Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

I have a hard time comprehending why people like this games so much. It must be one of the mose overrated types of media ever created. The story? 10/10!! Amazing! To bad it falls flat on its stomach when it comes to gameplay.. This is esentially a parrying/dodging simulator. 10-15-20 minute battles that hang on you getting a perfect parry every single time? No thank you. Everytime you face a new enemy you have to fail first in order to learn their attacks so you can try and time the parry/dodge. You might be thinking "But there has to be a lower difficulty setting?!" There is, it is for those who want to focus more on the story. Like me. The game is still relentless in that you have to have perfect parrys/dodges. For some reason there is a setting under accessibilty that allows you to "skip" QTEs by automating them. If a person needs help with QTEs then i would be willing to bet they need help with the parrying/dodging too. I kept thinking i will get in to it, but no. After re-doing a battle for the fifth time, a battle that lasts for 10 minutes. You loose me, its not fun anymore. I wish i could still re-fund this.. You can tell it was made by the french.. (Not because its basically set in france..)

I really wanted to love this game. The visuals often feel like scrolling through an endless gallery of midjourney concept art. Every scene is trying so hard to be breathtaking that eventually they all start blending together. The music is great… if you listen to it on Spotify. In the game though, it just never stops. Every area, every cutscene, every emotional moment has another huge track blasting in the background. There’s almost no ambience or quiet moments. The game is constantly trying to impress you, but because it never gives you any room to breathe, both the visuals and the music gradually started losing their impact. Combat has the a similar problem. It looks like a deep RPG with all the different builds, Pictos, Luminas, but parrying is so strong that it kind of makes everything else feel less important. Once you’re good at parrying, that’s basically the game. I spent way more time learning attack timings than thinking about my build, which feels like a waste for a system with this many RPG mechanics. The story is where it completely lost me: [spoiler] For the first 30 hours, the game asks me to care about the people of Lumiere. They have families, dreams, friendships, and they’re willing to sacrifice everything for the next generation. Then the ending starts asking me to empathize with the family whose grief ultimately matters more than the countless lives caught in the middle, and that emotional shift just didn’t work for me. By the end, my takeaway was basically: wiping out an entire civilization is understandable as long as you’re an aristocratic family dealing with grief, and your victims aren’t considered real people.[/spoiler] I can absolutely see why people love this game. It’s ambitious and clearly made with a lot of passion. But the ending left a bad taste in my mouth that I just couldn’t shake.

Bien

The premise of a game is that it should be fun. For some reason, many games these days like to call themselves works of art. You can be art if you want — but first, you have to be fun. On that point, this game is terrible. Completely not worth playing. A waste of money. It tries to pass itself off as art, but it’s just self-indulgent garbage.

Listen, the game is unfinished. The final environment is a way to wrap up an unfinished game. It's fine. The story has unraveled and been wrapped up by then so it makes sense, narratively, but not mechanically. It simply suggests this game would've been even better had they worked out how to wrap up both loose ends concurrently. The story, for me, is not very good. The beginning events, as you experience them, and major plot points are emotional and the acting/directing of this game is it's masterpiece factor. The mechanics, overall game design, character models, tone, soundtrack, and environment/world building (narrative context) are all very well done. Example, the sprint start to have the camera pan left and down into the square. All of that felt VERY intentional, a way to control narrative exposure experience, while maintaining as much freedom of play as possible. The studio put on a masterclass in this regard, specifically. S tier. The rest is A tier. Overall, the story for me is C tier. It relies too heavily on people acting illogically. The girl would be PISSED if her parents effectively decided that her life was worth less than her brother's to a point that they ignored hers to live his old one. The story has a ton of holes. Nothing "major" but it's so riddled with them that it would stand, alone, like a piece of swiss cheese sideways. It's propped up by stunning cinematic fights and incredible emotional weight. The parts of the story are exquisite, but if you ask yourself too many questions it quickly falls apart. It will still move you. Well done redefining the genre.

it's peakkkkkkkk best game and story everrr

I don't think there are words to properly describe how good this game is, but i'll try. And there's never been a game that made me wanna learn how to play an instrument, before. The story is amazing and really interesting, masterfully breadcrumbing you pieces of information to keep you interested until the end. It's so good you can actually enjoy this game just for the story alone. There's a good balance between sadness, and comical bits that are very well written. Characters are interesting and you grow attached to them quite quickly. Music is phenomenal and there's an insane amount of tracks. Combat is very interactive and can be challenging enough to satisfy both casual and tryhard players. Exploration is rewarding and there's a lot of it. Visuals are stunning, really well representing the concept of the game. You can honestly be a turn based hater and still love this game. Because it excels in almost every aspect. A game made with sheer passion. Most game devs should be taking notes.