It's that time again for a new episode of Chichuki Plays, the show where I go hands-on with upcoming games and show them off. Usually, it's about an hour or so but I don't want to spoil too much of the game for you. This time we're looking at Celestial Return on Steam.
It felt like an interesting combo between RPG and graphic novel. I went with graphic novel because there is a lot of reading and a lot of character development. The characters are pretty cool too.
We play the role of Howard, a no-nonsense detective, who is trying to figure out the mystery of Abstracts and the PID. Netherveil City is where all this takes place and things are crazy right from the start. Lucky for you, you aren't doing all this on your own. It would appear that you have different voices talking to you in your mind and those are able to help you decide which path to take. These are known as Insights and you can level them up to give them better abilities throughout. Virtue, Intelligence, and Foolishness are some of the voices you'll hear as well as some of the options you'll have to progress certain story elements. Virtue could be the more humane option for example but you'll see the options in the text box.
That being said, if you go with a more "interesting" option, you will have to play the hand of fate to get a result. Fate is determined via dice roll and your dice are like gold. You need dice to use for more out of the box situations. No dice mean you can do them. Dice will have different pros and cons to using them. You'll see those when you decide which dice to use for that situation. Don't want to take a chance on rolling, pick a different story situation. You will be told what value you need to roll to succeed in your situation. You can explore more map locations to see more world/character development as well as find more dice.
Graphically, the game looks really good, and I was enjoying the writing as well. The characters are really interesting as well. I had a devil of a time getting the game to load on my PC but finally got it going. I always make it a point to tell you folks when a game could have an issue performing on your computer. Fingers crossed you have better luck than I did.
Make sure you check out the hands-on video below!