Celeste

My hands actually hurt from gripping the Switch but I couldn’t stop, and when I finally landed on the other side of one of the many gauntlets that Celeste wears like a medal, I felt both relief and curiosity as to what it would throw at me next. It’s a rewarding experience and a game that I’m honoured to issue a perfect score.

Celeste is an exemplary amalgamation of style, mechanics and character. A devilishly brilliant action platformer with enough skill required to excite genre purists and the speed running community, while at the same time featuring a breakdown of gameplay elements to customize and cater for all audiences. While the game mechanically is great, if familiar, the art style and narrative are truly special, showing both a visual and emotional range and depth that will resonate and inspire. Celeste is the absolute peak of personal exploration and discovery on Nintendo Switch.

Celeste is probably the greatest surprise in 2018 so far. Its marvelous platforming, great mechanics, lovely visuals and lovely soundtrack simply make this a must have for anyone who loves 2D platformers.

Celeste is a challenging, charming and near-to-perfection game that doesn't only play well, but also tells a poignant story and merges this with all the best qualities you can expect from a platformer.

Celeste is one of the best 2D platformers in recent years. Challenging, beautiful and full of content. Prepare to die.

Celeste is an excellent platform game with excellent level design, a lovable cast and an intriguing atmosphere.

It may take a certain type of patience to really get hooked into Celeste's laboriously challenging masochism, but it’s undeniably a well-crafted and thoughtfully designed experience that’s equally satisfying as it is unyielding.

I played Celeste again in 2026, I think for the 3rd or 4th time, this time on the Switch. Even though it's emotional side does not affect me like the 1st time, the fun is there. I think this is the best 2D platforming game ever made. It is the best I've played. It is so satisfying to play. I think the developers are masters when it comes to balancing difficulty with fairness and teaching you the mechanics of the game. It's designed in a way that will continuously hold your hand while going through so many challenging rooms. Especially the normal game is designed perfectly. The strawberrys give you additional challenge when you want but they are optional. And the B-Sides are nice when you come by them. Every new chapter has it's own mechanics and it's impossible to get bored. In the latter chapters you actually feel like you are flying while doing amazing parkours. It's just beautiful. And this is so intertwined with the story. It's about depression, personas and maybe being a ****. It is a beautiful story and going through it with the game mechanics as well just makes the whole package. And the music, this is one of my favourite video game osts. I listen to it all the time, and it is very connected to the game's story as well. Amazing work. Of course, the game doesn't end when you complete the main story. There are B-Sides and C-Sides. I completed all of them and I can say that it was an experience. It was the hardest gaming achievement I have completed. It was frustrating but so rewarding in the end. This is how much I love this game. Hoping for something like this to come my way someday :)

This is an utterly unfair review and I'm going to be upfront about that. As a platformer, the game is extremely good. It feels good to play. I just. cannot. for the life of me. stand. the forced meme writing in this game. It isn't even that prevalent, but still... whenever it rears its ugly head, it's peak millennial "so like we did a thing." I can't deal with it. Somehow it **** out any joy I might have from the game.

I lovedddd the game's story, characters, conversations, soundtrack, and art. But the difficulty curve is just too insanely difficult for me. This is a game where you need to discover mechanics on your own, so you'll be stuck at harder parts confused on what to do stacking countless deaths. And the difficulty only gets harder, as even when you know what you have to do it could take dozens/hundreds of deaths to do perfectly if you arent cheating on assist mode.I think the difficulty is partly due to me using a keyboard as the movement felt overly fast and bit clunky. I feel like with controller you'd have more control on how much your character actually moves. The keyboard controls also needed to be reput every single time if you remapped it, as you should as default controls ****. So its annoying needing to input it every single time.Overall great game, but couldve used better difficulty curve to gradually make it harder instead of sheer difficulty walls randomly introduced. All the random side objectives were pretty annoying too so I started ignoring them. I wish they put more effort in a singular streamless level rather than random side areas for random side objectives of collecting a collectable item. But again, way too hard game, especially as someone that doens't play much of these types. It got way too hard where I was stacking dozens/hundreds of deaths on one section- espeically on the B-Side areas, that it was no longer remotely enjoyable. I decided to just uninstall and watch a utube vid of the game's story instead.

Coming from games like Hollow Knight and The Messenger, I was pretty disappointed about spending $20 on this game(thanks hype machine!). Unlike HK or TM, this game controls like a turd. The graphics are nothing to write home about and neither is the music. You know modern gaming journalism is a joke when mediocre games keep getting high scores. If you are a thinking person who doesn't gets easily swayed by pathetic hyping, this is a hard pass. If you absolutely must play this game, just wait until it's on sale for like 10$ or lower

10/10?? You people are out of your minds. tldr: if you usually don't like extremely difficult 2d platformers, but you're thinking that with all these rave reviews maybe you should buy it and see what all the fuss is about... Stop Right There. Do NOT buy this game. It will be a painful waste of money. If you're looking for a challenge and hate yourself, buy this game and waste your life on it, please. The story? Meh. Common tropes about overcoming personal weakness. That makes it a standout game? Are you serious? Tight controls? Absolutely not! The more difficult levels (one screen is one level, typically) rely too much on luck to complete. You can find yourself rehashing the same jump attempt for 20 minutes. And when you succeed? You have no idea what you did different that time. That's luck. Not skill. Which means that the game is a Failure at developing skill in players via play. It also means the switch analog stick is a Horrible input method for performing such fine movements. The art? If you usually don't like pixelated art in games, this game is in no way going to change your mind. I hate pixelated graphics. I don't care if it takes more effort to make. It looks awful. And if you're going to be making players replay the exact same move over and over for over 10 minutes on the same exact screen until they get lucky, the screens should be beautiful to look at. The music? Actually very good. I bumped up my score a full point for music. The other 3 points are pity points. Some people worked very hard to make this title, and even though it galls me that a game this bad is one of the highest rated games on Switch, the fact that they made a game that some people seem to really enjoy is worth something. Mario games have charm and soul. This game is an ugly, repetitious bore that tricks players into thinking they've achieved something when success is too often dependent on luck. I can't help but wonder how many of these high scores were bought.