5/5 ★ – Andariya's review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

TL;DR: Despite usually not being the biggest fan of turn-based games, this game blew me away both story and gameplay-wise. I don't see any other game this year beating this as my GOTY. If you're even mildly interested in playing this game -GET IT! To think that this game was developed by a team of only 30 people is nothing short of a miracle. Pros: + Turn-based combat that doesn't get stale + Amazing soundtrack + Great art direction + An unpredictable and unforgettable story + Great voice acting + No mindless grinding needed (played on: normal difficulty) + Just 1-2 missable achievements + NG+ available Cons: - Minor stutters upon the loading of cutscenes (nitpick tbh) Conclusion: This might take a spot in my top ten games of all time. The game took me about 42 hours to play through, and I'm planning to clean up the remaining few achievements as well. The game runs great overall and feels very polished. I didn't encounter any game-breaking bugs, crashes, or major glitches. Only the cutscenes stuttered a bit when they started, but only during the first 5-10 seconds or so. So that wasn't really a big issue to me. Might have just been my PC, too. The story completely blew me away. Without venturing into spoiler territory here, the story-writing is nothing short of insane (positively)! The plot of the game completely took me by surprise. Everything I had theorized about while playing turned out wrong, and this happened at least 2-3 times. I cried at least 5 times, or so as well. Hands down, one of the best stories I've had the pleasure of experiencing in quite some time. The music, voice acting, and world design are also insanely beautiful. The characters felt real and natural. The voice lines didn't feel tacky or put on either. I also have a certain song stuck in my head since release already... you know the one: "dim dim da, da da dim dim da..." The combat feels varied and interactive, despite being a turn-based game. I usually tend to find them quite tedious after a while, but the fact that you can actively dodge and parry and don't have to stand there and facetank all hits actually made me want to engage in combat instead of avoiding it at all costs. The character kits also feel well-designed and blend well together. This leaves a lot of room for creativity with your team composition. I often switched them around, too, because I liked all the character kits so much. I also liked that even if you don't actively use a unit in combat, it still gets quite a good chunk of passive XP, which saves you from mindless grinding later on. I can just urge everyone to play this game, please! The quality of... everything, makes it really hard to believe this is not a AAA game. Trust me, it's a masterpiece!