Celestial Return Review

A stylish cyberpunk mystery held back by frustrating design choices and inconsistent execution.

The indie RPG maker ranks have been swelling, inspired in part by the narrative-heavy classics, but few have loomed as large as Disco Elysium. Its blend of a philosophical storyline, choice-driven gameplay, and RPG mechanics has spawned a host of projects that try to mimic its appeal while adding their own takes.

Celestial Return is one of those big titles. It doesn't just copy its source; it mashes together cyberpunk dystopia, supernatural horror, detective fiction, tabletop RPG rules, and visual novel presentation to build a universe that grabs your attention right away. Celestial Return was conceived as a self-contained production, with story and mood as the primary concern.

It definitely tries to be a role-playing experience where you actually feel like you're making choices that matter. What you end up with is a game full of creativity and interesting ideas, but the execution often does not live up to the strength of the vision. The story takes place in the city of Netherveil, a metropolis where high technology and otherworldly creatures coexist in uneasy harmony.

Rather than use exposition to dig into the details of its universe, the game jumps immediately into the action. Conversations start with vague mentions of mysterious animals, tribes, and fights. This method can be confusing at first, but it quickly becomes one of the most powerful in the game.

Celestial Return relies on you to put together the story through interaction, research, and observation, rather than treating you like an outsider who needs constant explanation. As the investigation progresses, hidden plots, strange incidents, crooked institutions, and dreadful truths about the city's inhabitants emerge.

A lot of the plot works because Netherveil feels alive.

While the writing never reaches the philosophical heights of Disco Elysium, it’s always engaging, with believable dialogue, detailed worldbuilding, and a setting that feels really unique. Each place has its own flavor, and practically every conversation hints at a deeper past beyond the surface.

The cyberpunk ideas are complemented by strong anti-corporate satire and mystical elements that keep you guessing. It’s a combination that often feels like Cyberpunk 2077 mixed with Shin Megami Tensei, all wrapped up in a detective story ripped from tabletop role-playing games.

This individuality is very highly stressed in character designs. Their exaggerated features and passionate pictures tell the unpleasant truths of the world without too much elaboration. Even background photography contributes to the plot, making every location feel like a real part of a much bigger universe.

The game is based on exploration, dialogue, investigation, and decision-making rather than conventional action. You don't fight your opponents in real time; you travel from location to location, observe your environment, interrogate suspects, gather information, and make decisions that will affect the short- and long-term events.

The story is the main way you tell your story, but it is also full of amazing views that look like they were taken out of a hand-drawn comic book. The presentation maintains the emphasis on writing but provides enough graphic variety to keep each scene fascinating. You do get some direct control of your character as you walk around regions of the city, but exploring is very basic.

It is always about discussion, investigation, and careful assessment of the implications of each decision.

There is no doubt about it; the dice mechanic is the defining aspect. Almost every major action involves rolling dice to make skill checks. Unlike the traditional RPG, where dice are rolled for success or failure and then reset for the next encounter, Celestial Return treats dice as a limited resource. Once you spend a die, it’s gone forever until you find more in the world.

And that technique feels good early in the game since it forces you to think carefully before you enter any discussion or query. Do you roll a lot of dice to improve your chances of success, or do you save them for more dangerous encounters later? Your resources are incredibly limited; therefore, every choice counts.

At first this dynamism causes a lot of tension. Every successful inquiry seems earned, while failed rolls take the plot in surprising directions organically. Often the game urges you to just accept that you will fail and see how the story plays out, rather than encouraging you to keep saving over and over.

This unpredictability imparts an essence of character to each game and causes decisions to be important, rather than cosmetic. Your journey is one where luck is a factor, not something to be combatted. Unfortunately, this strategy introduces some of the game's most aggravating parts. Dice are a finite currency, and it’s shockingly easy to run out of the resources to keep moving forward.

In some circumstances, if you fail crucial checks or burn too many dice early, you will be effectively locked inside forced discussion sequences with no way out. Sometimes the game forces you to use a prior save file instead of giving alternate solutions. If you saved too early, you could still be trapped.

If it's too old, you may lose a few hours of progress.

This kind of soft-locking feels old school by today's RPG standards. Older adventure games were more willing to take this kind of harsh repercussion, but they are far more bothersome in a narrative-heavy experience, where going through long dialogue sections gets tedious quickly.

At some point, the game adds safeguards to avoid some of these difficulties by offering emergency dice at important moments. This answer, however, occurs sporadically, leaving the earlier sections feeling overly severe. A bit more balancing and the dice system may have been one of the most unique aspects of recent indie RPGs.

Rather, it walks a fine line between rewarding strategy and unfairly punishing experimentation. Unlike many other role-playing games, Celestial Return does not use traditional fighting or experience grinding. You're not fighting enemies for experience or running events over and over to boost your stats.

Instead, progress is gained through plot progression, exploring, and finding extra dice hidden about Netherveil. It’s an approach that focuses on timing almost entirely on narrative instead of going over advancement techniques. There is no standard XP grind, so every place you visit is rewarding for narrative reasons, not numerical rewards.

Acquiring more dice is your primary means of expanding future possibilities, encouraging careful exploration while avoiding repetitive gaming loops. Some players might miss the old-style progression systems, but the lack of grinding is part of the game’s intentional story drive.

Celestial Return provides an impressive first impression.

Its comic book-style graphic design gives each environment flair without ever approaching photorealism. Bright colors and gritty urban backgrounds make for a unique look for hand-painted backgrounds, suitable for both supernatural themes and the cyberpunk vibe. Character drawings are loaded with visual information.

Each one is an expression of the personality of the character in facial expressions, posture, and clothing. The graphics are a matter of atmosphere, established through strong artistic direction, not of graphical sophistication or technical precision. But the creative consistency might sometimes be a problem.

A few cinematic moments break the carefully built ambiance by suddenly inserting real-world imagery, live-action footage, or over-stylized editing that looks like modern music videos. These intervals seem to break the immersion for a while and are different from the rest of the presentation. There are some literary choices that are inconsistent with the meticulously constructed fake context.

Real-world organizations like Uber, rather than invented ones, act as an unnecessary reminder that you’re playing a game, not inhabiting Netherveil’s unique universe. Each of these issues is small, but combined they contribute to the general sense that the project sometimes feels like it lacks a strong artistic direction.

The audio design always displays the game at its finest.

Exploration is accompanied by electronic atmospheric music. Ambient noises enhance the city’s dreary vibe. The music shifts seamlessly from quiet investigative scenes to emotionally intense times in the plot without becoming repetitive. Sound is vital for immersion, as a lot of the experience is told through reading, not voice acting.

Fortunately, the soundtrack manages to keep up the air of mystery and intensity. Environmental features, small background noises, and interface sounds help to contribute to the overall presentation, so long dialogue scenes never feel static. Performance is mostly solid, with the rare glitch breaking up the experience.

Apparently, some early versions had problems launching, including dark screens and unresponsive menus, requiring the application to be restarted to work correctly. These issues are minor and may have already been fixed in patches, but they do highlight the general lack of polish in crucial areas of the game.

Luckily, the experience remains very consistent over long stretches of play once everything gets rolling. Celestial Return is not without its flaws, but it’s a game that’s simple to admire. Almost every mechanic is an honest-to-goodness stroke of creativity, and the devs were upfront about what sort of experience they were trying to create.

The screenplay unravels a curious mystery at a steady pace, the setting beckons exploration, the artwork is predictably superb, and the soundtrack complements all the scenes. When it’s at its best, the game hits the same investigative roleplaying highs that made Disco Elysium so memorable, while having enough new elements to avoid feeling like a blatant copy.

But adoration can not completely erase frustration.

The harsh dice economy, the intermittent soft locks, suspect creative presentation, and unbalanced balancing often get in the way of an otherwise exciting adventure. Neither of these problems is due to a lack of creativity. Instead, they suggest a project that needs a bit more polish before it can be released.

With improved balance and artistic consistency, Celestial Return could have found itself alongside the games that inspired it. If you enjoy your RPGs being story-driven, where communication is more important than battle and where you like a meticulously crafted scenario, and don't mind the idea of failure being part of your story, Celestial Return gives a different experience than most other indie titles.

You have to enter with the idea that it’s sometimes more ambitious than it is well-done. Beneath its gruff surface is a nuanced, interesting, and captivating experience with a lot of potential. And even when it stumbles, you have to admire the sheer gall of its attempt to do something different.