What if Harry Potter was something that you could enjoy without the knowledge that every word you read came from someone who is deeply, aggressively hateful? What if you could jump into the body of a student of magic and fall in love with all the characters? That’s essentially where we’re at with Celestia: Chain of Fate.
At the start of this otome love story, your protagonist discovers that she has magic potential and is whisked away to join the Academy of Celestia and participate in the world of demons and angels.
And so she finds herself on a rollercoaster of a ride where our heroine learns how to tame the magic inside her, get herself placed smack-bang in the middle of clandestine plots of this fantasy universe, and perhaps even find love along the way…
Well, actually, the love bit’s the real goal of the whole game. There are a lot of endings in Celestia, and many of them “bad” (so save often and ideally before every decision that you’ll be asked to make). There are a lot of potential endings because there are a surprisingly large number of decisions to make along the way – Celestia is quite interactive for an otome visual novel, which may or may not be to your cup of tea, but the developers make good use of the branching trees to give you plenty of different storylines and opportunities to see different sides of key characters in subsequent play-throughs.
Play your cards right and you’ll get to have one of three handsome (and devilishly handsome, in one case) boys fall head-over-heels for the protagonist. It’s often very YA-style story beats and characterisation, but it’s also written with a sweet and charming tone, and Celestia is far more compelling than it has any right to be.
It’s also utterly gorgeous. The developer, Agate, hails from Indonesia, and was previously best known for Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story 2, and as far as art direction goes, this is a big step up. Perhaps I’m biased because the protagonist does look vaguely like how one of the artists I’ve worked with over the years drew Dee Dee, the DDNet mascot, but I do love her, and while there’s not a huge amount of animation in the game, her various expressions are loaded with character. All three boys are nicely drawn and distinctive too, and the artists fully indulge in the whimsy of a fantasy universe where they can.
Meanwhile, the background art is lovely and sets a great scene, and the music fits the mood perfectly. The only downside is that at times the ambition does outweigh what the artists could deliver. For a really early example, the game kicks off with a ballroom scene which the story describes as featuring a large crowd and dancing. However in terms of what was visualised there were a couple of portraits and a background that was empty of people.
To be clear the game doesn’t skimp on the amount of art that went into it – there are over 50 CGs to unlock as you play, and they are of a universally high quality. It’s just that Celestia’s narrative is ambitious and filled with creative flair, and it ends up stretching out what went into it quite a lot. The game is more than 20 hours in length, and this might have been a case of where a slightly narrower ambition would have been worthwhile to make the scenes that the game basically glosses over – such as this one – a little bit more than a transitionary scene that chews through time.
If I was to really nitpick I would say that the storytelling leaves a little to be desired in places. Overall the characters are vibrant and each has their own personality. The world-building is a little cliché, but playing the greatest hits in the context of an otome is fine. It’s just that at times the language used is a little juvenile and leaning too heavily into YA-style spaces. I realise that these storytelling techniques have an audience, but the lack of sophistication does mean that the storytelling doesn’t have the depth of, say, a Cupid Parasite or Hakuoki.
As far as independent visual novels go, Celestia: Chain of Fate lands in that growing middle tier of visual novel. Sure it might not have the production values of an Otomate production, or even last week’s Famicom Detective Club by Nintendo. As with all genre’s there’s an A-tier, and Celestia isn’t quite there. Yet it punches far above the typical “indie” visual novel, too, thanks to its absolutely gorgeous art, the complexity of the branching narrative, and… well, the kind of writing that does make you want to see the inevitable CG when the very pretty girl and very, very pretty boys start smooshing lips and bodies together. Celestia is a very believable bit of fantasy romance, which is the point, and it’s one VN fans shouldn’t overlook, despite 2024 being quite a year for the genre.
