Sarco Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review

A great game that combines an amazing story with fun gameplay and visuals. Story. If you focus on just the story and minimal extra content, the game takes maybe 40 hours at most. It doesn't bog you down with a 100+ hour story like some other games. It has exactly what is needed. Won't go into the story for spoiler purposes, but know that you're walking into a somber, eerie, and beautiful story. Gameplay. At first I was hesitant to turn-based game with quick-time events, but it really grew on me quickly. The combat is anything but boring, as you are engaged in both offense by timing the QTEs to gain bonuses (or if you don't want to have QTEs, you can actually set it in the optios to auto-win the QTEs, except for defensive QTEs), and defense by parrying, dodging, or jumping. Parrying is more unforgiving, but also most rewarding as if you manage to fully parry, you do a counter-attack on the enemy. Dodging is easier and more forgiving. Jumping is specific to certain moves, but they are telegraphed fairly and are quite forgivable. Soundtracks. Beautiful, mostly french vocals, and mostly classical-inspired. It really sets a good tone to the game. Some tunes can really burrow into your head and you'll start hearing the "dim dim dam" jingle every now and then. Improvements. There are of course things this game can or needs to improve. Though, they are few. Here are a few on the top of my mind: - Wiping on a boss, you need to walk up to it, start the slow fade effect for the cinematic, pause the cinematic, hold a button in order to skip it. An option to auto-skip such things if you set an option, or give a way to do that faster would be a welcome addition. - The game has no way of saving loadouts or "builds". It would be nice to be able to have a character use certain pictos for a "dueling" build versus a "party" build for example. - Sometimes if you are too fast on turn-start, you can "bug out" the menu for your abilities, so you need to back out and then back in to "reload" them. Kind of weird, but nothing major. - The world map travel needs some work. There are many places that look "traversible", but arent. There are also some weird places when you unlock flying. - Clarify things. I've read many say that they didn't understand the Pictos and Lumina systems, and I didn't understand it either until I started hitting really hard enemies and tried to understand why they were one-shotting me. - Certain places are in a dire need for a flag - Enemy telegraphing multi-attacks. It's weird how the game sometimes say "Does a 4-hit combo" and then most of the times it just says "Does a light attack combo" or such. Like... how many hits am I expecting here? Either it is intended or not, but I just don't like the inconsistency. Overall. The strongest GOTY contender this year, and is a genre-defining masterpiece.