• I'm glad I'm playing Deltarune episode by episode. I think if I had all 7 chapters of this dumped on me I would not be able to process everything it's doing, and I think the games do a lot of work to make the different chapters work as their own thing. I think the best possible release schedule for DR would be monthly for half of a year, but yeah that couldn't happen because of reasons.
• The concept of this chapter, as both "one last fun adventure" and something layered in dozens of meta levels, is the worst concept for the Deltarune chapter on paper. It has no business working as well as it does.
• ch5 is tricky in the sense that it's both self-contained and not self-contained at all. It's a "standard deltarune chapter" in that you spend most of it in an original setting with a new cast, but there's something eerie about how content it is to go through the motions.
  • Flowery is a wildly meta in concept, but in practice not that different from Tenna and Queen. He's both manipulating Asgore in a repetition of Undertale, reflecting Ralsei, and reflecting the player themselves? He's so many things at once that he never resolves into being about anything at all. When he was offed in a scene that felt like the most predictable ending to his character possible, it felt less tragic and more distancing, and weirdly I liked that?
    • Tenna worked as a self contained story about feeling feeling unloved, and relating it to old tv is pretty great. Queen as a story about control and losing it eventually related well to Noelle's light world story. I don't know if Flowery will ever fit in the same way, but that might not be a bad thing?
    • I think the most interesting thematic idea is when he challenges to you justify preserving your dreams at the expense of the flowers. Unless I missed a part, that feels like it could have resolved into something, but it doesn't really? I think this might be something picked up in ch 6 and 7.
      • The flowers don't really put up a fight, and it's not clear to me why. I think it's just left to vagueness.
  • The flowers feel like they're supposed to be mind blowing -- they're reflections of the protagonist of Undertale and a bunch of characters fans have been theorizing for years about -- but in practice are mostly just fun.
    • This cast is by far the best part of the chapter, Flowery is most interesting when he's leading this crew.
  • Asgore took up much less time than people expected, but what was there was good.
  • The introduction of what could have been presented as a mind bending meta reveal (the characters can see the menus.....) is presented in the most deflating way possible. The game has already layered on too many meta levels already, so I appreciated just getting done with it.
  • It was extremely funny that the game tried to exploit nostalgia for itself. Deeply fucked up and I think that was intentional. Nostalgia itself is already a painful feeling and now you just made it awkward.
• If it's not clear yet, my feeling on ch5 is that if I took it only on a surface level, it would be something impressive on a craft level but not really something I'd rave about. Something like a fangame, but both better than that in some ways but less charming and free to experiment than an actual fangame would be.
  • But in context, it's awesome. Here's the things that make this "fangame" surreal:
    • The Noelle is waiting stuff, and the Kris opening the dark world stuff.
    • It comes after the Asriel opening, which makes the ending of ch4 both more and less distressing. Really tricky shit.
    • The festival is awesome. Every conversation is cute and satisfying on one level, but I never felt actually relaxed in it. The extremely cute lake scene taking place while Kris is basically passed out... creepy.
    • We "know things are going to get worse" but the game doesn't excessively rub that in.
• Everything Ralsei was great. We have no actual answers to what his deal is but he feels richer in a way I really liked.
  • His story adds to the feeling of everything just kind of falling apart.
• The best playing chapter. Really loved the perspective change gimmick. Even the final boss people complain about is good (it's trying to feel harder than it actually is, that worked for me).
• Weird route was also incredible, taking the subtextual stress of the main game and making it text. Beautiful.
• I get the sense that ch5 has been through a lot of revisions, for better or for worse. This might be the best state it could have possibly came out in, for an idea that weighs it down overall.
  • Still... very very gud

Deltarune rules, thank for reading.