Super Daryl Deluxe review

Sometimes theming is everything. Super Daryl Deluxe is ultimately an RPG with some wonky ideas that work okay, but it’s all wrapped up in pure distilled creativity – with an overdose of absurdity – so that it becomes weirdly entertaining. The premise of the game is sort of like if Calvin and Hobbes did an enormous amount of drugs and then decided to take on the powers that be within their world of imagination. In order to enjoy Super Daryl Deluxe I think you have to be a fan of the type of humor it conveys, because I’m not sure that the gameplay stands up as well on its own. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of referential humor, but I do enjoy camp, and there were plenty of times when Super Daryl Deluxe gave me a good chuckle. It was also fun to bring along a friend in co-op mode so that we could see each other’s live reactions to the absurdity. Super Daryl Deluxe is like a clever and random web-comic; it’s just a lot of fun in spite of some repetitiveness with the gameplay.

First impressions of Super Daryl Deluxe were a little bit mixed. It throws you right into combat with Daryl daydreaming about noir and books or something, but the gameplay is weird enough that trying to figure out what the heck you’re supposed to do was a little confusing. When you complete this daydream sequence you’re thrust into a long and awkward cutscene setting up the origins of Daryl’s highschool and foreshadowing some of the weird background conspiracy stuff that you’ll be dealing with later on. This opening is disjointed and I wouldn’t be surprised if any player just casually trying this game out found themselves stopping before they even got past it. Once you get into the meat of the game and start talking to Super Daryl Deluxe’s quirky NPCs however, there are plenty of intriguing hooks to be reeled in by. You start working for a pair of local underhanded goons, and your interactions with these two NPCs alone could almost carry the game by itself. It gets even better since they’re not the only ongoing comedy routine there is to find.

Throughout your adventure you’ll be visiting various classrooms, all of which have been twisted into strange abstracts of the subjects they represent. When you visit the science classroom for instance, you’ll be fighting giant equations or oversized plants and viruses. In the music classroom there are sentient drums and ghosts carrying large bassoons. In literature you will pass through Hobbiton on your way to Frankenstein’s castle. Super Daryl Deluxe uses this setup as an opportunity to cram in as many references as it can, and does it using that common assumption that combining the familiar with absurdity makes it funny. Sometimes it does. Following Dracula’s quest to overcome his fear of bats, or helping Gengis Khan join the goblin hordes against Napoleon are indeed funny to think about based on the subject matter alone. What makes Super Daryl Deluxe work for me though is that the juxtaposition of conflicting tones would be entertaining even without the references. The references just add an extra cringe factor, sort of like enjoying a really bad Dad joke.

Another assumption Super Daryl Deluxe makes is that the more intellectual the language used in an inane situation, the funnier the situation becomes. This means there will be characters engaging in long discourses and using big words when all they’re really talking about is having a barbecue in purgatory and they just need you to bring the hamburgers. This is just another example of what I mean by Super Daryl Deluxe’s brand of humor being niche. If you’re not into reading long paragraphs of nonsense dialog just to enjoy the ludicrous escalation of the stakes, then Super Daryl Deluxe is probably not for you.

The gameplay itself has that RPG Skinner box style of powering up, which can be relaxing, but if you’re just trying to see what happens next it can definitely be a grind. While the quests you do are quite rewarding if you enjoy the dialog that follows, the quests themselves are the kind you might find in an MMORPG. You’re often tasked with finding 20 body parts from a specific monster, or to go fetch macguffins from NPCs in a chain, and it very rarely gets more complex than that. Doing the sidequests is also almost required, since if you’re not properly leveled for the newest area that you can access then you’re in for a lot of frustration since the game’s mechanics don’t really allow for you to bypass leveling with your own skill or strategy. Bosses follow patterns that you can adapt to, but it’s all just janky enough that having the extra layer of defense or a higher attack power is really the more fun way to take them down.

Daryl doesn’t actually have any basic attacks, instead you’re given five slots to fill in with whatever abilities you want – with one of these slots being locked into specific movement type abilities. You don’t have any kind of MP pool or resource like that, but each power has a fixed cooldown which prevents you from spamming anything. Depending on which abilities you slot, for most battles you’re most likely going to just be rotating whatever power is on cooldown at the time. This severely limits the strategies you apply to a given situation. There are some utility powers that can be used to mitigate your weaknesses, but slotting a utility means one less attack, which means less damage, making leveling up a more dominant strategy than it might otherwise be. In addition, as is too often the case in RPGs, many of the tools toward power available to you become irrelevant quickly in spite of the effort involved with obtaining them. In Super Daryl Deluxe’s case I’m referring specifically to the equipment system. It includes a grindy crafting system that often rewards you with gear that is obsolete within minutes after obtaining it. The more permanent rewards are then of course the most valuable, so just leveling up or collecting “popularity points” is going to be your best bet for progress. In Super Daryl Deluxe’s defense though, the fastest route to gaining exp or garnering popularity is doing more quests, which is where you’ll find the best parts of the game.

Like any game that involves a decent grind, it’s good that Super Daryl Deluxe also includes a local co-op mode, which lets you mitigate its slower parts with friendly conversation while you play. The cooldown system for your attacks is also less stringent when you have two sets of powers to work with. It lets you can stunlock enemies you might not be able to otherwise by coordinating your efforts. I’d probably say that playing co-op is the best way to enjoy this game, but it’s not without its problems. The split screen system makes it almost impossible to read some of the rewards you’ll find even on a big 55″ HDTV like what we were playing it on. There are also moments in the game that highlight that Super Daryl Deluxe was designed as a single player game first, since the second player just gets to sit back and watch player-one fulfill certain story moments. Managing equipment is also slow, and powering up your abilities works on a shared pool of skill points, thus optimally you would be using the same powers between the two of you. Finally, you of course have to find a local friend who also enjoys the bizarre nature of this game’s story – luckily for me I have just that kind of friend, and we had a great time playing it together.

Besides questing and leveling, Super Daryl Deluxe describes itself as an “RPGvania”, which suggests that exploration and other Metroidvania elements would be present. Super Daryl Deluxe does technically have ability gating, but you only really get one – maybe two – abilities that are required to progress anywhere. Generally speaking the game opens up based on story events, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be doing some wandering to figure out what to do next. Because the equipment system is so unreliable and there aren’t any items that give permanent benefits similar to the HP-Ups you might find in a Castlevania game, exploration isn’t really rewarded in the traditional Metroidvania sense. In fact if you stripped away all of Super Daryl Deluxe’s theming, traveling around the game world would be a total slog. It’s the theming that makes wandering and exploring entertaining, and occasionally you’ll stumble across a quest or situation that can make the effort worth it.

While the story in Super Daryl Deluxe is generally entertaining in a random sort of way, actually making sense of what’s happening is like trying to interpret a fever dream. By the time we made it to the end it all suddenly made sense, but I’d like to bring back that “Dad Joke” analogy I made earlier. It’s like a really bad pun where it’s hard not to appreciate the mental connection imposed upon you, but it forces your face into your palms while you try very hard to suppress an embarrassing smirk. Making it all the way to the end of Super Daryl Deluxe was a shaken-not-stirred combination of laughing out loud and wondering what the heck it was that I had just played.

Super Daryl Deluxe is one of those games that makes me think existential thoughts. I kept wondering whether I was wasting my time or achieving some form of twisted enlightenment. I wish the gameplay stood on its own merits as something more than just pretty good, because I honestly have no idea whether the rest of the game has any actual value. It does have value as entertainment, but only if you like its jokes. If you listen to the game’s theme song – and really pay attention to its lyrics – and find anything amusing about it, then go buy this game and give it a shot, and bring a friend if you can. It might be completely dumb, but I think we all could use a little dumb escapism once in a while.