Yup. I did it. I never thought I'd ever beat this thing back in 2019 when I attempted it (wavedashing filtered me) but not only did I learn that mechanic totally, not only did I beat Farewell...I got the moonberry baby! It took me over 8 hours and almost 3000 deaths but I did everything the DLC has to offer (besides the golden strawberry ofc).
I mentioned the visuals being lovely for the base game and in farewell it's on another level. I love the use of color used in this stage and the cosmic jellyfish look is super awesome. I also think the mixtapes floating through space was a really nice touch aesthetically.
The OST is still solid but it actually has my favorite song in all of Celeste and it's right near the end too. The song that plays on the last screen is so so good and fits really well. It's the end of a super hard super long final chapter and the song is all triumphant and emotional it's so good.
Speaking of that final screen, I honestly didn't think it was too bad. The fact I had to do it several more times after beating it to attempt the moonberry run made it actually quite easy. There's another infamous room where you have to wavedash into a wall bounce off a moving block and that one was definitely hard but it didn't take me long...only like 15 mins I think? The final screen from 7-C was still hands down the hardest and most time consuming screen imo. Either way, besides some really difficult screens, farewell wasn't absolutely soul crushing like I was expecting but it was definitely a lot of fun.
The story this time around has Madeline having to cope with the loss of granny and I think it was really well done. It was emotional, especially near the end, and the reveal that Theo's grandpa and granny were friends was a great reveal. I also loved how young granny looked just like Madeline, that and the fact they both went to climb Celeste made them being friends more believable.
So yeah, this DLC chapter was awesome and I still can't believe I beat it and got the moonberry! I was thinking an 8 at first but like the base game will give it a 9 for now. This one has a higher chance of me bumping it down but like I said, for now it's a 9. Also, sick ass game cover btw, it's awesome.
I mentioned the visuals being lovely for the base game and in farewell it's on another level. I love the use of color used in this stage and the cosmic jellyfish look is super awesome. I also think the mixtapes floating through space was a really nice touch aesthetically.
The OST is still solid but it actually has my favorite song in all of Celeste and it's right near the end too. The song that plays on the last screen is so so good and fits really well. It's the end of a super hard super long final chapter and the song is all triumphant and emotional it's so good.
Speaking of that final screen, I honestly didn't think it was too bad. The fact I had to do it several more times after beating it to attempt the moonberry run made it actually quite easy. There's another infamous room where you have to wavedash into a wall bounce off a moving block and that one was definitely hard but it didn't take me long...only like 15 mins I think? The final screen from 7-C was still hands down the hardest and most time consuming screen imo. Either way, besides some really difficult screens, farewell wasn't absolutely soul crushing like I was expecting but it was definitely a lot of fun.
The story this time around has Madeline having to cope with the loss of granny and I think it was really well done. It was emotional, especially near the end, and the reveal that Theo's grandpa and granny were friends was a great reveal. I also loved how young granny looked just like Madeline, that and the fact they both went to climb Celeste made them being friends more believable.
So yeah, this DLC chapter was awesome and I still can't believe I beat it and got the moonberry! I was thinking an 8 at first but like the base game will give it a 9 for now. This one has a higher chance of me bumping it down but like I said, for now it's a 9. Also, sick ass game cover btw, it's awesome.
This review contains spoilers
Celeste is a game about climbing a mountain. From what I observe generally, people see that, play it, get to the Summit chapter, conclude with "yeah that was pretty good, a bit heavy-handed with the main metaphor, but it was pleasant enough" and move on. Maybe they'll try some B-side bonus content, maybe they'll play a bit of the PICO-8 original, but most people I've seen are happy enough leaving that as the experience. The story is over, right? Why keep playing? She had to overcome the mountain, and she did just that. That's the end of it.
But what if you kept going?
What if you came back with the 4 Crystal Hearts for Chapter 8, with Madeline revisiting the mountain an in-game year later? She had no real reason for being there in the first place, and now she's there again. Why are you still there and not playing something else? Was it the gameplay that was so intricately crafted, Maddy's still updating it years later to improve the feel on a microscopic level? Lena Raine's shimmering arpeggios? The friendly cast of faces Madeline met with, brought to life with voices that were actually ridiculously elaborate in implementation? A perhaps too simple and saccharine approach to mental health draped in pastel colours, that made for a warm and relatable enough environment you could maybe appreciate nonetheless? Even from this game's biggest detractors, I still usually hear "it's so polished tho". The amount of care that went into Celeste fires through on all cylinders.
Okay, but what if you just kept going.
What if you did all the B-sides. And now the C-sides. Every strawberry. The golden strawberries too maybe? That one achievement where you get 6 strawberries back to back? Speedruns? Custom levels?
Completionism is pretty normal territory for people that really like a game, and Farewell muscles its way in as one more thing to check off the list. Some time long ago, Celeste stopped being a game primarily about climbing a mountain for these people, as they had found themselves consumed in every bit of the experience. Trying to fill that cake Madeline bakes at the end with as many strawberries as they could. Really milking that climbing action.
Not moving on.
So isn't it funny that Farewell's a story about grief, pelting Madeline every few minutes with "hey, you should move on now"? Part of Her gives up with reasoning as to why she shouldn't be using her psychic mountain climbing powers to spend the entire chapter chasing after a bird. She met Granny, she climbed that mountain, these were events in the past. She should just move on now. You're still playing Celeste, named after the mountain you're meant to be climbing, even though you painstakingly covered every inch of it already. "The mountain looks like a molehill from here," she remarks, even though you're still playing Celeste.
Madeline contorts herself in dashes and obscure movement techs, in order to scrape through the most pulverising screens the game now has to offer, because you just can't get enough of the climb. Even when there's no mountain left, when she's lost in dreams of exploding puffer fish, flying jellyfish (...green moose, guava juice), as the game is throwing literally every gimmick you've seen up to this point while introducing new shit at the 11th hour, glitching out, putting up barriers, demanding wavedash finesse, it's hard to stop playing. I quite like it giving you a Crystal Heart that doesn't count at one point, to tie together the completionism with grief further. "Empty Space". Maybe depicting grief with even more shmovement thandysphoria depression and anxiety in the main game might be just as whitewashy, or worse. It still feels well-intentioned enough, ending on a really sweet note, and there's no "omg selfies #buzzed YOLOOO!!" talk going on this time. Sorry Theo.
Farewell is a message to those fans ultimately. Not the ones that just dipped after beating it, but the ones that really exhausted that damn mountain. It was originally intended to be played after beating every C-side, though it pops up innocuously for anyone newly done with Chapter 8, only unceremoniously gating them halfway through (and requiring 15 Crystal Hearts, as opposed to 23). This is maybe my biggest complaint, as the only warning sign here saying "hey, maybe don't play this until you've worked through all the content?" prior to that is the fact that Madeline is just chilling in the 7C scenery upon starting it — something only people that already played 7C would catch onto.
Despite the stellar rating curve on the left there (which I suspect has some survivor bias), I'd say Farewell is a bit more polarising in how it's been received, judging from people's reactions online. It's obscenely difficult and seriously expects you to master some fairly obscure movement, introduced with as much grace as exploding fish to the face, as per how I expect the average experience went for a lot of people:
"Oh cool, I unlocked Ch 9 after beating Ch 8."
"Why is this so fucking hard? What is all this shit?"
"I need FIFTEEN HEARTS to get past that gate? After all that?"
(if they actually went and did that) "This game has WAVEDASHING??"
Such a clumsy way of going "oh anyone can play this but uh, actually no, sorry. It's for the hardcore fans lol". Farewell just ends up recontextualising all that "optional" stuff as a much more integral part of the game. It's titled and presented in such a way that anyone can clearly see that this is now that resolving piano chord at the end of it all, giving Celeste an air of finality, but its deceptive title of "Chapter 9" just works against it when there's a sea of content directly preceding it.
Despite all of that though, I'm confident in saying that this is my favourite part of Celeste. The twinkly luminous environs, the music ebbing back and forth from foreign to familiar as new motifs are weaved in with old... Madeline's just zooming, wavedashing, wallbouncing off of the most disjunct objects in this spaced out dreamy... aquarium... techno-observatory? I love how that visual style comes together when there are like 4 different themes being patchworked together. Every 5 seconds you're demanded to do some nebulous, evil oneiro-parkour, but you can't stop. You made it this far and you're not missing that last screen, damn it. Dash, dash, scrape against spikes, die. Just in this zen stupor, set to these spaced out surroundings, retooling yourself again and again. This was my 3rd playthrough of this game over the last 5 years, and my 2nd time ending on Farewell. It really truly feels wrong to me to actually stop playing at any point before Farewell. It's one of the most beautiful endings to any game I've played, and one I keep feeling eager to come back to in spite of thousands of deaths.
Happy 5th anniversary Celeste. Farewell for now.
--------------------------
A couple notes:
- I don't actually know why this is listed separately on IGDB. It's literally a free update and part of every Celeste copy, and you can't play it separately lol. I appreciate it because it feels disconnected and separate enough to the main narrative, but it'd be like if the third semester in Persona 5 Royal got its own page. That shit would have like a 4.9 average. Scary.
- They're very different ultimately, but the whole experience of physics-platforming as a girl in a surreal dream world and constantly being met with the most devious screens makes me think of Umihara Kawase. That game/series is awesome and I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't. More games like this please.
But what if you kept going?
What if you came back with the 4 Crystal Hearts for Chapter 8, with Madeline revisiting the mountain an in-game year later? She had no real reason for being there in the first place, and now she's there again. Why are you still there and not playing something else? Was it the gameplay that was so intricately crafted, Maddy's still updating it years later to improve the feel on a microscopic level? Lena Raine's shimmering arpeggios? The friendly cast of faces Madeline met with, brought to life with voices that were actually ridiculously elaborate in implementation? A perhaps too simple and saccharine approach to mental health draped in pastel colours, that made for a warm and relatable enough environment you could maybe appreciate nonetheless? Even from this game's biggest detractors, I still usually hear "it's so polished tho". The amount of care that went into Celeste fires through on all cylinders.
Okay, but what if you just kept going.
What if you did all the B-sides. And now the C-sides. Every strawberry. The golden strawberries too maybe? That one achievement where you get 6 strawberries back to back? Speedruns? Custom levels?
Completionism is pretty normal territory for people that really like a game, and Farewell muscles its way in as one more thing to check off the list. Some time long ago, Celeste stopped being a game primarily about climbing a mountain for these people, as they had found themselves consumed in every bit of the experience. Trying to fill that cake Madeline bakes at the end with as many strawberries as they could. Really milking that climbing action.
Not moving on.
So isn't it funny that Farewell's a story about grief, pelting Madeline every few minutes with "hey, you should move on now"? Part of Her gives up with reasoning as to why she shouldn't be using her psychic mountain climbing powers to spend the entire chapter chasing after a bird. She met Granny, she climbed that mountain, these were events in the past. She should just move on now. You're still playing Celeste, named after the mountain you're meant to be climbing, even though you painstakingly covered every inch of it already. "The mountain looks like a molehill from here," she remarks, even though you're still playing Celeste.
Madeline contorts herself in dashes and obscure movement techs, in order to scrape through the most pulverising screens the game now has to offer, because you just can't get enough of the climb. Even when there's no mountain left, when she's lost in dreams of exploding puffer fish, flying jellyfish (...green moose, guava juice), as the game is throwing literally every gimmick you've seen up to this point while introducing new shit at the 11th hour, glitching out, putting up barriers, demanding wavedash finesse, it's hard to stop playing. I quite like it giving you a Crystal Heart that doesn't count at one point, to tie together the completionism with grief further. "Empty Space". Maybe depicting grief with even more shmovement than
Farewell is a message to those fans ultimately. Not the ones that just dipped after beating it, but the ones that really exhausted that damn mountain. It was originally intended to be played after beating every C-side, though it pops up innocuously for anyone newly done with Chapter 8, only unceremoniously gating them halfway through (and requiring 15 Crystal Hearts, as opposed to 23). This is maybe my biggest complaint, as the only warning sign here saying "hey, maybe don't play this until you've worked through all the content?" prior to that is the fact that Madeline is just chilling in the 7C scenery upon starting it — something only people that already played 7C would catch onto.
Despite the stellar rating curve on the left there (which I suspect has some survivor bias), I'd say Farewell is a bit more polarising in how it's been received, judging from people's reactions online. It's obscenely difficult and seriously expects you to master some fairly obscure movement, introduced with as much grace as exploding fish to the face, as per how I expect the average experience went for a lot of people:
"Oh cool, I unlocked Ch 9 after beating Ch 8."
"Why is this so fucking hard? What is all this shit?"
"I need FIFTEEN HEARTS to get past that gate? After all that?"
(if they actually went and did that) "This game has WAVEDASHING??"
Such a clumsy way of going "oh anyone can play this but uh, actually no, sorry. It's for the hardcore fans lol". Farewell just ends up recontextualising all that "optional" stuff as a much more integral part of the game. It's titled and presented in such a way that anyone can clearly see that this is now that resolving piano chord at the end of it all, giving Celeste an air of finality, but its deceptive title of "Chapter 9" just works against it when there's a sea of content directly preceding it.
Despite all of that though, I'm confident in saying that this is my favourite part of Celeste. The twinkly luminous environs, the music ebbing back and forth from foreign to familiar as new motifs are weaved in with old... Madeline's just zooming, wavedashing, wallbouncing off of the most disjunct objects in this spaced out dreamy... aquarium... techno-observatory? I love how that visual style comes together when there are like 4 different themes being patchworked together. Every 5 seconds you're demanded to do some nebulous, evil oneiro-parkour, but you can't stop. You made it this far and you're not missing that last screen, damn it. Dash, dash, scrape against spikes, die. Just in this zen stupor, set to these spaced out surroundings, retooling yourself again and again. This was my 3rd playthrough of this game over the last 5 years, and my 2nd time ending on Farewell. It really truly feels wrong to me to actually stop playing at any point before Farewell. It's one of the most beautiful endings to any game I've played, and one I keep feeling eager to come back to in spite of thousands of deaths.
Happy 5th anniversary Celeste. Farewell for now.
--------------------------
A couple notes:
- I don't actually know why this is listed separately on IGDB. It's literally a free update and part of every Celeste copy, and you can't play it separately lol. I appreciate it because it feels disconnected and separate enough to the main narrative, but it'd be like if the third semester in Persona 5 Royal got its own page. That shit would have like a 4.9 average. Scary.
- They're very different ultimately, but the whole experience of physics-platforming as a girl in a surreal dream world and constantly being met with the most devious screens makes me think of Umihara Kawase. That game/series is awesome and I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't. More games like this please.
beating this makes you braver than any US marine
The hardest part of this DLC was beating it and still identifying as male
I'll gladly salute anybody patient enough to finish this gauntlet of a chapter.
Somehow makes the base game level design look like amateur hour. Extremely OK Games fires at all cylinders to present a level that not only tells the story of a girl learning to move on from grief, but allows the developers to say goodbye to a project that has helped kick off their own journeys of self-discovery. An excellent send- off for an excellent game, one last mountain to climb.
This mode is really really REALLY hard but somehow still super fun. i will definitely come back to it someday but for now im moving on to other games.
Just way too needlessly frustrating and exhausting, further amplified by the constant reliance on one of the most unreliable movement mechanics I've had to use in a game. Which is a real shame as I feel this would've been such an amazing sendoff to this game if my experience with it wasn't so soured by those aspects.
the real farewell were the friends we made along the way
Celeste is a mastery of the platformer genre. It is tight, fast-paced and extremely challenging at times, but never feels impossible.
Firstly, the gameplay is immaculate, as I've already said. The game feels so tight and polished, and you always feel in control. The game's controls are fundamentally quite simple:
Jump, movement, wall grab, and dash.
But hides complexities with techniques such as wavedashing, hypers and many more that the game itself does not even specify for those who really want to push the boundaries of the game. Complexities also come in the mechanics of the levels themselves, and by making every level feel different and unique, the gameplay loop never feels stale. The game also has many unseen quality of life features that most players wont know about, like the generous coyote time that the game actually gives you. You always feel in complete control playing this game.
As for the story, I honestly didn't care much about the story of celeste. It's not bad, and does have some really cool moments, but other than in farewell, it's nothing that special.
The music in this game, however, is spectacular, even incorporates dynamic elements into the game itself. My personal favorite being the hotel level, which gradually rises in intensity as you clear up the hotel more and more until it finally reaches it's breaking point, at which point the gameplay and the music both break loose. My overall favorite song has to be farewell though. It's simply amazing.
Done with the game? The modding community of this game is one of the most committed (and batshit insane), and you will never ever ever run out of mods to play. They go way beyond the scope of the game, introducing new mechanics and some even being borderline impossible.
Celeste was a complete delight to play, and in my opinion, the single best uncontested platforming game on the market. No other platforming game comes close to feeling as tight and polished as Celeste.
Firstly, the gameplay is immaculate, as I've already said. The game feels so tight and polished, and you always feel in control. The game's controls are fundamentally quite simple:
Jump, movement, wall grab, and dash.
But hides complexities with techniques such as wavedashing, hypers and many more that the game itself does not even specify for those who really want to push the boundaries of the game. Complexities also come in the mechanics of the levels themselves, and by making every level feel different and unique, the gameplay loop never feels stale. The game also has many unseen quality of life features that most players wont know about, like the generous coyote time that the game actually gives you. You always feel in complete control playing this game.
As for the story, I honestly didn't care much about the story of celeste. It's not bad, and does have some really cool moments, but other than in farewell, it's nothing that special.
The music in this game, however, is spectacular, even incorporates dynamic elements into the game itself. My personal favorite being the hotel level, which gradually rises in intensity as you clear up the hotel more and more until it finally reaches it's breaking point, at which point the gameplay and the music both break loose. My overall favorite song has to be farewell though. It's simply amazing.
Done with the game? The modding community of this game is one of the most committed (and batshit insane), and you will never ever ever run out of mods to play. They go way beyond the scope of the game, introducing new mechanics and some even being borderline impossible.
Celeste was a complete delight to play, and in my opinion, the single best uncontested platforming game on the market. No other platforming game comes close to feeling as tight and polished as Celeste.
Si los capítulos y retos finales de Celeste ya mostraban síntomas de agotamientos, Celeste: Farewell trata de arreglarlos con un par de objetos excelentes (los peces y las medusas). Pero la configuración misma de los niveles ha dado un inmenso paso atrás. Ya no se trata de ser inventive ni de dominar el dash, ahora todo se reduce a hacer exactamente lo que tienes que hacer y no equivocarte ni un milímetro. La sección final es una prueba de resistencia que puso a prueba tanto mi frustración como mi valoración entera de la obra. Si lo único que tienes que ofrecer al final de todo es dificultad extrema y técnicas de speedrunner, entonces tu juego ya se ha quedado sin ideas.
En un vídeo de Patricia Taxxon sobre Celeste oí no hace mucho que la dificultad en los juegos podría entenderse como añadir picante a un plato, y me pareció una analogía bastante buena. Aquí sería como si alguien hubiera echado un bote entero de wasabi que, en vez de aumentar gradualmente, se limitara a hacerte toser entre cada cucharada.
--------------------------
If the final chapters of Celeste already showed signs of exhaustion, Celeste: Farewell tries to fix them with a couple of excellent objects that do wonders for me-the fish and the jellyfish. But the design of the levels has taken an immense step backwards. It's no longer about being inventive or mastering the dash, now it's all about doing exactly what you have to do and not getting an inch wrong. The final section is an endurance test that tested both my frustration and my entire assessment of the game. If all you have to offer at the end of it all is extreme difficulty and speedrunner techniques, then your game has officially run out of ideas.
In a video about Celeste I heard not long ago that difficulty in games could be understood as adding spice to a dish, and I thought that was a pretty good analogy. Here it would be as if someone had poured a whole pot of wasabi that instead of gradually increasing would make you cough a lot with each spoonful.
En un vídeo de Patricia Taxxon sobre Celeste oí no hace mucho que la dificultad en los juegos podría entenderse como añadir picante a un plato, y me pareció una analogía bastante buena. Aquí sería como si alguien hubiera echado un bote entero de wasabi que, en vez de aumentar gradualmente, se limitara a hacerte toser entre cada cucharada.
--------------------------
If the final chapters of Celeste already showed signs of exhaustion, Celeste: Farewell tries to fix them with a couple of excellent objects that do wonders for me-the fish and the jellyfish. But the design of the levels has taken an immense step backwards. It's no longer about being inventive or mastering the dash, now it's all about doing exactly what you have to do and not getting an inch wrong. The final section is an endurance test that tested both my frustration and my entire assessment of the game. If all you have to offer at the end of it all is extreme difficulty and speedrunner techniques, then your game has officially run out of ideas.
In a video about Celeste I heard not long ago that difficulty in games could be understood as adding spice to a dish, and I thought that was a pretty good analogy. Here it would be as if someone had poured a whole pot of wasabi that instead of gradually increasing would make you cough a lot with each spoonful.
shat and creamed my pants when i got the hang of waevdashing
This shit made me scream out of anguish I am NEVA doing this again🙅♂️🙅♂️🙅♂️
HARD. Beautiful extra story. HARD. Cemented my thoughts of this whole game being one of my all-time favourites. HARD.
this has to be bad for my health. feels like i lost 5 fucking years of my lifespan beating this shit
got the moon berry tho yay!
got the moon berry tho yay!
I feel like I leveled up irl.
Farewell to your sanity.
Jokes aside, Farewell is an amazing and engaging finale for Celeste and the true ending is absolutely worth the efforts you're going through.
Jokes aside, Farewell is an amazing and engaging finale for Celeste and the true ending is absolutely worth the efforts you're going through.
I dreaded doing this dlc for over a year, and when I finally got to it, it was hell to finish. Fun, but really precise.
I really cant express all the emotions celeste has made me feel, but I can say that I am so grateful this game exists. When I originally beat the base game and got all strawberries about 2 years ago, I was very happy with the achievement I made and felt satisfied leaving it there. That being said I am so glad I picked this game back up to play the extra content, At first glance I said, "this is too hard for me" and left it there, but then 2 years later I decided "why not try". I am so thankful my past self made that decision. I completed all of the B and C sides while slowly chipping away at Farewell. Eventually I had completed all of the games extra levels besides farewell. This happened to line up with Farewell's half-way point where there is a massive spike in difficulty. Wave dashes were no problem for me, I had watched the speedruns of this game quite often so I already knew how, but wave dashes where only a sliver of the challenge that Farewell poses. At this point I was fully determined. i had made it this far, why stop now. I was truly starting to feel the pressure of the level and at points doubted myself, but I kept coming back to my mindset when I started this whole thing, "why not". There is no reason I can't beat this level. Eventually I had made it to the last room. It took about 3 months to just get to this point but I was finally there. and this room alone... took me about 3 weeks. When I finally made it to the very end I cried like a baby through the whole final cutscene, but I wouldn't change a single thing this game has made me feel. This experience has caused so many emotions for me. This game has helped me cope with real life issues for fucks sake. This game means so so so much to me. I am so grateful for the journey it brought me on. <3
these guys made free DLC for the cute anxiety platformer and it's still probably the hardest video game challenge i've ever completed. such an emotional, triumphant epilogue for a game that was already one of my all-time favorites.
I mean like...
Farewell is the PERFECT way to wrap up this game. I used to think the new mechanics for this chapter were extremely annoying, but the more time you spend with them, the better it feels, to an insane degree. By the last few checkpoints, you get the opportunity to go wild with every complicated movement you know, and that is such a free and exhilarating feeling! It's going to be hard for any game to top Celeste's airtight level designs. Alas, I'm finally able to say farewell to the game that's stumped me for years. It's been hard, but it's been fun.
Beating 99.999999% of this without a guide is one of the greatest gaming achievements I've ever accomplished
this 1 level took me 4 hours
GOD THIS GAME WAS ALREADY PERFECT, THEN THEY MAKE THIS?????
47 hours and more than 6700 deaths spread across a week. It was worth it. My favorite chapter in the game.
A truly brilliant epilogue for the best pure platformer ever made.
i think i gained more self worth from beating this
Played and beat in about 10 hours on the day of release. Incredible sendoff to one of my favorite games of all time. Celeste is so, so important to me and it was a pure joy to revisit it like this.
...God, this chapter gave me PTSD with how long I took to finish this...