DELTARUNE

On Halloween, the creator of the 2015 indie game, Undertale, released a free demo for what appears to be a spiritual successor. It's labeled as chapter 1 and presumably, Toby Fox has plans to develop a full game out of this. To me, what's been released feels like a complete experience in and of itself. The scope is very small, there's only three areas (plains, forest, castle), and a tease at the end for things to come, but there's also a final boss, a post-game secret boss, a complete character arc, a sense of ending, and it feels like we experience the culmination of the mechanics introduced. So I'd really like to talk about what's been released as its own standalone thing as I've really enjoyed it.

Undertale received a lot of fanfare, and I could see where it was coming from. It had a lot of charm and a unique feeling. That's all still here. I'd say Fox has been very successful in creating an identity for the Undertale branding. If someone can look at an aesthetic and say "that looks like Undertale!" then you've succeeded at that. My feelings on it were the same as my thoughts on Earthbound - the game that inspired it: as an experience, it's wonderful, as an actual game... not so much. The big thing was the mercy mechanic and how you didn't have to fight but could pacify enemies to end encounters instead. This got a lot of praise, but it didn't really change much under the hood. Typically, you would receive some encounter-specific commands under the ACT menu and would use these to pacify foes. Usually, only one of these was effective at convincing the foe not to fight. So if you had two ACT commands in a battle, you either picked the right one and pacified the foe on the next turn or you picked the wrong one and the battle took more turns to complete. This wasn't at all different than having two elemental spells and ending battles sooner if you chose the enemy's weakness. The game mechanics as a set of abstract functions and rules were no different than the most banal menu based combat systems, Undertale just changed the representation of the abstractions. In short, I never got as into the game as others did. Charming experience, mediocre game.

Deltrune, on the other hand, is a good game on top of having all the charm and atmosphere of its predecessor. The shift is like going from Dragon Warrior to Dragon Warrior II. There's party members now! There's also spells and a resource gauge that you build up through various actions. Each of the three characters have their own set of commands and serve a unique function. Your main character has the ACT command and offers context sensitive actions to pacify opponents just like the original game, and then there's a wizard character who has access to support magic that consumes tension points on use. There's a new mechanic in place so that enemies can become tired through certain actions. The wizard's first spell spares tired enemies. Now at first, this doesn't look any different then pacifying enemies normally, but it offers another method to peacefully remove foes from battle that can be quicker but also costs a resource that you have to manage. That's the first thing I noticed that makes Deltrarune different - you actually have interesting stuff and there's different solutions. In Undertale, you either killed the foe or spared them by doing the one specific action to pacify them, Deltarune gives you a few more options to achieve one goal. Sparing tired foes didn't happen to often during my playthrough, but it's a step up.

Now, let's talk about the third party member. At first you don't control her, instead you have to work around her. She's blood thirsty, ignores your commands, and always attacks enemies. Not good if you're doing a pacifist run, however, you can warn enemies about her! At the start of certain battles, you'll need to take a round to warn the opponents and then they'll be able to dodge her attacks while the other two work on pacifying them. I was impressed but after a few battles I began to feel tired of having to warn on the first turn of every battle and then - what do you know - she gets tired herself of hanging around us heroes and leaves. I'm back to two party members for a good stretch and then, once I'm starting to get tired of the way they work together, I get that third party member back with a new outlook as a full playable character that I can now issue commands to.

This is the thing that made see Deltarune as not just good compared to Undertale, but a good RPG in general. It consistently changes up the combat situations so that nothing overstays its welcome. Just when you start getting tired of something - the situation changes and you have to get a grip on new strategies to deal with whatever comes your way.

This applies to enemy encounters as well. There aren't many and they go by quickly. In Undertale, you might find the ACT command that pacifies the enemy and then keep doing that each turn until their name turns yellow and then take another turn to spare them. In Deltarune, if you use the correct ACT command, then that's enough. You only need to do the action once per enemy to get its name to turn yellow and all your party members can spare foes so basically you'll usually be able to pacify and spare an opponent in a single round. Enemy formations and choosing which enemy to target is nice as well. There are support enemies who are easily identified by heart-themed clothing and staffs. There attacks are easier to avoid then others so try pacifying more fearsome stuff first and save support enemies for last. Nothing too complex, but a nice touch and I like using an enemy's look to telegraph something like that to the player.

Then there are Chrono Trigger inspired duel techs and surprisingly, they work better than Chrono Trigger. Yes, CT is one of my all time favorites but its cracks have shown over the years. My biggest gripe with CT is how duel techs to the same amount of damage as just having the characters attack individually. The first boss, Yakra, teaches you the utility of this. It counterattacks everything so it's necessary to dish out the same amount of damage in the least amount of hits to avoid the counterattacks. But after the Yakra battle, this rarely ever comes up again. Deltrarune's duel techs aren't about damage but rather access to more effective context-sensitive ACT commands. These are typically versions of the commands that will target all enemies instead of just one. Very useful to warn all enemies at once that your berserker is about to dish out some damage.

A lot of little things come together to make Deltrarune feel like a full game to me in a way that Undertale never did. It offers multiple solutions to spare enemies, a varied toolbox of status effects and non-damaging commands that all feel useful and I never feel like I'm wasting turns, an element of resource management (and if you suck at the bullet hell segments like I do, managing TP for healing becomes super important), and nothing overstays its welcome, once you figure out a solution, you've already proven to the game that you've solved the problem and it gives you new stuff instead of making you solve the same puzzle a million more times. There's a decent number of ways to interact with enemies and work both with and around your own party members so that it never feels like I'm just mashing the same command over and over. It's a massive step up from Undertale and I'm excited to see where it goes. I thoroughly enjoyed Deltarune, not just as a spin off to Undertale, or as a demo of an eventual game, but as a good game in its own right. I would high recommend it.

Is anyone on here playing it or interested in doing so? Please, share your thoughts!