fun.
It’s tough to say exactly where this lands in the ranking of all chapters released for Deltarune so far, but it’s somewhere in the middle of the pack. Some cool new gameplay ideas and some underwhelming narrative decisions balance each other out, making for a good but not great addition.
Deltarune is a game that can feel odd to recommend, as it’s both difficult to convey in words what makes this game feel special and… well, it still isn’t done. Its goofy and subversive narrative, innovative battle mechanics, and killer soundtrack all combine to make this one worth the purchase in its current state, even if it is unfinished and the visuals still feel a tad underwhelming.
At any rate, I’d suggest you pick this one up; there’s no telling when the story will finally wrap up, but the release of the latest chapters has done a lot to round out what once felt a little anaemic.
