Deltarune Chapter 5 Is Not What We Asked For, And That’s Okay

The wait for Deltarune Chapter 5 after the release of 3+4 last year was three whole years shorter than the gap between 2 and 3+4. But given where Chapter 4 ended, it somehow felt much longer. There’s something about this drawn out, episodic format that drives people a little nuts, I think, especially with a game as full of double meanings and hidden messages as Deltarune has become. I’ve been obsessively following it all for over a year now: the speculation, the datamining, the ARG, all of it leading up to the release of Chapter 5 yesterday.

It wasn’t what I expected.

And I’m so, so glad it wasn’t.

I don’t spoil any major plot details in this review, but I do talk in broad strokes about the events, characters, and themes present throughout all of Chapter 5, including the very end. I have also included images in this piece in which new Chapter 5 characters are visible, but did not include images of major story spoilers. Anyway, read on at your own risk:

Deltarune Chapter 5 is exactly what Toby Fox billed it as: “one more fun adventure” before the sun sets completely. Structurally, Chapter 5 closely and purposefully mirrors Chapter 1, playing on themes of nostalgia and Susie’s reiterated desire for good times to last forever, while knowing they can’t. There are a number of excellent callbacks to the start of this adventure eight (eight!!) years ago, though the best might be the needle-drop reprise of Chapter 1’s “Field of Hopes and Dreams” remixed by composer and musician insaneintherain. I screamed when I recognized that piano riff! The rest of the soundtrack is typically fantastic, too, if surprisingly a bit shorter than that of the other chapters.

Chapter 5 is doing far more than retracing earlier steps. Every chapter needs a gimmick, and this one takes the shocking swing of becoming an action-RPG about half the time. Switches around the chapter activate a perspective shift that swaps you from top-down RPG to side scroller, leading to some interesting puzzles that require you to imagine what the world looks like from the other perspective in order to know where to go, and where to find all the chapter’s secrets. I won’t pretend this mechanic was a gamechanger—it was fine. Maybe a little unnecessary, except as a way to vary things up in the middle of a significantly longer but otherwise well-paced chapter. But I respect the energy of taking a risk like this midway through your (probably) seven-chapter-long episodic game. I liked this better than Chapter 4’s climbing (which unfortunately also returns), anyway.

Everything else is pure Deltarune, excellent in the way past chapters have been excellent. I continue to enjoy the mash-up of turn-based RPG and bullet hell battles. There’s a healthy, non-irritating amount of hidden secrets, including a secret boss battle that had me exactly the right amount of pissed off. The deeply messed-up alternate game route continues to ensure I will never touch it, even as reading up on its revelations enriches my understanding of the far more whimsical normal playthrough. It’s colorful, at times even lovely thanks to thoughtful use of the series’….ah, simplistic aesthetic. Its puzzles are sort of whatever, but they always have been. The writing is as on-point as ever here: often funny and charming, but cutting deep where it matters. As usual, I took a gazillion screenshots as I played, mostly in anticipation of using Deltarune’s many, many good jokes as memes contextually in online conversation as needed. The consistent nailing of natural, unapologetic humor does a lot of work to make every last one of Deltarune’s new and returning cast members lovable, memeable, and memorable. Even the ones you initially want to strangle:

But, we’re over halfway through Deltarune now. What’s going on with it, more broadly? What’s it even about? It’s clear there’s a lot more here than a playful little RPG adventure about saving the world from darkness. Deltarune’s chapters thus far have flirted with themes of good vs. evil, free will, what it means for a life to have value, and how we as players relate to games. All those are still present here in varying degrees. But Chapter 5 is also about more personal, intimate themes. It’s about grief, loneliness, and loss, and how those feelings impact individuals and then ripple out from them into the wider community. It’s about how we bear our individual burdens, and who we allow to help us. It’s about the small moments, as much if not more than the big, dramatic ones.

• Back-of-the-box quote:

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

• Developer:

  Toby Fox

• Type of game:

  Turn-based RPG, bullet hell, also this chapter’s an action-RPG too?

• Liked:

  Witty writing, lovable characters, great music, continuation of a twisty mystery, mostly fun battles.

• Disliked:

  Climbing walls, the section of the secret boss fight that’s like Bomberman.

• Platforms:

  Played on PC; also on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5.

• Release date:

  June 24, 2026

• Played:

  Eight hours on Chapter 5 alone, for all five chapters I’ve spent around 30 hours on a completionist playthrough.

There’s a community of fans who have spent the last several years digging into Deltarune’s lore on a granular, Wikified level, to the point where many fans had seemingly mapped out a set of very specific expectations for Chapter 5 that largely did not pay off. I’m guilty of the digging myself, and Chapter 5 has been a wake-up call for me to reconnect with this story on a less manic level. Chapter 5 did not deliver the massive lore revelations that Chapter 4 did, and I think some people might be disappointed by that. Briefly, I was too. But by the end, I had come around: I do not think I actually wanted the version of Deltarune Chapter 5 I had made up for myself in my head for the last year. Instead, Chapter 5 was unexpectedly grounded, built mostly on relationships played out in quiet moments between battles: a poignant conversation in an onsen, playful flirtation by the lake, an implied ferris wheel scene you never get to watch. In fact, it almost felt a bit on the nose by the end, as Asgore realizes what he’s been missing in his life while drowning in conspiracy theories about what happened in the past, and why. It’s not the web of crazed lore that I love most about Deltarune. It’s the cast of lovable weirdos, and always will be.

Nowhere is all this more noticeable than in Chapter 5’s final moments. Just before the credits roll, we see Kris walk Susie “home.” Their conversation zooms in not on any of the story’s wild lore swings, but on their relationship and each character’s quiet suffering—suffering they haven’t been able to reveal to one another even after all they’ve been through together. Deltarune Chapter 5 ends not on a moment of shock, or triumph, but on grief and loneliness. 

Kris’ plight in particular remains one of the best bits of storytelling across all five chapters of Deltarune. It’s established as far back as Chapter 1 that the player is a separate entity from Kris. Kris needs us, both to close Dark Fountains and seemingly also to even survive, and we need them to play Deltarune properly. And yet, Kris seems to hate us, the player. They are a willing but unhappy participant in this exercise for reasons they have yet to share with anyone, reasons almost certainly tied to a deeply felt loss in Kris’ past and a grief that’s yet unhealed. And while you can avoid exacerbating that hatred pretty easily by not taking the deeply upsetting Weird Route, there’s seemingly nothing you can do to convey to Kris that you don’t want to hurt them, and in fact want to help.

From the opening of Chapter 5 (in which I desperately just wanted to get Kris to eat a piece of toast or something) to the lonely end, Deltarune had me clawing at my screen. I wanted to shout at Kris: “Let me support you! I like you! I care!” This is simultaneously the most, and least, connected I’ve ever felt to a video game protagonist. That connection has been built, bit by bit, over the course of all five chapters in everything from the game’s narration (which is almost certainly Kris’ thoughts, often directed at the player specifically) to Kris’ dialogue options, which seem to allow you to play along with their mischievous personality, support them in loving their friends, or (terribly) push Kris to give into intrusive thoughts. However you choose to build it, the progression of this strange, tense relationship between player and character is immaculately done.

For good or ill, I am deeply invested in seeing how Deltarune resolves. And it may very well be ill! Deltarune has taunted players with the impossible possibility of a happy ending from the start, implying repeatedly that sacrifices will be necessary, or that the player may need to take drastic actions to get there. It tickles my brain to try to unravel what any of that could possibly mean. But even if the result is heartbreak, Chapter 5 has me more determined than ever to see it all through. Yes, because I think the world of Deltarune is fascinating and I want to pick it apart and learn all its secrets. But more so because of the pieces of myself I can see in Kris, Susie, Ralsei, and Noelle, and how badly I want these fictional beings to be happy and safe.