Celestian Tales: Old North

( PC – JRPG – 2015 ) + TRAILER

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In unembellished fashion I'd say Celestian Tales: Old North is essentially Game of Thrones meets JRPG. A lot of the former lies in the game's themes and mood. The other half will be more than familiar to any genre fan, though.

Before I briefly discuss the story bits, as I'm usually want to, there is an interesting twist – you get to choose which of the six characters is the primary one. This results in a unique prologue, as bulk of the game is shared, which may be familiar to Dragon Age: Origins players, alongside some self-contained choices throughout as well as the epilogue. In theory this means you should play the game six times to see absolutely everything. In practice you should decide whether it's worth doing so for ~15 minutes of content a pop. I don't know how it panned out, but supposedly these decisions you make should leave a mark in the sequel, though.

We step into the shoes of an ensemble cast comprised of noble youths who travel to city of Levantine in order to pledge their service to lord Alain as his squires in hope of becoming full-fledged knights one day. Befitting customary RPG protagonists the realm is in peril with Enders, warrior people from the north, returning to wreak havoc. Fortunately, there are highly competent generals and bearers of Sacred Swords who will rise to do service to their noble Houses, but that doesn't mean our squires are short of work, much to their frustrations. And yet there are plots brewing as nobles scheme against nobles with commoners caught in the crossfire.

What sets Old North apart is the exhaustive effort that went into expanding the world via all the background info. Only “problem” is most of it is contained under Lore entries when I wish writers found a way to inject into the script more organically. Mind you, this isn't another instance of Final Fantasy 13 where you needed to make up for shoddy storytelling, but rather it feels like a waste when there's so much backstory concerning noble Houses, forbidden magic itself and support cast you'll only get the barest of essentials through obligatory conversations. Like I mentioned in the opening there's a strong Game of Thrones vibe going on and game simply lacks the capacity to explore all of it.

I promise, this will be the last fluff segment and it's appropriate I make it about the characters since our crew is the only constant in the game. Considering you have everyone from a bigoted religious zealot to a sheltered half-elf unfamiliar with human ways you can expect varied reactions based on all the scenarios party find itself in. These characters are not exactly even in their motivations or developments throughout the story, however. Even if you have no interest in replaying the entire game I'd still say check out their prologue at least as it's critical for at least one character.

And now onto everything else. Game stuff which will largely be familiar to JRPG aficionados.

Having more than one portrait to display characters' emotions shows that additional production effort.

Everything you need at a glance, with stamina in place of mana to keep track of.

As tantalizing it is by never entirely opening up it's nice to have a world map. Some locations depend on your main character.

I know from experience this is a deal breaker for some people so I'll say it up-front – no random encounters in Old North. Sadly, there's also no way to be (dis)advantaged when engaging them either as game doesn't account for taking enemies by surprise or vice versa. Still, ability to outrun enemy sprite representations without hassle can only be a good thing. Combat itself? Very straightforward turn-based affair with action order indicator and without need to go extensive menu delving for basic actions. Departing from usual MP-based tradition we have Stamina powering up all your special skills. Capped at eight and gained by attacking, defending or consuming curatives, Stamina leads to this particular ebb and flow where being conservative rarely pays off. In fact, considering the game fully restores your health after each encounter it's implicitly encouraged to go all-out whenever possible with one imperative – you really don't want anyone dying on your team because you'll get a Wounded debuff which can only be removed by going to a church or spending an expensive Bright Red Crystal. This, however, is a non-issue because...

Difficulty is a joke. I can't decide whether that's due to developer under-tuning, giving player the freedom to grind whenever they want, while implementing a universal party level so everyone's always on the same level, or simply because you have six characters to work with so you can tackle any situation even if you can only have three in a party. It's really easy to set yourself a HEALER + TANK + DAMAGE without much thought and breeze through the entire thing down to the final boss. Confusing part is Old North truly does give some freedom to character customization even if they never break the role they're supposed to fill. You're meant to pick and choose from an array of abilities/passives acquired through leveling, as you can only have four/two respectively at any time, but I went with what was flavor-appropriate and was never lead astray. Same with equipment you'll find most of locked away in chests, leaving procuring the ingredients to UPGRADE weapons the only real investment on your end which boils down to fighting the right enemy. No 0.1% drop rates here, no sir.

It's only appropriate I talk about the Howl of the Ravager since this DLC is almost the length of the base game and in some aspects outshines it. Narratively we're dealing with a prequel story featuring Severin who was barely in the original as idolized, stern general and see more of his relationship with Alain in their younger days. If you've played as a certain half-elf you already know the outcome as DLC introduces your two other party members, though. As a returning crisis unfolds getting humans and elves to join hands we discover brand new information about the Sacred Swords and their true nature in turn framing the original game's finale in a different light. In gameplay terms HotR answers some of the problems I had. You have only three characters total and, albeit once again perfectly filling archetypal roles, you'll spend an extended time without a healer so there's at least an illusion of danger. Good news is there's now ONE challenging fight in the form of a final boss. Remember I talked about how long this DLC is? Well, that's probably because it throws not one, but two mazes at you and expects backtracking. I was just about done when I realized I had to re-visit that damn forest in the penultimate act. Solid DLC delivering largely more of the same with minor tweaks, like loss of weapon upgrading as you're wielding legendary weapons passed on through history.

Lastly we have production matters. Old North was crowdfunded and you see it best in how scaled back the grandness of the presentation is versus the scope of the conflict they're going for as the entire realm mobilizes for war. Fortunately, this is where beautiful watercolor aesthetic pulls all the weight. World map, and by simply having one game already goes against modern JRPG grain, particularly shows it off nicely while avoiding some perspective shenanigans actual areas suffer here and there. Tiles sometimes don't snap together perfectly and couple of times art assets made me think a ramp wasn't traversable. Nothing major, though. Soundtrack has comparatively few tracks you might expect from the usual genre fare where musical offerings span multiple disks and whatnot, but developers made good mileage with what they have. Fittingly, opening movie and final boss tracks steal the show in setting the note if bombastic was the goal.