deltarune and consistency
i honestly think the biggest criticism with DELTARUNE as a whole is that Toby (and by proxy the team he has amassed.) - because of time constraints, lazyness or reluctance to follow through - isn't very consistent or constant.
From the little things, like the 1 bonus HP not going into chapter 5, or stuff like which recruits actually show up in castle town. To larger problems, like which songs make it onto the OST listing, character writing, what powers people can use, the many buildings around castle town (looking at you, dojo.). All things that should be consistent.
I understand that effectivly creating around 2-3 new battles just for the dojo would cause the game to take much longer to be made, but it just feels annoying to neglect old concepts in favor of pushing more and more NEW (as in new areas and bits) content into castle town. i like the climbing mini-game and the piano, but i also wish that places like the cafe, dojo and cd shop had just as much to do in them. its like a form of power-creep but concepts and gimmicks.
there’s also the issue of character writing. when i played chapter 5 i felt like both Susie's and ralsei's characters were much different from that of chapter 3 or 4. now upon reflection, most of Ralsei's changes come from them finally allowing themself to be who they are, not forcing themselves to be all polite and proper when they don't want to. however even knowing this, their actions towards orange come off as mean and rude for no reason. yes orange did start it by being mean to begin with, but ralsei's actions during the dual orange/green fight come off as much harsher and mean-spirited than anything we've seen from them. they aren't even that mean to flowery (most of the time when compared to how often they're mean to orange.) it just feels like quite the shift compared to everything else.
susie's lack of questioning or drive towards closing the fountain (especially in the middle point of chapter 5.) can be seen as a much more prominent style of escapism, with how she focuses on thinking about having fun/ noelle, due to not wanting to think about the final part of the prophecy/prophecy overall. its a much more noticeable way of portraying the themes of escapism and avoiding things that the entire game takes on. a microcosm. taking this into mind, i found myself seeing moments that seemed out of character for Susie as moments where she was trying to do anything not to think about the knight, the prophecy and everything that has happened over the last few days. This culminates into her partially rejecting the reality of it all and choosing to call castle town her home, rather than her actual home. her mental state is detiorating because she refuses to confront what shes gone through, and the world never really gives her a moment too either.
there’s also the issue of Kris, and how they're very picky on when to allow us (the soul) to use abilities. if they are in cohoots with the knight, then it makes sense for them not to let us use x-slash or red-buster, both moves that require kris to use their soul to do said attack. however, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to use x-slash during the titan fight. the titan wasn't in the original plan for the knight, it was very much a last ditch effort to slow down the team to stop them from fully catching the knight in the light world. If the team were unable to stop the knight, it would put a large wrench into whatever plans kris and the knight have for the prophecy, so you'd think that kris would be trying their hardest to kill said titan, or at least look like they were killing it.
The same issue as the one above, that of abilities not being consistent, also applies to Susie and ralsei, who just gain or lose abilities whenever the time calls for it. like revive song, scythemare and that fireshock bullshit we see ralsei do and never talk about.
i just feel like deltarune has a lot of problems with staying consistent to itself. There are things that fall under this umbrella that are due to other factors, like how i feel that the pacing, art and certain parts of gameplay of chapter 1 (and parts of chapter 2 tbh) doesn't match up with the other chapters is due to how long the game has been in development and how toby (and his team) have evolved their skills over the years and gotten much better. and these issues could be fixed if when deltarune is finished, toby went back and redid chapter 1/2 to new standards.
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