Celestial Return

I'm quite certain AI was used to write a lot of the text in this game. Especially a lot of the item descriptions are full of "it wasn't (just) X, it was Y", and the narration itself relies heavily on constant metaphors done through the use of "like" or "as if", and when I say constant, I mean CONSTANT. Every second, third or fourth sentence. I've just recently come from playing a couple of beautifully written games, so the low quality of this writing sticks out to me like a massive sore thumb, and I could not get past a lot of it. The game is cheap but I do not believe it to be worth even that. I'll be getting a refund. There are much better narrative games you can get for 10 euros. Please save your money for them.

[b]Product received for free as a Kickstarter backer[/b] [h1]Review at a Glance: A strong freshman showing for a new studio, "Celestial Return" drips with atmosphere but struggles with depth[/h1] A strong 6.5~7/10 for a 8~10 hour experience makes this game a decent AA experience for a rain-soaked weekend of gaming. The art and soundtrack are worth the price of admission alone, dragging you into the slick and moody atmosphere of Netherveil City. With that said, the story can fall a little light particularly by the final Chapter 3 and it can be frustratingly easy to soft-lock yourself with no dice left and no more leads to follow. Ultimately, at it's low points, "Celestial Return" can struggle to live up to some of it's spiritual inspirations: if you liked "Citizen Sleeper" and "Disco Elysium", I think you'll find something to love in this game. If you haven't tried them yet, maybe start there then come back when you want a little more. On the whole, I am a satisfied Backer and wish Metaphor Games all the best and success: after playing "Celestial Return", I hope they get a shot at some of Metis Creative's IPs for bringing to a CRPG space, or another bite at the apple where they might bring us back to Netherveil City with a few more resources at their disposal. Regardless, I'll keep my eyes peeled for what's next in store! [b]Further thoughts likely to be contributed to Discussions tab in the near future[/b]

I don't understand why some of the reviews are harsh. It's a really good game. Yes, there's some bugs but it only JUST came out. This is an Indie game, sometimes you're gonna encounter bugs. It happens. It's going to get fixed. The writing IS fine. We're not expecting classic literature here. A few people said they didn't like what they were reading without even spending more than an hour on it. It's like finishing the first chapter of a book, don't liking it and saying it's the worst volume ever written. Not everything is AI just because you don't like the phrasing. The narrative in his entirety is really strong. Please, if you're not sure because of this type of comments, just play the demo and make you're own opinion. It's free. It has gorgeous artwork, a catchy and on point B.O, the personalities are really staying in their lines. Interesting cutscenes between chapters. I also really like the idea of different type of timeline interwinding, merging even. Making me question what's real or not. What pieces am I missing in the story? Am I supposed to know it yet? Or did a just walked past it without noticing. It's worth the try. And for the amounts of content, the game being less than 10€ is worth the price.

Absolute. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Cinema. I know I've got some games in my library that I'll never play, because I wasted my money on the promise of a good game. It happens. Far too often. Well, this game ain't that. It's even better than the demo. Very happy to have contributed to this game's development via Kickstarter. The art work, the vibe, the gameplay it's all great. Do I wish there was voice acting, yeah, but I'll manage. I still have a relatively in-tact imagination. What I love most about the game so far is the tension. Do I use my dice or do I hold on to them? Am I making the right move? What's going to happen? That uncomfortable uncertainty that is endemic to RPGs is ever present and I just love it. I'm bracing myself for that moment where I make a bad decision and have to live with the consequences, but man when you take that chance and it works out, it's really satisfying. There's a definite Disco Elysium vibe for sure. I see the inspiration and I like the paranormal investigation twist. The writing could use a little work. I believe they're going for something neo-noir-esque and that's not an easy cadence to pull off without it feeling like you're trying too hard. The overall aesthetics make up for it though. The game has endless style and the gameplay feels good. Controller support is a little iffy here and there. I find myself losing my curser in the UI every so often. Navigating the UI takes some getting used to, but it's not like super annoying. I hope there is some replayability. I can't quite tell at this early stage if there will be multiple endings, but I hope so. I donated like...what...$20 USD on Kickstarter? I paid almost twice as much as what they're asking on release. $10 USD is criminal for this game. Money absolutely well spent. I look forward to seeing what else these developers can do. Great job!

In its current state, it's a pile of buggy mess that I can't recommend in good conscience, especially when the underlying game is not even that... exceptional. Here's a few I've experienced so far: - The Save/Load system doesn't work sometimes (all the time?) and is prone to bug out. There are multiple points in the story where for no discernable reason the game won't let you save or load. To add to that, the autosave is spaced out rather oddly (doesn't save at the end of each act?), which combos to mean that often times you can't close the game without losing significant progress. This seems rather unacceptable for a modern game, especially a *narrative* one. - Some events trigger in nonsensical, immersion-breaking orders. For instance, there's one event where you are told about some barking, but you can trigger that event AFTER you resolved the event it is supposed to lead up to, which when I encountered it made me think was a continuation of the same event rather than a retrocausal event trigger. If this sounds confusing, it is because it is. - The latest patch (July 16) also is not actually downloadable. I'm sure a clean reinstall would probably fix it, but why? About balance: - The game doesn't provide difficulty options, and the default experience is... quite difficult. You are almost always short on dice and the ways to farm more are neither clear nor abundant. The game also never mentioned that any dice you waste in the tutorial will come back and bite you because it carries over to the actual game, which, okay. - Item balance is nonsensical. You already know there's a dice shortage, and yet there's a merchant that lets you sell your dies (which is a +3 to your roll on average) for consumables that give +1 to a specific type of check for a single time that you have to declare ahead-of-roll. Who came up with this? (I know there are some dies that are actually detrimental to use in a roll, but you only get a few of them and you'd be spending them on the good items already) - Boosts? The game has a screen that pretends you get to buy various augments, except that I did not even spot a whiff of that until Book 3 (at which point I had quit after losing a huge chunk of my progress because of the aforementioned S/L issue). - Dice events feel really random in what they actually accomplish. Some events kind of just do nothing. Others are just different ways to get the same outcome. This means you're committing your dies before you even know what you can get out of it. Onto the narrative: - I respect the author for coming out at the very beginning and stating that the game has some railroads. But I didn't expect it to be a totally linear experience where your dialogue choices largely don't matter. There's a single main quest with very specific required pathing and objectives that don't really incentivize you to explore much (not that there is much to explore anyway...). It feels quite odd for the game to claim to be a spiritual successor to Disco Elysium when the only thing that the two games share are your mind-voices. - The author also really makes these railroads incredibly transparent. Wanna talk to the Abstract? Well, oops, your coworker killed them anyway. At least it gave you the option to ask nicely. Want to linger a bit more in the crime scene office? Well, uh, you're too mad to do that, apparently. Yeah, feel mad! (An amazing ludonarrative tool to make the player also have anger issues) - Of these mind-voices... There's an in-game mechanic to unlock insights into them, of which you are provided very little context and make decisions about your upgrades based purely on vibes. What these upgrades do are also nebulous at best. I haven't come across a "locked" decision due to lacking a mind-insight the same way the game presents those for missing items or missing knowledge. - Speaking of these locked text. I'm not quite sure why the game displays them when you can't pick them. All it did was to tell me that I missed things I didn't need to know about. Huh? - At the start and end of each book, you are presented with a cutscene that feels a little... pretentious? I feel like the author is going for some sort of dreamcore/surrealist vibes or some occult type vibes (which is also quite strange as the story itself is not that surrealist) but the cutscenes feel like a gigantic waste of time to sit through - just some odd music to vibe to while you watch a gas mask guy break dance in an abandoned factory. I'm sorry if my brain is too small to understand these pieces' connection to the actual story. - The game has these little archive notices and an in-game wiki to help explain in-universe terms, but for some unknown design reason (negligence, I suppose, as a wise man said never to attribute malice where ignorance is sufficient...) it was made difficult to access. The game notifies you that a new entry is added, but the onus is entirely placed on you, the player, to navigate to the archive tab and then find the newly added entry (thank god it's at least alphabetical). As opposed to what every good game does nowadays of letting you highlight the term.

This is my first story-driven RPG, and it made me want to explore the genre even though it normally goes against my usual preferences. I do not usually enjoy reading a lot of text or doing detective-style investigation, but Celestial Return completely won me over. I cannot point to one single reason. I think it is the combination of everything. The art feels alive, the music becomes essential to the experience, and most importantly, the story and lore constantly make you ask questions, search for answers, and form your own theories. The systems and gameplay elements also never feel like artificial, gamified mechanics. Every part of the gameplay feels connected to the universe and its lore, which gives the entire experience much more depth. I especially recommend Celestial Return to anyone who has never played a story-driven RPG before.

Well, two hours in, and I really love it so far. The dice management system ♥♥♥♥♥♥ me up a bit, as I was lacking dice for mandatory rolls at some point in the story, but I expected it to go that way with my frivolous dice expenditure. The vibes are great and they do give it its own identity. I'm not sure the foolish insight fits the narrative, but the others did make a great impression on me so far. The devs really managed to capture a fitting dystopian vibe. One small thing that bothers me a little bit but is technically helpful for discovering content you missed out on are the locked dialogue choices that tell you what you could say if you had succeeded in a previous check. I'd prefer for those to be hidden or if there was a setting to have them hidden. I doubt that's something that will be added, but I think it would be more in line with the game's tone and delivery if you had to discover them for yourself.

Game does not let you re-play previous chapters if you make a “bad” choice that locks you out of a leathal early end to the story. You have to re-start from the beginning. Generally there are numerous annoying bugs. Runs on steam deck but the controls are slightly confusing and at a few locations the text is not scaled (impossible to read a just a few px tall ..) Update: now if i try to restart a new game it gives me a blank screen after the prologue .. to tired to try to figure out how to clear my steam save. It didn’t seem like the story was going anywhere interesting anyways. I never played the original Disco but I did play Esoteric Ebb and Sovereign Syndicate. The full story (supposed I was on the last / 3rd chapter) feels to be about the same length as one chapter from those other Disco-likes. So about 1 / 4 of a game. But I guess the art style is pretty original?

"You don't go to God's party wearing your real face." I recently stumbled upon the Celestial Return demo and was captivated from the very first moment. I bought the full version as soon as it was released. The game blends elements of Citizen Sleeper and Disco Elysium while adding plenty of unique character of its own. The dialogue is fantastic, and the music hits the mark perfectly. Having played through about two-thirds of the story, I’m incredibly enthusiastic and looking forward to a spectacular finale. I’d love to see more of this!

Man. Excellent ambience and narrative. Seems like a real passion project. It definitely draws on Disco Elysium in some pretty obvious ways, but that was a good system and should be imitated, in my opinion. As a long time Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Dystopian Sci-Fi purveyor, the game hits a lot of sweet spots and has kept me pretty rapt to the story. The art is appealing and I'm truly enjoying the atmosphere. It's a little bit of an adjustment not controlling a physical character of any kind (outside of choosing locations to visit and dialogue options), but I'm coming around to it and the narrative has been good enough to keep me very interested. Some really original and unique ideas are scattered amongst the borrowed ones and the blend is appealing. Great job, really happy with my purchase so far.