izigame.me

Celeste, one of the greatest games ever made. And here is why. Firstly, let me point out that I have played a lot of this game. I mostly play mods nowadays, but I'm currently grinding doing all the levels deathless. This review will be mostly spoiler free, but a few level mechanics will be brought up.
MECHANICS
Celeste is a relatively simply platforming game at first glance, until you take a closer look. You have a few abilities at your disposal. You have your basic jump and walk, you can climb walls and jump between them, and you have a dash, which can be used on the ground or in the air. SImple, right? But one of the things that makes this game great is that the developers know what the people want. And what the people want is speed. There is NO speed cap in Celeste. Nada. Zilch. And there are many ways to build up speed. So you can get going really fast. Now I couls spend a lot of time talking about the different tech you can do, such as a reverse extended hyperdash bunnyhop into a double block boosted chained ultra. (Which is tech only used in the hardest of the hard mods.) But that stuff can be learned on your own time.
STORY
Hooo, Boi. Celeste has got one heck of a story. I'll keep this spoiler free, but simply put, it is the story of someone climbing a literal mountain while struggling with a mental mountain at the same time. Madeline, our protagonist, sets out to climb a mountain to show that she can do anythings. But the mountain isn't any ordinary mountain. It brings out the worst in people. So while climbing she has to deal with her internal turmoil being physically manifested around her. And, I could be wrong on this, I'm pretty sure its also a personal story about the developer.
LEVEL DESIGN
Celeste has some really briliiant mechanics in each level, and all the levels are quite pretty. Besides your relatively generic platformer mechanics, such as wind or ice, there are also some really unique ones, like blocks that move when you dash, or my personal favorite, Kevin. Kevins, whenever you hit them move towards the direction you hit them from. You hit them on their right side, they move right. But they look hilarious. And some of the secrets are really well hidden. Too be completely honest, I did use a walkthrough in my first playthrough, but only for the stuff I missed, which waas a lot. There are even a handful of puzzle secrets.
DEVELOPERS
Celeste has some of the best developers of any game I have seen. Period. They listen to their community, and react based on that. For some examples, when the Farewell Update came a while back, the developers added a few things to cater to players and the community. Firstly, in the new level they added, there were a few really secret rooms that showed off some speedrun tech that had been discovered which wasn't intentional. There is a whole puzzle hidden in farewell that, when completed, will reveal some of the biggest names on the Celeste community. And lastly, my favorite, is the secret Kevin save. (I like Kevins, OK?) A few years back, there was a TAS that was made for Celeste. (For those who don't know, a TAS is basically a player playing the game one frame at a time.) The TASsers had changed the Kevins to make a noise that sounded like, Fwuhuhu, or Fwahaha. The developers found this hilarious, so when they updated the game, they added a hidden save name that would make them say this noise. For those who are curious, the save name is FWAHAHA.
MODS
If you have finished this game and are hungry for more, then let me tell you, there is a ton of mods to play. And they can get a lot harder then your regular old Celeste. I would highly recommend, if you are starting to mod to get the Strawberry Jam Mod, Speedrun Tool, and Monika's D Sides. Monika's D sides are a pretty hard mod, harder than any part of regular Celeste, and really fun. Speedrun Tool is a almost essential tool that lets you make savestates. This is helpful for longer rooms when you need to practice the end bit. And finally, Strawberry Jam. This mod is MASSIVE. There are over 100 levels, 100+ custom songs, was worked on by 300+ developers, and offers a wide range of difficulty, from beginner to advanced to Grandmaster to GM+1.
OTHER CRITIQUES I HAVE SEEN OF THIS GAME
Lastly, I feel that it is necessary to discuss the negative reviews that I have seen. There are two common complaint: Accessibility and Difficulty. Firstly, accessibilty. There is some fair complaint in here. One, there is no colorblind mode. Now, I am color blind myself, (Yellows and Greens, Blues and Purples.) but I didn't have any trouble. However, it is quite possible that it could impede you playing the level, especially for darker ones like chapter 5. There is also one color based puzzle in the game, which can be trouble some when colorblind. Second, the keyboard controls. This game was rather noticably designed for controller. This is really obvious in the feather mechanic. In chapter 6, you get accsess to a feather which will give you flight and 360 degree movement for a short time. This, when starting out, can be really hard to work on keyboard. HOWEVER. I would highly recommend playing on keyboard for one simple reason. Diagonal dashes. (For note here, I have fully beaten the game on both an Xbox and my PC.) Digonals are really hard to do on controlller, and will often send you right or up instead. And in the last chapter of the game it teaches you a tech called wavedashes. Wavedashes are a movement technique where you dash diagonally down into the ground and then jump. This gives you a big speed boost and is a required part of Farewell. This. was. TORTURE. on controller. (As a sidenote, I saw one reviewer complaining about the inconsistency of the tech, and I can tell you that with a bit of practice, it it extrememly consistent. After I finished Farewell on PC, I almost never failed it again.) If you enjoy this game and are/eill be considering modding it, you want keyboard. Precision is the name of the game, and controllers just don't bring that too the table. Other then this accesssibility issues, the game is pretty good at working for all types of players, and even has an assist mode if you find the game to be too hard.
Which brings us to the second complaint: DIfficulty. Don't get me wrong, Celeste is a really hard game. And you are going to die a lot. I died probably 20k times on my first playthrough, and have probabl died 200k+ times now. But it is not absurdly/ Kaizo level hard. And if you are struggling, use assist mode. Its ok to use it. Its what its there for.

CONCLUSION
This was a rather long review, so I'll take my leave now, hoping that I convinced somebody to play this masterpiece. It wil be hard, and sometime it will feel like you are not making any progress and keep falling down to the bottom of the mountain. But if you keep trying, you will find a great view waiting for you at the top.
Good Luck.