It legitimately earned all those awards. Obviously it won’t be liked by everyone, but I think it was a clear winner for just about every award it was nominated for.
It’s a fantastic original game that has had a ton of care and love put into it, and it shows.
I’m not going to make friends here but I think it’s overhyped.
The premise is fresh and interesting
The VO is absolutely stellar in French and English
The story is very focused on interpersonal relationships and leaves overarching questions unresolved
The game is experimenting on putting souls like timing mechanics in a turn based rpg
The experiment does not work however. Either you’re good at timing QTEs and can beat the story with absolutely no regards to any of the other game mechanics. Or you’re bad at them and will fail every second enemy encounter. Everything resolves around those QTEs.
The environments feel overloaded. Like typical indy level designers that equate flash and colors with beauty.
All in all it’s fairly decent and I support any studio trying to risk something new. Some of it worked well, a lot didn’t.
I tried playing it (before it received all the awards); and honestly, the pacing was all over The place. One minute they’re experiencing horrors unbeknownst to man (in a cut scene); the next minute, they’re quibbling one liners like they’re in a sitcom.
You already said solved, but I have more to add to the other comments. As someone who rarely plays turn based JRPGs, the gameplay is very good as each party member has their own unique system that develops over the game, which keeps things from getting stale most of the time.
The artwork and graphics are gorgeous, it often feels like walking through a painting in the best way possible.
I don’t spoil any plot points below, but do discuss the themes through the ending and how they affected me.
But the thing that cemented this game in my mind is the theme. From the outset this game has a major theme of dealing with grief. In the first few minutes it’s established that everyone is grieving almost all the time, and the game looks at how different characters deal with that grief. I was dealing with my own grief when I started playing it, and while I kept that and the game separated for most of the game as the finale approached the game and my own thoughts/experiences intertwined in a way that I have very rarely experienced with media. This culminated in the only narrative decision the player makes, and is the hardest decision I have ever made in a video game. I sat there pondering it for at least five minutes. I was still processing the experience when I talked to my therapist the next day, and when I shared my feelings she told me she had never thought games could be so impactful.
If grief is something you are very in touch with, I highly recommend playing Clair Obscur.
Considering it’s from a small team of like 30 people it’s exceptionally competent.
Nothing is really new (it’s a turn based JRPG with some quick time button pressing like Vagrant Story had), but it’s fun, varied, well acted, well written. It doesn’t sit there wanting you to buy funbucks to buy revealing outfits.
It does exactly what it set out to do. Give it a go.
Great game, but you have you master the QTE. For Attack there’s an indicator and those are generally easy (got annoying after a while and set them to auto). For evasion or counter, there’s no clear indicator and every enemy had it’s own pattern. If you master it you can complete the game without being touched once, but it you fail several you can be wiped by random enemies.
This is specially annoying on bosses, where a never seen before attack can kill your whole team and you need to improvise the dodges. It happened to me multiple times being killed very fast and on the second try when I know the attacks defeat almost perfectly.
It’s funny I’ve been hearing about this sound indicator a lot but never managed to hear it myself.
I’m around 100h in the endgame, level 99 with all pictos, weapons and stuff but never managed that sound indicator.
I parry using visual references. Sometimes having to look a bit at the larger scene, having the action in my peripheral vision for some bosses. It worked perfectly until now but one day I shall try to hear that sound indicator…
It’s not always the same sound. I’ll admit, it’d been a month or two since I’ve played but it’s often something like a metallic “ping” right before the hit. On some of the harder bosses I literally found it easier to close my eyes and go by sound for the parrying. But whatever works for you
I don’t know, I’ve had friends that hate turned-based games and refuse to play any anime based games and just adored this game so much that I couldn’t get them to talk about anything else for months.
I used to love turn-based RPGs but I kinda fell out of love with them over the years … I’m gonna say around FFX. I actually enjoyed Expedition 33 less than these guys that typically play CoD and Factorio.
I haven’t played it, but my opinion based arround what I’ve seen of marketing and a little gameplay, winning best art direction in TGA over silksong and hades II makes it feel like some of those accolades were kind of gratuituos. It’s still probably a great game.
It does have legitimately excellent art direction, but I think a lot of it could be easily missed if you only watch the trailers and the “wrong” parts of the gameplay
deleted by creator
It legitimately earned all those awards. Obviously it won’t be liked by everyone, but I think it was a clear winner for just about every award it was nominated for.
It’s a fantastic original game that has had a ton of care and love put into it, and it shows.
I’m not going to make friends here but I think it’s overhyped.
All in all it’s fairly decent and I support any studio trying to risk something new. Some of it worked well, a lot didn’t.
I liked it more than I thought I would but I still hate QTEs
Not sure why you’re being downvoted.
I tried playing it (before it received all the awards); and honestly, the pacing was all over The place. One minute they’re experiencing horrors unbeknownst to man (in a cut scene); the next minute, they’re quibbling one liners like they’re in a sitcom.
The game never quite clicked for me, I guess.
Thanks for your honest opinion. I guess then it’s not much for me either. Maybe i’ll pirate it sometime to see if it’s any good (and buy it if it is).
You already said solved, but I have more to add to the other comments. As someone who rarely plays turn based JRPGs, the gameplay is very good as each party member has their own unique system that develops over the game, which keeps things from getting stale most of the time.
The artwork and graphics are gorgeous, it often feels like walking through a painting in the best way possible.
I don’t spoil any plot points below, but do discuss the themes through the ending and how they affected me.
But the thing that cemented this game in my mind is the theme. From the outset this game has a major theme of dealing with grief. In the first few minutes it’s established that everyone is grieving almost all the time, and the game looks at how different characters deal with that grief. I was dealing with my own grief when I started playing it, and while I kept that and the game separated for most of the game as the finale approached the game and my own thoughts/experiences intertwined in a way that I have very rarely experienced with media. This culminated in the only narrative decision the player makes, and is the hardest decision I have ever made in a video game. I sat there pondering it for at least five minutes. I was still processing the experience when I talked to my therapist the next day, and when I shared my feelings she told me she had never thought games could be so impactful.
If grief is something you are very in touch with, I highly recommend playing Clair Obscur.
It’s very good if you like RPGs and are a touch on the artsy side.
That’s on the artsy side?! Man I wish video games weren’t so on the nose all the time ugh
when compared to the average? I’d say so
Absolutely. It’s one of my top games from the last 10 years easy.
I liked it a lot. I like Elden Ring a whole lot more.
Considering it’s from a small team of like 30 people it’s exceptionally competent.
Nothing is really new (it’s a turn based JRPG with some quick time button pressing like Vagrant Story had), but it’s fun, varied, well acted, well written. It doesn’t sit there wanting you to buy funbucks to buy revealing outfits.
It does exactly what it set out to do. Give it a go.
Great game, but you have you master the QTE. For Attack there’s an indicator and those are generally easy (got annoying after a while and set them to auto). For evasion or counter, there’s no clear indicator and every enemy had it’s own pattern. If you master it you can complete the game without being touched once, but it you fail several you can be wiped by random enemies.
This is specially annoying on bosses, where a never seen before attack can kill your whole team and you need to improvise the dodges. It happened to me multiple times being killed very fast and on the second try when I know the attacks defeat almost perfectly.
Sound indicators are the only way for me to parry consistently
It’s funny I’ve been hearing about this sound indicator a lot but never managed to hear it myself.
I’m around 100h in the endgame, level 99 with all pictos, weapons and stuff but never managed that sound indicator.
I parry using visual references. Sometimes having to look a bit at the larger scene, having the action in my peripheral vision for some bosses. It worked perfectly until now but one day I shall try to hear that sound indicator…
It’s not always the same sound. I’ll admit, it’d been a month or two since I’ve played but it’s often something like a metallic “ping” right before the hit. On some of the harder bosses I literally found it easier to close my eyes and go by sound for the parrying. But whatever works for you
Yes
No. Not for me, from what i hear.
If you like anime style JRPGs then yes, otherwise not really.
I don’t know, I’ve had friends that hate turned-based games and refuse to play any anime based games and just adored this game so much that I couldn’t get them to talk about anything else for months.
I used to love turn-based RPGs but I kinda fell out of love with them over the years … I’m gonna say around FFX. I actually enjoyed Expedition 33 less than these guys that typically play CoD and Factorio.
I haven’t played it, but my opinion based arround what I’ve seen of marketing and a little gameplay, winning best art direction in TGA over silksong and hades II makes it feel like some of those accolades were kind of gratuituos. It’s still probably a great game.
It does have legitimately excellent art direction, but I think a lot of it could be easily missed if you only watch the trailers and the “wrong” parts of the gameplay