Is it literally just me that feels like this abt ch 4?
Reading posts here has really thrown me for a loop on what I thought people would have issues with surrounding the progression of deltarune honestly. A majority of people I see speaking on the game’s progression nowadays seem to really really like ch. 4 story-wise and as a shift in the entire tone and gameplay philosophy, and therefore think ch. 5 is a step back because it effectively reverses the tone shift and gives a huge respite to the player instead of further continuing story threads from ch. 4 with similar dramatic tension.
From my perspective, and something I felt since first playing ch. 4, was that Toby kinda already fucked up with that chapter, not 5. Writing-wise, it is the most messily handled ramp up in tension like ever, but worse than that, the entire flow of the game suffers massively from the pacing slowing to a total crawl. There are a whole bunch of incredibly cool ideas in ch. 4, and I really do enjoy it story-wise in some ways (thematically very cool chapter, and the prophecy being told in it to the characters serving as something to make Ralsei’s whole schtick more clear is pretty genius), but GOD it’s also drenched in cliches, weird character melodrama that doesn’t fit with the already kinda forced tone shift and it just has a complete identity crisis coming off the heels of the first three chapters. Gerson feels like a plot device since he literally just serves as an infallible and perfect crutch the characters can grow from interacting with and then he’s written out lol. I like Ralsei’s development and how it continues in ch. 5 tho. Gameplay-wise, ch. 4 is the least fun chapter in the game, even the fights aren’t great outside of Gerson (which is amazing, what a goated fight), but coupled with the story-focused pacing and a lot of menial space where you just aren’t very engaged both in the moment and in exploring, it just becomes a bit of a slog compared to earlier chapters. Ch. 4 is good, I still like it, but it kinda messes up everything I like about Toby’s way of handling both gameplay and story ngl. Ch. 5 is so much more focused (though def not perfect, that fucking ending with Asgore man), and it being self contained is completely fine imo? I don’t feel blue balled much at all, and Ralsei gets some of his best character dynamic moments with flowery that really propel his issues into the limelight. Ch. 4 just doesn’t feel like Toby wrote it even half the time :p it’s like it’s trying to be outwardly silly and outwardly serious at the same time, when Toby already does subtle drama and seriously good thematic writing underneath a sillier and goofy seeming exterior really well. It’s just such a confusing and jarring shift in narrative communication (it’s also worse and a bit on the nose for me…) and the gameplay issues make it twice as frustrating!
I guess I could add that in some ways, I find the attempt at a tone shift really admirable and I think it could have been pulled off super well, but Toby just really didn’t let things breathe enough, while superimposing a slight shallowness on what could have been a subversive, darker point in the story. I love that ch. 5 brings back a sense of naive wonder with an underbelly again after ch. 4, and had ch. 4 been pulled off better, I think it would have worked even better. All I’m wondering now is how the fuck Toby is planning to wrap literally everything up in two chapters lmao
this wasn’t a super thought through post written on impulse so uh, hope it’s not intelligible