Celeste

  This was originally posted on the 16th of January, 2024, in this Twitter thread.

CelesteGame.com

To my surprise, the main story only took me like 5 hours. The rest of my playtime was dedicated to bonus content.

While I thought this game was pretty fun, I do have some issues.

I didn't really like any of the characters aside from Theo, so as you can imagine I didn't really enjoy most of the story. I particularly disliked the Granny character.

I had a lot of problems with specifically the main story levels, because for whatever reason the game leans into being a dungeon crawler midway through, and I didn't really like when it did that.

The game also does this thing I hate where sometimes the "secret" pathways are so obvious that I literally can't distinguish which way is supposed to be the secret, so then I end up having to guess, but the game typically likes to lock you out of backtracking so if you guess wrong then you have to back out of the level and restart an entire section. The frequent locking out of backtracking made collecting stuff really tedious because I kept having to replay sections of some levels. Also, some collectables are in way too obscure of locations I felt.

The platforming challenges tied to collectables were pretty consistently fun though, so it's not all bad. I enjoyed the game a lot more though once I got most of the collectables and could just focus on beating levels. Thankfully, most of my playtime was just spent on beating levels.

One core "issue" I have with the game is that it's a precision platformer. I respect the fact that it's a precision platformer and enjoy the game nonetheless, but as with all other presicion platformers, I feel as stages get harder, they tend to become less dynamic in the ways in which you can go through then. I don't think it's necessarily bad that precision platformers are like that, it's just not my preferred taste.

Most of the game blurs in my head, I think probably due to how much you revisit areas and level themes. Chapter 7 having you (sorta) revisit areas was cool, but revisiting areas a second time with the B-Sides, a third time with the Chapter 7 B-Side, and a fourth time with the C-Sides just felt excessive. I get that whipping up more level themes probably isn't a very small task, but I think maybe the game could've been structured a little better to make it not feel as repetitive. At least the level themes were really good. My favorite was definitely Chapter 9.

The whole game is super pretty really. I especially like this boxart.

Anyways, I know I listed mostly complaints but, I still think this is a pretty good game, and I did enjoy it. The gameplay at its core is very well designed, and the game realizes its own potential very well. 👍

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