Hey all, hope you had a wonderful time celebrating the Holidays with your loved ones! That’s what I did when I wasn’t playing through Claire Obscur: Expedition 33. I was gifted this game, which has won roughly three billion “Game of the Year” awards, so I was very excited to give it a go. Read on to see if it’s my (belated) game of the year too.

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Short Synopsis

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a French-themed dark fantasy RPG where a godlike being known as “The Paintress” erases everyone over a certain, ever-decreasing age each year through an event called “the Gommage.” Expedition 33 is the 67th group of folks who are next on the countdown and seek to stop the Paintress, all to give humanity a chance to age safely and prosper.

The Good

Exploration: Exploring the open world is fun and intuitive thanks to how you move around in it and the map you can pull up any time, but exploring the biomes is less so; no map or waypoint at all and some spots that make it easy to get turned around are pretty apparent misses. Overall I’d say it’s solid, but could also have been improved with some key additions often found in other games like Clair Obsur: Expediton 33.

The Great

Soundtrack and Score: This is easily Claire Oscur’s best quality and some of the greatest music I’ve ever heard on a video game, on par with the likes of Final Fantasy VII, The Last of Us Part II and Doom Eternal. Truly remarkable stuff. Emotional, weighty and perfect for the story that unfolds.

Art Direction and Visuals: Clair Obscur is gorgeous (somehow even moreso than Ghost of Yōtei) filled with more than a few breathtaking biomes and a style for days. It’s an absolute winner in the aesthetics department and kind of insane that a game this pretty didn’t have its photo mode at launch.

Story: The story of Clair Obscur drags on about a few hours longer than it probably should, but that doesn’t do much to hamper the epic tale that’s full of incredible characters, a phenomenal voice cast (Ben Starr needs to be in everything from here on out) genuinely emotional moments and some of the best comedy the medium has seen in years. I laughed, I cried and I was in awe. Really couldn’t ask for more here, other than a tad tighter pace in the back quarter or so.

Side note: I would die and/or kill for the bundle of brilliance that is Esquie.

The Not So Great

Combat & Character Management: In my mind there’s such a thing as too deep when it comes to RPG mechanics and the combat here is a perfect example. Each character having their own combat styles is a very cool idea and I enjoyed it at first, but it also kept me from changing my roster. Once I finally got into a groove with the first three party members I didn’t want to mess with it by adding another style of gameplay to manage on top of what was already close to overwhelming. Then there are the bosses that are ludicrously hard (even if you drop it to the story difficulty) unless you first defeat other, “optional” bosses elsewhere that the game doesn’t tell you about. Finally, trying to figure out the attack patterns of every new enemy was far more exhausting than exhilarating by the end of my playthrough.

In Conclusion

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s magnificent story, music, world and characters kept me invested even when the exploration occasionally faltered and combat became a chore. Not my game of the year, but I get the hype and I’d still strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a narrative-focused adventure.