Celestial Return

Writing seems to be aimed towards a very young audience, or made by a very young author. It overworks clichés, dull takes on important philosophical topics, and "like-" comparisons (you get one or two per scene). For a game which is 95 percent based on text and narrative, that's quite bad. Unless you are twelve. Then it's amazing.

A breath of fresh air! Amazing visuals, captivating worldbuilding and a headscratching plot. A must play.

the art is beautiful and the whole thing has so much personality

S-tier: art, characters A-tier: story (which is different than writing. in this I mean the themes, tone, overarching direction), mechanics B-tier: game interface C-tier: writing (to clarify, sometimes the English feels a bit clunky and might've done a service to have another editing pass)

Celestial Return, a great new story-driven, dice-based noir/cyberpunk RPG. Dice mechanics are a tad clunk but it looks & sounds great, it's well-written, and there's plenty of meaningful choice & consequence. Want to know more? Check out my Bite-Size Review here: https://www.cshpicone.com/gaming/bite-sized-game-reviews/bsr-celestial-return For more niche curation, follow me at: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27440015-CSH-Picone/ Want more honest niche & indie reviews? Check out: https://www.cshpicone.com/gaming

First of all, I really want this game to gain a lot of traction, 'cause I need a 7-hour long YouTube breakdown on what the hell I actually experienced. I finished the game - at least my first playthrough, because I'm not leaving this like this. Some stories can work only within a specified medium. As a book, a comic book or a movie this wouldn't work, because I wouldn't have felt the impact of decisions made by an author(ity) in stead of myself. In a TTRPG scenario I'm sure any GM I know would pity me in the end and cooked something up to make the ending less... my own making. But here I'm sure I brought it upon myself. Like that evening I decided to listen to all Neurosis records and believed it won't leave me scarred forever. Enough of the rambling. I'd say most games are entertainment. Some are art. Singalis. Norco. Celestial Return. Those. Go and play that stuff, feel vulnerable, experience weird game mechanics, weird stories, let them judge you and ask you questions that won't leave your head for months. Maybe ever. Down to the game'y stuff and game-wise features of a computer game: some people compain about the dice mechanics, I can see those were patched and I never had any issue with them. At some point I was afraid the dice economy might be broken like it was in Tides of Numenera, where you could lock yourself from progressing forward when you run out of resources for test. Here most of my failures still lead me somewehere - yet not in the direction I was trying to force. Maybe adding an option to push a test without a die - to intentionally fail it or simply because stacked modifiers are enough to pass a test without burning a die would be something to consider? Anyway, I had all the time enough to keep gambling, few enough to feel I need to plan at least some of my gambles well enough. I had some music stutter issues in Book 3, and that's about it when it comes to technical issues. Very late in the Book 3 I had a dialogue option to mention something about I footage I didn't watch, I believe it should be a "missed opportunity" as I chose to not watch it a few steps earlier, but do something instead. Back to the good stuff - the art direction is superb. The writing is amazing. The pacing is to the point, the choices are so heavy I won't be able to crawl away from the ones I made, at least not until I finish another run. It all works not only as a weird cyberpunk dystiopa, but also as a detective story weird enough to make sense, but old-school enough to not be about the case as much it is about the detective. About you. because beind the choir of voices in Howard's head there's you - the conductor.

Couple thoughts: 1. This isn't Disco Elysium, but in a way it shouldn't be. This feels like something different entirely and that's not a bad thing. There's a rawness in the conversations, the flow that adds to the cyberpunk charm of the game. 2. The art is just breathtaking. It's like gritty and refined at the same time. Totally digging it 3. If I'm being fair, there are parts of the game that feel slightly unpolished and could've used maybe a little more time to refine, but not something that is totally game breaking Generally it's a good time, and worth a play especially if you're into these sorts of games

Thinks it's even cooler than it is, but ok, it's legit probably one of the 3-4 dozen coolest games I've tried (out of well over a thousand)