1st to 3rd places are so unbelievably close you have no idea i hate that i had to choose

deltarune chapter 5 is the greatest thing ever made. the music is immaculate. the characters are immaculate. the writing is amazing. flowery and seth pissed me off to no end when they first appeared and towards the end all i wanted was more from them. all of the flowers were so good. the platforming gimmick was fucking phenomenal. i loved all the chapter 1 callbacks because chapter 1 holds a very special place in my heart. the festival was beautiful. i don't care that this chapter wasn't lore heavy. i just wanted more of the characters we had. i don't care that gaster wasn't there. i don't care that friend wasn't there. i don't care that dess wasn't there. the characters that were there were perfect and the gameplay was perfect and that was enough for me. shit, it even had me thinking "i'm gonna miss the forgotten man" after they gave him so much personality with ZERO DIALOGUE. ONLY HAND GESTURES. I LOVE THIS FUCKING CHAPTER. the secret boss was so unbelievably fun. and the weird route. oh the weird route. also normal npc continues to freak me the fuck out. immaculate. i love lesbians. all hail toby fox, all hail temmie chang, glory to fangamer.

if you asked me a year ago about my opinion on deltarune, i would have said something along the lines of "chapter 4 is the greatest thing that toby fox has ever made" and today, if chapter 5 hadn't dropped, i would have said the same. the lore implications. the mysteries it continued and started. the questions it asked. the characters it gave and took. every single track of its OST. the climbing gimmick, which was at the time my favourite innovation in the entire franchise. all perfect as they were. i thought toby managed to surpass all of his past work, and i wasn't sure how he would do better the next time. but somehow he did. but my opinion that ch5 one-ups everything else doesn't and shouldn't downplay the greatness of chapter 4. i still love every character. every story. every conversation. i was even enamoured by the most basic things, even the overworld enemies fascinated me. the fight against gerson, both living and statue, were both clear examples of fox's immaculate boss design. the final boss being a titan, a threat that was being built up since chapter one's fucking prophecy cutscene(or was it chapter 2's roaring exposition?? i can't remember for the life of me) was the hypest shit ever, and is able to recapture the grandeur of the fight every time i replay it. i still love this chapter, truly. it has been all i could have dreamed of and more.

placing chapter 2 this low was the hardest decision of my life. on one hand, this is the chapter that truly showed off deltarune's potential greatness. chapter 1 was great, but this was the thing that truly locked me in for the long run with this game. it kickstarted so many amazing things. the roaring. more questions about the knight. spamton. who the hell is mike? how does that one rudinn know what we called ourselves during the goner maker sequence? and the writing. the characters. the music. damn near every single joke in this chapter still lands. this chapter is actually still so fucking funny. not to mention, this shit started THE weird route. and it posed so many questions. where will we go with this next? does or doesn't kris actually want this? why would chara make us do this? this chapter was amazing, and every memory i've made with it, before, during, and after its release, has been amazing, and i wouldn't trade it for anything else.

chapter 1 is a strange one. it was the first. it's rudimentary. it's unpolished. there's basically nothing to go off of lore-wise. but it's charming. that's how i'd describe chapter 1. this thing fucking overflows with charm. the characters we were just now meeting, the witty, oftentimes hilarious dialogue of their interactions, are what made me fall in love with this world. the existence of chapter 1 is the only reason anything else i'm gushing about here exists. it created all of our favourite characters. maybe some of our least favourite too, i don't know. point is: it was the first one. it doesn't have to be perfect. it never had to be. i'm just glad it's there. as a bonus, it has my personal most favourite to play against boss in the entire franchise, jevil. although his lore-relevance in the future seems grim and hopeless, i'm glad we got what we got of him, because he's genuinely amazing. such a fun fucking boss and character oh my godd. this chapter holds a special place in my heart, regardless of its imperfections.

chapter 3 was amazing (on the first or second playthrough). it suffers from an unfortunate and critical lack of replayability due to how linear it is. i don't hold that against it, but that doesn't mean it isn't an issue. it has the usual things you'd expect. good writing, great soundtrack, witty new characters, but one of these had to be in last place. tenna was a shocker of a character when this chapter first came out. nobody expected a 3d rendered, fully animated major antagonist (more of an anti-villain but hey) and he was amazing and funny and everyone loved him. the 8-bit minigame gimmick was cool (on the first or second playthrough) but eventually it got old. the whole side story with the sword route and ERAM and the shadow mantle was very cool and interesting, but the final fight against ERAM was really annoying and i suck at it which takes away from my enjoyment of the chapter. another issue i have is that a lot of TV World feels very samey. at times i felt i was walking through the same room over and over. this chapter's fight against roulx genuinely feels like a complete slog, which i have no idea how they accomplished, considering his first fight birthed THE susie throwing act, and his second fight's house capturing minigame was actually a really fun gimmick. also, i'm salty that they CONTIUNED to build up whoever the hell mike is, only to do fuckall with him next chapter, although maybe it was better for him to be a red herring??questionmark????? oh well, at least the knight was pretty cool.

at the end of the day, it doesn't matter which chapter was "THE BEST" or "THE WORST" because they all join to create my favourite game i have ever experienced. chapters one through five, toby fox, temmie chang, anyone else that worked on undertale or deltarune that i can't name off the top of my head, thank you. seriously. for the years of joy these games have given me. i wouldn't give them up for anything.