I’m so unbelievably happy right now. Toby’s ability to completely unify people and communities with his works has become so commendable and frankly rather frightening to be honest. He did it once before with the surprise release of Deltarune’s first chapter almost three years ago, and he’s done it once more with the shadowdrop of the second chapter in the Undertale 6th anniversary stream. I can’t express how grateful I am that the old age of disliking a work of art simply due to its popularity has finally gone behind us. After that immensely frustrating hate bandwagon Undertale suffered from that I was unfortunate enough to witness in person was seemingly demolished after Deltarune chapter 1 was released, I’m glad I can finally be back to expressing my love for games no matter how popular. I was honestly quite surprised when Toby actually decided to go through with the episodic release of the newest chapter in the story of Deltarune, and it’s definitely one I’m ready to express for.

First off, we might now just have an idea of what a behemoth of a game we may have on our hands now. Upon startup now you can see that we’re currently only two chapters into a seven chapter story. Just what kind of ride does Toby have planned for us?! With everything that chapters 1 and 2 had to offer, the idea of five more chapters coming off of all this seems incredibly daunting. It no doubt must be daunting for Toby as well, with how he’s stated before how badly he’s eager to show everything he has planned. Plus the wait between this new chapter and the first was almost like, what, three years? I’m rather concerned with how much Toby is setting up. Has he made progress on the other chapters alongside the full completion of chapter 2 or is this all that’s finished at the moment? Clearly he’s taking his time with this gargantuan project but I really hope he gets some form of extra resources to help him out. Hell, I’d help fund a Kickstarter for this game just so he can get what he’d need. But I digress, I’m just worried for him and his project as a whole as of now.

Anyways, chapter 2 starts off much more abruptly than chapter 1 did, fitting with everything already set up so far and with characters like Susie who are desperately eager to cut to the chase after whatever the hell they had just witnessed yesterday. You’re soon introduced to your own dark world town, located conveniently in the school’s back closet. Here is where you’ll likely take notice towards how the morality formula is going to make a difference in the game. Through sparing enemies you’ll end up recruiting them to your own town and grow its populace and locales. Perhaps this is a way to make the whole morality system work within the lack of control narrative being set up in Deltarune, or maybe it’s another setup of sorts? Who knows. What I take a lot of interest in is how you’re also shown how the state of the outside world does in fact affect what goes on in each of the dark worlds, like how all of their environments are presented, what represents all of the Darkners in each world, details like those. For example, think about the room next to the school’s back closet. Thinking about how you were released from it when you vanquished the fountain, what all of the clutter was in that room, just that room being next to the closet in general, and with extra details shown later you can piece together how that room was where the whole kingdom of cards took place.

With not much to show off in your little castle town aside from a few oh-so kindly built rooms (susie really thinks she got the cool room when lancer’s is right next to her’s lmao), your journey in the dark world for today comes to an abrupt stop as it seems. Well until that detail about dark worlds being formed from real world locations comes into play as the library’s computer lab has become a dark world as well somehow. This is where we’re introduced to the real main event of chapter 2, the Cyber World.

My, oh my, what do I say about the Cyber World? Coming off of the mysterious Kingdom of Cards, the Cyber World sure does feel like a tonal shift. It’s vibrant, wondrous, whimsical, and a sheer spectacle to behold. All of these traits of the Cyber World in general could possibly also describe how chapter 2 feels as a whole, aiming for a much more adventurous vibe than the first. This can come at the cost of feeling less emotional than the first chapter did overall, but what chapter 2 wants to do instead is give more depth to the characters that are alongside you. We’ve already gone through Susie’s arc on growing as a person, so why don’t we let these character’s newfound bonds show themselves off in a brand new adventure? That’s not to say there isn’t some newfound character growth to be had here, as Noelle and Berdly are also introduced into the equation in this chapter. Noelle was clearly going to have some involvement in this chapter but Berdly was one I was surprised on. Noelle appears as an occasional temporary new party member and Berdly as a fittingly annoying foil, with both being strung along by our robotic overlord of the new dark world, Queen. Queen in general is likely where a lot of the tonal dissonance from chapter 1 and chapter 2 is visible, as she feels like a much more comedic and aimless villain than the likes of the King of Spades. Granted the King of Spades is never really present until the end of chapter 1 and you have his comedic buffoon son, Lancer, teasing you throughout the majority of chapter 1, but the King of Spade’s cruel influence on his dark world was still very present. Queen’s influence on her dark world is much more lighthearted in comparison. Plus her overall demeanor is in a much more entertaining fashion, comparable to that of Lancer actually, and her constant intrusions on your journey simply set out to provide more whimsical interactions with you and your whole gang. Speaking of your whole gang, with how Noelle is confirmed to be a new member in your group, and there’s still some major hints of Berdly becoming a new party member as well (oh dear god), I’m starting to wonder how all of your many new friends you have on your side are going to be handled. Are they simply going to switch in and out contextually like they did with Noelle in this chapter, or are they eventually going to be one big squad that you can swap out freely Chrono Trigger style? Only time may tell for this, I guess. Just one more thing to be anticipating for the coming chapters!

Even still, chapter 2 retains just exactly what I love Toby’s works for, just in an insanely wondrous form that I still greatly appreciate. Those quirky unique encounters like the Sweet Cap’n Cakes crew, big shot Spamton, Rouxls Kaard’s vengeance, and Berdly’s many attempts to come off as superior. I can’t forget about those endearing situations the gang goes through on their journey, my favorite being that one really cool Punch-Out tribute you group all of the main three together to absolutely stomp Queen at. Plus one really cool thing chapter 2 does is that it decides to continue the whole secret superboss trend set by the likes of Jevil. Like Jevil, it’s a bit cryptic to find out how to encounter them but this is gonna be the one thing I don’t want to go into detail here as what that battle does to the gameplay is so fucking cool and honestly makes it a more enjoyable battle than Jevil for me so I just really want people to find out what it is for themselves.

But still, I have quite a lot of things on my mind after this. It’s rather hard not to have questions on what’s going on due to the whole episodic release plan. The epilogue of chapter 2 still retains a bit of it’s lightheartedness but gives off many more questions and much more anticipation for the future. Thankfully Rudy is still alive in this chapter, some people had speculation here would be when he would flatline but that wasn’t the case. But one thing that unfortunately didn’t come to fruition is MY DAMN TIME WITH PAPYRUS. Come ON Sans, what do you mean it can’t be today????? Guess I gotta anticipate meeting Papyrus in chapter 3 then. (ignore my score, it’s actually a 0.5 because of this >:[ ) And that ending, wow that sure gave off the most questions, but some answers as well ironically enough. Kris has to be up to something, as they keep casting away their soul in certain moments, only to take it back again. It can’t be some sort of influence from someone like Chara, why would they take the soul back? Maybe they cast it away to make sure you can’t control them when they’re trying to do something dubious. And that very end, with Susie sleeping over at your house, and Toriel concerned about ominous things happening around her, all topped off with Kris literally creating a fountain in their own living room. Is Kris the Knight that has been mentioned so often? Are they the one who created all of the fountains? Why are they creating the fountains in that case? I read a theory that Kris might be doing something like this to make things interesting for them. I could presume it could be something along the lines of that, but what if there actually is some ulterior evil play at play here? Only time can tell. I can only anticipate what the later chapters are going to bring us, and what sort of dark world will be made out of our own home. I’ll be ready for it anytime.

Also, since I’m on the topic of the ending, I just can’t hold this back anymore. I just HAVE to gush about how that ending of this chapter went down. The whole climactic battle with Queen was pretty cool but it was probably intentionally made to come off in a similar format to how the final showdown with the King of Spades went down, just so the bait and switch with the REAL final battle of the chapter can come in and slam as hard as it did. Queen suddenly comes in piloting this absolutely massive robot, and once Kris, Susie, and Ralsei came together to form that dumb arcade playing position again right in front of it, I was so fucking ready for what I thought was about to happen. THEN IT ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT. One big friend reunion and fittingly corny fusion transformation sequence later and the game takes that one cute little Punch-Out homage from earlier and TURNS IT INTO A FULLY FLEDGED BADASS GIANT MECHA BOXING MATCH FINAL BOSS! Just, in that entire buildup to that moment and during the entire duration of that fight I just had the biggest dumb grin on my face as I relentlessly brought the beatdown in this absolute spectacle of a moment. I just couldn’t believe that Toby actually fucking did that, and it how much it fucking RULED!

So, after how much I’ve gone on about how much joy I felt and how purely I was enamored by the sheer scale of chapter 2, why did I only give it 4 stars? Well, it’s mainly with some concerns on this chapter’s tone as a whole and with the overall format on how this game is presented. I mentioned earlier on how in comparison to chapter 1, chapter 2 feels notably less emotional and more lighthearted. Sure, there are still quite a bunch of neat character interactions and new depth given mainly towards Noelle and Berdly, but it’s less tonally impactful than everything that was going on with Susie in chapter 1. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though, as I feel this means that whatever impactful narrative is likely being saved for what the later chapters have in store for us eventually. But the whole primary focus on a more whimsy and surreal adventure of great proportions and spectacle with the extra character fleshing-out as a treat makes chapter 2 feel like some form of elaborate buildup for what’s to come later on down the road.

Plus, I also feel that chapter 2 has one major issue as a whole, and I feel chapter 1 has this same issue as well. Well actually, to be honest, calling it this “major issue” is probably being way too harsh on it, as it’s pretty much the same issue I would have with something like standalone Sonic the Hedgehog 3. That issue is basically spelt out to you in the title: it’s only chapter two. Most of the reasons why I have so many questions and so many theories and all this built up anticipation as a whole after this experience is primarily due to it being an unfinished story as of now. With how the episodic format of Deltarune has been planned out to be released in, each chapter now has sort-of been treated as their own standalone release, which is a bit fair as both chapters 1 and 2 have been exceptionally lengthy and in depth with everything going on in them and together can even feel like a bigger experience than Undertale alone was. However I still feel it may be a bit unfair to judge them as fully fledged releases like this as in the grand scheme of Deltarune as a whole, to me rating each of these chapters individually would be akin to maybe rating a singular chapter in a Paper Mario game or a singular case in an Ace Attorney game to give some examples. It’s the primary reason why I wished that Deltarune wouldn’t be released in parts like this and just be one gigantic experience let loose once it was finally finished, but oh well, I wouldn’t want to complain about getting pieces of this early.

Regardless, Deltarune’s second chapter more than definitely lived up to what I had hoped for. All that I dislike about it is essentially just that I want more of it even! Toby’s been extremely generous to give us this extra taste of art for free, and god do I admire him for doing that. I’d be more than willing to pay for the rest to continue this story. I’ll certainly be prepared for what Toby has to throw at us next.





Also that one segment with Noelle monologuing to you actually softlocked me at the end of it for some reason. Gay baby jail transcends beyond all forms of medium and will never hold any mercy for you.