Contains spoilers. This isn't a review!
This essay is not written by AI.
I got into deltarune in june 2025 and just played Chapter 5. I've really been enjoying the game and think it's amazing! But I've had some subconscious thoughts since I played Chapter 3. Chapter 5 is the point where I really noticed them and said, „you know, this feels really off and I really want to articulate my thoughts now“. I couldn't find anyone discuss Deltarune from this perspective, despite how insanely popular it is.
While the concept of Deltarune is cool, combat is stays fresh and the gameplay is consistently fun, the overall structure is broken. I don't mean that the game or story or whatever is fundamentally bad — rather, that it suffers from semi-significant issues. I do not know how to explain it without sounding like a hater who doesn't like deltarune for telling its story, but i'm trying my best.
I encourage you to read the full essay before deciding whether you agree or not.
Deltarune suffers from Structural friction and ludonarrative dissonance.
Ludonarrative dissonance: the narrative demands urgent action, but the actual gameplay loop demands trivial distractions.
In most games, narrative builds like a staircase; each area you complete gets you higher to the main plot. Deltarune doesn't do that. You start each chapter in the light world, the peak of the plot. After about 30 minutes, you fall into a new Dark World, where the tension suddenly drops to 0. You spend 5 hours playing in a new, isolated micro-plot featuring characters you'll likely never meet again.
It feels like starting a new game every chapter — you're forced to remake your investment to the narrative. You spend hours learning to love Queen or Flowery, just for them to go away hours later. This is structually super exhausting, and it doesn't matter if the chapters are fun or if it's intentional. It's hard to give a shit about the overall story when everything is temporary.
The roaring knight is literally portrayed as someone who's gonna end the whole world tomorrow or something — but the game's pacing doesn't acknowledge it. This is a REALLY common issue in open world games, as the plot is independent from the gameplay due to the genre's nature. Deltarune isn't an open world rpg — and this is an issue, as open world games have this because of the genre's nature. Deltarune suffering from this is massive. You can't just force yourself to strictly follow the story and ignore all sidequests; you need to follow a linear rollercoaster. It's so much worse than botw letting you ignore ganon.
Toby Fox loves to write serious stuff around comedy. This is fine, it's really cool! But my issue here is that the Dark World purely leans into comedy, while the light world — somewhere you barely play on — is serious. For the first 30 minutes, you have the seriousness of the situation with kris and Noelle x Susie yuri, then suddenly the game transitions to pure comedy for the next 5 hours. To me, this feels incredibly jarring, and this contrast doesn't add value to the game.
The game also disrespects your time .
Throughout the 3rd chapter, you're dragged through tedious minigames, for like, 3 hours i think? This usually wouldn't be a problem — but there's no payoff for the time you spend. Character development — proportional to playtime — is relatively small. Most of the chapters are spent having basically tv time!!!!; yes, i know character development happens, most notably with noelle in ch2.
Chapter 4 tries to fix this by being dedicated to the entire narrative! It builds some massive tension! It's one of the best chapters yet, which is a low bar unfortunatly. But it derails in a lot of moments, and jackenstein should've come later or earlier. So out of place.
Chapter 5 abandons the narrative momentum from chapter 4 and puts you in some random, unrelated flower world.
The most significant character is Flowery. He tells the protagonists that they're arrogant. Yet don't even engage with it — it just gets ignored. He says it a few times, and the gameplay moves on as normal. Insane for such a significant thing.
The worst part is that the only things that happen in this 6-hour chapter are in the last 10 minutes.
Asgore talks about him feeling guilty about Dess' dissappearance. Which, does not make sense. Is the story made out of hopes and dreams? get it? laugh track plays
“ In Chapter 4, we saw dark clouds on the horizon…
That’s why, let’s not look there for now. Let’s turn around and watch the sun, before it goes down completely.
Let’s smile again.
Let’s have one more fun adventure, okay?
…
In my opinion, it fits well in the overall story of the game. “
This is what Toby Fox said about the chapter.
Toby. This is the final act. You built a bridge to it in chapter 4 — but instead of crossing it, you built another bridge.
The pacing and the story is completely disorganized and incoherent.
And now you're pumping what would be the middle AND climax of a story, in 2 bloated chapters.
Some fans might point to Chapter 5's massive twists the chapter drops — suselle, rudy falling down, asgore and dess, ralsei acting weird around flowery — as proof of major plot progression. But listing plotpoints doesn't fix a structural issue. Throwing huge, game-shifting revelations into the final and first minutes of a chapter doesn't justify spending five hours on an isolated, narrative-stalling detour, right at the climax.
The Dark Worlds are basically devices for character development. But it takes 5 hours to get like, 10 minutes worth of character development.
Yes, it's obvious that this is intentional. The protagonists treat the Dark Worlds as an escape. But it introduces friction and wastes time — that's the issue. Whether intentional or not, it's bad game design. There are much better ways to write a narrative, and this is highly inefficient. I don't want to waste so much time on what is ultimately a long trip to a themepark, when the overarching plot advances so little in comparison.
You might defend this by saying that Deltarune is a character-focused rpg. But then, why put so much focus on a „traditional“ narrative? Why is it so dark and serious? Why do the characters from chapters after 2 just disappear, or at least turn to mere props in Castle Town? This is more of an excuse, not an explanation.
I know the Dark Worlds are the main attraction, the issue is it wraps it around this serious story and creates an annoying contrast, purely to justify the dark world's existences. Without it I wouldn't even criticize them.
What about chapter 6?
We already went through 5 chapters; about 24 hours total. If Chapter 6 is where the central narrative finally takes over, it'll reinforce what i'm talking about.
Toby's only option is to give the previous chapters a retroactive meaning; this would recontextualize the pacing, but only in an attempt to justify it after the fact. It wouldn't excuse why he structured the game this way.
Nothing he could do would give an answer as to why you had to play on a fake TV show or fuck around in chapter 4 doing random puzzles for hours. It's like making a really bad argument and later saying „just a joke lol“. Just because it was intentional doesn't mean the pacing is good.
There's no build-up to the sudden shift in the end of every Chapter. You just kind of… get thrown in them.
I still like Deltarune
Hardcore, long-term undertale fans definitely LOVE this game and might even find its flaws okay. I am not one — I play it casually. Start chapter, go through the default path, don't bother with secrets or engaging with the fandom. And from this PoV the game is pretty flawed, though extremely fun still.
The music is awesome, I have a huge skill issue in dodging bullets but that's okay, I care about the story and the characters. But Deltarune's flaws actively hold it back.