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So, I've been playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for past couple of months (slow pace because of limited gaming time) and while not exactly from the start, ultimately I was having a great time playing it. Here's some thoughts about the game:
What's fantastic:
OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/10
What's fantastic:
- Visuals: The art style and visuals are gorgeous, each location is unique, with a very different vibe and atmosphere. Enemy design is awesome, some creepy (reminding me of Elden Ring), other majestic and scary.
- Music: Hands down the best soundtrack I have ever heard in a computer game. Simply stunning. I could listem to it the whole day.
- Combat: I had so much concerns if I will like the combat, given that I haven't really played this type of game before, but Sandfall did terrific job designing it. There is quite steep learning curve, because of parry and dodge mechanics, but once you get a grip, it's very enjoyable.
- Story: I gotta say, I couldn't see GotY material when it comes to story first, sure if was great from the start, but I wasn't blast away, as promised. Instead, it was growing on me while I was playing with the ending being one of the more emotional pieces I've seen in a while. Great and deep stuff, although it required some time to love it.
- Cinematics & voice acting: The cast is fantastic, all of them. Can't really highlight anyone, because they were are great. Cinematics are of high quality.
- Performance: This is one of the best running and bug-free games I have ever played. I sincerely haven't encountered a single bug during my entire playthrough. I haven't experienced any frame drops, although I have a pretty good PC.
- Character progression: It was a little bit complicated at first to understand all types od resources, but otherwise it's a really satisfying system. Requires a bit of grind to build endgame builds, though.
- Itemization: I like simplicity od it. You basically have a weapon (which you can upgrade using a resource called chroma catalyst) and 3 types of tint (potions) and that's it. And that's really all you need with this combat system.
- Minimal reactivity: It's very linear game with no narrative choices, except one at the very end. How story progresses is decided for you and you have minimal impact for the most of the game. Perhaps it's a normal thing for JRPGs, but I usually expect more reactivity from RPG genre. The same goes for environmental reactivity, there are very few objects you can interact with.
- Exploration: It's fun due to stunning visuals, but it's lacking because of what I wrote above, minimal environmental reactivity. It usually comes to going from one fight to another and searching for resources and collectables. It's even worse while traversing world map, especially until you unlock all ways of travelling.
OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/10