Forbidden love has always been a compelling story to take in. Two sides who are meant to hate each other and instead, choose to come together to love; it’s a heartwarming premise. Things can get even more interesting when there’s a child in the mix. Celestia: Chain of Fate stars the daughter of an Angelus and a Daemon, who must figure out the truth about her parents and the world around her. How is that premise handled, and does it remain as interesting as it first sets itself out to be? Let’s find out.
Celestia: Chain of Fate opens up with a fairytale, telling the tale of an Angelus and Daemon intertwined in a forbidden relationship. Tensions rose to a breaking point where the two eventually fled from their respective realms, daughter in tow. However, things grew so dangerous that they had to leave their daughter in the human realm to protect her.
While the game doesn’t directly say that you are that child, connecting the dots is easy, especially as events unfold on your birthday. During the party, you receive a letter from Celestia Academy inviting you to attend the school. But that’s not the biggest shock, as you discover that you are half Angelus and half Daemon, and that the parents you grew up knowing aren’t your biological parents. From there, you are swept up in a world of new knowledge as you pack your bags, head to a new school, and catch the attention of new friends, love interests, and enemies.
A forbidden love story between an Angelus and a Daemon starts the game.
The concept of a protagonist going to a magical school, especially when they weren’t aware that magic existed in the first place, isn’t new. But while there was an interesting concept at the core of the game (a magical school that teaches Angelus’, Daemons, and Humans, and touches on the hardships of each realm), the execution leaves a bit to be desired. The writing in general is on the simplistic side, and while deeper themes are mentioned throughout the game, they aren’t explored in a way that feels satisfactory. Along with surface-level writing, the game also tends to leave on comedic moments that detract from otherwise serious moments.
While three different romance options can be pursued throughout Celestia: Chain of Fate, all of them can be pursued in one playthrough. It can be a bit disconcerting though when there isn’t any mention of the fact that one scene ago you were making out with another guy from any of the other love interests. If you’re trying to feel out how you feel about each love interest before focusing on a single character, it is nice not to be locked out of other routes.
You can choose between three guys: Ashe Winterlight, Luke Alastair, or Val De Lucifer.
In terms of love interests, each guy represents a particular “trope”: the gentle one, the stoic one, and the hothead. While there are aspects of their personality that start to grow as the story progresses, they heavily lean into these tropes for a majority of the story. Each guy has their own storyline that they’re at the center of that you can help them figure out.
Along with the three main endings with the love interests, there is an abundance of bad endings that you can experience by not making the right choice. Since it’s extremely easy to lock yourself out of the story in general if you happen to save after making the wrong choice, saving before any decision is a good idea. It would have been nice if there was functionality to end up back at the last choice that resulted in a bad ending, especially when it can be hard to tell if a choice results in a quip before moving on or if you’re heading straight for a bad end.
You can experience a lot of bad endings at Celestia Academy.
Celestia: Chain of Fate is an otome visual novel where you make choices to guide your character through her school year. Some of these choices don’t hold much weight in the story, offering just flavor text to experience. However, the other decisions you make affect the affection level between the three love interests or lead straight to a bad ending. Unlike other otome games, the choices that will boost a specific character’s affection will be obvious. This is nice because it reduces the need to constantly refer to the affection chart to avoid reloading a saved file if you make the wrong choice.
There are many dialogue choices that you can make to shape your school experience.
When it comes to the quality of the choices given to the player, however, there are many times when it feels as though a choice was added just to have a choice. When looking at some of the choices, there were plenty of times when two of the three choices would result in the same outcome, just with mildly different text. It can bring up the question of why even bothering to have some choices in the first place.
You can track the affection levels of the characters at any time.
To pursue a character, you’ll have to raise their affection level. There is one singular “route” in this game, with all of the love interests available right off the bat. To increase affection, you’ll mainly want to make sure you’re spending as much time as you can with the character you choose. The affection chart does tell the player what chapters they can increase affection, making it easier to pinpoint the most important moments. And if you want to change your mind later down the road, you do have that option, although you’ll need to make sure you have enough affection with the character you want to end with by the end of the game.
The art for Celestia: Chain of Fate is nice, if a bit basic. The character designs are detailed enough for each character to look interesting and the array of emotions from all of the characters are fun to take in. There are some moments where side characters aren’t illustrated, remaining mere silhouettes. Where the game shines a bit more is with its CGs, where the art looks a lot better when not limited by the constrictive nature of character sprites.
You’ll experience a variety of new experiences during your time at Celestia Academy.
The UI is also on the simple side, although in this case, it works very well for the game. The design is sleek yet elegant, without overpowering the player or standing out negatively. There are also quite a few light effects that appear, usually when magic is used, or when transitioning over to a CG. The only minor complaint is that during the full screen images, the text can be hard to read at times since the standard text boxes aren’t being used.
When it comes to the music, the soundtrack is not all that memorable outside of the theme song that plays at the beginning of the game. While the music doesn’t take away from the game, it also doesn’t add much to it. There are a variety of piano and string pieces, many of which you’d typically hear in any game in a fantasy setting. Given the lighthearted tone of many of the songs, they all start to blend together into the next.
You’ll take flying ships to enter Celestia Academy.
There is no voice acting in the game, only sound effects to build onto the atmosphere. But unfortunately, those sound effects tend to take away from the game. Most of the time, the sound effects are put into points where tension is taken away from serious moments, pivoting the writing into a more comedic route. While that’s not bad sometimes, there are other times when it would have been nice for the story to commit to the serious tone that it had set up rather than dip out at the last minute.
Celestia: Chain of Fate is one of many games in the otome realm. Unfortunately, its simplistic writing and lack of commitment to fully exploring the deeper themes that it initially touches on leave the player wanting more. There are touching moments to be had, and the general atmosphere of the game leaves the player with a fun experience nonetheless. The art and the music both are nice, if a bit boring to take in. Unfortunately, there’s not much that stands out with this title compared to other games in the genre.
Celestia: Chain of Fate gets a 6/10.
