Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Deltarune Chapter 2 is Fantastic (and Free)

 Reviews, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Sep 202021
 

So after Deltarune Chapter 2 came out Friday night, I downloaded it and played it over the weekend.

Like Chapter 1, Chapter 2 is free. Both can be downloaded together now and are considered a long Deltarune demo. The current plan is that Chapters 3-5 will be released together and cost money.

But anyway, let’s get back to talking about Chapter 2.

The first chapter ended on quite an unsettling note, and Chapter 2’s beginning suggests that nothing sinister happened after all… or did it? With that note of uncertainty hanging over you, you soon return to the Dark World.

Like in the first chapter, you have a small party of characters and various options during combat. You can either attack enemies to force them to run away, or choose the correct actions that will allow you to spare the enemies. Although at first only the main character can use these actions or ask another character to, the other characters eventually gain the ability to use their own actions.

A new system introduced in Chapter 2 is recruitment, which means that spared enemies will go to your town. Recruits don’t do a whole lot here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s expanded in subsequent chapters.

The main area for Chapter 2 is based on the Internet, with an AI queen who has seemingly become a tyrant due to the Internet outage and the appearance of a fountain, which you need to seal. There’s a lot of humor again, with several goofy situations and wacky characters getting in your way.

It also has its share of sweet moments, a few moments that hint at darker things to come, and some continued questioning of the relationship between the player and the main character.

Click for Deltarune spoilers
Ralsei, specifically, is acting suspicious, and multiple things suggest that he is aware of you, the player, being a separate entity from Kris. One scene in particular implies that he diverted your attention to watch the scene with Susie and Noelle so he could speak to Kris without you there to witness it.

(Apparently there’s also a much darker alternate route that sounds incredibly disturbing.)

Chapter 2 was a bit longer than Chapter 1 and took me over five hours to complete. Together with Chapter 1, the Deltarune demo has now taken me almost as long as all of Undertale. That’s a hefty amount of content for a free demo!

Now, due to the way it started, I was concerned that each chapter might end on a shocking cliffhanger that would be left ambiguous in the next part. However, while Chapter 2 definitely ends on another unsettling note, it suggests a much clearer picture of what’s going on and raises some intriguing possibilities for what will occur in Chapter 3.

I’m really enjoying Deltarune now in its own right (rather than viewing it as an Undertale alternate universe) and I can’t wait to see how this story will unfold.

It also looks as though there will be 7 chapters total, which is more than I expected. Here’s hoping the wait to 3-5 and then 6-7 won’t be too long!

Deltarune Chapter 2 Comes Out Tonight!

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Sep 172021
 

Remember Deltarune?

Yes, adding to the list of exciting games all coming out at the same time, Deltarune Chapter 2 was announced with a release date of today at 8 PM ET.

Deltarune was a surprise game from Toby Fox that came out back in 2018.

I played it expecting it to be a demo, only to learn that it was Deltarune Chapter 1, the first part of a new game that may or may not be connected to Undertale.

Back then, the plan was that subsequent chapters would be released all at once, although an update last year made it sound more like the plan was to release it chapter-by-chapter, and that seems to be the case now. This is Chapter 2, and further chapters are still in development.

I’m a little disappointed by that, since there might be another long wait to Chapter 3. Still, I’m excited to get more Deltarune at last!

Nothing has been revealed yet about pricing, but since Chapter 1 can be seen as essentially a long demo, I’d expect Chapter 2 to cost money. We’ll know tonight, one way or another!

In the meantime, I’d better refresh my memory about Chapter 1, since it’s a bit fuzzy after all this time. Are you looking forward to Deltarune Chapter 2?

Contest Winners, WoFF Sequel Chances, and Deltarune

 Video games  5 Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,
Nov 022018
 

November is here, which means our Celebrating All Things Spooky contest is over. We had four winners this year: Moombit in first place with 33 points, Tord Laudal in second place with 28 points, and Jonathan and Ludwig Von Koopa tied for third place with 10 points each. The winners have been contacted about choosing their prizes.

When I reviewed Costume Quest 2 on Halloween, two other topics could easily have made for a blog post instead, so let’s cover those now.

World of Final Fantasy 2??

I loved World of Final Fantasy, and the amount of optional lore made me hope they had a sequel or prequel planned.

When World of Final Fantasy Maxima was announced, I was a little disappointed it wasn’t a sequel (and that I can’t update my Vita version to get the new content), but thought it might increase our chances of getting another game.

In a recent interview, World of Final Fantasy director Hiroki Chiba spoke about the possibility of a sequel, as reported here by Gematsu.

First, the new content in Maxima “tells a bit of the afterstory of Lann and Reynn.” More importantly, however, he wants to make a sequel:

While there are no plans for a sequel, I have fully written the story. If Square Enix gives us its approval, we can start development right away.”

The story for a theoretical World of Final Fantasy 2 has already been written, and all they’re waiting on is for Square Enix to decide a sequel should be made. This makes sense, especially given the lore I mentioned earlier. With all those background details, I’m not surprised they had sequel ideas… although it being fully written already is more than I expected.

I’d buy a World of Final Fantasy sequel in a heartbeat. Say the word, Square Enix, and my preorder is yours.

And amidst my hopes for a World of Final Fantasy sequel, a different not-quite-sequel made an appearance.

Deltarune

Basically, the Undertale Twitter account told players who had finished the game to be ready for something on Wednesday, and it turned out to be a link to Deltarune.

Being a huge Undertale fan, I downloaded it right away with the hope that it would be some sort of demo for a new game from Toby Fox.

And then it just kept going.

You can either view Deltarune (or more properly, Deltarune: Chapter 1) as a long demo for Toby Fox’s next game or a short game that will eventually be continued. As for its connection to Undertale, that’s still a bit unclear.

Click for Deltarune spoilers
When I started Deltarune, at first I thought it was a sequel to Undertale’s pacifist ending, but too many things didn’t add up.

Then I thought it might be a prequel, with Kris being the first fallen human’s actual name… but again, too many things didn’t add up.

It seems like it’s an alternate universe, possibly due to Gaster’s experiments. There are signs that Gaster is linked to Deltarune, and Gaster being alive in this universe would explain at least a few of the differences.

Anyway, Deltarune: Chapter 1 is a nice little game in its own right. It feels a lot like a fresh take on the Undertale format, especially where combat is concerned. In Deltarune, you have new options, such as the ability to defend, use magic, or ask one of your party members to perform an action.

Undertale is one of the funniest games I’ve played, and while Deltarune didn’t have the same effect on me, it was still enjoyable. It had funny moments (especially thanks to Susie and Lancer), heartwarming moments, and a few surprises.

Click for major Deltarune spoilers
And then the ending happened. What was that? What was that?!

Right now, the most prominent fan theory is that Kris was rejecting the player’s control, since characters in the epilogue comment on how different you’ve been acting and you still have control over the heart at the end.

It was a pretty unsettling scene, and it left me wanting to know what will happen next.

If you haven’t played Undertale, I think you could play Deltarune and still enjoy it. You just won’t get as much out of the references… and theories from fans about what’s going on in Deltarune are a minefield of Undertale spoilers.

Since the release of Deltarune: Chapter 1, Toby Fox finally released some information about it.

First, he describes it as “not the world of Undertale.” This has led some fans to believe he’s saying the two are completely unrelated, but if you go on to read his full answer, I think he’s mainly reassuring fans that this hasn’t undone the game’s ending or anything like that. Alternate universe theories still feel applicable.

(Especially since there are too many connections for it to be completely separate.)

Next, he says that creating the full game might be impossible.

……

To be more precise, he says it took him a few years to make this demo, and given how long the rest will be, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to make it without a team. He has no idea when it will be finished, although he mentions 7 years as the maximum amount of time he’d want to put into a project.

Deltarune will be released once all the chapters are completed. This is good news to me, because I was concerned it might be an episodic release. Chapter 1 serving as a demo for a longer, full game is much better.

He also say there won’t be multiple endings, which is a little disappointing, but one of the big takeaways here is that he isn’t trying to make Undertale 2. He just wants to make a new game.

Anyway, Deltarune: Chapter 1 was a lot of fun, and it pretty much stands on its own even though it’s obviously hinting at more to come. I just hope we don’t have to wait until 2025 to see how the rest of the story works out.