The walkthru I used for this is dated July 1998 but I don't know how old the game is. I also do not know what the system requirements are. I 'borrowed' this game from Solman when he FLOATED it and there was no manual or booklet with the discs. It installed on my computer with no difficulty and I had no technical glitches with it at all.
This is a mouse/trackball point and click adventure. I guess this is classified as a 1st person game since I/you are the only person there. Options i.e. save,load,quit are easy to access. So, too, the inventory. There is no limit to the inventory but it did not take a lot of management or manipulation since use of items picked up are almost immediate. There is a 'status inventory (sorta)' of books, amulets, and harp strings that pops up when you acquire the required item. This makes it easy to check to be sure you have what you were seeking and had to have to activiate the ending. The cursor was almost self explanatory. I did not do much exploring on my own but followed the wt pretty much.
5 Saved Game slots are provided and when saving you have to decide if you want to overwrite a previous saved game. Saving your place is only important if you think you will have a lot of trouble with a puzzle, so it does not really matter if you overwrite a previous sg.
This is a very short game. But very enjoyable, no tension, hairpulling mazes, timed puzzles and the only slider I remember was easy - an 8 tile one.
You start out on the island (off Ireland, I believe) and you are to piece together the story of a group of people from a time before, who enjoyed a pleasant (at first) summer there. They were seeking a magical, mystical 'otherworld' and needed certain books, and amulets etc to find. You are doing the same thing to find out what happened to them in their time.
The scenery is lovely, soft, calming. Someone else called it Mystlike. There are stonehenge type ruins everywhere. You get to explore a beautiful house and garden. There are 3 island REALMS you explore (I think they are all the same island but depict different times within the storyline).
The puzzles are really not too hard (if you put on your 'thinking cap'). I tried a couple of them by myself without the walkthru because understood what the end result was supposed to be.
All in all I have to say I enjoyed the game, no blood/gore, no stealth, nice graphics, nice music background, fun puzzles, OK storyline BUT I was disappointed with the end because I expected more. Certainly would recommend this as a nice 'in between' game to try (if you can get ahold of a copy) and it sure was relaxing.
Love, Betty Lou

This game was not 100% stable on my computer. After I'd played for a while, it had a tendency to dump me into Windows. The places it would tend to do this were fairly predictable. Two times out of 3, when I was changing to CD2, I'd get dumped to Windows. So I had to remember to save before entering those glowing purple doorways to the other islands, because that's where there was apt to be a CD change.

The other times I got dumped were before or during puzzles. I played the game twice, and the first time I played, it dumped me on different puzzles than in the second time.

Other than being dumped to Windows, the pyramid puzzle got corrupted and I had to go back to a saved game in order to complete it.

Since the walkthrough that I consulted mentioned bugs, apparently they do happen. They seem to be more apt to happen if you play the game for a while. If you only play the game for an hour or so at a time, maybe you won't see any bugs. Restarting it seems to clear out any problems its accumulated.

I did most of the puzzles myself, but lost patience with the alchemy puzzle. It just took too long to go through the motions to experiment. So I cheated.

I also lost patience with the cave maze. Cheating time again.

The best island was the first one - the one with the gazebos and the church and the lighthouse and the manor house. The other 2 islands seemed much smaller and didn't have much to interest me. The underground area was not interesting because I didn't like the cave maze. It may not have been very difficult, but it was just boring grey cave walls to look at and I didn't feel like spending time there to map it.

When I first started Celtica, I thought the gameworld was lovely with its rolling green hills and ocean in the background. But by the end of the game, I found this monotonous (though certainly better than the underground maze). One thing about the Myst ages is that they had variety.

You always have to start the game with CD1. Yuck!

Did I mention I don't like cave mazes, especially in such a short game. It was longer than Chateau D'Or though.

The ending seemed out of character from the rest of the game. I'm not sure it was even a desirable ending. Maybe I don't want to be magically transported into outer space to meet space aliens, who may or may not want to see me. I'm pretty sure I don't want to do that, especially when the game isn't going to let me see what happens next.

Huh. You got more out of the ending than I did. I did not know I was being transported to outer space! They could at least have done it so as to promise a sequel of some kind like "whatever happened to that little old lady that found and fixed all the missing pieces on the island/s and found and unlocked the gate to our world?"
Oh well. Thanks for the comments
Love, Betty Lou

Actually I got that part about being transported to outer space from the walkthrough. There were hints about it in the game - that ultimately the person who put together the pieces of the puzzle would make contact with the aliens. But I didn't really pick up on it until I checked the walkthrough, and then "Oh, so that's what that was supposed to be. What a ..."

Nice comments and review of Celtica Betty Lou,

I got Celtica a while back - before H and A vanished. I thought it was alright. A couple of the puzzles in the first world were interesting. I liked the secret doors and such. But I got a bit bored later. It was a decent game and worth what I paid - but I'm somewhat surprised by how many seem intent on locating the game. Maybe just the lure of the hunt.

Still it had very nice graphics, the ambiant sounds... were well done and it had a nice feel to it. If you love Ireland, 1st person games with no people - you probably would really enjoy this game. It also is not rushed and I can't remember any sense of timed sequences. Definitely no action.

Laura