Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I bought this game because of my brother. He practically forced me into it, since I’m not usually big on fantasy RPGs, but he bought it for me and promised I wouldn't regret it. Let me tell you, people: I have never played such a narrative and visual masterpiece. A studio this small, and they go and make the Game of the Year for 2025? It’s crazy how much my opinion on fantasy RPGs has changed thanks to this one game. Thanks, brother, and thank you, Sandfall Interactive.

I give most games a very fair chance and I heard nothing except great reviews about 33, but I simply cannot recommend this game. There are a few real simple reasons as to why I'm just completely unimpressed by it. #1 - The voice acting is unfitting to the characters (somewhat) and it feels like it's almost robotic. Not in the terms of "AI", but the casting and the voice direction must have been off and it definitely shows. #2 - The graphics, run animations, battle sequences, it all feels very Xbox 360 era and not in a good way. I felt like I was playing a tech demo of a game that had too much saturation, too much bloom, too much in the way of an identity crisis. The scenery was fighting to find itself (steampunk, fantasy, classic Victorian, 70's British, etc) and I just couldn't get behind the semi-weird cartoony nature in an otherwise random universe. #3 - It tosses you into the game and tries to impress on you the seriousness of the story right away, without really giving you time to develop a character, grasp the situation or even understand much else. The movement was weird as well; switching quickly between a low-tech adventure platformer (felt like Wolverine honestly) and a turn based combat system (almost similar to FF13, which was weird). I see what they were going for and it's an easy game to understand gameplay wise, but it's tossed at you as if this was a sequel or you were meant to be at least an hour into the game prior to everything being dropped. Honestly I can't quite put my finger on why I dislike this game overall aside from saying a massive TL;DR. TL;DR - The game has a definite identity crisis, the graphics are weird, the voice acting is weird, there was definitely AI used in this (undisclosed), the music is good but not fitting to the situations (bad tact/context) and it just overall felt like a weird tech demo. If you like old school RPGs with fun concepts, go find a way to play Lost Odyssey or Legend of Dragoon. If you want a very stylized RPG with great characters and a modern style, check out BG3 or for the cartoony-side try DQ11's super ultra turbo edition. But this game? It just feels... unpolished.