4.5/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Honestly, what a fucking game. Lean, creative, very fun and bolstered with a really special story. A story so special, I'm probably gonna spend a few paragraphs talking about only that, because, man, this shit hit for me. As time goes on, we just see fewer and fewer games trying to tell actual stories, with thoughtful themes, and character depth, and awkward, uncomfortable questions that make you actually engage with the art itself. At the end of the day, it's much less hassle to make a blockbuster with a surface-level story that a mass audience can chew through like popcorn while they enjoy the gameplay, and there's nothing wrong with that. But this is a testament to how much you can accomplish when you hone in and try and tell something that matters. I saw a review that said it was "melodramatic," and to me, I think it's pretty reductive criticism for a game that's very sensitively exploring and diving into big, morally complex ideas that stray towards having darker subject matter. And it's funny that I'm defending the tone, because I was actually, at one point, somewhat critical about that specifically. It opens up on such a morbid but engrossing hook. A world where life is on a ticking clock; where the entire prologue is about a bloke who looks like Robert Pattinson finally admitting he loves the girl of his dreams just to watch her get fucking Thanos snapped out of existence. And just as you're getting over how depressing that is, we watch him and his propaganda-pilled homies mounting a grand, noble mission filled with hope to stop this ticking clock, just to fail at the first hurdle. And the aftermath is haunting. It quickly becomes this dirty, gritty and genuinely pretty unsettling epic, watching these characters on a death march through hell, grappling with their promise to keep moving forward emotionlessly and complete their suicide mission while their lives are crumbling around them and the people they love are dropping like flies. As a set-up, it's so damn effective. But at the end of the first third, suddenly the game shifts, and it becomes a very whimsical, high fantasy, quasi-action-comedy, where Ben Starr is quipping with his weird paintbrush friend, and the characters play beach volleyball. And I was fuming. None of this stuff is bad, but where did they take my depressing-ass, sad suicide mission simulator? But the more you play it, and the more the story unravels, the most amazing part of Expedition 33 is how every tonal shift (while occasionally slightly messy) leads to its absolutely sensational crescendo. Because once Expedition 33 slaps its cards down on the table, everything it's done up to that point makes sense. The veer to silliness, the way it grapples so deeply with grief and what that means, how it's constantly trying to make you attach to fun, light-hearted characters and why exposing the joy in this world alongside the darkness is so important. It did for me exactly what Attack on Titan did in its final seasons. It gives you a very distinct view of what this story is, then suddenly exposes that there's so much more scope to it that you didn't see. And much like Attack on Titan, I kinda hated that at first, until I sat with it and realised how smart, complex and morally interesting it is as an evolution. Reaching the end, everything slots into place so perfectly, and its big, dramatic climax works because its two main leads are so well fleshed out and the core moral conundrum it's been building you up to wrestle with is so complicated that it lands exactly what it's trying to say. The end point feels so detached from where it all started, but what's crazy is how the two tie together to tell such an inventive, bittersweet tale with a very bleak conclusion. It also sucks, because you can't even really talk about it without spoiling everything that makes it so fucking rad, so here I am vaguely talking around it while you're probably like, ok, cool bro. Anyway... uh, also the actual game is good... It's kinda like Persona and Final Fantasy had a baby, and that baby smoked weed with Dark Souls, Lies of P and Sekiro. But I love the fact it's all meat and no fat. Just 30 - 60 hours of exceptional game that never really wastes your time with grinding or doing things that aren't engaging. And I love the combat a lot, except the parry system is either the most satisfying thing of all time or it made me want to punch a hole in my monitor. You'll play for like 3 hours unhindered, and then suddenly some little munchkin fuck will turn up with an insta-kill knife attack that has the most annoying tell and he'll wind it up for 7 minutes before using it. I think generally, the game has a certain amount of clunk, but like a cute clunk, you know. The kind of clunk I wanna ruffle on the head and be like, you cooked on like 95% of the rest of the game, so we're alright, big man. Well, until you face that purple dragon that freezes you, silences you, takes all your action points, and then spends 5 turns shitting on you for no reason. Fuck that guy. All in all, just play this shit man. I can't imagine a single thing dethroning this for my personal game of the year, and the ending made me cry just as much as the first time I watched King Kong. And that's my metric for whether it got me emotional. King Kong's death is my The Notebook. It's super fun, it's hugely creative, it's one of the best RPGs I've played in years and... I'll say it... ITS GODDAMN CINEMA, BABY!