[Awards] Game of the Year 2021
Old Games I Played This Year:
Metal Gear Solid 4: The Guns of the Patriots.
I replayed this because I bought the limited edition off of eBay. If you don't know, it comes in a really nice matte finish box with a metal plate featuring Yoji Shinkawa artwork that has a little part that slides off and reveals the cases inside. It comes with the game and a special behind the scenes blu-ray which I have not yet watched.
MGS4 isn't as bad as you might remember it if you hate it, and not as good as you might remember it if you love it. I mean from my point of view at least we're talking about subjective shit here. Like, I'm not gonna go over all the criticisms because many, many people have done so. I think it's a stupid, ass-pull story which either overexplains things that didn't need to be explained or completely retcons things which should have stayed where they were. It's too brown, the cutscenes are too long, it's long winded, pretentious, and in desperate need of an editor... but you know, it really ain't that bad. Most of it is complaints one could levy at MGS1, 2, and 3 but just magnified so it's more obvious. I think Kojima took it too far with this one but I also don't think it's nearly as bad as it ends up being in our memories. Like, was this game's story a mistake? Yes. Was it Star Wars Prequels level mistake? No.
Besides, a bunch of the setpieces are really cool and the microwave hallway and fist fight with Liquid Ocelot are fantastic.
Lost Planet
I replayed this cuz I like Lost Planet, dunno what else to say there! Yeah I dunno I like it, it's not a particularly good game but it's fun and I enjoy playing it. I like the heat management mechanics and the grappling and the mecha. The story is pretty simple and stupid but I enjoy that too. Obviously the best part is when one of the mecha turns into a full on like fucking gundam and you get to just slash shit with your laser swords.
Whatever it's fun.
Dead Space 2
I replayed this one because I felt like it. I like Dead Space 2 a lot. It's a good game. It's a great horror action game! I dunno what else to say about it really. It's a great RE4-Like and is a massive improvement over the original game, which I think is good but not great like a lot of people do. I think it's scarier because it deals with a lot more psychological concepts this time in addition to body horror(which I don't mind it's just it stops being scary pretty quickly)... not that those are particularly well done, but I like the angle. I like the hallucinations especially when it's like, Ghost Nicole trying to stab Isaac only for the hallucination to cease and for it to really be Isaac about to stab himself. It's a scary thought, that your mind could become so broken and fucked up you could kill yourself and not even realize you're doing it. Self harm and suicide is sad, psychosis induced self harm and suicide is terrifying. That's just the horror and story, on a gameplay level it's fantastic. I played on hard for most of the run, there were some parts I just kept dying to repeatedly so I bumped it down temporarily, but for the most part I was able to handle it really well. The ammo I had was just enough and I always had just enough health and healing supplies... except for the few times I didn't. It's a really solid and fun game with also some good set pieces. God I wish they didn't cancel this series... I hope the remake of 1 is good.
Final Fantasy V
I finally(pun not intended) completed FF5 this year, on a nice repro cart I got even so it was original hardware!
Game is still great. It was always one of my favorite FFs even though I haven't ever played it all the way through until now. The story and characters are quite simple, but I still think they have a lot of charm. This is a more comedic story, it's more in line with the tone of something like Dragon Quest. I think all the characters are pretty likeable, but again, simple. You got freedom loving adventurer Bartz who just wants to go where the wind takes him and do what's right along the way, loving princess Lena who is just all around a sweetheart so is worried about the world, Farris the hot blooded rough and tumble pirate captain who ends up warming up to the rest of the party and sticking with them, and gruff old guy Galuf who has a personal stake in the conflict already. They're a fun party with simple personalities and simple character arcs. The plot is fairly simple too it's really just there's a big bad and he wants to destroy everything cuz he's pissed(it's something to do with environmentalism) and they gotta defeat him. Sometimes you just want something simple and enjoyable that you don't have to think too much about.
The mechanics are far LESS simple though it's more that they're easy to learn, tricky to master. The combat itself is pretty simple, standard stuff. It's the customization that's where the complications come in. I'm sure you know about the Job System, back from FF3, which allows you to learn skills and attributes from various classes that can be changed. You make someone a knight they'll learn knight skills, when you get enough job experience you can keep using knight skills when you switch to a different job. I kept with a pretty simple set up, basically making mages who could use two schools of magic and warriors who could use different warrior abilities and eventually either dual wield or two hand grip for extra damage. You don't have to get too creative if you're not doing the optional bosses, so it works out. It's still fun to experiment and find the set up you wanna use. You have a lot of freedom here. My only issue with it is the same issue with any JRPG that allows this sort of thing; it makes the characters kinda blend together, combat role wise. I like RPGs where the character has a distinct skillset that reflects their character, so that the gameplay reflects the story. I love FF7 but my big issue with that is that materia means you pile everything on to your favorites or whoever's limit break you like best and then ignore the other characters. It's best if the game can force you to use all of them and not relegate half the cast to cutscenes. In this case, though, there are only 4 characters so you end up using them all, and if you're like me you assign them combat roles that fit their characters: Lighter physical and maybe a little magic for Bartz, heavier physical for Farris, support magic for Lena, and offensive magic for Galuf. Still, I think mechanically I prefer like a FF10, which makes you switch your party members out often and you'll only end up with skillsets that move away from their character by the end when you've completed their sphere grids. That said, still a fun system and the jobs are fun to mess around with at the very least.
Anyway to sum up it's fun to play regardless of that small gripe, I had a lot of fun/frustration setting up for the skills I wanted and crafting my ideal party. The story was a fun, light time and it was nice to actually finish it this time!
Best Most Disappointing Game:
Hitman 3
And it's good. That's about it. It's good like the others. It's like if you bought DLC of more missions. Like the story is interesting and a good close out but still.
Then of course there's the botched launch. I dunno who's fault this is but it's terrible. Like, there was all this complicated shit you had to do to download the old maps and carry over your level progress, involving like creating a IO account and linking it to the game for the first game's maps/progress, but like for the second one's it was way simpler you just downloaded a free thing... and if you played anything at all of Hitman 3, and then did it, your progress in Hitman 3 would be erased.
That said I mean it's still really, really good. Very fun no matter how you choose to play(fitting for an undertale/deltarune fan, I do pacifist runs where I do my best not to kill any non-targets), so many different options and ways to approach things, good open and sprawling levels that intimidate at first and make you feel amazing once you've memorized their layouts. It's good, even if the last level is super linear(there's still challenge to it and it was fun getting it perfect). If you enjoyed Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2, you'll enjoy this too, so definitely pick it up if you didn't.
Best Sequel:
Persona 5 Strikers VS Resident Evil 8
This is actually kind of a tough one.
On the one hand, I like P5 Strikers a lot more. On the other hand, it's also mostly a retread of P5 in terms of plot. There are a lot of things I like about it, like how it actually retroactively gives a bit more depth to the antagonists from the original and deals with a lot of stuff that was only brushed upon with the characters. The bad guys this time around are people who've been deluded by something and are acting as villains despite not really being bad people like in the original P5, which is how I prefer my antagonists. No-one's heart is changed to force them into feeling horrible about what they did, everyone is just snapped back to reality oh there goes gravity and realizes "oh fuck I've been a huge piece of shit". It's some very "understandable circumstances, but that's not an excuse and you gotta make up for it" stuff. I find that a lot more compelling. The problem is that the end point of the story is a mix of vanilla P5's and Royal's final bosses and it's just kinda "wow yeah I already saw this". It ends up kinda being like a fanfiction- a very good fanfiction, though, that understands the characters, wants to touch on things not addressed in the main narrative, and give you more of what you loved... but ultimately the writer didn't have any ideas for the plot really and just settled on rehash. With a fanfic I'd never begrudge that I mean have you seen the worst AO3 has to offer? This is a retail product though, guys! Like, the new character is basically just Morgana again!
RE8 on the other hand isn't as good of a game. I like musou games and it's mechanics are vastly expanded from like a Dynasty Warriors, and it's Persona 5, so that just makes the game a lot of damn fun. RE8 is fun too, I think it's an improvement over 7 in story and in gameplay, but I also don't like it as much as P5S. I really do prefer the Remake style of modern RE game. That said I mean it still scratched a lot of that Survival Horror itch and I had a good time with it. The story even subverts something that I hadn't even thought about when it came to Ethan Winters, the protagonist, that I thought was actually a really clever little twist. I think that, while I don't prefer it, they've refined the style they went for with 7 and made it more enjoyable. The setting and plot are also not at all retreads of 7 and even the chaser enemies feel different than 7's. Hell, there's more enemy variety in general! There's all sorts of shit, my favorites are the big armored dudes you gotta blast the armor off of and shoot their big glowing weakpoints. It's a pretty fun game, I just like P5S more... but RE8 is a better sequel...
So I'll have to give it to Resident Evil 8.
Not that both games aren't good, and you shouldn't play them, of course.
Best Remaster:
Nier RepliCant VS Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturn HD
This one's not even a contest, honestly. SMT3 is a great game, and you should play it if you'd like a challenging JRPG(I mean it's not that hard Lucifer was really the only boss aside Matador that gave me troub). The story is definitely really good but it's not really what you're here for. Like it is good, but I feel like the presentation is a bit blasé and the writing doesn't make any of the characters pop. The philosophical ideas and all the mythology presented are great and fun to think about, and everything other than the remake the original world ending is pretty sad... but I also didn't feel that sad. The Demifiend is absolutely a total blank slate character, he has no personality. You learn very little about his friends before The Conception and nothing about their dynamic as friends. There's not very much development for any of them, they're basically just their personality traits and then the ideals they represent. This is all great for being a smarty smart boy and going "hmm, yes, nihilism" but not much in the way of feeling anything for the characters. Like, you end up forced to fight your former friends in a battle for the right to remake the world according to your ideal and it's just like... this isn't as sad as it should be. Cuz I don't really know them. This is one of the reasons going for the True Demon Ending is ideal, because it's just more interesting that way. It kinda tells the story of your fall from grace and your anger at god for putting you in this situation, eventually siding with the devil himself in order to take your revenge and get your freedom.
The game really is primarily good from aesthetics, music, setting/premise, and mostly importantly gameplay angles. That's what you're here for and if you aren't here for it, you're in the wrong place.
And that's just the game! On the remaster side of things, they added in voice acting, and a much needed ability to choose which skills you wanna inherit instead of it just being random. This actually probably made the game easier... but yeah that's it. There's really nothing else. Which is fine, it's a fine remaster. Just fine... I mean I heard the switch port performs like ass, but aside that it's fine.
Nier RepliCant is, unfairly, way more than just a remaster.
Not only can we now experience the Brother Nier version in english(equally superior and inferior, in my opinion), the graphics have been updated(equally superior and inferior, in my opinion), the combat has been tweaked a bit(equally-), and there's an entire new super secret ending to get! Also you can play with japanese voices! This is a good version of this game especially if you wanted, and spoilers btw, a bit happier of an ending than the literal end of fucking days Nier has been erased from existence oh god so fucking depressing one.
It's not a contest because one is actually significantly different. I mean I guess SMT3 did let you recruit Raidou instead of Dante for the first time in the west... which to be honest is probably the only way I managed to defeat Lucifer, since he has a specific skill that Dante doesn't.
But ending E is amazing so fuck it Nier wins.
Best New IP:
Scarlet Nexus
Gosh I love it when games are not remakes, remasters, sequels, reboots, or what have you! Says the guy who's gonna put- shit wait that's spoiling game of the year. If you're reading this you probably came from my twitter though so I think you already know.
Well whatever, this is a good new original story and good new original game! The setting is really cool, the story is really neat, the characters are pretty fun; I wouldn't say any of it is particularly good, not great or anything, but all good and enjoyable and very fun. I ship Kasane and Shiden, I think they had a fun little character arc together and he's basically just tsundere. I think his tsundere nature and her kuudere nature play off each other well and they'd make a really fun couple.
Speaking of that I've only played Kasane's story, because I picked it first cuz like... you think I'm gonna pick the male character to start with? Are you crazy? If the game gives me the option, I wanna play as a cute anime girl... the only time this was a mistake was in Tales of Xillia, don't play as Milla first. I will eventually do Yuito's story but that's gonna be a while.
There's a lot I like about the story of this game, but my favorite part is probably that a character who I assumed, due to the time travel stuff, would be brought back after they died... was not brought back at all. The game makes a point about not changing the past, because every thing you do affects not only the person you were changing it for, but others as well. It talks about how it's not right to change people's lives through it, even if it's for the better, because that takes away who they are now. That's a good ethical dilemma: If you could, say, completely change the life of the most unhappy person in the world, some kind of blinded, paraplegic, drug addict homeless former sex slave or something, just really bad, via time travel... should you? Should you make that decision for them? Entirely change their life by playing god? Make it so the choices they made to get there weren't really their's, take away the agency and free will of a person to save their life or make them happy?
Instead, the people hurt by this character's death simply have to move on. They're dead and we don't have the right to bring her back. It's a powerful moment that I really enjoyed and bucked the traditional formula for this kind of thing and asked a real philosophical question.
Boy there's a game coming up I really hope doesn't do that though! Oh god, oh no.
Anyway, the gameplay is also very good. It's got a lot of familiar action RPG and character action game mechanics and controls, but just different enough it takes some time to master and also spices things up a lot. for example what you wanna do rather than just outright kill an enemy is hit it with it's weaknesses and deplete the other bar. This let's you do a special takedown called a Brain Crush, which depletes the rest of it's HP gauge and also gives you more exp... and also just feels cool, especially if you chain multiple together. It helps get into this good flow state in combat, tossing around shit with your telekinesis, attacking enemies, and then finishing them off. There's also ways to have your teammate's help you: You can borrow their powers temporarily and also have them do an attack as part of your combo. It's really fun to get a good set up and activate all the powers at once, then just go ham on your foes. It all takes of getting used to and feels finicky at first, but once you've gotten the hang of it, it's a lot of fun and feels real cool.
Basically, this is a good video game and you should try it!
Retroactive Game of the Year 2020:
What did I have as GotY 2020? Whatever, doesn't matter, because it's
Omori
Omori is now game of the year 2020.
Boy how do I explain this one? I'm not nearly as enamored with it as I was a couple months ago, but that's because this year's game of the year has hooked me way too strong. All the energy and mental space I was using for it got transferred over to it because I just can't care about two things that strongly at the same time. After I beat it for the first time, however, Omori was cemented as one of my favorite games of all time. It's ironic, too, because during my first playthrough I was sitting there going "You know, this is really cool, but this could be done so much better", and then I got to the end and I was like "Yo, nevermind.". I have played it 3 times now, and it's not short, it's about 25-30 hours if you're doing side stuff and not rushing it. Somehow, my first playthrough took me 50 hours! I dunno how the FUCK that happened! I went back and I played the game's alternate route. If you're expecting something like undertale's genocide route or like a Yoko Taro game alternate route well you're out of luck there: The biggest changes happen in the last 3rd of the game, and other than that you actually get to do less. I did the alternate route, entitled the Hikkikomori Route because your player character remains a shut-in, and then I played the True Route again because completing a bad ending route and then quitting feels like you've doomed the protagonist to me. Like that's where the game's world is at and that's where it's gonna stay until you get the good ending... So yeah I played it like 3 times in a row, which is saying something cuz it actually has big pacing issues.
I'm not exactly selling you on this, am I? Well what I'm trying to say is I was so into it that I replayed this 30 hour game 3 times in a row and currently have about 100 hours logged. I played this for 100 hours.
What even is it? Well, Omori is an RPG maker indie game with a cute artstyle that hides darker themes and is about depression, it's-
HEY. Stop. Where are you going? Oh, right. Yeah. I know, I know, yet another indie game about depression, yet another indie game that looks cute but is actually fUcKeD uP!!!. It's another quirky EarthBound-inspired game! I get it, in fact that's one of the reasons it took me so long to get around to it despite showing an interest. I saw it and said "wow that sounds cool" but then I thought about it and said "wait maybe not". But, I like Yume Nikki inspired games(which it's way more of than EB) and I like RPG maker games in general, and it's both, so I ended up giving it a shot.
Remember, it's not the premise, the plot, the character archetypes, the tropes used; it's the execution. And Omori, is incredibly well executed.
To start with, in addition to the state mandated trigger warnings the game throws up upon launch, the title screen is melancholic and monochrome. All that's there is the simple menu options, a close up of some black and white child, the title card, a white void of a background... and a haunting and somber sounding piano piece.
After that, the first thing you see upon starting a new game is that same child from the main menu in a white void with very little in it. A black lightbulb hangs from a ceiling that can't possibly exist, a white door sits there with no frame and on no wall, there's a white picnic blanket with a laptop, a sketchbook, a box of tissues, and a cat. This is all that's there. Try to explore and you'll either loop back or get teleported back by strange hands with a red outline.
This tells you immediately that the game is in fact, not cute and fun, and clearly hides darker and sadder truths about itself. This is important to do, because while it's good to shock and surprise your audience, from a writing and directing standpoint you need to establish tone. You can't just open with happy fun cute and then halfway through go OH FUCK SHIT IT'S ACTUALLY DAAAAAARK, because that's obnoxious and feels like you've bait and switched your audience, and it's just bad writing and fucks up the tone. Omori does what is needed, you establish a tone at the start, and then thrust the player into the happy and fun and cute. This causes intentional tonal disconnect; you're distrustful of the pastel colors and silly playful children... until you aren't, you get lulled into a false sense of security, which can then be yanked away from you. Omori is masterful at this, after a tutorial/introduction section, something spooky as shit and highly concerning happens to one of the characters... and then you wake up.
See, Omori is a game about two different worlds, explored by two different characters; the world of dreams, and the world of reality. The protagonist, Sunny(you can rename him but please don't), wakes up after the dream turns into a nightmare, and proceeds to go try and get something to eat... only to experience a waking nightmare instead. The game shows that our little main character isn't in the best mental health, and is hallucinating things which seem to be tied to an unknown trauma.
After another stint in the colorful dreamworld, called Headspace, in which other protagonist Omori(hey that's the title) goes on an adventure with his friends to save another of his friends who has gone missing, you wake up again and there's a knock at the door.
If you open it, you'll find Sunny's friend Kel, who is a lot taller than the Kel you see in his dreams. Sunny has been locking himself away in his house for an unknown reason, dreaming of being with his friends, while they've been out living their own lives... for 4 years. Going with Kel, you discover what's happened to Sunny's friends in this time and learn more about why it is he'd become a shut-in and dream of better times to begin with. You meet Aubrey, who is no longer the black-haired, pink ribbon wearing girl in his dreams, but a pink-haired, nailbat wielding gang leader. A delinquent who acts out her frustrations with her friends abandoning her through violence.
These friends abandoned her because Sunny's sister, Mari, died, and it broke them apart.
Another friend is Hero, strongly implied to have been in a romantic relationship with her, who has buried himself in his studies to become a doctor instead of reconnecting with his friends or even really addressing the grief he feels. Kel wants to talk it out with people and be there for his friends, but he responded by trying to let everyone have their space to mourn, only for it to seem to them like he didn't care. Basil, Sunny's best friend, is very clearly on his last legs and can't even take care of the plants and flowers he used to love tending to anymore. Everyone is dealing with this loss differently, and Sunny's way is isolation.
However... he ends up going with Kel, because he's moving in 3 days. It might be his last chance. Is it fear he may never see his friends again that drives him to break his 4 year trend, or is there something else..
I hope that makes you interested because the game does have a lot of issues. A big one is pacing: Too much time is spent in the less interesting Headspace. Not to say there isn't plenty of interesting things about Headspace; in fact, there's a lot! If you find the optional stuff, there's some deep ass lore that implies it might have existed before Sunny, like it's only been molded by his mind. That said, for every mysterious, optional NPC, there's 3 more fairly boring treks through a dungeon that outstays it's welcome. Like, it's all fun and charming at first, but honestly after the first one with Captain Spaceboy, that charm wears thin. Sweetheart's Castle is notoriously padded and not that interesting. The dream world characters can be argued to all be symbolic of some aspect of Sunny's psyche or life in some way, but it's hard to pin them down as that and it might be a coincidence. There's reason for these parts of the story to exist, a lot of them, but they really should have been cut down. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if I wasn't just thinking "Yeah this is fun and all but I really wanna get back to trying to reconcile with Aubrey and helping Basil." That's the big issue, it keeps you from the real meat of the story most of the time, and I get the reasoning behind that as well as the story/symbolism reason for it... but like, respect the player's time? Properly portion out your story to maximize investment? The good news is that everything from after you collect all of the mysterious keyboard keys you need is just absolutely 100% gold, perfectly paced, constantly effective, wonderfully atmospheric, and sometimes harrowing. I just, you know, I would have preferred more time in the real world.
Especially because the characters, while incredibly well written, endearing, and contributing so much to the story's themes, aren't as developed as I'd like. I feel like we needed more time or more days to flesh them out as much as they really needed... or maybe it's more like, deserved, because they're really fantastic. I mean that, it's just that sometimes the game has a bit of an issue with telling and not showing, and could have made them even more fantastic if it spent the time to do that and delve deeper into them. Yeah like what am I saying they're in the top 10 best casts, I love them all, it doesn't matter but still.
Oh and the game is easy as shit. Once you figure out the dominant strategy you can just coast through the whole game. It uses an interesting version of a buff-debuff system, which is an emotional state system. No state is totally positive or negative; Anger makes you stronger but your defense goes down, happiness makes you faster and crit more but also hit less, sadness makes your defenses go up but lowers your attack. They play off each other with a rock-paper-scissors dynamic; mad works on sad, sad works on happy, happy works on mad. Here's the issue: You get skills that can eliminate the attack gained on foes' anger, and you can get skills that make Kel do massive amounts of damage to angered foes if he's happy. So all bosses ended up being the same: Make angry, lower attack, make Kel happy, set Kel up for big damage, do big damage until win. It's not hard. The only boss I had any issue with is Perfectheart, and that's because she's the bullshit super bonus boss in the alternate route.
That said, as stated: most of the game up until the last like 3rd of it is equal parts hit and equal parts miss, but from then on it's just hit hit hit massive god damn critical hit. The ending is one of the best endings I've ever seen. People say it's the journey, not the destination... but that's bullshit, the destination is very important and it's one is fucking mind blowing. It makes the harder parts of the journey absolutely worth it.
If you want to fall in love with a great cast of troubled characters who could really use some therapy, if you wanna delve into the psyche of a mentally unstable teenager, if you wanna explore crazy dreamscapes and experience the darkness of the heart, if you wanna cry cry time over the loss of a sweet girl who everyone loved, if you wanna question moral quandaries and the nature of right and wrong, if you wanna experience a twist that makes some people go "that's retarded", if you wanna figure out what the fuck that weird black eye creature that keeps following Omori around and spooking Sunny in the mirror is, go play this game. It's coming out on switch in april too if you're a switchbaby.
Just uh... make sure you know it's a spooky game. Like if you're not good with horror, it's not jumpscare horror except for a few things, but it got to me a few times. It's subtle, psychological horror and unsettling imagery for 90% of it's spooks. If you can't handle that then uhhh... well you're SOL I guess!
Omori is now 2020's game of the year, but also it came out on December 25th(yeah christmas) so maybe it could count as this year's??? Well, no, because!!!!
Game of the Year 2021:
DELTARUNE CH. 2
Fucking deltarune chapter fucking two is the game of the year, baby!
Yeah I know, can I really call it game of the year when it's technically a demo??? Yes, because it's really not a demo at all. Chapters 1 and 2 are just the first two chapters of the game, it's basically episodic. And anyway, Chapter 2 is about 6 hours if you do the optional stuff, and the alternate route adds about hour and a half even if you start right at the point where the path can diverge. It's long enough to be a standalone game, and it's got the 3-5 hour Chapter 1 included in it. That's right, this game is already longer than UNDERTALE. And there are 5 or more chapters coming. This is gonna be full on 30-40 hour adventure.
Besides, it's so fuckin good, of course it's getting game of the year.
UNDERTALE probably would have been my game of the year in 2015 if I'd played it that year, I really love it. It's genuinely one of my favorite games of all time and I've spent countless hours analyzing, theorizing, and just generally appreciating everything about it. I've played it over 5 times now and I actually just recently replayed it because of deltarune, I got so deep into it that I got back into UNDERTALE! It's still a really good game and the fight with Asriel Dreemurr is one of the coolest final bosses to me. There are options to "hope" and "dream" in it, if you "hope" your defense raises and you recover hit points, if you "dream" it fills your inventory with full heal items called "dreams" that tell you "through determination, the dream came true!" when you eat them. I fucking love UNDERTALE.
And deltarune is already better than it, just 2 chapters in. Here are things deltarune has improved on UNDERTALE:
Characters: The characters are more interesting and better written this time around, having better character arcs and more depth. The characters in UNDERTALE were well written and endearing, but in terms of development and arcs, there really wasn't much to them. This is partly due to the structure of the game; most characters can only be developed during their section of the story. Papyrus, Undyne, and Alphys get extra development, but everyone else remains pretty underdeveloped. Good, but underdeveloped. In deltarune, you've got a main party and also characters like Lancer, Noelle, and Berdly who remain a part of the story due to being written more like a traditional JRPG. None of the characters' arcs are complete yet, but they're all really great characters with fantastic chemistry and dynamics with each other and are so very endearing, it's clear that by the end they will become very fleshed out characters and are probably going to stay some of my favorite characters of all time.
Battle System: The battles are much more engaging, especially in chapter 2. In undertale, battles are much less dynamic. Your choice is to just kill shit which is two button presses, or pacify shit which is a a binary "spareable or no" system which is always the same. Once you've gotten a pacifist ending, you'll always know how to pacify every enemy you encounter. You can mix it up and play dangerously, attacking enemies until they're so weak they don't want to fight, but that's it.
In deltarune, especially in chapter 2, you have a lore more options and ways to spare enemies. There are team actions in which characters pacify enemies together, there are ways to plan out your sparing to create a good feeling flow, there are things like Susie throwing Ralsei or Kris and capturing mice with a trap that have an action/timing aspect to them, you can also use a spell to pacify enemies who are tired. Speaking of that, there are spells and skills. Regardless of how you choose to approach combat, you have skills at your disposal; Ralsei's healing spell and Susie's Rude Buster attack for example. If you wanna go ham on enemies, which you aren't really punished for, you have other options than simple attacks and for simple attacks you have 3 party members anyway. It's a big improvement.
Graphics: This game looks way better than undertale. All the spritework is done by Temmie Chang, who was responsible for the better looking sprites and artwork in undertale(she was the one who illustrated the intro and the Asriel flashback scenes). They look good, they look cool. Everyone has something that flows in the wind during battle like total cool guys. Kris' ACT animations look so cool, Susie's Rude Buster attack looks badass, and all of Ralsei's animations are adorable. It may not look as good as a lot of indie games, but I think there's a charm to how rough around the edges a lot of it looks while still managing to be pretty cool. This game looks good.
Better Character Design: Generally I think the designs are better too. Kris looks like if you mixed Frisk and Chara together and made them look actually good. While Toby's art for Susie is... uh... not good, her sprite and generally agreed upon actual character design is a good one. She maybe looks more masculine than feminine, but there's enough feminine there to make it a very appealing design for a tomboy lover like me. Assuming your tastes have evolved(or devolved) enough for that, at least. Ralsei is cute fluffy boy and I love him. Noelle is dorky cute, with her freckles and big buck teeth. Berdly is Berdly. Everyone looks good and they're all much more interesting looking than most UNDERTALE characters.
Better writing/comedy/theming/metanarrative: As much as I love these aspects in UNDERTALE, deltarune is just doing it a lot better. Like, the first chapter's boss, King, is such a good example of this. He's not exactly evil, I think, but he's definitely a flat out villain. Though the fountain is said by Toby to have made him worse, his description says he heart became cracked with hatred. He feels abandoned and betrayed by Lightners, the denizens of the Light World that Dark World beings were supposedly created to serve. He's full of hate and he thinks what he's doing is the only way to be free and gain a purpose again. His mention of "platitudes" to Ralsei shows he doesn't believe in traditional, black and white concepts of good and evil and doesn't care if he has to do bad shit to achieve what he thinks is a worthy goal. UNDERTALE dealt with the rejection of black and white notions of morality as well, but that was because no one was actually bad. No one really wanted to do what they were doing, they just thought it was what they had to do. It was easy to get them to stop because they all so truly hated what they were doing. Even Undyne, who is the hardest to convince, understands she was a fool. King on the other hand is broken enough that he just doesn't care anymore, fuck you.
The metanarrative is great this time around because it not only looks at another, different aspect of playing games that we take for granted(the act of simply playing your player character), but also is about the people who've played UNDERTALE as well. It's trying to make you rethink your actions and motivations in that game as well, even those who have only every done a pacifist route aren't safe. The new alternate route in chapter 2 is also significantly more fucked up than the one in UNDERTALE, due to a much more grounded and realistic, comparatively at least, story to it. From both a meta and regular narrative angle. It's bad, so much I've sworn off doing anymore unless it turns out I might need to for some reason.
Oh and the humor is both much more refined and also much more devolved, half of it is just shitposts. Like how so much shit explodes with the same default explosion effect and sound effect just slapped on there it's hilarious.
Direction: Pacing of scenes and their general direction is much better as well, many scenes are very impactful and are expertly structured to get the most out of you. A good example is near the end of Chapter 2, when Kris removes their soul for the second time. It practically comes out of nowhere and is a shock. The music stops. Kris shambles on over to the window and crawls outside... after which the music comes back and you hear Toriel talking with Susie as if everything is okay. The contrast of these two things heightens tension and makes you more nervous. The ending scene is also great as well, especially if you're like me and were enjoying seeing Kris and Susie just hang out and watch movies... that fun slice of life scenario gets ripped right out from under you. It's so mysterious and intriguing as well...
But then, guess what? Chapter 2 isn't just an improvement over UNDERTALE, but Chapter 1 too! The character writing, battle system, graphics, general writing and direction are just much better, it's what got me super obsessed with it the way I am now.
An example is how fighting enemies now causes something: You can't kill them(under normal circumstances), but you can gain power from them. Stats increase with each enemy defeated, but in return said enemy can't be recruited. Which hey, that's right, now there's a real reason for sparing enemies! You can recruit them, and they'll come live in Ralsei's Castle Town! So which do you want, more townsfolk, or more power? You don't even need the power! Or, do you?
Really the battle system is improved a lot, enemies now have percentages for their sparing, different acts raise it by different amounts. And, you learn the ability to ACT independently with other party members, so now you can have Kris, Susie, and Ralsei all trying to pacify different enemies. The battle system is a lot more dynamic this time especially if you're going for pacifist.
The character writing is of course just a lot better. There's even more hints and pieces at what Kris is like and it makes it so much more clear that they are not a player insert character. Hell you can't even choose how they say things! The biggest example, and one we Kris X Susie shippers use a lot, is that if you choose anyone other than Susie when she asks who Kris would like to go to the town's festival with, they say it confused according the her reaction. Susie's super cute this time around, being totally tsundere with everyone, trying to act like she doesn't care, but interestingly it seems like she might have the biggest heart out of everyone. She even genuinely gets concerned for Berdly, someone she is very clearly annoyed by and nobody but Noelle likes. Ralsei has a lot of moments that set him apart even more from our weird mental image of Asriel, and from his doormat persona. The moment I truly got on board with Ralsei was during a scene in which, if you tell him "It's nice that Ralsei is Ralsei"(which I refuse to not pick), he says he likes hearing that but doesn't really know what being "Ralsei-like" even means. I'm sure he'll figure that out by the end. Noelle also became a real character too, and she's totally adorable and I love her, but also she has an interesting arc set up about becoming more confident and strong of will, as well as stuff that I think hints towards a repressed traumatic event. Not to mention, her longing for things to go back to how they were before her sister went missing, and Kris' brother Asriel went off to college, which caused her friendship with Kris to fall apart. I hope they can become good friends again. Oh, and yes, her massive girlcrush on Susie is pretty cute too. Berdly is also great, also made into a real character, and is hilarious and annoying in the best ways yet also shows that he is just a genuinely good dude who wants to help the people he cares about... he's just stupid as hell and is really insufferable about it. Really though, he suffers from imposter syndrome and puts on the front of being an egotistical smartboy because he thinks it's the only way to get any recognition, in my opinion. I think he's scared that if he's true to himself, not only will he be unliked as he already is, but he won't get anywhere in life anyway. People praise him for his grades, if he stops hanging out with Noelle and leaching off her intelligence, he won't get any of that and he'll be stuck with the rest of the class hating him. Hopefully he can overcome this, I expect by the end of the game everyone's gonna love him, both IRL and in-universe.
Oh, and the humor: In addition to the aforementioned shitpost humor, I realized a lot of it is manzai. Susie's interaction with Sans at the end if you go to his store is just 100% tsukkomi-boke. He just keeps saying the stupidest shit, and her reactions are just her getting angrier and angrier. She even says if you examine the snack shelf again, to not look at anything that makes him say stupid stuff. It's hilarious. People talk about Toby Fox subverting expections, but the expectations he subverts are usually in his jokes. One of my favorites is when you come out of Spamton's shady ass shop, and Susie says "What were you even buying in there? Nevermind, I don't wanna know.". Ralsei takes the opportunity to tell Kris she said "She hoped if it was candy you'd get her some.". She gets mad and tells him to shut up but there's an extra bit where she's like "but did you??" because she totally just wants some candy.
Oh yeah, and this chapter also ends with a combining super robot fight in the middle of a futuristic city. No really I'm serious, the Thrash Machine you designed in Ch. 1 is remade into a giant robot and you have a punch out style mini game fight, and it's special attacks are based on which head you chose. I chose the Knife and it makes it's head look like Susie and you can go into Sword Mode where you slash with a sword instead of punch it was so bad ass. The battle theme is a reference to Live-a-Live and it samples the Power Rangers SNES game. No really.
Then there's just all sorts of mysterious shit to think about like is Gaster involved, is Kris the bad guy, why does Susie seem to be the key to all this? Is it because she's a funnier character than we've had before? Why can Snowgrave even be done? What'll happen if you complete that route? What's possessing Kris? It's not just literally the player, right? What are the Shadow Crystals, why do they seem to show an alternate reality when you look through them in the real world? Is The Roaring real and what's the Angel's Heaven? Who's the Knight? What IS the fucking Dark World really? What's up with that weird bunker at the edge of town? Why did Toriel divorce Asgore? Will Asgore learn that he can probably do better than her because he's one handsome big guy 4 u? Does Kris listen to My Chemical Romance? Do other humans even still exist? Will Undyne and Alphys smooch again? Is Noelle actually a lesbian or is she okay with dudes too? I'm asking for a friend, who looks, and sounds, exactly like me. Also, will the final boss of the whole game be cooler than the one in UNDERTALE(Y/Y?)?
I dunno! And I can't wait to find out!
That's why DELTARUNE CHAPTER 2 is absolutely my game of the fucking year. God damn.
And that is IT. Game OVER. Show is DONE. Get the hell out of my FUCKING HOUSE. I need to build my NOELLE shrine.
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Ey watchu think mang?