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Clair Obscur Metacritic user score

62 points by tyleo 1y ago

tyleo 1y ago
I thought I’d post this because there are a lot of gamers here. This game went entirely under my radar but apparently it’s great. I don’t know what it’s about but I intend to play it and wanted to share with others.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Funny I am playing Persona 5 on my Steam Deck right now and this is exactly the sort of game I like.
- jeffwask 1y ago
  It's a jrpg made by a team of 30 that adds timing based quick time events (block, Parry, Empower) to standard jrpg combat with souls like one shot mechanics. It's a new IP based on a world where a entity has taken over and every year a countdown decreased by 1 and anyone over that age disappears. You are on an expedition to solve the mystery and stop it.
  - skyyler 1y ago
    Do the QTEs work like the Mario RPG games? That sounds great.
    - bigstrat2003 1y ago
      More or less (disclaimer: I haven't actually played those games so I'm going by reputation). The big difference is that the dodge/parry mechanic in Clair Obscur can be punishing. There have been cases where a boss would one-shot characters if I don't get a dodge off, which is very frustrating - I don't play Souls games for a reason, and I don't want that level of fuck you difficulty. But mostly, it is at the level where you will need to spend more time healing if you take hits, but you can muddle through.
      - commakozzi 1y ago
        While i agree mostly, i feel like it fits the environment/setting in which this story takes place. It feels like a near hopeless expedition; one of which many believe is a suicide mission.
        Aeolun 1y ago
        Sure, but while you want the suggestion it’s hopeless, you don’t want it to actually be so, or it’d be a pretty frustrating game.
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      Yep, more or less. The game is like if Super Mario RPG and Persona had a baby in the middle of the Champs-Élysées.
      - riwsky 1y ago
        And also, somehow, Fantasian
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    I love that the origin of this game is basically the developers going "hey, nobody makes turn based JRPGs with high end graphics any more", and they decided to be the change they wanted to see.
    - jeffwask 1y ago
      The AA space has been really stepping up to fill the gap when AAA abandoned good single player games for live services, player retention. and recurring revenue. All while proving you don't need a $150-200 million dollar budget to make a good and successful game.
  - gaws 1y ago
    > made by a team of 30 Not true. Roughly 500 people worked on the game.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      You mean 15 000, you forgot the people making the engine.
- commakozzi 1y ago
  It's wonderful. went under my radar as well, but i had it through Game Pass. Been playing it on my Steam Deck via GeForce Now. I'm a long time JRPG (turn based) fan and this is, so far, one of the best i've ever played. I'm very happy to be surprised by this one.
  - coffeebeqn 1y ago
    Doesn’t it work on the steam deck straight?
    - bigstrat2003 1y ago
      It ought to. I'm playing on my Arch desktop with no issues, so I can't imagine a steam deck would have problems.
bigstrat2003 1y ago
Clair Obscur is really good. The storytelling and writing have been fantastic, the graphics look great (and the art direction is beautiful), the music is good, and even the voice acting is good. It's also fun to play (though some fights are too hard like I mentioned in another comment). Honestly, I hope that it wakes up the devs at Square Enix because this is what Final Fantasy should have been for the last 25 years instead of the hot mess they have made of it.
- ReDeiPirati 1y ago
  have you played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth?
  - cwizou 1y ago
    Not op but having played Rebirth, while overall very good, it suffers from the classic case nowadays of adding repetitive "chores" to do around maps, to artificially increase the length of the game with little purpose. So far (only 6 hours in, but some friends who went further confirmed), Expedition 33 seems to steer away from that, being a lot more story driven. It also has, by far, the greatest prologue I've seen in a game. Worse thing so far, the UI in the menu does take a second to get. Particularly the selected state is way too subtle and a bit confusing at first.
    - lenova 1y ago
      Agreed, I've only played FF7 Remake (which I'd waited patiently for years while it was being developed), and just did not enjoy playing the game. It felt like it 20 hour game stretched out to 70 hours with repetitive fetch quests. It lacked the charm and fun of the original, and it sounds like this Clair Obscur game has learnt from this experience.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    No, but that is because I played Remake and thought it was really bad, genuinely one of the worst games I've ever played. As you might imagine I did not drop my cash on the follow-up to a game I hated that much.
TimorousBestie 1y ago
It’s so refreshing playing a game that isn’t the N+1 installment in some archaic franchise. I hope the studio survives and makes something else novel and interesting. Of particular note is the care taken in facial animations. There’s still some uncanny valley (UE5 still sucks at human faces) but they’ve done a lot to make the characters emote believably during in-engine cutscenes. I wish the out-of-engine FMVs weren’t so heavily compressed, but c’est la vie. My advice: play this in performance mode. Parrying is significantly harder at 30Hz.
ReDeiPirati 1y ago
Just finished FF VII Rebirth, which I'm considering exactly what a FF should be, with the exclusion of the last chapter's narrative that I didn't like. That said, next one is Clair Obscur, very looking forward to play it!
- torben-friis 1y ago
  This one’s more of a streamlined experience, with a very nice take on turn based combat - it’s FFX turns with complex mechanics and quicktime parries, basically. Story and environment rival a FF, with a European touch that’s a nice change. But it’s about 30 hours so not as immersive. Amazing achievement for an unknown team!
aeze 1y ago
I’ve been playing it for the past few days and I’ve been really enjoying it. I normally get bored of JRPGs quickly but the game systems, music, artwork and story have all been stellar.
the__alchemist 1y ago
Does anyone else find the vibe to be... off-putting? From the trailers, videos etc, something about this doesn't gel with what I go for, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's an uncanny valley feel between abstract and realistic, or may be it's just different from the games I play, and fiction I'm exposed to. Edit: After watching more videos, I think it is, indeed, the mix of cartoon/early-video-game-era flashy animations on the screen (Or maybe think Batman comic books?), with a story-driven narrative, and characters that also toe the line between cartoon and realistic style.
- georgelyon 1y ago
  One thing is the graphics are a generation behind what you would usually expect from a game of this quality. I’ve been playing it and I can confirm it is wonderful, and the graphics just makes me impressed with the amount of focus the tiny team (33 people, I think?) put into making what matters great (though I’d be excited for a remaster in the future).
AIPedant 1y ago
This is not very meaningful unless you filter the plethora of 0s and 1s out of games that clearly don't deserve then (e.g. Baldur's Gate 3 - I didn't like BG3 very much either, but even for the crankiest gamers it is not honest to give it below 6/10). There is some interesting sociology about why Clair Obscur hasn't been dogpiled by bad-faith reviews, but I don't think it says much about the quality of the game. In particular I am sure the score will go down once it wins some awards and bored losers get mad about it.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  > This is not very meaningful unless you filter the plethora of 0s and 1s out of games that clearly don't deserve then Only if you filter out the plethora of 10s that games that "clearly don't deserve them" either. Who is the judge if a game deserves a score when the aggregator purpose is to normalize it anyway? If a game sees a bunch of 10s and 0s it means that something in the game is polarizing. The fact that Clair Obscur has such a high rating means it pleased everyone across the board. Nowadays that is quite a feat.
  - AIPedant 1y ago
    Sure, user reviews are totally useless across the board, not disagreeing with that. My point is that if a game gets exceptionally good critical reviews then a 0 is almost always a hissy fit, not a serious assessment. And often the only thing that is "polarizing" is the game's financial success. (Edit: see my prediction about the game winning awards and seeing its user score knocked down accordingly.)
    - surgical_fire 1y ago
      Funny you say that, I think user reviews are the only useful reviews for me to measure if a game is worth playing. I find professional reviews less than useless - those are essentially trash. Start with a quantitative analysis. A game has a 7. Is it a bunch of scores around 7? A bunch of 10s and some zeroes? Those will inform you some. Then do some qualitative analysis. See what people are praising or complaining about. Check if the complaints matter to you. If they don't, you should try it. > My point is that if a game gets exceptionally good critical reviews then a 0 is almost always a hissy fit, not a serious assessment Hard disagree. Critical reviews are pure marketing. I played games that are aggressively mediocre that were critically praised before.
flkiwi 1y ago
Having just started (and slogged through the interminable intro piece that is tonally completely unrelated to the main game), I'm keeping an open mind, but it feels like this is scratching a very particular itch for a very particular group of gamers who have been largely ignored for a decade or more. It's not bad at all and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, but the turn-based approach feels _very_ old (in both good and bad ways), and the dialogue system.. "We leave tomorrow." click A "Huh" click A "We must drink tonight" click A "You're a bad influence" click A "Huh" click A Someone will probably tell me this is the convention in the Final Fantasy style and that's FINE, and this would go a long way to explaining the reaction. It feels like a well above average game that is a GREAT game to a subset of gamers because they haven't had a game like this in so long.
- skydhash 1y ago
  There's few things I dislike more in 3d games than selecting dialogue flow. Especially if there are important hint inside. Cinematic scenes should be a quick break from the flow of the game, but those feels more like reviewing forms. Either gives me a proper cinematic, or a journal/note/description thing for me to read.
  - flkiwi 1y ago
    I don't mind if there's meaningful choice that can affect later gameplay, but clicking through lines of dialogue feels like an unnecessary step. (Again, I'm completely open to the response that this is just how it is in this genre, but from a more general audience perspective it feels strange.)
    - imbnwa 1y ago
      Likely a business decision to save on VA billable hours via nostalgic RPG trope.
      - flkiwi 1y ago
        VA = "voice actor"? Because, if so, that's the funniest part: having to click A after someone responds, in spoken words as well as onscreen, "Hmmmm". It's almost charming, but it seemed deeply, deeply unnecessary to me. (Also just a quirk so far.)
switch007 1y ago
Released a week ago? Aren't IMDB ratings high in the first few weeks/months too, because of screenings/film festivals/devout followers etc? Talk about hyperbole
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  For an established IP that can happen, yes. Further context about this one is that it's new IP and the first game from a studio that doesn't even have a Wikipedia page yet.
stuff4ben 1y ago
I've never been a fan of JRPGs, preferring things like BG3, Mass Effect, Dragon Age (not the new one), and Skyrim. But after 800 hours in BG3, I think it's time to try something else and this looks like it might be that.
Aeolun 1y ago
I went for Oblivion Remastered instead, but this was the other contender.
Cortex5936 1y ago
What is the argument of letting people vote without verifying if they played the game ? I get it since its the usual approach to movies, but when you are used to reviews through stores like Steam, it sounds a bit off (granted, people can buy a game on steam, leave a review and refund it but that's still less of a problem than letting everyone review). If there is an argument, would that still hold for Steam ? Can anyone review a Steam game even if they didn't play it ? I might have missed a lot so don't be too harsh
- advisedwang 1y ago
  I think its about ergonomics of the review system, not that reviews of non-players are positively valued. Review sites NEED reviews. Even unreliable reviews are better than no reviews. Otherwise you are dead. On top of that keeping users engaged in the review system drives revenue. All of this means adding hurdles like verification (however that might work for metacritic) or (for Steam) turning away reviewers because they played the game off-platform is a net negative for the company.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
t0bia_s 1y ago
Hopefully they will release DRM free version on GoG as well.

62 points by tyleo 1y ago

I thought I’d post this because there are a lot of gamers here. This game went entirely under my radar but apparently it’s great. I don’t know what it’s about but I intend to play it and wanted to share with others.

PaulHoule 1y ago
Funny I am playing Persona 5 on my Steam Deck right now and this is exactly the sort of game I like.
jeffwask 1y ago
It's a jrpg made by a team of 30 that adds timing based quick time events (block, Parry, Empower) to standard jrpg combat with souls like one shot mechanics. It's a new IP based on a world where a entity has taken over and every year a countdown decreased by 1 and anyone over that age disappears. You are on an expedition to solve the mystery and stop it.
- skyyler 1y ago
  Do the QTEs work like the Mario RPG games? That sounds great.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    More or less (disclaimer: I haven't actually played those games so I'm going by reputation). The big difference is that the dodge/parry mechanic in Clair Obscur can be punishing. There have been cases where a boss would one-shot characters if I don't get a dodge off, which is very frustrating - I don't play Souls games for a reason, and I don't want that level of fuck you difficulty. But mostly, it is at the level where you will need to spend more time healing if you take hits, but you can muddle through.
    - commakozzi 1y ago
      While i agree mostly, i feel like it fits the environment/setting in which this story takes place. It feels like a near hopeless expedition; one of which many believe is a suicide mission.
      - Aeolun 1y ago
        Sure, but while you want the suggestion it’s hopeless, you don’t want it to actually be so, or it’d be a pretty frustrating game.
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    Yep, more or less. The game is like if Super Mario RPG and Persona had a baby in the middle of the Champs-Élysées.
    - riwsky 1y ago
      And also, somehow, Fantasian
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  I love that the origin of this game is basically the developers going "hey, nobody makes turn based JRPGs with high end graphics any more", and they decided to be the change they wanted to see.
  - jeffwask 1y ago
    The AA space has been really stepping up to fill the gap when AAA abandoned good single player games for live services, player retention. and recurring revenue. All while proving you don't need a $150-200 million dollar budget to make a good and successful game.
- gaws 1y ago
  > made by a team of 30 Not true. Roughly 500 people worked on the game.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    You mean 15 000, you forgot the people making the engine.
commakozzi 1y ago
It's wonderful. went under my radar as well, but i had it through Game Pass. Been playing it on my Steam Deck via GeForce Now. I'm a long time JRPG (turn based) fan and this is, so far, one of the best i've ever played. I'm very happy to be surprised by this one.
- coffeebeqn 1y ago
  Doesn’t it work on the steam deck straight?
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    It ought to. I'm playing on my Arch desktop with no issues, so I can't imagine a steam deck would have problems.

bigstrat2003 1y ago

Clair Obscur is really good. The storytelling and writing have been fantastic, the graphics look great (and the art direction is beautiful), the music is good, and even the voice acting is good. It's also fun to play (though some fights are too hard like I mentioned in another comment). Honestly, I hope that it wakes up the devs at Square Enix because this is what Final Fantasy should have been for the last 25 years instead of the hot mess they have made of it.

ReDeiPirati 1y ago
have you played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth?
- cwizou 1y ago
  Not op but having played Rebirth, while overall very good, it suffers from the classic case nowadays of adding repetitive "chores" to do around maps, to artificially increase the length of the game with little purpose. So far (only 6 hours in, but some friends who went further confirmed), Expedition 33 seems to steer away from that, being a lot more story driven. It also has, by far, the greatest prologue I've seen in a game. Worse thing so far, the UI in the menu does take a second to get. Particularly the selected state is way too subtle and a bit confusing at first.
  - lenova 1y ago
    Agreed, I've only played FF7 Remake (which I'd waited patiently for years while it was being developed), and just did not enjoy playing the game. It felt like it 20 hour game stretched out to 70 hours with repetitive fetch quests. It lacked the charm and fun of the original, and it sounds like this Clair Obscur game has learnt from this experience.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  No, but that is because I played Remake and thought it was really bad, genuinely one of the worst games I've ever played. As you might imagine I did not drop my cash on the follow-up to a game I hated that much.

TimorousBestie 1y ago

It’s so refreshing playing a game that isn’t the N+1 installment in some archaic franchise. I hope the studio survives and makes something else novel and interesting. Of particular note is the care taken in facial animations. There’s still some uncanny valley (UE5 still sucks at human faces) but they’ve done a lot to make the characters emote believably during in-engine cutscenes. I wish the out-of-engine FMVs weren’t so heavily compressed, but c’est la vie. My advice: play this in performance mode. Parrying is significantly harder at 30Hz.

ReDeiPirati 1y ago

Just finished FF VII Rebirth, which I'm considering exactly what a FF should be, with the exclusion of the last chapter's narrative that I didn't like. That said, next one is Clair Obscur, very looking forward to play it!

torben-friis 1y ago
This one’s more of a streamlined experience, with a very nice take on turn based combat - it’s FFX turns with complex mechanics and quicktime parries, basically. Story and environment rival a FF, with a European touch that’s a nice change. But it’s about 30 hours so not as immersive. Amazing achievement for an unknown team!

aeze 1y ago

I’ve been playing it for the past few days and I’ve been really enjoying it. I normally get bored of JRPGs quickly but the game systems, music, artwork and story have all been stellar.

the__alchemist 1y ago

Does anyone else find the vibe to be... off-putting? From the trailers, videos etc, something about this doesn't gel with what I go for, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's an uncanny valley feel between abstract and realistic, or may be it's just different from the games I play, and fiction I'm exposed to. Edit: After watching more videos, I think it is, indeed, the mix of cartoon/early-video-game-era flashy animations on the screen (Or maybe think Batman comic books?), with a story-driven narrative, and characters that also toe the line between cartoon and realistic style.

georgelyon 1y ago
One thing is the graphics are a generation behind what you would usually expect from a game of this quality. I’ve been playing it and I can confirm it is wonderful, and the graphics just makes me impressed with the amount of focus the tiny team (33 people, I think?) put into making what matters great (though I’d be excited for a remaster in the future).

AIPedant 1y ago

This is not very meaningful unless you filter the plethora of 0s and 1s out of games that clearly don't deserve then (e.g. Baldur's Gate 3 - I didn't like BG3 very much either, but even for the crankiest gamers it is not honest to give it below 6/10). There is some interesting sociology about why Clair Obscur hasn't been dogpiled by bad-faith reviews, but I don't think it says much about the quality of the game. In particular I am sure the score will go down once it wins some awards and bored losers get mad about it.

surgical_fire 1y ago
> This is not very meaningful unless you filter the plethora of 0s and 1s out of games that clearly don't deserve then Only if you filter out the plethora of 10s that games that "clearly don't deserve them" either. Who is the judge if a game deserves a score when the aggregator purpose is to normalize it anyway? If a game sees a bunch of 10s and 0s it means that something in the game is polarizing. The fact that Clair Obscur has such a high rating means it pleased everyone across the board. Nowadays that is quite a feat.
- AIPedant 1y ago
  Sure, user reviews are totally useless across the board, not disagreeing with that. My point is that if a game gets exceptionally good critical reviews then a 0 is almost always a hissy fit, not a serious assessment. And often the only thing that is "polarizing" is the game's financial success. (Edit: see my prediction about the game winning awards and seeing its user score knocked down accordingly.)
  - surgical_fire 1y ago
    Funny you say that, I think user reviews are the only useful reviews for me to measure if a game is worth playing. I find professional reviews less than useless - those are essentially trash. Start with a quantitative analysis. A game has a 7. Is it a bunch of scores around 7? A bunch of 10s and some zeroes? Those will inform you some. Then do some qualitative analysis. See what people are praising or complaining about. Check if the complaints matter to you. If they don't, you should try it. > My point is that if a game gets exceptionally good critical reviews then a 0 is almost always a hissy fit, not a serious assessment Hard disagree. Critical reviews are pure marketing. I played games that are aggressively mediocre that were critically praised before.

flkiwi 1y ago

Having just started (and slogged through the interminable intro piece that is tonally completely unrelated to the main game), I'm keeping an open mind, but it feels like this is scratching a very particular itch for a very particular group of gamers who have been largely ignored for a decade or more. It's not bad at all and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, but the turn-based approach feels _very_ old (in both good and bad ways), and the dialogue system.. "We leave tomorrow." click A "Huh" click A "We must drink tonight" click A "You're a bad influence" click A "Huh" click A Someone will probably tell me this is the convention in the Final Fantasy style and that's FINE, and this would go a long way to explaining the reaction. It feels like a well above average game that is a GREAT game to a subset of gamers because they haven't had a game like this in so long.

skydhash 1y ago
There's few things I dislike more in 3d games than selecting dialogue flow. Especially if there are important hint inside. Cinematic scenes should be a quick break from the flow of the game, but those feels more like reviewing forms. Either gives me a proper cinematic, or a journal/note/description thing for me to read.
- flkiwi 1y ago
  I don't mind if there's meaningful choice that can affect later gameplay, but clicking through lines of dialogue feels like an unnecessary step. (Again, I'm completely open to the response that this is just how it is in this genre, but from a more general audience perspective it feels strange.)
  - imbnwa 1y ago
    Likely a business decision to save on VA billable hours via nostalgic RPG trope.
    - flkiwi 1y ago
      VA = "voice actor"? Because, if so, that's the funniest part: having to click A after someone responds, in spoken words as well as onscreen, "Hmmmm". It's almost charming, but it seemed deeply, deeply unnecessary to me. (Also just a quirk so far.)

switch007 1y ago

Released a week ago? Aren't IMDB ratings high in the first few weeks/months too, because of screenings/film festivals/devout followers etc? Talk about hyperbole

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
For an established IP that can happen, yes. Further context about this one is that it's new IP and the first game from a studio that doesn't even have a Wikipedia page yet.

stuff4ben 1y ago

I've never been a fan of JRPGs, preferring things like BG3, Mass Effect, Dragon Age (not the new one), and Skyrim. But after 800 hours in BG3, I think it's time to try something else and this looks like it might be that.

Aeolun 1y ago

I went for Oblivion Remastered instead, but this was the other contender.

Cortex5936 1y ago

What is the argument of letting people vote without verifying if they played the game ? I get it since its the usual approach to movies, but when you are used to reviews through stores like Steam, it sounds a bit off (granted, people can buy a game on steam, leave a review and refund it but that's still less of a problem than letting everyone review). If there is an argument, would that still hold for Steam ? Can anyone review a Steam game even if they didn't play it ? I might have missed a lot so don't be too harsh

advisedwang 1y ago
I think its about ergonomics of the review system, not that reviews of non-players are positively valued. Review sites NEED reviews. Even unreliable reviews are better than no reviews. Otherwise you are dead. On top of that keeping users engaged in the review system drives revenue. All of this means adding hurdles like verification (however that might work for metacritic) or (for Steam) turning away reviewers because they played the game off-platform is a net negative for the company.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

t0bia_s 1y ago

Hopefully they will release DRM free version on GoG as well.