Rating: 10/10 – Masterpiece

When I first heard about this game I thought it looked Great. The combat looked Good, the graphics looked Good and the premise sounded Amazing. It would be a lie to say that I didn’t go into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 expecting to like it – what I didn’t expect was for this game to be such a Masterpiece.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 combines turn-based combat with many real-time elements in an Amazing way, and on top of that it has a soundtrack so Great that it competes with games like NieR: Automata. The art direction and art style are also simply Amazing, this game is simply a work of art, visually, audibly, and in terms of writing.

The story of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a Masterpiece the whole way through. The characters and the relationships between the characters are Amazing, the Amazing soundtrack and Great voice acting elevate everything from the smallest moment when walking through an area to the incredible story moments, and the visuals of the environments and the character designs paint a gorgeous background to it all. The only issue is how incredibly easy it is to spoil this Masterpiece of a story.

Beyond the story, visuals, soundtrack, and characters you have Great gameplay. The combat is incredible. Each character has their own playstyle that can change entirely just by switching out which weapon you use. The progression with both the levels / attriubtes and different pictos is incredibly well done and you can feel yourself improve both on the numerical front and your own skill when it comes to dodging / parrying and hitting the qte’s during skills at the right times. There is a rhythm to the combat that could be compared to game’s like Sekiro, dodging and parrying, going through each character’s flow and interacting with their unique mechanics – it is simply Amazing.

And beside the combat and progression you have some other Great things – like the overworld (something that is very refreshing considering how over saturated the open world genre is by now), some of the minigames (♥♥♥♥ the volleyball game tho), multiple gauntlets, super bosses which are incredibly fun to beat and oh so many side locations that are pretty fun. Although I do wish that the game directed you toward option locations more, as finding some of them when you’re already too high level for them is a bit unsatisfying.

There are only a few things where I’d say Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 falls short of greatness. The level design isn’t Amazing in many cases and the use of invisible walls feels unneeded considering the linearity of most levels – although overall it is Fine, and easily forgotten considering how Amazing everything else about this game is. Besides the level design there is the balance of the game. At one point the game’s difficulty begins to spike upward fast, which made me believe that the final dungeon would be a tough challenge. This led to me doing most, if not all, of the side content before going toward the ending of the game. And this also led to me being far too overleveld for the last dungeon, and I simply wish that there was some scaling of the final dungeon to be a challenge no matter when you go there.

Overall, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the best games ever made, a true Masterpiece of a game with a fantastic story about grief and addiction, and how people choose to deal with those. It’s simply a work of art.

On another note: This is what modern Final Fantasy, and especially the Final Fantasy 7 remake project should have been and I’d love to see the classic Final Fantasy games like FF6 be remade in the style of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Rating: 10/10 - Masterpiece

NieR:Automata is, quite possibly, the best game ever made. Not only does it combine a breathtakingly Amazing and emotional story with the absolute Masterpiece of a soundtrack; it also ponders deep philosophical themes - all packaged in with some of the best action combat out there. This game grabs your attention, not only with the story or interesting world, but also with a constant switch up of gameplay: from action packed hack-and-slash to bullethell shooter to side-scrawling - it keeps you entertained throughout the entirety of its runtime.

The characters are also pretty Amazing, with backstories that deserve entire games of their own. And they're also all hot as ♥♥♥♥ so that's a Great bonus on top of all the emotions you're going to feel while playing through this game. Exploring the world through simple exploration or side quests with these characters is pretty Amazing and while not all of the side quests are on the level of The Witcher III's story telling the stories that are being told here are more than worth it, they flesh out this unique world and its characters, themes and Amazing aesthetic.

Overalll NieR:Automata is one of the few games that actually deserves the rating of Masterpiece for me. It might not be perfect, it might not be for everyone, but there is never going to be a game that is. With a medium as subjective as video games NieR:Automata is, in my opinion, the only one that comes close to earning the title of Best Game Of All Time.