my thoughts on deltarune chapter 5 right after finishing the normal route
(spoilers below obviously)
overall it was really great!! i found it to be the most fun chapter in terms of gameplay cuz i loveee platform games. it was so stimulating lol
the mew mew fight was amazing, the song was so good, the art was adorable and the fighting mechanics were so creative! some parts felt almost like a rhythm game which was so fun. it was a hard fight but it was manageable for me, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the roaring knight or spamton neo in snowgrave
i absolutely ate up all the suselle content, i've shipped them so much from day 1 so i've waited years for this and it went above and beyond my hopes :)))
the only thing is i wish there was more lore drops/foreshadowing in the chapter, my takeaway after everything is that i don't feel any closer to uncovering the mysteries in the game rn and after chapter 4 i've just been dying to understand what's really going on for a year.. every theory i had going into chapter 5 didn't get any closer to being confirmed or denied
we got new characters and storylines which were all really great, but very little new information. the only really significant thing we learned is that ralsei is way stronger than we knew (has fire powers?!) and has been holding back, but we didn't really learn just how far that really goes. this chapter opened up some new questions too, like why did ralsei have to be hidden from asgore? why was ralsei talking to us in the game over screen? does ralsei have some kind of meta game(save file?)-altering ablities?i was already curious on what ralsei's whole deal is (and at times mistrusting) but now i'm even more curious
there was a lot of asgore content but nothing was revealed that we didn't already know. there was just some more clarity on what was already implied (but casual players probably missed in chapter 4) about him being there "that day" that dess went missing, and him knowing of the existence of dark worlds and obsessing over them to prove he was innocent. but we kind of knew all of that already, and the backstory he told didn't go into detail about anything at all
i was really happy to see his character development by the end of the chapter. he drove me nuts in this game up until this point tbh LOL it was hard to watch him be so pathetic and make toriel uncomfortable all the time. so i'm relieved he actually learned from this experience. his storyline in the chapter didn't go how i expected though, with the "inferno of jealousy" line i was pretty sure that he would 1. find out about sans & toriel and 2. be very upset and hard to reason with, i thought he might even be so caught up in his emotions we would have to fight him. but we didn't have to do anything to help him in his growth (i'm glad, kris shouldn't be in that position as his kid), the story with the flowers just unfolded conveniently for his arc and he responded like a rational responsible adult would. good for him
also, i fucking love flowery he made me laugh so much. i couldn't even hate him for being annoying because he just entertained me way too much. he was actually a kind hearted person and was pretty morally sound. i liked the moral dilemma of either flower king's or castle town's fountain would have to be sealed, and just because from our perspective castle town needs to be protected, doesn't mean the home of others' deserves to be destroyed. he treated all his friends well and was even nice to the fun gang, and just wanted to make asgore happy. at first he seemed like he could've been a deceptively nice character only to be revealed to have ulterior motives in the end, but nope. he was just trying to do the right thing
i liked the rest of the flower darkners pretty well too. personally, they didn't leave as strong of an impression on me as many of the darkners we've met in previous chapters did, but maybe i'll feel more attached after engaging in the fandom more for chapter 5 fancontent/commentary. i'd say yellow is my favorite. him and blue had some pretty sweet moments too (i love how much gayness there is in this game)
one thing i'm still wondering which i don't think was explained, is that i don't think the flowers ever said why they want to be human? i assume it has to do with trying to make asgore happy somehow. they want to be his new family. and yeah, kris is human, they could just be trying to replace them. but the rest of his family are monsters, so i don't understand the fixation on humans? maybe it's because he watches tv/anime and/or reads manga with mainly human characters? idk, but i felt like that was an important aspect of the flowers' characters that could've been explained a bit more and i guess i don't get why it wasn't?
and like i said i loveddd the mad mew mew fight but i do kinda wish the secret boss had actually revealed some plot-relevant secrets! her storyline wasn't tied to the main plot of the game, the purpose of the fight was moreso thematic (kris/player parallels) but it's just reinforcing ideas that we're all very familiar with at this point, like kris' motivations & desires not aligning with the player's
i would say the chapter felt a bit like filler to me. it stayed pretty light hearted and seemed to purposely avoid revealing too much to save all the angst and plot twists for later. and this was definitely the right time for something like that in the story, we needed to get more invested in relationships and more curious about the characters so that everything that's to come will have more emotional weight.
so i wouldn't even call this criticism because i thought the chapter was incredibly well done and all the right choices were made. but as a fan always obsessing over the lore and coming up with theories, i want more a little more crumbs!!
tdlr; i loved it, but i wish there was a little more lore/foreshadowing, but i get why & can't complain cuz it's a good choice narratively










