Celestia- A Magical Masterpiece
The spiral is filled with many amazing worlds. From kroks, dragons, dinosaurs, and the mysterious cabal, there truly is something for everyone in the spiral. Out of all of the wonderful worlds in the spiral, the one that stands out to me the most is Celestia.
Story
One reason I love Celestia is because the world feels like an amazing introduction into the second arc of the game. The story of Morganthe begins to build up, while not revealing too much about her or her intentions to be the main villain of the second arc.
Design
Another reason that I love Celestia is design of the world. Even though most of the areas are underwater, they are all done in very unique and different ways. I feel this is a good step forward from the world that was before it, Dragonspyre. In Dragonspyre, it was harder to tell apart the different areas since all of the streets looked similar. However, in Celestia, the areas look very unique which helps to make it always feel like you are progressing with each new area that you go to.
An Introduction To The Astral Schools
An obvious reason to love Celestia is that it introduced the three astral schools. These schools are the moon, star, and sun schools. Each new school provided different spells for wizards to utilize that were different from the hits, blades, and traps they were used to. The moon school provided spells that allowed you to polymorph into various creatures and obtain their spells. The sun school provided ways to enchant your attacks so that they could have added damage, accuracy, or pierce with them. Last but not least, the star school added aura’s that you could use to buff certain stats such as resist, damage, critical, or healing for your next three turns.
Cheating Bosses
The other new mechanic that Celesta added with it was cheating bosses. Before Celestia, most bosses required wizard’s only to use blades, feints, and hit’s to kill them. With the introduction of cheating bosses, it always kept wizards on their toes as they would never know what to expect. It also required wizards to have to occasionally change up the strategy they were using to beat the boss. Take the final boss of Celestia for example, the boss Mithraya made it so wizard’s had to get a trap and blade on her as soon as they could to avoid getting a smokescreen on them every turn. These bosses were a great way to make wizards change up their strategies and a great introduction to some of the bosses they would have to face in the future.
Puzzles
The last thing I enjoyed about Celestia was the puzzles. In the final dungeon of Celestia, you are met with three different puzzles. These puzzles can be challenging and also add additional flavor to the final dungeon. I feel that puzzle’s are one thing that the later worlds of the spiral lack. These puzzles help add variety into dungeons so that they are not all the same. For example a lot of dungeons in Empyrea include one or two mob fights and then a boss. Adding some of these puzzles into dungeons can help give players a break from fighting and make every dungeon more unique than the last.
Overall, Celestia is filled with many amazing elements that make it a fun and exciting world to play through. It very much feels like an introduction to a new arc of the game because of all the new mechanics and story that it begins to tell. While there are many great worlds in the spiral, Celestia stands out to me as one of my favorites.