Celestia: Chain of Fate [Review]
On our main character’s birthday, Aria Silverwings discovers there are magical beings known as Angelus and Daemons. She is not human as she previously thought, but half Angelus and half Daemon. From there she’s tasked with going to a magic school, Celestia Academy, to learn how to use her powers. There starts her journey as Aria solves magical mysteries, frequently finds herself in danger, kisses three different boys, and reaches her full potential.
Developer: Agate Games
Initial release date: June 10, 2024
Genres: Visual Novel, Otome Game
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows [REVIEWED]
Publisher: PQube
Series: Celestia: Chain of Fate
Engine: Unity
Price: $29.99 for PC and Nintendo Switch
Full disclosure, before I picked up Celestia: Chain of Fate, I hadn’t picked up an otome game in years. I decided to request to review this one (thank you Keymailer for the free key in exchange for a review) to try to broaden my video game horizons a bit. This was a nice way to dip my toe back in the genre.
Celestia: Chain of Fate reads like the cozy slice-of-life fantasy novels (albeit with one uncomfortable facet that we will get to) that I grew up reading, such as Harry Potter and Howl’s Moving Castle. There are currently not a lot of video games which emulate a wizarding school. If you’re like me and no longer support anything J.K. Rowling is involved with, there’s even less options on that front. So getting to revisit that part of my childhood through this game was very lovely.
And what a visit it was! Celestia: Chain of Fate has a fully fleshed out story with all sorts of whimsy. There’s so much lore and world-building here. Some of it is a little blatant in its references, such as the reference to a train station through a wall. Some of it is really silly, such as the rebranding of angels, demons, the name of elements' spells and so forth. However, a lot of it is really fun. My favorite moments so far revolves around the use of magical animals, and includes a pack of wolves that can serve tea and a hellhound that hides as an adorable puppy. Oh, and there are rabbits in cute outfits. So many rabbits.
However, this is an otome game, and surely the point of an otome game is to kiss boys, right? How was that?
Let’s get the hard part out of the way, which is this game’s interesting design choices to its narrative structure, which affects the relationships. Most otome games have a common path and then branch out into the love interest’s route. Not this game. Instead, it mashes all three love interests routes together, with players ending up with one of them at the end based on intimacy meters. From what I’ve gathered, this was a phone game first, and the intimate scenes were locked behind paywalls, which allowed players to choose what scenes they wanted. The PC release seems to have opted to include every scene, which gives the game a very weird two-timing vibe. There’s even one chapter where players kiss all three boys separately. Yes, if you want to play devil’s advocate, polyamory and being non-exclusive is a thing. To which I say yes, yes it is, and there’s a whole genre of romance books that deals with those situations well. In this instance, it feels unethical.
If players can look past that, the boys here are gorgeous, and fun to kiss. While there’s no depth beyond their respective archetype, I found them charming and a little swoon worthy. I definitely would have liked a harem end, because all three of them were great. Aria herself doesn’t have much depth to her character, and she felt much more like a bland character meant to let me self-insert into the world than her own person, which was both a plus and minus. All in all, while the romance was fun, cheating aside, I found myself more invested in the magical adventures of the world itself.
The writing is a little simplistic, and it reads like a young adult novel. While the original did have 18+ scenes, it seems these have been removed for this release. I enjoy young adult literature, and this type of writing style I felt fit the story pretty well, given it’s a coming of age story. There’s a lot to see and do here as the game spans about 30 hours of content.
On a technical level, this game meets expectations. The UI was clean and simple to use, and it had all the basic things one would expect with a visual novel. One thing I was disappointed in was the lack of a windowed mode! And while I could take screenshots on my Rog Ally I couldn’t make it work on my pc. There also were no cloud saves, so I could not flip between playing on my PC and playing on my Rog Ally. With that in mind, I think if you want a handheld experience, the Nintendo Switch version launching later this year would be the best bet.
How much players will enjoy Celestia: Chain of Fate will come from what exactly players want from the game. Those coming to this game for the romance may be disappointed, but if players are looking to be immersed in a fantasy world with deep world building and cozy feel-good adventures, this story delivers. With the current popularity of romance fantasy as a genre, I feel like many fans of those novels would get a lot out of this game. Overall, while I would have preferred the romance to be handled differently, I had a good time with it, and feel comfortable giving it a thumbs up, albeit with a few caveats.
My Score: 7/10
