Celestial Return

Amazing piece of art. Really loved the sound design and artworks!

Metaphor Games presenta con Celestial Return una novela gráfica con decisiones que sí importan, siendo el elemento rolero algo a lo que se le da suma importancia, la cual se siente recompensada mientras recorremos esta aventura neo noir, que habla sobre un futuro gris, mientras investigamos un misterioso caso, que nos lleva a pensar sobre nuestro propósito, el valor de la humanidad misma y los límites de nuestra consciencia. A través de personajes bien caracterizados, experimentaremos una trama principal que puede durar entre 4 y 5 horas, pero con un valor rejugable que extiende eso más allá, gracias a la inclusión de diferentes desenlaces para cada misión, incluyendo el final mismo del juego. Un apartado visual bien estilizado y con características muy originales hace que nuestro tiempo viendo fotos inmóviles y cuadros de texto no deje de ser interesante gracias a la variedad y el nivel de detalle que logra la presentación, todo esto acompañado de una banda sonora que logra su cometido de ambientarnos en esta distopía, aunque sin lograr destacar. Mecánicamente el sistema de dados propuesto por Metaphor Games funciona bien, dándonos poder de decisión sobre los sucesos de la historia, y es lo bastante flexible como para que incluso nuestros fracasos en las tiradas de estos, puedan hacer continuar la trama; fallar o ganar un chequeo de dados, forma parte de la misma narrativa, aunque si queremos ganar cada una de las tiradas siempre podemos guardar y cargar el juego a placer. Si estás buscando una novela gráfica para dedicarle horas y horas, si te gusta la ambientación cyberpunk y su apartado detectivesco, y si te interesa indagar en una historia filosófica sobre el existencialismo, entonces Celestial Return te está esperando para que recorras sus caminos, donde cada tirada de dados que hagas, puede ser la última.

Incredible game! The style, the writing are all amazing. While there are a few rough bumps along the road, the patches are coming fast to fix them. For me it feels to weird fiction genre in a game format (The City & The City comes to mind). The world is incredibly interesting and getting to know it through Howard's eyes is a joy. Seriously, with this price the game is more than worth it.

I thought I'd like this game. There's some good stuff in here, but I came away from it feeling a little frustrated and disappointed. Might give it another play later and see if I change my mind.

not enough wolves for a turkish game....

Hot take: this might be better than Citizen Sleeper 2. Better than Citizen Sleeper 1 or Disco? No, but hey maybe I wanna just see the world burn. It is cyberpunk afterall

I've yet to even finish Book 1 but this game is honestly incredibly beautiful and artistic. It's got this dark and grimy cyberpunk vibe to it with an interesting enough mechanic and a really compelling story to keep you going. It feels a bit like SCP meets cyberpunk2077. The soundtrack is also an incredible plus.

TL;DR: Okay to pick up at a discount if you like narrative games and don't mind a fair amount of jank. I appreciate the art style, music and overall vibe but in the end I didn't really enjoy it that much. I'm still upvoting because I support the effort behind it. The dice mechanic is fine (different dice, passive modifiers, items, etc.), but the game doesn't give you any clear hints on how/when you're going to get more dice, so it's hard to commit to spend them. I think there are too many special dice and not enough regular ones to use in simple tests or for small adjustments. There is no way to force-fail a test without spending a die (so you are punished for being short on dice even if you accept a failure). Additionally, there are situations in which winning/losing a check has no difference in the outcome, which feels stupid, specially when you waste a very limited resource. The setting is cool but the writing falls a bit flat. It tries to be profound too often. Some of the personalities are bland and uninteresting (foolishness in particular). I also locked myself out of some dialogue choices because the game doesn't hint at all about which events will advance the plot (and reset the map) and which won't (the name doesn't always make this immediately evident). Same thing with dialogue choices. If you play I recommend you save often and into many slots, and make sure to visit all map spots. The ending was also disappointing. The pacing is a bit weird with all the cutscenes announcing the name of the "episode" or whatever, sometimes some "episodes" last literally 1 minute. Those cutscenes are also accompanied of weird artsy visuals that don't seem to fit that much. The ui/ux is subpar too; there is a skill point system that is never explained, and I finished the game without knowing what it's meant to do (other than changing the name of your inside voices). I didn't notice any increase in scores nor any unlocked dialogues after upgrading. There's also a tab for body upgrades that I guess is simply for flavor. I also missed a way to auto-sort dice and a way to see your passive modifiers for all skill checks. Finally, there are also a few bugs. The game just locked for me after some choices (repeatedly, after many restarts) and I had to take different ones. Also, one of my saves towards the end just sent me to a different branch I never took when loading it.