I’ve never hidden the fact that visual novels and I don’t have a tendency to get along, so if you happen to be a fan of them I offer my apologies in advance for slinging arrows at something you enjoy. The thing is, over the course of this generation I’d be lying if I said that my view of this subgenre hadn’t improved… at least in some specific cases. My central struggle is with there not always being room for me to take part in guiding the story in some way. If you’re putting a product out on a system made to play games, it doesn’t seem too unfair to have some expectation that I should do more than read walls of text with periodic pretty pictures to go with it.

So, in the case of Celestia, we’ll get right to the fact that given how few opportunities you have to make choices, and that they seem to carry so little consequence, it got off to a poor start. Even as someone who doesn’t tend to dabble in these sorts of titles often, I’ll also say that the general story and even some characters all felt a bit safe and familiar. Sure, throwing angels and demons into the mix (especially with a little romance) is somewhat novel, but while I’ve played through some of these where they felt fresh and unique, this failed to grab me. Worse, the fact that to get to the school of magic they have to get on a train entirely too similar to the Hogwarts Express kind of pushed me even further away.

I don’t doubt that there’s a crowd that this is being made for, and I’m simply not a part of it. My interest is always in trying to be fair and have an open mind, but the story borrowing ideas and imagery combined with a lack of player agency really bummed me out. If this somehow sounds like it could be of interest though, more power to you and I hope you enjoy it.