Shiny Samurott @shinysamurott9 - Tumblr Blog

God I fucking love Deltarune. Finished Chapter 5 again after a full game replay and yeah it's pretty good it's very much a lighter chapter but considering what came before and what's set up to come after it's very intentional. Full spoilers ahead obvs cause I have a lot of thoughts on it

First of all, this chapter has by far my favorite light world segment but it opens on a very uneasy note. Kris is just not in a good state at all. It's the first time we're really seeing the kind of toll not having their soul takes on them for extended periods. They literally crawl back into their room, their skin completely green as they desperately try to put their soul back into them. And even after they get it back, several bits of the check dialogue are almost checked out in a way, like "Really, this is what you're looking at now? In your condition?". Not to mention them barely recognizing themselves in the mirror.

One thing that stuck out to me before heading out of the house was when you talk to Toriel and mention being locked out, she says that Kris knows where the spare key is hidden. Of course, we're controlling them and wouldn't know that, but it also feels like a hint that they were perhaps looking for an excuse to get Susie back to the church for the dark fountain.

Everything after that though is so fucking cute dude. Going to Castle Town and seeing everyone helping Susie get ready for her date with Noelle, the fucking return of the Thrash Machine bit cause Lancer wants to make an outfit for Susie, (Ponytail Susie is peak btw), Tenna trying to give Susie advice about Noelle if you still have him, it's all good shit, all on top of all the other bits of Castle Town goodness. The vibes there are immaculate if you keep up with recruiting darkners.

The festival itself is also super fun. Susie and Noelle's interactions are adorable and her reactions to Kris and Susie's shenanigans is great. I particularly like Kris seemingly being a wingperson for Susie, at least going by dialogue options like encouraging her to include Noelle in future stuff. It is hard to tell what Kris' actual opinions are sometimes even when there are dialogue options are clearly influenced by them in some way, but I do think they're supportive of the two together.

I honestly love the impact this has on Susie, it's almost definitely her first crush, likely the first time she's experienced any kind of romantic affection. Given her lack of friends as discussed in Chapter 4, and her implied rough home life, she's literally living in castle town since the end of Chapter 4 as we learn here. Susie's so love starved that her time with Noelle leaves her constantly thinking of her throughout the chapter, what kind of flowers she'd want, what she could do for her. It's all really sweet, which in turn plays into the end of the chapter where she wants to bring Noelle in on the Dark World. Sure, getting the shelter code is the main reason, but I can't imagine this wouldn't have happened eventually with how central the Dark Worlds and Castle Town are to her.

Speaking of the Dark World, the Dark World this chapter is pretty interesting. The starting section doesn't hide the callbacks to chapter 1, the area, the music, the various darkners are all echoing The Field of Hopes and Dreams. Even the battle theme is a remix of Rude Buster, despite what the title of Chapter 4's theme "From Now On" may imply. It's cool for each chapter to have its own battle theme, but I think the reuse of Rude Buster along with the Chapter 1 callbacks is meant to invoke the nostalgia theming of this past, the idea of wanting to go back to how things were when times were simpler. I don't think this is out of nowhere either. At the end of Chapter 4, Susie says "When the sun comes up, she wants tomorrow (Chapter 5) to be the same as yesterday (Chapter 2 and arguably 3)", and between Susie's own words following that and the fact the Flower King Fountain was made by Kris, I don't think it's a stretch to say they, on some level, feel the same way.

That theme of nostalgia also carries over to Asgore. Flowery and the other flowers want this to be his ideal world, Flowery himself even taking on the role of "Asgore's wacky college roommate". I took that as meaning he's been growing Flowery's real world counterpart since his college days, the seven flowers are already his wedding bouquet after all they've already been around a long while, but it may also be invoking Rudy, which again, the nostalgia theme, it's to remind him of a time when things were better, before Rudy was struck with the illness that now seemingly has him approaching his deathbed.

But Asgore is also where the nostalgia theme ends as Flowery says he'll take him to the Dark Fountain. We don't exactly have the full details of what happened on "That day" presumably the day of the incident surrounding Dess' disappearance. Asgore keeps it vague when he talks to Kris at the end of the chapter, but that makes some sense cause he's talking to Kris, someone who was clearly involved with the incident and is still scarred by it. But I think more of the point of this chapter was to illustrate the fallout of the disappearance, the way Asgore became obsessed with learning what happened, and proving that it wasn't his fault, this obsession cutting him off from his loved ones until they eventually leave him, only leaving him to spiral further becoming, enraged and even more obsessed with learning who's behind the dark worlds and making them pay. It's interesting to see this side of Asgore's personality as I believe it's the same side that led to him sentencing all fallen humans to death back in Undertale, this self destructive and impulsive anger born from feeling some responsibility for the incident that ultimately drives his loved ones away.

I believe this is most shown with the 7 flowers and how they ultimately just want to make Asgore happy in this time in the dark world after it gives them the understanding and consciousness to understand what Asgore has been through. And yet their attempts are ultimately stonewalled as he obsesses over trying to compile and compare his old notes. The flowers themselves are such interesting characters to me, how they're all so different despite all being flowers. I believe this is actually a combination of a few things, in part the way Asgore is stated to speak to his flowers often telling them is troubles, quite literally personifying them in a way. I also think that perhaps in the past, Kris may have followed their example. They still do seemingly as checking the flowers outside Asgore's shop, their reaction is to talk to the flowers, something Asgore approves of. I think Kris also personifying the flowers in this way, on top of Asgore, causes the fountain to create their varying personalities.

But yeah the flowers are cool. My favourite's probably Seth, I just think their design is neat. Not sure why they have an admiration for Berdly, maybe just how Kris personifies them as a nerd and they connect that to Berdly on some level. I do like how they all parallel the fallen humans from Undertale. There have been so many interpretations of the other 6 humans over the years, and I think these guys are Toby's way of getting in on that without making them explicitly canon, which I like.

The main focus when it comes to them though is Flowery. Tbh I'm not really sure what to make of him as a character but I do enjoy the way he pushes the Fun Gang, especially Ralsei as characters. It's brought up that because the flowers are so delicate they can't be brought to castle town meaning this will be their only dark world. That in combination of them wanting to preserve what they believe as both Asgore and their ideal world is not only what leads the two groups into conflict, but also what leads Flowery to question why they get to have their fountain in Castle Town, why they get to live their fantasy and Asgore's has to be sealed. Obviously there is the fact Castle Town can support most Darkners, meaning it's their only chance to continue existing in the same form after their fountain is sealed, but that's just it. Ralsei mentions to Kris that every fountain opened brings them closer to the Roaring, upsetting the balance even more, revealing their knowledge that Kris was the one who opened this fountain. If they keep going around sealing fountains like this, is Castle Town not just as much of a liability? I think that is a genuinely important question to ask when we've been told since the start that too much darkness is a bad thing.

There's also how he acts towards Ralsei, this is in many ways Ralsei's chapter because of that. The chapter already sets them up to be growing out of his shell, trying to learn things not just for Susie and Kris but for themself as well. Ralsei's room is an actual room with stuff in it now which is great. But it's in their interaction with Flowery where the meat of Ralsei's development in this chapter comes from. Despite Ralsei growing as a person they still feel bound to their purpose and the rules of the dark world associated with that, which is where the jealousy in Gerson's foreshadowing of Chapter 5 comes from, "Field of pink and gold charred in an inferno of jealousy" as Ralsei . And yet, Flowery can see that they want to be more than that and he genuinely wants to support them in that all the while taking Trans Ralsei theory from "possible but may or may not happen" to "Goddamn, it's not even subtle" at least to my dumbass. Like, he literally calls Ralsei princess and hands them a ticket for a pink and blue drink.

Speaking of trans funnily enough, there's the shadow crystal boss for this chapter. The completely out of left field return of Mad Mew Mew of all characters, or rather Pink as they are called here. They too play into the aforementioned chapter 1 callbacks as the way to unlock them is like a more fleshed out version of Jevil's unlock. You have to scour the entire map for Pink coins, to receive a special key from a shop keep positioned middway through the dark world which is then used to unlock a secret door in the castle. Much like Pink herself I was really surprised to see the use of the Purple Soul here. Out of all the soul modes this one always felt the most forgotten to me. Probably because it's not just the only one that wasn't used by a major character in Undertale but also only used by a boss you literally have multiple ways to skip if you know what you're doing, which is why I was really surprised to see all the creative ways this they actually use it here. Some patterns are reminiscent of Muffet's some invoke Mew Mew's Joycon Soul attacks from Undertale Switch version, some get really creative like the tunnel attack it's really neat.

That combined with the cutting of your TP Bar and having to rebuild it through out the fight along with managing your limited TP to progress makes for a really interesting fight mechanically. It's also hard as balls, (Those fucking bombs I swear dude). In fact this chapter in general does feel like quite a step up in difficulty. Flowery I also found to be an incredibly difficult fight on my first go, probably didn't help I was up late trying to finish the chapter so I was tired, but even some of the regular enemies and minibosses were a challenge, Aqua kicked my ass on the first go around. I did find it easier on my second run through, which was on a file where I did a full game playthrough, explicitly trying to get as much as possible, so I had much better stuff and several party heal items, like I never got stuff like the Spin Cake on my main file.

The last interesting thing about Pink is the reward for beating her. Every Superboss up til this point has dropped an equipment piece in addition to their Shadow Crystal. I always appreciated that Jevil and Spamton had different equipment drops depending on how you beat them, even if one option is usually better than the other, genuinely Deal Maker is so much better than Puppet Scarf it's almost comical. It adds replayability and gives you a reason to go back and try things a little differently. Because of this I was disappointed that the Knight and Gerson only gave one weapon each, even if it is appropriate since there's only one path to victory with the Knight and you more or less have to fight against Gerson. Pink however brings that idea back in a different way. For beating her, you get the option to pick 3 of 6 equipment pieces to spend your remaining pink coins on, all of which are modeled after the Fallen Human's items from Undertale. This is really cool and they do a somewhat decent job of making them a balanced choice but unfortunately some do lag behind in terms of viability.

Aqua's Knife is sadly the worst of these, the effect seems neat and it is the second best sword in the game rn, but if you're going for all shadow crystals it's blatantly outclassed by the Black Shard, which between the better stats and presumably future fights against the Knight and other dark enemies, players will probably get a lot more use of. It is one of those weird weapons that Noelle will be able to equip despite it not being made for her though which is neat ig.

Seth's Specs too are sadly not the greatest on paper at least. More I frames after getting hit was good in Undertale but in Deltarune you can't graze while in I Frames so if you wanna build TP this item isn't great. This one might just be a matter of playstyle tho. It does at least give a solid +6 Magic so it has that going for it.

The rest tho, I would say are all valid choices for which you wanna take.

The Blue Shoes are a weapon for Ralsei and make Pacify completely free to use. Honestly I found myself using Pacify quite a bit throughout Chapter 5 and if that trend continues I could see this becoming immensely good for them.

Speaking of Pacify, the Orange Glove makes Susie's new move Scythemare cheaper reducing it down to 20TP, effectively making it an objectively better version of Noelle's SleepMist. How useful this will be really depends on how viable pacify strats end up being in Chapter 6 and 7 but even without that it still gives a massive 8 Defense, the highest of any armor in the game rn. Well worthy option.

The Green Apron isn't far behind it though giving a huge 7 Defense, making it second best for that, technically only tied with the Shadow Mantle since that gives defense based on the current chapter number but that's only in Chapter 7 so way away rn. It also heals 16% HP every time it heals making it something you can easily use on anyone.

The best one though, imo has to be the Yellow Hat. +4 to all stats putting it on par with the Dealmaker, which still holds up this far in, while boosting the effectiveness of all spells by 20%. This to me feels like the last piece of the puzzle to make Susie a genuinely great healer with it and Dealmaker you're hitting around 150 hp healed per use and it's a perfect item for her even without that since it's all spells, meaning Rude Buster also gets increased damage. As someone who does genuinely like using Susie's healing it's an easy pick for me every time.

Once you get all three you want though you get given the secret 7th item, Flowery's Scarf, Ralsei's ultimate weapon. Internally it gives insane stats, but Ralsei refuses to equip it. An extremely easy to miss detail is that at the end of the chapter, after The Knight kills Flowery it becomes the "Broken Scarf", "It was all just for show". Ralsei can equip this, but it's effectively just a reskin of the default Red Scarf. I have a feeling however that this, like a lot of the flower items, is meant for the future chapters. I think at some point in Chapter 6 we'll have the chance to repair it, perhaps using the Pure Crystal, to make Ralsei's true ultimate weapon.

I think that's something a lot of people miss about the chapters of Deltarune. Despite how they're produced, they are all designed to be parts of a full game, that if you were to pick up Deltarune after the release of Chapter 7, you'd barely be able to tell it wasn't released as a whole game from the get go. It's why this Chapter doesn't necessarily progress the plot much, rather focusing on developing the characters and giving them some time to breathe between the heaviness of Chapter 4 and what's projecting to be a tragic Holiday focused Chapter 6, but there are things like that in all the Chapters . It's part of why Chapter 3 has its Egg Room and the Sword Route, both of which effectively act as a hint or tutorial for the for the various Eggs and the Weird Route respectively, even if the former is extremely obtuse for that purpose.

Oh yeah, The Weird Route. I wonder what happens over ther-

I won't lie, I don't think any game has ever made me feel as disturbed as Chapter 5's Weird Route. Everyone expected some major shit to go down here, after Chapter 4 it only made sense. But I don't think anyone expected what we got.

From the very beginning it's unsettling. We find Kris, having completely slept through the festival, still in bed. To even begin the chapter, we have to quite literally force them to to get up. Make them drag themselves out of their bed, even as they desperately cling to the sheets to try to subvert us. A detail that's easy to miss is some oddly colored pixels surrounding Kris in their bed. I've seen some people guess that these are meant to be tears, and that Kris cried themselves to sleep and I think I'd believe it.

We've seen the toll us controlling Kris takes on them, physically and emotionally, especially in Weird Route after their crash out in the bathroom, but we've yet to see Kris so vulnerable and hopeless in any other context. Even after we get them out of bed they aren't giving us anything. On the normal route they're tired and bewildered in the check dialogue, but on Weird Route? They give us nothing, literally nothing, the text is blank.

When you get out of the house, you get this really unnerving walk through Hometown. Between the music, titled Happy Town btw I'm sure that's not a coincidence, being this somber slightly off rendition of Hometown's theme on Guitar as you wander around what's left of the festival with Susie, just trying to enjoy whatever you can, but no matter what you do, you're only putting off what has to happen as Susie talks about various parts of her day with Noelle.

No one else is around for this either, adding onto the almost uncanny vibes of the festival. Outside of you and Susie, it's just Rudy, struggling to even stand and of all people, Sans, still running the Ice Cream stand. Perhaps the most curious part of the route, is that talking to Sans is mandatory. Susie will not let you go to the Lake without talking to Sans and receiving, a piece of bread, that leaves crumbs wherever it goes... Only then can you go to the lake.

I don't think I will forget watching the lake scene for the first time. Late at night, well past 1am, hot off the heels of finishing the normal route, I figure, I'll do the start of the Weird Route real quick, see what the story is and it sure wasn't what I expected. Noelle completely breaks down, she expresses how she feels like she's been moving through her life, watching it through someone else's eyes, that even if she may have wanted to break free and take the reigns of her life, she couldn't. Because she's only Noelle.

But Kris? Kris did change, they became someone else. Someone else who was able to make Noelle into someone else too.

It's there where we get to see Noelle's face, and truly see just how off the rails she's going. Chapter 5 was absolutely top notch with the talk sprites, but I think this is Temmie's best work in that regard here. Some of these expressions just feel wrong on Noelle, a couple in particular give her an eerie resemblance to Carol. Fitting in a way, Noelle resembles her mother most, when she's at her worst as I've heard some say. I feel like this is something we see in the normal route taken to its extreme. When in the Light World, Noelle defaults to smiling, and yet in the Dark World, she has a neutral expression. The only lightner so far to have this kind of distinction as the norm. It's one of a few hints that Noelle largely puts up a front a lot of the time, and now? Any sense of that facade has completely crumbled letting us see just how much our own actions and the events of her life have pushed her to the edge. Far enough to do, "Something Crazy", to grow wings and fly out of this town.

And what is that something?

The other side of the lake. It's long been thought there was something up there between the consistent mentions of a song coming from its other side, not to mention whatever the fuck is happening with Onion but that's a whole other thing. Now, Noelle wants to go there, saying that if Kris is the one telling her to, they can make it, that she can do anything, before taking Kris by the hand and waiting to hear the word.

But notably, even if you refuse to tell Noelle to Proceed, she simply denies it, even telling herself to Proceed instead if you refuse enough times, before that option goes away completely. The Route has gone too far and now all you can do is keep pressing proceed, watching as the two walk further and further into the lake. Ironically, echoing the other, "Evil Route you're not supposed to do", you've reached the point where you're no longer the one in control. You're forced to watch now as the two slowly walk out into the lake, until eventually their heads are barely above the water, needing you to now keep mashing the dialogue to proceed, quite literally forcing them deeper and deeper under the water, the entire image getting blurrier and more indistinct, the text box turning red until the only thing you can make out is sporadic dialogue from Noelle, literally screaming at you to keep saying Proceed, until the game itself quite literally breaks under the pressure and all that's left is a single black screen saying:

This, however, is not what happened to me. I did get to the drowning scene, but unbeknownst to me at the time, I failed to hit proceed enough times in the time window given. If you aren't genuinely mashing the button to proceed and holding down the button to select right or left, it's very likely you will also fail the prompt.

In that case, you will get an abrupt cut to snippets of the Normal Route events, interspersed with Noelle claiming "Nothing Changed" as the route seemingly course corrects despite your efforts, as if nothing ever happened. And yet it did. When you take back control of Kris, they can't even walk, Susie has to help them up on their feet before they can move on and even then they're still barely able to. And yet even then, the normal jingle that plays when The Weird Route aborts, never plays. Given how far we pushed Noelle and her projected increased prominence in Chapter 6 , I heavily doubt things could just go how they would in the normal route. Perhaps it will just be minor changes, something in the vain of aborting a Genocide Route in Hotland, where sure you're back on the main path but the scar of your actions will never truly leave for the rest of the playthrough, or perhaps this is a gateway to a third route altogether.

Something it brings to mind is that with Chapter 5's Weird Route skipping any chance to get the last Shadow Crystal and likely any chance to return to Castle Town, we now have the Twisted Sword as an item exclusive to an aborted Weird Route specifically. What that means? Who knows, but it's very odd for the game to seemingly have an actual tangible reward for backing out.

But for the actual weird route, the current final scene just feels so haunting for lack of a better word. The way you can only sit there and watch as Noelle gives you no other choice but to force both of them to drown themselves. Something I only realise now is that the only way to back out of the Weird Route in any way at this point is to completely forsake your control for a moment, stop selecting Proceed and presumably allow Kris to take back control just for a moment to drag them both back to shore. Considering how Noelle actively wanted this, and that Susie is completely unaware they attempted this, Kris bringing Noelle back is the only way they could have survived.

And of course, regardless of what Noelle intended and what actually happened, whether or not they actually made it to "another side" or not, the suicide implications are very much there. In one of those aforementioned interactions with Susie in the festival prior to the lake, she'll talk about how Noelle didn't just want to pay for their time, but actively insisting on giving away hundred of dollars to Susie, a clear sign whatever Noelle thought she was doing, she didn't plan on coming back.

What's sticks out to me the most is that Noelle's feelings are not unfounded or exclusive to the Weird Route. Noelle's speech about doing "Something Crazy" doesn't just parallel her scene with Susie here on the normal route, it also directly calls back to their scene on the Ferris Wheel all the way back in Chapter 2. The imagery described is exactly the same. The exact wording of "Something Crazy", the image of Noelle growing wings and then flying away looking back at it all. Her scene with Susie at the lake also brings up the idea of doing "Something Crazy" and if Noelle "left". Susie interprets this as just her running away, to which Noelle only responds with "I guess..." but given the added context of The Weird Route, I think it's abundantly clear what Noelle really meant. That deep down she may be struggling with suicidal ideation, as she feels less and less in control of her life. Whether it's because of Carol's strict expectations or because of forces completely out of her control like Dess' disappearance or Rudy's illness it's clear Noelle feels trapped by her life. Even when good things do happen, reality is quick to bring her back down. Despite her having a happy time with Susie it all comes crashing down when she gets the call that Rudy has fallen down.

And then we come along on the Weird Route. Despite forcing her to commit what is effectively a massacre, forcing her into things she doesn't want or would never do, all in the name of making her stronger, ironically, at that point, where she has less agency than ever, she finds a false sense of agency in the power it gives her over others. She says herself, when she cast Snowgrave, effectively leaving Berdly in a permanent coma, she felt stronger than she ever had. Yet at the same time, she's able to recognize how horrible that is. She was able to write it off as a dream, but after chapter 4's scene, the realisation that all of that was real just hit her all at once, and I think this is part of why she crashes out so hard here. Her feelings of being trapped and wanting to break free are not only amplified by how much agency we took from her in Chapter 2, but also the taste of freedom she felt she was able to get by going along with it, and that broke something in her. Whether or not her world is fake and she's becoming aware of that in some way, rationalising this as why she's felt so little control of her life and subsequently breaking the world, or if this is just Noelle resorting to the most desperate measure imaginable to finally feel some kind of control.

Whatever it is, it lets her and Kris seemingly break the world and skip straight to Chapter 7, presumably ending up in the depths, the unimaginable darkness growing beneath the town that the normal route has hinted at. Where do they go from there who fucking knows tbh. We'll have to wait til, probably 2028 to figure that out.

All of this is also makes for a very foreboding outlook in Chapter 6. Susie wants to bring Noelle in on the dark world, but all her feelings of wanting to escape her life are still present on the normal route, all while Susie only immerses herself further into the dark world, she quite literally lives in a closet now. I have no doubt that this decision, even if it may be pleasant at first, is going to backfire horribly when Noelle is confronted with the reality of her situation and Rudy's failing health. She will likely be the one to create the Chapter 6 Dark Fountain, either in the hospital or possibly in the Holiday household, maybe Rudy wants to spend his last days at home, or maybe Rudy genuinely dies and Noelle tries to make a Dark World to revive him in the same way as Gerson.

But for now, I think that's all the major things about chapter 5 I wanted to get my thoughts out on. There's a few other sporadic things I wanna get my thoughts on.

For one, this chapter is absolutely gorgeous. Deltarune has had some great visuals and creative uses of different graphic styles like with Tenna, but I love how this chapter looks. The way they use lighting and shadows throughout the chapter makes it such a standout compared to other chapters.

On a more critical note, this chapter is long. It's by far the largest dark world. you need only look at how many areas there actually are. Not only are there 4 main areas, each of them have three sub areas to go to with the Fast Travel doors. It is by far the largest dark world, which is crazy when we literally had 3 of them in Chapter 4. It's an interesting thing to note, maybe a sign of how the balance has shifted further to the dark thus creating more in depth dark worlds but it does make this chapter a bit daunting to go through, especially when you're incentivised to scour the map for the pink coins, yet you're not allowed to backtrack freely until near the very end.

The sidescrolling mechanic is really fun, it's a great way to mix up progression through this chapter while also making good use of climbing from Chapter 4. I'm liking this trend of gaining more and more ways to traverse each dark world, curious if we'll see something in this vain in Chapter 6.

While the Flowery boss fight is genuinely quite hard, I was absolutely shocked to see him utilise not just a soul mode, but an entirely new Orange Soul Mode, giving you the ability to charge through certain projectiles , putting it in the same vain as Undertale's orange attacks. Really curious to see if we'll get a corresponding Aqua Soul in chapter 6.

Chapter 5 seemingly sees the conclusion of both the Egg and Shadow Crystal sidequests. The Egg Man prompts Kris to not look for him anymore and we received the last Shadow Crystal from Pink. I'm still not quite sure what the meaning behind the eggs are, 3 & 4's rooms seem very personalised to Kris but the rest don't seem to have an obvious direct connection I can tell. I suppose it's a question for Chapter 6 and 7.

The Shadow Crystals on the other hand, we got quite a bit of info on them. Seam reveals that they are solidified fragments of Lost Dreams, which makes it interesting to wonder the origins of each crystal. Spamton's is quite obvious, it came from the Neo Body and Mettaton giving up on their dream of their ideal body, though I'm not as sure when it comes to the others, especially Jevil and the Knight's. The Knight is ultimately just cause we really don't know much about them as a character yet and what they actually want, but Jevil I can't really think of an answer based on what I can recall. We'll see where this goes when we get presumably the Pure Crystal from Seam.

Until then though, I think that's everything I have to say on Chapter 5 right now. I think this chapter is a lot better than some want to give it credit for, but I also really can't wait for Chapter 6 now. Playing Chapter 5 alongside a full game replay after the first run, has left me with major Deltarune brainworms and I really wanna draw stuff for it now. Definitely wanna get to that as soon as I finish my anniversary art for Megaman ZX.

#deltarune #very long #lot of rambling

God Gerson is hands down my favorite boss in Deltarune, setting aside the fanservice of actually getting to fight him after Undertale's portrayal of him as this wise but powerful old war hero, it's such an amazing use of gameplay mechanics to tell a story.

When you go to heal, he'll outright steal your items. Not only does this feel like a nod to Gerson's knowledge of and exploitation of game mechanics, his "old trick" that kept him alive in the human monster war in Undertale, it's so perfect for his intentions with Susie. Without items, you are forced to use Susie's healing, and thus engage with the little hidden mechanic behind it, where every time you use it the move gets a little better, you get more HP and the TP Cost gets a little lower.

This mechanic makes it such an interesting fight on your first go around because, at least in my experience, he completely kicked my ass. And yet, each attempt mattered. Each attempt, you're going to get more heals in, both just because you're likely going to need the healing each attempt and because it gets easier to use each time. You tangibly get better each attempt both because of this and just through naturally learning his patterns each attempt. He says himself once you beat him, Perseverance. You get a little better each time. And that work pays off since by the end of the fight, you'll likely have close to maxxed out the uses for improvement on top of getting the early upgrade to BetterHeal. And I'd say it's worth it too, with the heal fully maxxed out, on top of tools you receive across the chapters like Dealmaker or the YellowHat in Ch5, Susie's heal is genuinely an effective and viable option.

And to top it off, numerically speaking at least, healing is the best way to progress the fight. Using OkHeal generates 9 stars that progress the fight. Parrying Rude Buster in comparison generates 8 stars. Sure in practice it might not be the most effective but it complements the way Gerson is pushing Susie very well.

tl:dr, Gerson is a genuinely incredible showcase for using game mechanics to tell a story throughout a boss fight and I love that for it.

#I actually didn't know the improvements to Susie's healing carried over from chapter 3 #up to 5 uses apparently #I'll have to keep that in mind next time I replay Ch3 #though there's probably not much oppurtunity to use it given how TP is used for Ranking for most of Ch3 #Then again ig that depends on how the game counts it #Like do you get the S as long as the threshold was passed at all or what?#something for future me to figure out ig #deltarune #deltarune chapter 4 #gerson deltarune #susie deltarune #stuff I'm thinking about replaying Chapter 4 #Gonna do the chapter 5 replay tomorrow and I'll see what my thoughts on it are then

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