I have my nitpicks about Celceta, but to dismiss it would be miserly, because I had a wonderful time. Despite middling writing and bizarre music choices (what have they DONE to “Dawn of Ys”! why were so many Ys IV tracks cut!) Celceta so often manages to capture the speed and momentum that characterizes Ys combat at its finest. It successfully reworks Ys Seven’s combat system to greatly improve the rhythm of normal attacks vs skills, and injects a greater fluidity into non-slash characters that finally makes nearly everyone fun to play as. And it throws in a few great ideas of its own - I was initially pretty resistant to the weapon upgrade system, but it’s a fun way to customize status effects and make your characters extremely powerful.

Throw in some banger original music (generally better than the reworked versions of Ys IV tracks) and you’ve got a fun, breezy 20 hours. If it can’t match the heights of Felghana or its immediate successor, Lacrimosa of Dana, well. I won’t hold that against it

For a wordless puzzle game in alien environments, the game lacks a lot of mystique. Something about the top-down view of all the spaces just feels consistently flat on the screen, even when the levels have good layering? The puzzles, too, felt like busywork until at least halfway through the game. The boss battles do not help with this feeling of 'this should feel spooky and alien but it doesn't' with how instantly identifiable they are. Once you actually get to the more open-ended puzzles, it's good, but then there's only like a single area's worth of that to let it soar.