Undertale, an incredible hit of a game. Loved by people all over the world for its witty humor, great cast, and multifaceted narrative. A game so great it infiltrated Youtube channels everywhere, and even fell into the hands of people who don’t like video games… Such as myself.

I’m not a gamer. When I do play games, I do so for the story, and not for anything else. So it’s strange that, when I finished Undertale, I didn’t care about the story, or about the cast… In fact a lot of the elements people praised about the game, I instead had problems with… And the elements I enjoyed, such as the interactive UI elements and genre-bending gameplay, were rarely highlighted as positives. The meta nature of the game was definitely my highlight, with my defining memory of the game being when I Digimon-The-Movie’d the “final boss” who had closed my instance of the game. In retaliation to his cheating ways I opened up several instances until the boss slowed down and BAM, I outmeta’d the enemy.

It was great, and I did like my time with Undertale… But I didn’t love it. I could see so many problems… But it looks like Toby noticed those flaws too. (Of course he did; every half-decent creator recognises their mistakes.) Not only did Toby notice the flaws: he set out to improve upon his grand creation. I won’t be talking about the narrative for this post because Deltarune is effectively just a preview, but I’m excited to talk about everything else.

The first thing I have to mention is the party system. Yes, Deltarune introduces a party system to the classic Undertale gameplay. You have 3 party members and each has a different playstyle. One character will only attack. One character is specialised in healing magics and sparing. The protagonist and leader has the ability to do everything you’d expect from an Undertale protagonist, and also is capable of commanding the other party members to do stronger versions of an available command. This party management becomes part of the puzzle that every battle involves, increasing the variation in play patterns.

Deciding not only your own actions, but the actions of your party members, and planning around their respective play patterns, makes the characters feel like they actually matter as gameplay constructs. They’re more than the handful of jokes they get given. You might choose to combo up with Susie and bash through the fights quicker, or you could time your actions with Ralsei to speed through your sparing. This really helps fix the problem of perceived grind, something the original game had a bit of a problem with. The game also includes a feature in which enemies will become tired after certain or enough actions. This will both weaken them in combat and make them instantly spareable via one of your party member’s abilities. This is great for those players who can’t quite figure out how to solve the puzzle of how to spare an enemy, but it also speeds up traditional combat.

When it comes to equipping gear, the party members have little quotes upon granting them new items. It’s a small touch, but it really helps give life to the menus and to the characters. I very much enjoyed finding some chain armor and instantly thinking to myself “Oh Susie will loooove this!” Then I got to see her actually react to being given it. That was fun.

The game also differs from Undertale in nostalgia factor. The original game spent a lot of time creating places, situations and melodies that it could later reflect upon, a form of nostalgia manipulation that all great stories rely on. Deltarune however no longer has to dedicate such time to things because it has the original Undertale to tap into. This opens the game up, meaning it can include more variation in music, in environments, and in characters. The characters themselves are part of a central repetition within Deltarune, one that puts the four main characters into archetypes very similar to four of Undertale’s main characters. This makes the previously mentioned character-developing gameplay elements much more noticeable. Though I still think a lot of the characters are comical in their simplicity (an unfortunate downside to the limited length of the game) I can’t begin to quantify how much more effective in my opinion Susie’s (for example) development was than Undyne’s. Toby’s narrative concepts seem to rely a lot on a love for his characters, so it’s nice to see the game itself focus on doing exactly that.

The map of Deltarune feels so much larger than the ones from Undertale. Part of that is due to the map being… well… bigger practically and more detailed visually. However a big part of that is in the different optional pathways thrown about the place. Toby’s love for invisible walkways shines true, and there are plenty of optional puzzle rooms and bonus items to retrieve within the game’s short playtime. The optional back-and-forth revisiting of areas from Undertale is still here in Deltarune, but the many systems of rapid travel (with the larger scale option being the doorways) help you get around areas at a quicker pace. As much as I like the River Person, I’m happy that I no longer have to go to an out of the way location to sit through a transit animation to get to my desired location. I still think the Undertale locations were more visually iconic, but I have suspicions that I only think such a thought partially because Undertale had such a unique visual style to it, and partially because I spent much more time in the locations of Undertale.

The maps are further streamlined with the removal of random encounters. A lot of Deltarune’s changes exist to make the game less annoying, and this is another one of those changes. Now you see all of the monsters on the map. They walk around, spawn from inventive locations, block off optional sections, and sometimes even attack you with projectiles (ala the Undyne chase segment of Undertale) or with stage hazards that the player must maneuver around. These monsters end up feeling more a part of the environment than any non-boss monsters did in Undertale, and the annoyance of being interrupted by a random battle is now gone.

One last interesting thing I have to talk about is the most obvious thing: The removal of choice. You can no longer kill in Deltarune. At first I found this disappointing because who doesn’t love to kill? But really, the grindy nature of the combat-focused routes was by no means the highlight of the original Undertale. The unique and interesting element was the puzzle-bullethell-datingsim mishmash of an action system. Deltarune has chosen to focus entirely on that conflict style, and I’m sure that in the long term that design choice will mean good things. You can still use the fight system (except for a handful of exceptions) but it exists for players to mindlessly get through the little guys. Attempting to go on a murder spree will both diminish your enjoyment of the battles and ultimately leave you at a dead end, which is why it ends up being so heavily discouraged. Deltarune knows what the greater battle system is, and it has decided to embrace it fully.

Also save slots!

Unfortunately however they removed the ability for players to glitchily move across the screen by running against a wall while moving in another direction, and honestly that was the best part of Undertale.