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Celeste - Everest

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ano0maly
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by ano0maly »

There's Assist Mode

(plus Variants to showcase)

if needed
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by Crow »

Godmaster is a special case because one attempt of the last pantheon is like 30+ minutes per.
You only have to clear each screen of Celeste once. Well usually unless it's nonlinear lol.
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
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Re: Celeste - Everest

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having now played through chapter 9, here's my summary:

imagine if you played a level a bit harder (and much longer) than Core A, then after that you played its B-side and C-side all in a row

and also had to come to terms with the existence of wavedashing



i don't think it's a massive spike in terms of difficulty but it's definitely harder than anything else in the game. it's not remotely comparable to the pantheon of hollownest.

also raocow will be pleased to know that the chapter 3 C-side was edited at some point to remove one of the mandatory oshiro bounces at the end of the last room. it's still not, easy, but it's not doing that tricky jump twice in a row anymore
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by RobinLSL »

Chapter 9 is incredibly hard. I would say that it's harder than the version of Pantheon of Hallownest which raocow faced (with several nerfed bosses).
I'm not sure raocow can beat it,
but at least mistakes don't kick you back very far.
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by Super Maks 64 »

This DLC is not worth the 0$ you have to pay for it.

(and no I don't mean that it's worth more)

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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by Crow »

it's not magically so much harder than the c-sides

just because you're forced to learn wavedashing

but ok

i honestly think

the last room is far easier than the last room of 7C, it's just a lot longer, though the trek to the moon berry is probably harder overall just for how long it is



anyways if y'all are having trouble beating it but want to see the story assist mode is right there.
it's honestly a pretty good level overall tho it definitely is overlong and has the occasional questionable room
i have zero doubts raocow can beat it, it'll just be like. at least a week, maybe two lol. he's done harder. some of the mario world stuff he's done was way harder. the superbosses of rabi ribi were way harder. this happened
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by RobinLSL »

Hmm you're right, I guess I was considering a "beat it now or pretty fast" point a view, but if you give raocow 2 weeks I think he can do it. I think his performance at Hollow Knight lowered my estimates, but he just wasn't that good at that specific game.

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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by ano0maly »

I just beat it and wow. It's totally worth the $0 you pay for it. I plan to give a more detailed review of it later.
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

I'm onto the final stretch, and boy howdy. This might take me a few evenings.
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Re: Celeste - Everest

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ano0maly wrote: 4 years ago I just beat it and wow. It's totally worth the $0 you pay for it.
i get the feeling that this is unintentional but


damn is that some intense damning with faint praise
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

I surprised myself and finally beat Chapter 9 last night. Took about a week of 2 hour sessions - 12-14 hours total, but I think there was some serious menu idling that contributed to that total. Oh, and 2800 more deaths...
Cyril wrote: 4 years ago i honestly think

the last room is far easier than the last room of 7C, it's just a lot longer, though the trek to the moon berry is probably harder overall just for how long it is

Fully agreed with this. But I'm never going after that last achievement. Never again! :lol:
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by ano0maly »

Arctangent wrote: 4 years ago
ano0maly wrote: 4 years ago I just beat it and wow. It's totally worth the $0 you pay for it.
i get the feeling that this is unintentional but


damn is that some intense damning with faint praise
It's meant to be a response to Super Maks 64

Although I'm glad it's not a paid DLC
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by ano0maly »

My thoughts on the chapter (this is quite long):
Introduction

Before Farewell came out, I was replaying B-sides and C-sides to help practice for the difficulty of chapter 9, so I had a more prepared perspective going into the DLC. I didn't know what to expect, other than what I was told: it's post-C-side difficulty, there are some new mechanics, and there's no collectibles (which isn't quite true) or other sides.

The first thing I want to note is how the chapter confirms, or at least plays around with, some notions that were popular in the fan community of the game:
  • The elderly lady character that guides Madeline: I just used the title "granny" to refer to her for convenience. The chapter opens with Madeline calling her Granny.
  • Fans speculated that the bird may be a part of Granny, the same way Badeline is a part of Madeline manifested on Celeste Mountain. The game gives a shout-out to this by making this a central plot point of the chapter.
  • The long jump technique that uses diagonal-down dash has been commonly called wavedash. The Internet cafe in this chapter codifies the name.
I really like the newly added facial expressions for Madeline and Badeline, too.

For someone that hasn't played the game in a while, or came fresh out of 8A - chapter 9 is available immediately after it - I can see this chapter being a steep difficulty spike overall. That been said, the chapter does build up in a quite gradual pace, so I think the game is well aware of that. Early on you notice that you only have one dash and there's a new type of dash crystals to temporarily get two.

Surprisingly, there's some new technique involved with existing elements. There's one room fairly early on that demonstrates this:

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You have a block where grabbing onto the block makes it fall. You need to jump off of it and then do a mid-air maneuver to catch the sideway spring somewhere else on that block. Basically jump from the block to that same block while it's falling. It's kind of like jumps you perform on beehive levels in DKC2 but more advanced. Sometimes I also need to dive down midair to descend faster to help me catch things. It's tough to execute and it can get your fingers quite fatigued.

A lot of rooms have binoculars (some of them are hidden), but there are some tricky levels where you wish you had them because you don't know what's ahead. You can only learn those screens through trial and error, unless you prefer to look them up or explore them with Assist Mode, which is essentially giving yourself a free binoculars effect.

I liked that this DLC brought back various objects from past chapters. It gave the chapter variety. Chapters 7 and 8 did that too, but the Summit largely divided them up into distinct zones, where each zone would correspond to a particular chapter. And the Core tended to put all the things in a particular room, so it felt more like simply for the sake of throwback. In Farewell, the various elements are spread out throughout the chapter, so I got the vibe that the game is getting more use out of all these resources. Of course, this also means more stuff you have to keep track of, and if you don't remember how certain objects functions or you didn't like certain elements, you would have a tougher time.



New Mechanics

The blowfish is an odd thing. I wonder who came up with it. It's a combination of two mechanics: a stepping stone you can bounce on and move around with other blocks, and a bomb that blows up upon proximity (only at the semicircle below it, though) and blasts you left or right. It respawns a bit later and if it moved somewhere else and blows up, it returns to its original position. I thought it was a little janky, but clearly the levels were designed around these two mechanics. There are parts when you need to dash into it horizontally to bounce on it, and you wonder how you can do that without triggering its explosion, but the game has some leeway that allows you to do this.

Then there's the jellyfish that you ride like a parachute to slowly float down. One thing I find convenient is that you can hold up or down to control its descent speed. You can ascend with a jellyfish if there's a wall; while holding up, repeatedly approach a wall and jump kick off the wall to gradually gain net height.

Like with Theo in Mirror Temple, although you can still wall jump, you can't climb walls or dash while holding a jellyfish. But you can let go of the jellyfish and then dash towards it to grab it again. And if you catch the jellyfish during the dash, you get a boost, giving you more distance than a standard dash. The game uses this technique quite often, so you need to take the time getting familiar with what you can do with the jellyfish.

If you simply let go of the grab button, Madeline tosses the jellyfish forward, so if you want to catch it again, you need to dash in that direction - this would normally be diagonal if both Madeline and the jellyfish are midair. If you want to go straight up instead, you would want to have something it can bounce off of, so that it returns to you above your position. Although, it is possible to just release the jellyfish without tossing it if you hold the down key while letting go. This can be convenient if you're trying to move straight up without the jellyfish deflected by an object. Pulling this off is a bit tricky though, because you have to make sure you pressed down without diving too far. Fortunately, the game doesn't seem to require this mid-air release, from what I've seen - you only need to use the forward toss.

I also noticed that blocks in this chapter sink down a bit if you're on them. I had hoped that this wouldn't affect what I was doing, and it mostly doesn't.



The Wavedash

After the heart named Empty Space, the game goes quite meta. And the Internet cafe explaining the wavedash was pretty amusing and witty about how it explained it.

About this wavedash: the tricky part is making sure you regain the dash when you pull it off. The cafe instructs you to do a hop before you dash diagonally; I suppose this is the intended method because it simplifies the timing, since this allows you to jump as soon as you land. You can pull off the move just from the ground, but you need to stagger the dash and the jump afterwards so that they're spaced apart enough - otherwise, you get the boost but you use up your dash.

You need to get really familiar with the wavedash because the chapter makes heavy use of this from this point on. Something important to remember is that you need to dash at the apex of your short hop. If you wait until you're falling back down and dash, you're probably not going to get enough pause between dashing and jumping. What helped me was to count two beats, where I consider the diagonal dash and the subsequent jump as one beat apart. In fact, sometimes it was helpful to have three beats: hop, dash, jump.

Of course, I understand all this in principle, but I still mess up sometimes in the heat of the action. Some of the parts that gave me the most trouble was chaining multiple wavedashes together to leap across blocks. It feels like garbage when you don't regain the dash just at the last leap. You need to dash quite early when you aim for the next block; you shouldn't wait until you're directly over it.

I also noticed while writing this review that you can wavedash backwards (in the opposite direction of your diagonal dash).

After the cafe, there are a few obstacles with tutorial screens where virtual Madeline shows you how to get past the obstacle. This display helps you see how wavedashing works, but I found it visually confusing when actual Madeline and screen Madeline are together and sometimes got them mixed up. I wait until the screen display passes by before I advanced.

Now, players at this point haven't necessarily completed the very last challenge (8C), where wavedash is introduced, so Farewell spends a significant amount of time with levels designed to gradually get the player used to it. And even if you played 8C, you might have known that you regain the dash if you time things correctly, given that in chapter 8 you only regain dashes at dash crystals and screen boundaries.

However, soon I come across a room that uses a dash wall jump you learn in 7B, and with a somewhat obnoxious obstacle at that. There is a tutorial screen, but the game just expects you to do it. And later on you need to use the slime jump, which is taught in 2B. Initially I wondered how the player that might have only played up to 8A would know about these advanced moves. Then while revisiting this chapter, I noticed that there's a heart barrier that crashes down in the screen just before the cafe. This requires 15 hearts to pass (just like the 8B barrier), which means by this point you should have beaten those B-sides that teach you these moves.

Things made sense once I realized this. So even though you can start chapter 9 right after 8A, the part up to the heart is like a demo content, and the real challenge starts after the heart barrier. By the time this barrier is crossed, the player should be much more proficient at the game than after beating only A-sides, which is appropriate since chapter 9 is quite demanding.



Beyond the Heart

Needless to say, the more you get a grasp of wavedash, as well as dash wall jump, the more fun you'll have. But there are certain rooms that are very precise. I've seen people discuss a certain screen with a rightward arrow block and some thorns on the ceiling that resemble icicles.

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They were talking about how difficult it was to time the wavedash and then dash up and jump kick off the block that moves, so you need to match the position of the upward dash with the block and also have the correct timing so that the block is at a good spot.

When you retry, you appear directly below the right side of the block. I like to dash straight up (without jumping) to activate the block. And I think the thorn columns attached to the ceiling are there to help you measure the timing for your wavedash. I observed that you get a surprising amount of boost if you don't wall jump after the dash too soon. It's also a good reminder that the movement of the block will give you a boost in momentum even if it's not very fast.

Then there are screens with color blocks. I honestly wasn't expecting a color blocks section in this chapter, and with up to four different colors at that. The music track is an actual track forming part of the Farewell OST rather than an arrange of a theme of the given chapter. Unlike in the other color block sections, the chimes here are less dependent on the music, with intervals that vary in different screens. This is possible because the music track is a quiet, solemn piece, making you focus on the chimes themselves instead of following the beats of the BGM.



Final Part

The last part of the chapter is where the theme of this chapter become clear, if it wasn't clear before. The premise is that sometimes you need to let go of something because it's gone or done, and Badeline is trying to tell her counterpart to put to rest the obsession over something that is now past, and stop chasing after it. It is time to accept things and move on, hence the title of the chapter.

But I did feel that the settings of this chapter, with their ambiguity, have been unraveled by Madeline in the cutscene here. Early on, the chapter was presented like it could just be another large manifestation made possible by Celeste Mountain, and I was led to believe Madeline when she said that the bird is indeed intrinsically linked to Granny. As you progress, there is some conflict of thinking between Madeline and Part of Madeline, where the latter wanted to convince the former to get a grip with reality, telling her that this is a dream and that she shouldn't keep pursuing the bird. This does hint of reality that is contrary to that earlier presentation of the chapter. But back then, the game drives Madeline's point of view (partly with the fact that you're playing as her), so seeing Madeline suddenly give up on her passionate quest and admit that she was in denial was quite a downer.

I was curious as to why even after Badeline rejoins you, you have only one dash. But the way I interpret it, this is a very personal matter for Madeline, to the point that she herself needs to be willing to move on - Badeline told her all she could. From here on, touching Badeline or the bird gives you a boost (Badeline tosses you upwards, the bird throws you horizontally), and that character moves to the next spot to await you. If you skip past a boost, the character automatically goes to the next spot. This is different from the Summit where you need to meet with Badeline at each step because the screen will stop scrolling up at some point until you do.

This section is a test of your skill in utilizing the mechanics and elements new to this chapter, or otherwise had substantial use in the chapter, and it takes time to conquer these screens one by one, but it feels like an accomplishment as you succeed in clearing these screens. I feel that the game does a good job motivating you to keep going.

But then comes the final screen you need to beat before you can meet Granny, with a new checkpoint.

As you scroll through the screen with the binoculars, you gaze upon one of the longest levels you've ever seen in Celeste. Not only that, at some point there's a giant shock field in the way and you wonder how you're supposed to get past it. There's a gap above just before this field, so you may guess that you would go up that way, but the binoculars don't scroll up. The game is not being nice here.

Once you reach that gap (with a jellyfish), the wind moves up, allowing you to ascend if you're not holding down. Now you fly through a corridor surrounded by electricity, dodging obstacles, and you realize how huge this whole place is. This extends the marathon to be even longer when it was already a widely stretched screen. But honestly, aside from being part of a really lengthy marathon, this segment of flying freely with the jellyfish is pretty fun. It's true that this gimmick is introduced at the very end of the chapter and used only for a little bit, but I felt that this short bit was enough to get the point across, at least.

After you toss the jellyfish to hit a door switch, you need to scale back down to where you could preview with the binoculars, remembering that one mistake and you restart from the beginning of the screen. And then, after you jump from jellyfish to jellyfish in a chain, you reach the circuit box to disable the shock. It's tough to survive through all this, but doable - it just takes a lot of time and practice because of the sheer length.

Reaching the bird, you go through an automated sequence of bird and Badeline boosts that carries you up to a couple of feathers; keep going up and reach Badeline one final time, and you're done. It's sort of mean that you need to manually dash into Badeline or you won't reach her and will just fall from there. The feathers do respawn, but if you land back on the feather not expecting it, it could send you right towards the thorns. To see for a moment a saving grace that could salvage your run only to have it kill you, that would be infuriating.

After a heartwarming cutscene, the chapter ends. This has actual full-sized cutscene pictures and animation that you normally only see upon chapter clear (I guess this counts as one of those chapter clear images).

But there's more to this chapter.

Warning: stuff below may be spoilers even if you cleared the chapter.



Secrets

To start off, this chapter has some side paths you can take in lieu of the more obvious main paths. For instance, in the screen where you first see a jellyfish, there's an upper path that leads to levels different from what you get with the standard lower path. This alternate route requires techniques and mechanics used in this chapter, like wavedash, so the game expects you to be familiar with these if you explore this way.

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There's one screen a little bit after Remembered checkpoint that has Madeline's car tucked away up above in a corner. I don't know what it's doing here of all places, and it's strange because the car is already found next to the Internet cafe.

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Then, just before Determination checkpoint, there's a strange room with stereos making creepy sounds and a screen displaying waveforms and periodically a heart.

But the main secrets I want to talk about are the strawberries.

In the giant final screen containing Farewell checkpoint, you may have noticed some floating rocks among the shock fields that you didn't need to use. If you turn off the fields and hop across these stones, you can backtrack through the level and get back up to where there are inflating fish (those you avoided earlier while riding the jellyfish upward). Keep moving from rock to rock - some of them require the techniques you should know by now - and eventually there's a sizable chunk with a spring.

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Continue to go up from here, and at the ceiling you will find the entrance to a hidden place, indicated by shining light. Obviously, doing all of this means protracting the marathon further still, as if it wasn't long enough. Fortunately, once you reach this chunk with the spring, the game allows you to retry from there.

Once you enter, you're in a small room with no apparent way to proceed to the next screen to the right, as the path is blocked off by a wall. There's another screen above, but it just loops back down to this room. It seems that the only thing you can do is to touch the lone spike. If you do this (or just retry) after you loop around through the above screen, you reappear on the other side of the wall and you can enter the next place. The really neat touch is that if you bring the golden strawberry with you here, it detaches from you and waits for you on the other side, so you can safely trigger a retry without getting dragged back to start.

So the next place is another vertically ascending level, and it really tests your aptitude with the jellyfish and its ability to dash-boost Madeline. To reiterate, if there's a wall, dash upwards after throwing the jellyfish at it, and in open space, toss the jellyfish forward and dash diagonally into it. You need to grab the ride before the dash ends to get the boost, but it can also cause you to crash into hazards. The frustration with this screen is how there are spots that are overly cramped, where the thorns are needlessly close to where you would move through. I felt that the they could be more lenient and you would still perform the same steps, just with a little more space to maneuver and adjust yourself when needed. Note that there are spots where the screen won't scroll back down any further, so you can't just drop down indefinitely once you go past them.

The most annoying part is this:

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You need to dash-boost to get to the dash crystal, and then have the jellyfish land on those springs so that you can go above and catch it. This part requires some good positioning when you throw the jellyfish to aim for the dash crystal. If you're too much to the left, you might toss it at the floating block; if you're too much to the right, the boost could send you careening into the thorns. I've also had times when I hit the block from below during the dash and it messed up the attempt.

When you get higher up, upward wind is triggered and you get to float around once more. By the way, the binoculars at the start of the screen only go up so far - for some reason, the scope you can see with them stops near the spot where the wind starts. Here there are a couple of obstacles where the barrier in your path prevents you from riding the jellyfish through it, so you need to toss the jellyfish through the shock field to get around the barrier, and then race to catch up to your ride again as it drifts away. After clearing these obstacles and going up enough, you find a "WOW" strawberry as your reward for this extra challenge. A little bit past that there's Badeline; this serves as an alternate exit for the chapter and leads to the ending cutscene.

That's not all, though. As mentioned above, this monstrously long chapter actually has a golden strawberry. If you snag the golden strawberry and carry it all the way to where you would normally have the ending cutscene, you have one more screen to beat before you can meet Granny.

Why is the game doing this? If you die in this extra screen, you get sent all the way back to start. It's just sadistic, like Pantheon of the Hallownest level of sadistic. Even if you get here with Assist functions like I did, you shouldn't just turn off those functions upon arrival, because you would return to start upon retry all the same and it would be a big waste of time to get back here. If you want to play just this one level fairly, you need to get to the top (about the height where there's a green flag) to collect the strawberry, and then retry and turn off Assist.

The level itself isn't too difficult, at least. Reach the flag at the top and you get a little fanfare, and use Badeline to go to the ending cutscene.
Overall, Farewell is a rewarding, if difficult, experience. The music is as immersive and captivating as ever, and there's a lot of it - the tracks add up to almost 40 minutes. The plot and vibe of this chapter is

a stark contrast to the Summit. Whereas that chapter was very optimistic and themed on prevailing, the lesson of Farewell is that sometimes you need to set aside bygones and be able to move forward with your lives.

I will note that this chapter has now vastly overshadowed the Core as the epilogue content.

And playing the chapter was fun and engaging, just like how the game is.
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Re: Celeste - Everest

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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by CrappyBlueLuigi »

that article is the best read of the year tbh
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Re: Celeste - Everest

Post by Blivsey »

It really is. Like, from a trans perspective, that article makes me so happy.
convenient noise thread for stress-relief purposes
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