Deltarune Review (SneggeS)
With the cultural phenomenon UNDERTALE as it's spiritual predecessor, for a long time it felt like DELTARUNE had impossibly big shoes to fill. With the release of Chapter 3 and 4, I can now confidently say that DELTARUNE not only meets these expectations, but it some cases even manages to exceed them.
Starting with the art style, it is what you've come to expect from Toby Fox and the team behind DELTARUNE.
The 16-Bit artstyle is plain beautiful, the sprites + their animations are gorgeous and hand-made, the setpieces are varied and the small details show the love that has been put into even the smallest text box.
Despite having (close to) no voice acting, the game manages to be astonishingly expressive, for example making the letters of a character's dialogue shake subtly to suggest fear. Little details such as this, the aforementioned gorgeous sprites and the charming dialogue are where DELTARUNE truly manages to immerse and engage the player.
As to story and overall lore of the game, it's hard to give a definitive rating here as the game and therefore the story aren't finished yet. Without going into spoilers, a lot of things still remain unanswered after Chapter 4 that leave me interested as to how it'll all fit together in the end.
Judging from what is available now, DELTARUNE's writing really excels on a moment-to-moment basis in the different situations the group finds themselves in. As for the whole story long term, the writing so far is pretty good and I'm excited to see how it continues.
Regarding gameplay, I'll have to admit I was doubtful whether DELTARUNE would be able to keep the "Touhou-esque" JRPG combat fresh enough after the creativity that UNDERTALE showed when it comes to combat.
Again, I was wrong. Though Chapter 1 and 2 already always found a way to keep the different enemies and combat in general fresh, Ch. 3 and 4 manage to exceed even that. Without exaggeration, EVERY SINGLE different enemy fight's completely differently, requiring you to do completely different things.
It's hard to describe it further without getting into mild spoilers, so I'll leave it at that.
Regarding the OST and Music of the game, I don't think anything needs to be said. The Soundtrack is an absolute masterpiece and almost every track WILL manage to burn itself into your frontal cortex.
Overall, Chapters 1-4 of DELTARUNE convinced me that the game isn't barely a sequel or spin-off with a similar scope to UNDERTALE but a LOT bigger, not only in terms of game length but also gameplay variety. The clever (and sometimes hilariously dry) writing still works just as good as it did in UNDERTALE and similar to it's predecessor, DELTARUNE perfectly balances the humor against the rather "serious" story.
In conclusion, the only reason I can give not to recommend DELTARUNE would be if you don't like the artstyle or combat system, though that is subjective.
For me personally, DELTARUNE Chapters 1-4 have already been one of the best gaming experience the past five years, and it's crazy to think there are still three Chapters coming. If the first four chapters are any indication to the quality of the remaining three, DELTARUNE will easily be my game of the year it fully releases.