Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time is filled to the brim with great new ideas all around that had the potential to outdo the already masterful first game, and even a few better executed stuff than the first game (mainly plants like Blover and Cactus). However, the scummy amounts of microtransactions and artificial difficulty ultimately undercuts the game's strengths and makes it rather tedious and not really worth coming back to. Meanwhile, the soundtrack is noticeably weaker and the Versus mode is an uninspired bore in every way. EA can fuck off.

There's no denying how impactful Undertale was from a lot of its aspects, if not all. From its effortlessly charming characters to the way it played around the well-known JRPG tropes, it's a massively beloved title for all the right reasons. So there wasn't a lot to expect about a sequel being able to follow up to the success without feeling like a rote rehash of the aspects that made the first game so amazing to begin with. Fortunately, Deltarune: Chapter 1 is way more than that.

Deltarune: Chapter 1 sets itself up from the beginning as a direct antithesis to Undertale, starting up with a character customizer only to completely discard your customized character once you finish, before telling you that you don't choose who you are in this world. The whole point is "your choices don't matter", as unlike Undertale, here, you'll just get to the same outcome regardless of what you do in every situation.

While Undertale played around the JRPG tropes and even turned them around their heads more often than not, Deltarune: Chapter 1 plays with all of these tropes in a completely straightforward way. This puts the latter back in familiar territory, which is a bit baffling considering how well the former stood out from the rest with its unique ideas, but Deltarune: Chapter 1 has its own little perks that help mold an identity of its own; namely the way, depending on your choices, you can get different and entertaining approaches to the same inevitable outcome.

The game also introduces a few mechanics to improve over Undertale's gameplay, and most of them work well. Having 3 save files instead of only 1 is nice, the running feature should've honestly been in the very first game, and the Defend feature is a good way of getting TP at the expense of a turn. The only mechanic I'm torn between (mostly in terms of execution) is the one involving more than 1 character in your party. It's a nice feature on paper, but having all the three characters act on the same turn marginally lowers any risk of loss (whereas I got a significant amount of Game Overs in Undertale, I got a grand total of zero Game Overs here, which says a lot).

In terms of story and characters, Deltarune: Chapter 1 isn't that much of a game changer; you got the mysterious world with a prophecy of a human and a monster that just so happen to eventually come to save the world (the chosen ones); nothing revolutionary. But hey, there's some excitement to be found around how this particular Dark World is built and the characters that inhabit it. The particular highlight here, though, is Susie. She starts off as an apathetic school bully who couldn't give less of a shit about the carnage she provokes, but once she eventually joins "the bad side" and has a lot of fun with Lancer, she forms a bond with him and learns to be a lot more empathetic and understanding by the end without giving up on her signature rough 'n' tough attitude. It's a very compellingly crafted character arc that we see and feel happening through the dialogue and interactions the characters have along the game, and all without mentioning her and Lancer's antics are really fun to watch especially when they're together.

And the soundtrack, of course, is just as strong as the predecessor if not just as memorable; using a lot of the leitmotif formulas from Undertale but with its own catchy tracks. Not much to say here; I like it.

Overall, Deltarune: Chapter 1 isn't particularly able to live up to the masterfulness of its predecessor, but that's okay. Because if this chapter proves something, it's that Deltarune isn't Undertale, but its very own thing. And I respect that.