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

You've probably heard countless other people already talking about this game and giving it incredible amounts of praise to where it may be getting annoying. Doesn't matter. If you haven't tried this game out, you are absolutely missing out. This may be my favorite game since Nier Automata in terms of gameplay, story, surprises, among others. Clair Obscur is a turn based RPG game that heavily takes influences from all the greats that have come before it. It utilizes a dodge/parry time based mechanic that gives you a chance to take on almost every enemy from the start, but can quickly get you taken out and realize that's not an area or enemy you should be messing around in yet. You get three party members that you can have in the field at any time, and multiple characters to choose from to fight with. Thankfully experience is shared between them, so even when not using a character they will still level up. You find "pictos" which are essentially perks throughout your journey that you can then assign to your characters to really customize your character and party build. These were a lot of fun to play around in and you can create some really wild builds. There's an overworld map to explore and you gain abilities to explore more of it as you progress, with finding towns and other locations on the map that then go into the close up camera behind your characters as you explore. I won't say much of the story, apart from the fact there are some major twists and turns that you don't expect at all. The characters are all really well written, with the dialog feeling really natural between them. There are some big time actors (Charlie Cox of Daredevil, Andy Serkis of everything) that were pulled in to do the voice work and really brings these characters to life. The music here is incredible and thankfully it's on Spotify to listen to outside of the game! I think my play time was about 65 hours, with doing a lot of level grinding and a good portion of the side content/end game content. I didn't do everything as there is a LOT of content yet at the end for additional challenges. Given this game is $50 USD to buy outright, on Game Pass, AND Playstation Plus you have no excuse not to try it out. You'll be hooked almost instantly!