Toby fox seems to be uninterested in making Deltarune an RPG.
I love deltarune undertale, I really do. They're fun adventure romps with deeper emotional elements and a very interesting meta plot about our enjoyment of videogames packaged with a unique writing element of personifying the mentality of a person playing an RPG. Despite this, Toby fox seems to be uninterested in creating interesting RPG dynamics during deltarune and more interested in providing gimmicks throughout the story.
Undertale was a very successful experiment. It is a passion project that draws from all of its inspirations very well - it is a quirky RPG like mother, it is a bullet hell, it is a meta story like Homestuck, among many other stories many other people have spoke about. A revolution in the indie space, I suppose you could say. It presents itself as an RPG with multiple paths depending on actions used in combat, however in actuality it is a meta narrative about how you approach RPGs. There's different routes in the game that have different morality to them, however these play audience to very interesting and abstract stories about resetting and digging "too" deep into a videogame. It's very well done, and while its light on RPG elements, it's done intentionally to allow for players to explore it!
Deltarune during chapter one appeared to lean a lot more into being an RPG. We now have a mana system, an in depth stat menu and even archetypical party members! We have our black mage turned paladin (cecil, i see you) in Susie, and we have our dark mage looking white mage in Ralsei! The typical undertale elements of a whacky 'doesnt take itself too seriously' are still present, but already in the jevil fight we are shown that this game will take a lot more party management and mana management found in a more traditional RPG. We are even told - perhaps explicitly - that this isn't a story about us making many different decisions and absorbing a well crafted metanarrative through these decisions. This is an RPG that explores escapism and the coming of age for a team of scrappy youths (something quite common in RPG s.)
This is great - I love RPGs for the strategy involved in building parties, and Deltarune has this to an extent. There's plenty of equipment that all does different things, and there are different ways to build our characters to be better or worse at different things. Between ribbons, specific elemental resistances, magic and attack boosting items, and weapons that buff different stats making them soft side grades, there is definitely thought put into what items our heroes can obtain to let build variety flourish.
However, despite how the game presents itself, Toby fox does not seem to be interested in the RPG elements of Deltarune. Using elements to tell a story - like we see in the weird route, or with Susie's magic - sure. But never actually in implementing elements you'd see in an rpg. We never get to see our stats go up outside of scripted points where the enemies also get stronger, we are given VERY few new interactable in combat, we are actively encouraged to not use any of our damaging abilities and instead use the same 1/2 acts per type of enemy. I previously spoke about build variety, and while there's a few different armours and weapons to throw on each character, ultimately they all do the same thing regardless of what they wear - you pick the act the game wants you to, or you use the one damaging spell you're given the entire game.
Ralsei and Susie are initially presented as subversions on their archtypes: Susie is a knight who is a woman and uses 'rude' magic, and ralsei is a fluffy goat man who uses healing. However, they never actually get more into these archtypes than this surface level subversion. Susie learning healing feels like this at first, until you realise a knight/big tank character learning to heal is a VERY common trope among jrpgs anyway. In general, we have had 2 entire chapters (chapter 2 to chapter 5) where our party has not gained a single new spell or interaction in combat. It's disappointing that the game doesn't want to lean into the established genre more despite trying to subvert it.
The only fights i can remember actually picking my options of who to heal and who to do what with was in the jevil fight and knight fight respectively. Aside from that, pretty much every fight is picking an act that involves kris and a party member, and using items with the other guy. I understand its a genremash, but recently the game has felt a lot more like a bullet hell with rpg elements than an rpg bullet hell mixup.
It has felt like the game has become less of an RPG and more of a "what does Toby Fox like" as the game has progressed. The focus is a bit odd. Instead of designing unique encounters or challenges that involve strategy, instead we need the zelda section, or a new climbing gimmick, or a platformer! It feels very devoid of the package of chapters 1 and 2, which very much was in line with the established theme of "rpgs and how we interact with them."
I suppose it's fine that it went like this. After all, I still think what we have is high quality and is telling a good narrative, but I feel like toby fox is either uninterested in creating a full fledged rpg, or has lost interest in favour of a more episodic gimmick based gameflow.