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Spoiler-free Review - For those who come after
tl;dr
serious, melancholic, innovative, unique and a cinematic masterpiece - 92 on metacritic is simply deserved
Overview:
Enter the mysterious and melancholic world of Clair Obscur, where the last humans are getting oppressed by the elusive paintress who annually paints a declining number far on the horizon, which leads to everyone vanishing who is older than that number. You will play as Robert Pattinson Gustave, being part of an Expedition destined to journey to the paintress, finally setting an end to their grim fate. Clair Obscur is a heavily story-driven JRPG with innovative round-based combat and lots of things to explore.
The Good Stuff:
First and foremost, the story is an absolute gem. It is unique, intriguing from the start, offers a lot of mystery, and is confidently written. Every cutscene felt like a cliffhanger in a very good TV show, where you are hardly able to endure the time until the next episode hits. Rarely did I feel the overwhelming urge to rush through a game, just because I needed to know how the narrative unfolds. The writing keeps you on your toes. You start guessing, and sometimes you may be right; other times you will be surprised about unforeseen events. While the set-up is very melancholic and dark, I also had a lot to laugh, which often caught me by surprise. In general, the writing is pretty superb.
In between the story fragments, you traverse through a mythical, beautifully crafted world full of surprises. Just imagine taking the elevator down to Rapture for the first time and being amazed by the stunning environment you lay your eyes upon. Clair Obscur delivers on that feeling about every 15 minutes, especially in the beginning. I regularly stumbled over my jaw because it was casually sitting on the floor and often shook my head in disbelief because I could not fathom the creativity and beauty presented to me. There is a huge overworld connecting all the smaller areas that want you to discover them. The areas are, in general, relatively straight-forward. They are vast enough to take your time exploring and even missing things. But they are small enough to not get lost completely (although it may still happen ... happened to me on occasion). As your main way of orientation is your perception and memory (there are no minimaps) you need to be mindful when playing.
The combat system is very innovative, action packed, easy to learn, and hard to master. When you neglect exploring, fights can offer quite the challenge, so taking your time, leveling up, and getting familiar with the techniques is recommended. The party system and the amount of possible (skill-)loadout variations offer way more depth than initially anticipated. Delving into it and finding strong combinations feels very rewarding. The game is arranged as a very good hybrid, where it is up to you how challenging you want your experience to be. While it is never just a walk in the park, cranking up the difficulty makes it mandatory to get a deep understanding of combos, attack patterns and general mechanics.
The OST is close to perfect. I listen to it every day since I started playing. It offers an enormous variety (154 Songs on Spotify) and frequently sticks with you even after your session.
Lastly, the game is polished af. It runs smoothly without any trouble. I encountered no bugs or errors; it just worked. Chapeaux.
The Sorta-Kinda-Grinds-My-Gears-Stuff:
Yes, there are a few gripes - but they are minor. To keep it spoiler-free, let's just say that roughly during the second half of the game there were some occasional reactions in the story and some non-essential parts that gave my Spock-eyebrow some spasms. But they merely put a tiny dent into the otherwise immaculate writing delivered to you. Also, sometimes there are areas that look traversable, but you actually can not go there as you will be met with an invisible wall, which I consider to be a slight flaw in design.
Other minor things are only palpable very deep in the game. Managing your extensive library of "Pictos" (passive Skills) can be very overwhelming and fiddly. Also, ways can get long when you revisit some areas to collect a specific item you need or want. Getting into the middle of an area that you explored 10 in-game hours ago can get a bit disorienting, and the lack of ability to simply return to the overworld can actually feel a bit unpleasant. Some sort of Pokémon-esque escape rope would be QoL. Also it seems a bit odd that such a vast OST offers only one song for traversing the overworld; after dozens of hours, it can get a wee bit old. Furthermore, there are sometimes encounters that are either tied to a dialogue or a short cutscene. Failing to succeed in the fight has you reenter the said dialogue or cutscene. While cutscenes can be skipped, dialogues must be passed manually. Tough battles can therefore be a bit frustrating. Just a prompt that asks if you would like to try that encounter again would totally suffice. Or you just don't mess up and hence won't experience this issue. Lastly, the aforementioned manual proceeding of every singular bit of dialogue feels a bit weird. There is no time to lay back and just enjoy the talking. It may sound oddly specific, but "accepting" that, e.g., two characters remain silent at each other feels a bit off.
It may all sound nitpicky, but those are some flaws I encountered. Nevertheless, just a piece of critique at the highest level.
The Atrociously-Bad Stuff:
I can not experience the game "for the first time" ever again. That really is a big bummer.
Achievement-Hunter-Things:
I implore you to ignore the existence of Achievements in this game. Just play it. Play the story, delve into it, and immerse yourself in it. After that, you may take a gander.
With that being said, many things will come naturally with a couple of requirements that will need quite some preparation or just utter skill. But it is manageable. No difficulty-related stuff, and by now there are guides, walkthroughs and tips available. As I hit 100% today, I have to say that it is one of the most pleasant and rewarding games I ever perfected. As a hunter, you are used to a certain amount of tediousness, collecting the last pieces of uninspired BS, artificially stretching the playtime (looking at you, Ubisoft). But not here. Not in Clair Obscur. While mostly playing "blindly", I needed 81 hours for full completion, and I enjoyed every second of it. I feel like I could just do it all over again.
Conclusion:
I am not one to offer praise lightly. At this point you just have to take my word for it. But Clair Obscur really is a gem. For me, it pushes all the right buttons. I haven't been that engaged in a story like that for the last decade. It feels like a game designed by gamers, who know what they themself want to play. You will encounter a lot of things where you recognize the inspiration and influence that lead the devs without them simply copying stuff - they always transform it into their own creation.
Recommending this piece of art is an absolute no-brainer. Simply a must-play for anyone who values a story-driven experience enriched by action-packed and smooth gameplay. Even for non-gamers, just experiencing the story in a YouTube megacut or something is absolutely worth it.
Nothing more to say. Time for my next playthrough.
Tomorrow comes.