Like I have mentioned some times before, I usually get quite turned off by games that lean too heavily on the 8-bit or 16-bit styled graphics, especially if they also use chiptune extensively in their soundtracks, because I think it negatively influences the image of video games, as people you know who do not play games themselves often think about 8 or 16-bit when they think video games. However, I try my best to put this bias aside when playing new games, and I am glad I did for this game, because I found Celeste to be incredibly enjoyable, and there are many reasons as to why. Let's start with the most obvious one: the gameplay! This game, like many other platformers, is based on different levels, but one big strength it has is that it never feels like you are playing individual levels. In Mario games, levels feel pretty arcadey, in that you go in, beat the entire level, and then you continue to the next level from a selected overworld. This system has many benefits, like for instance the fact that an overworld or hub world can give more clear breaks between different hard segments, and as long as a game is structured around this, it's absolutely fine to use. But I'm glad that some games work differently, like Celeste for instance. In this game, the entire world is one long segment, where you restart from the beginning of a room if you die. This is better for world building in my opinion, because it makes the world feel coherent, instead of every level being a sort of microcosm. The worlds are also very well designed in my opinion, especially some of the final worlds. They usually take the classic approach of giving you a certain gimmick, and then using that gimmick in as many ways as possible in an increasingly difficult row. It's great! My favourite worlds are probably the two final ones. These ones are great because they are also great from a story perspective, and feature some difficult, but fair platforming. This game always manages to be completely fair in its challenge, because there are no lives and you can just retry as many times as you want until you succeed with a challenge.
The story in this game is very interesting. You play as Madeleine, who has decided to climb this mountain called Celeste Mountain. But she is unaware that the mountain has the magical ability of making your inner demons into a physical entity, which is something that you fight throughout the game. This is a game about depression, unsurprisingly, and it goes about the theme in a good way in my opinion. It also manages to be very cute at the same time. I loved how all of the voices were synths that just sounded like voices. That was incredibly satisfying to listen to in my opinion, and it made me want to engage in all dialogues that you can engage in within the game. But the main thing I loved was the gameplay, not to mention how satisfying the musical progression felt. I especially liked the music of the final world and the hotel, with the hotel being the one that I still listen to a lot. Lovely, cute little game!