3.5/5 ★ – halldenririe's review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Game of the year may do more harm than good to the video game industry. My expectations for this game were through the roof, to the fault of the community constantly saying that this is goty. This is a good game, one of the best aspects is that it’s an indie game, but sadly this wasn’t anything extraordinary for me. Gameplay and music were my favorite parts for sure. Adding parrying and dodging to a tried and true turn based mechanic is a stroke of genius. What bogged this game down for me was almost everything in between the combat. I’m so sorry but this story didn’t do anything for me. The writing is painfully millennial and corny and I really couldn’t have cared less about any of the characters besides maybe Maelle but that may just be because she was my favorite party member to play as. I shouldn’t compare to big rpgs like final fantasy or persona as those are big companies making those games versus this tiny French developer, but everyone and their dog talking about how this is the greatest story to be told in video games. FF and persona really do a great job of making you care about almost all of your party members, and I didn’t feel much for anyone in exp 33. Granted those games are longer and have more time to flesh out their characters, but I think this game could have been longer. I know the length of rpgs can scare a lot of players away, but I was genuinely shocked when I was going to fight the final boss, I felt like I was right in the middle of the game. Exploring the world map was pretty fun I loved the in your face final fantasy inspiration. Making builds was alright I think some of the menus could be organized slightly better, but this game does a great job of making you feel overpowered. I can’t gas up the combat enough that’s where most of my star rating is coming from plus the music. I think at the end of the day this may be some players first rpg, and it’s a massively accessible rpg, and that could be where the ultimate praise is coming from. Unfortunately there were quite a few games I enjoyed more this year, death stranding 2 my personal goty, followed by silksong. Mgs delta was amazing but that was a remake, I may have enjoyed silent hill f more as well. I feel bad but if goty wasn’t even a question maybe I would have had leveled expectations and liked this game more. Sorry French people.