201 Strawberries (Finally!)
Hello! This is my first real post on Reddit because I don't know anyone in real life that has also played Celeste. I had to get this out somehow and this felt like an appropriate place!
I picked up the game on my Switch back in 2019 during college and played it through feverishly, I thought it was just superb in every way. I've never been the greatest gamer technically, but I was still able to clear all the levels aside from Farewell, find the red strawberries, even get a handful of goldens. I definitely felt myself hit a ceiling with the difficulty at a certain point (probably around 188 or so?), and with school and life taking up my time I wasn't able to grind and get better, so I eventually put the game down.
Cut to seven years later, this past March me and my girlfriend had just bought a PS5 from a friend of hers and I see Celeste on sale for $5. Obviously I buy it; a million other games I could play but something about getting to relive the game I was obsessed with for a year's time made me giddy. I started playing and it was like riding a bike. I remembered everything so well: all the stages, the controls, the spikes I died a thousand times on, but something was different this time around. My reaction times were better, I felt myself getting the hang of physics and momentum, I was ... improving??
I breezed through the base game, even completing Farewell eventually, picking up loads of strawberries, getting to 175 in about a week, which then became 180, then 185, then 190 until I was getting golden strawberries on levels I never thought possible. About a month ago I was up to 198, which was already so satisfying, fearing the Hell Trio I've heard so much about.
7b was just infuriatingly long, but somehow one day I sit down for a play session and beat it on the first try. 6b took a lot of dedication but eventually I got farther and farther until I finally cracked 200 berries. Then came 8b, which I knew would be my nemesis: something about the timing of the cycles, those conveyer belts, those fickle lava blocks.. me and 8b simply did not see eye to eye, I put it off for months until I had no other choice. I grinded, I got timing down, I fixed mistakes, I never gave up, and finally...
Just yesterday, right before me and my girlfriend had to leave for a Fourth of July party, I got all the way to the last screen and didn't even choke on the music blocks. 201 Strawberries!! I couldn't believe it, I was so happy I'm still so happy as I type this 24 hours later. Finally I feel like I'm at a satisfying stopping point with one of my favorite games. I don't think I could ever, even with all the improvement I've had over the years, ever make it through Farewell deathless, so 201 feels perfect to me.
I know this is a touch longwinded but I just had to share this achievement with a community that I'm so grateful exists. I've lurked a ton searching for advice, tips, routes for goldens, seeing other people's achievements and being motivated by them, so I'll end this post by saying thank you to all the awesome people who still love an awesome game.