If you don't enjoy timed dodging or parrying, then don't buy this game.

I'm sure this game would be amazing if it wasn't colorblind hostile. Lune is straight up impossible to play if the player is colorblind, especially when it's tritanopia.

Edit: The colorblind mode does not appear to help the HUD. I turned it up to max and could not tell a difference.

2 very good stories, put together with duct tape

I'm leaving a negative review purely so the devs can address accessibility problems with the game. I am mostly blind and lack of distinct prompts for dodging make the QTE events largely impossible for me to complete without a huge amount of dumb luck on my side. We're meant to rely on sound effects and animations, but this window doesn't feel consistent or well telegraphed to someone with a visual impairment. I can't see the enemy animations well enough to determine what their pattern or timing is meant to be. I didn't have these issues with the Mario RPGs or Lost Odyssey with their QTEs.

Sandfall, you gave jumping a prompt icon so people would know when to jump vs dodge or parry, can you please add a similar prompt for dodging so that I can play the game like everyone else? Sekiro managed this mechanic, why can't you? How did this game get to the end of production and no one commented on this as an obvious problem? Mario RPG and the Paper Mario games got away with this due to insanely high levels of telegraphing and enemy attack design consistency that this game lacks. Please fix it so those of us with disabilities can have the same experience as everyone else.

I see I need to add this for those who haven't played the game - there is no option in game to fully disable QTEs in spite of the devs stating that this was the case. They misrepresented the nature of the feature. There's a button to fully disable attack QTEs, which isn't required as they are prompted, but there is no option to have clearer indicators or the full disabling of the dodge/parry QTEs which are the actual problem. Jumping is fine as that already has a prompt indicator and I don't see why further prompts can't be added for the dodge/parry when jumping was deemed worthy of one (likely because there's no real distinction in the animations). Please stop spreading false information that this feature exists already in the game - it does not.

This was originally a positive review, and I only intended to update it if, as I had written at the time, the game "catastrophically fails" later into it.
I have completed all optional content and gotten all achievements (save for 2 common ones that I can't be bothered with rn) and it was a rollercoaster. To be quite frank, the game isn't worth the 90%+ score it currently stands at, unless you look at it purely from an artistic perspective (even then, eh)


It's initially fine, but for most of Act 1 & 2 of the main story, the combat feels pretty bad. There are two main reasons for this:

• Your attacks's damage are capped at 9999, and you start reaching that cap very early (level 10...), so until Act 3 where the cap is removed, combat is frustrating as you are continuously c*ck-blocked
  
• Simultaneously, despite the damage cap, as you try optimizing your party, you do way too much damage to the story bosses. I've killed major story bosses (the Axons) within 2 turns, and clearly a lot of effort went into them and their mechanics, but you don't get to see it.

At Act 3 of the story, you finally get to play the "real game", and the enemies get significantly tankier, more in line with the side-content. It's really a shame that you have to be 15 hours into the story for the combat to finally become the way it's meant to be, and not this weird watered-down version. It seems most of the main-story combat was simplified for mass appeal, despite the easy difficulty already existing for that purpose.

The deeper you go into Act 3+ side-content, the more frustrating the combat becomes. Imo, this is because the parry mechanic is inherently flawed. On the surface, the parry mechanic is alike the Mario & Luigi games's counterattack mechanic; you can nullify the incoming damage, and do damage on top of that. Very strong already, but in Clair Obscur, each parry also gives you one action point, critical for your action economy, and counterattacks are also the biggest source of stun damage (note: counterattacks can only be done if the last person hit has parried every hit targeted at them).

This makes parrying the most important mechanic of the combat system and something you always want to do, as it is both the best defensive option and the best offensive option. So, how do you balance such an OP mechanic? I don't know, and it doesn't seem like the devs knew either.
The game starts with 1 or 2-hit enemy attacks that are well-telegraphed and with sound cues; In the endgame side-content, enemy attacks can be 10+ hits, with some being unreactable, some changing targets in the middle of the attack - with the delays included, attacks can go for 30+ seconds...
The damage done by each hit gets ridiculous as well, you might have your entire party be oneshot from failing to parry an unreactable hit of a 8-hit AoE attack, on normal difficulty.

In the first half of the game, you go "damnit, I missed the parry", in the second half, you go "what the f**k is this bs". It's honestly disappointing, I like Action-RPGs a lot more than I do turn-based RPGs, it's the reason I bought the game in the first place. Now that I've finished it, I find that I would have preferred if it was just a normal turn-based RPG instead... In its mixing of action and turn-based combat, Clair Obscur ends up being frustrating to traditional turn-based JRPG players, but also frustrating to Action-RPG players by not having the freedom of movement a real Action-RPG would.

Some other things, too:

• Fighting the merchants is a fun idea and a nice change of pace in the middle of a dungeon. Until the endgame anyway, where merchant fights start to become 1v3 fights, which turns them into annoying, painful fights, just to be given the right to buy from them (and the prices are certainly not cheap either!)
  
• The mimes would be an interesting encounter if they were a one-time encounter. As recurring encounters, they're really annoying, especially compared to the other recurring encounters like the Pétanks
  
• One specific fight is baffling: Simon. Simon is a superboss. Very clearly, the last enemy you're supposed to fight in a playthrough, but the fight really didn't feel great. Phase 1 is fine, Phase 2 just is unfair. You do not get healed into phase 2, but you lose your gradient gauge buildup, it was cool finding that out after I saved it during phase 1. First off, why can he just remove your dead party from the battle? What's the point of revive items then? Why is such a mechanic RNG-based of all things, making it entirely luck-based whether your run is over or not? Secondly, yeah, unreactable attacks woven into really long combo, and insane AoE attack with insane damage.
  There's virtually no difference between hard difficulty and normal difficulty for Simon. You get oneshot anyway. And that really shouldn't be the case?? As advertised by the description of normal difficulty, what I expect is a challenging fight where I'll be constantly on the backfoot, not a fight where missing a single parry/dodge wipes out my entire party. That's just not fun. If I wanted that, I would have chosen the hard difficulty.

(This is mainly notes for my fellow french devs)

• Dungeons tell you if they're higher level than you; overworld enemies however do not, which makes for a poor experience of finding out the hard way.
  
• The autosave is wonky. It doesn't seem to ever save in the overworld. When I was going through overworld bosses, after beating 2 and losing to a 3rd one (turned out it was way above my level), I was rolled back so far I had to redo the 2 I had beaten..
  
• The overworld map display is very barren of information. This isn't inherently bad, Elden Ring has that, but see, the key difference is that ER lets you place your own markers on the map so you can keep track of the location of things. A map with no information on which I cannot write the information myself is just bad UX.
  
• The pictos (equipment) system is rough. You cannot upgrade them, you have to hope you'll find the upgrade you need soon, but you're more likely to find an ugrade for some pictos you're never gonna use..
  
• Presumably this is what the "Lumina" system aims to partially address, but that has its own issues; The Luminas get really out of hand during the endgame, as you have so many to keep track of, and it makes any attempt to respec your character pretty annoying.
  
• The weapons system is a bit better than the pictos; you can upgrade the weapons, but you can also randomly find upgrades to weapons for free, and if you had already invested in that weapon, ofc you do not get your investment refunded.. Not all weapons have free upgrades either (or not in areas that you're close to reach), so it's not something you can just patiently wait for
  
• There's a lot of weapons! There's like, ~20 weapons per character, which can widely change their playstyle, and that's pretty cool! However, their damage mostly scales with your character's stats, so you often have to reallocate your character's stats to make the best use of them. This is not free, and while the item it costs is infinitely farmeable, it makes the process unnecessarily tedious and disincentive experimenting with builds.
  
• You cannot reallocate Lumina points???????
  
• You only have use for one Bourgeon skin, so why do all the Bourgeons drop one? What am I gonna do with it?
  
• You can make an argument for not translating "Gommage"; not translating "m*erde" and "p*tain", however, is plain unnecessary and sounds out of place, especially when voiced by British voice actors who clearly do not speak French.

I was hyped for this game, I saw a few pictures and 1 trailer, was told by many people not to look up too much because even seeing the party could lead to spoilers, I was told, if you love turn based RPGS you will love this.

I do love turn based RPGS, but I do not love this.

I have never seen a game have literally everything be perfect yet absolutely fumble the landing. The dodge and parry system can make or break your experience. If you are good at games like Sekiro or rhythm games ignore everything I said. If you play turn based games because you appreciate the slow and calculated gameplay or have bad reaction time this game will be a nightmare. I do not enjoy having a win or loss be entirely dependent on if i can press a button fast enough, this feel like a bunch of people sat in a room and said that turn based was boring and tried to make it fun. They didn't, they took away what is fun about turn based games for me.

In the early stages a few missed dodges or parries will straight up kill you because the game is balanced around you basically being able to never be hit, but as you go on you can level to reduce damage, but this doesnt mean you can ignore the mechanic now, enemies will start inflicting statuses, attack down, defense down, stuns that take away your turns, marks that make you take more damage, some of their attacks chain up to 5 times making you weave dodges, parries and jumps. I could maybe understand if there was a flash or a button prompt to help you dodge, but there is none of that, or a setting to make dodging easier without setting the whole game to story mode, but there isn't. The devs realized people may not be able to do quick time events for attacks so they added an option to do them automatically, but nothing for dodges, if you cant do one you cant do the other.

I sadly cant recommend this to anyone who likes a turn based game for being turn based.

Beautiful and polished, it reminds me of Nier Automata with the well fleshed out world and atmosphere. The dialogue and characters are especially well done, and the graphics are amazing. It has interesting combat mechanics and combos, with each character having wildly different skills

Unfortunately, all that's ruined by the combat system, which gives you the ability to negate every incoming attack with a very tight dodge/parry window - and fully expects you to dodge them all, because you die in 1-3 attacks. This means the only way to add challenge to the game is to make attacks impossible to read, occur in random numbers, one-shot, or all of the above, and they seem to specifically design monsters so you can't tell when their attack is actually going to swing. The only way to really win later encounters is to die to them enough times to learn their attacks, and the turn based combat is meaningless compared to just memorizing attack patterns and hitting the dodges

Early on they give you attack names that tell you how many hits and how fast they're gonna happen, and they're reasonably well telegraphed, but after a few hours you're just getting a generic attack name and it could be 2 or 3 hits, at differing tempos, that you have to somehow dodge perfectly or die instantly - so even learning their patterns isn't always an option

It's extremely annoying and defeats the entire point of turn based combat, which is a shame because the game seems so well made otherwise. If you like souls-likes, you'll probably like the combat, but if you're here for a turn based RPG, it's not really that

It's still tempting to recommend it anyway, because the story really is something else, and in Story difficulty, it's actually fun but challenging sometimes. But most of the time, when you're supposed to feel sad about some story beat, you just end up angry at how much BS they managed to pack into each fight, and relieved that it's finally over

I fell in love with this game, and then fell out of it again. I know I will get destroyed by the feral fanbase, but here is my honest opinion for anyone who is on the fence about this game.
There is a whole lot to love here. Compared to soulless products from big companies, this game just oozes passion and charm. The soundtrack is incredible, the overall creativity is out of this world. By the time I was done with the prologue, I was sobbing, and when the first real fights started to happen, I was ecstatic.
However, this game also has a whole host of issues that become more and more annoying as you progress. First, the crashes. Regardless of settings, in roughly quarter of cases the game crashes after a fight. And it doesnt autosave, so you have to do that fight again. No big deal in the beginning, but extremely annoying with some later boss fights that can be quite long.
Then there is the strange level design. Again, I love the creativity, but it was clearly a bad idea to combine extremely jagged terrain with jumping, because then you have to have a lot of invisible walls. And boy, are there weird invisible walls everywhere. The Yellow Harvest almost broke me.
Also, for the game that relies heavily on the timing of dodges and parries, at perhaps ten percent of cases the controls dont respond at all. Before someone inevitably shouts "SKILL ISSUE" - no, even if you press the key a long time before the attack, the character doesnt move. It always happens with the first dodge or parry in the fight, never in the middle, which seems to suggest that the game loads an animation and creates a lag.
Then there are some bizzare choices, like platforming sections. It feels very out of place and controls are nowhere near tight enough for it. And dont get me started on gestral beach activities...
So, all in all - in comparison with the slop served by big studios, this is a gem. At the moment, however, it is certainly a gem in the rough. I hope at least some of these issues will be addressed, because I am rooting for this team and I would like to revisit this fabulous world in the future and experience this wonder without the myriad annoyances.

this is my very objective, personal opinion. i understand this game has a target audience - and it isn't me.

bought into the hype here, didn't really realize what i'm signing up for though, mostly it is probably a skill issue on my part. however:

pros:
- great story, great characters. i found myself caring a lot about everyone in the short time ive played
- visually stunning
- great soundtrack. beautiful
- runs great, no bugs
- amazing perfomance from all the VA's

cons: (here it is where it gets objective - because i play different type of games)
- the world is empty. it is, as i said visually stunning but i found myself running around looking for things and secrets and rarely finding anything.
- i found the combat confusing and it just wasn't my style. i'm a fan of turn-based, but i was too stupid to figure out the quicktime events. i kept pressing parry/dodge too early or too late. this isnt a critique on the game itself, this is just a skill issue on my part. but for people who are like me - it may be a helpful word of advice
- i realize i only played 10 hours but - most of that were spent in combat, which made me really tired. i'm a person that plays purely for story and combat is just a nice accessory for me - again, clearly i am not the target audience here.
- no map(not always at least)/quest marker. i saw people get roasted for this opinion online but i found it hard to find motivation to explore anything because i never knew if i wouldnt accidentally progress with something.

this is certainly no game of the year for me - but it is NOT a bad game. it feels good to recognize that a game isnt bad - it's just not for me.

i purely picked "not recommended" because it isn't recommended for players LIKE ME

World building? Excellent. Characters? Intriguing. Combat? Constant. The game sells itself as turn based but that's not it's main focus. You have the ability to build characters how you want, which is cool, but can you push the button at the right time? No? Dead. There's weapon affinities and monster weaknesses. Cool, but did you push the button at the right time? No? Dead. There's combos and team abilities that help and compliment one another. Cool! But did you push the button at the right time? No? Dead. Can't push button at the right time? Then play on dumb dumb mode where combat is so boring you wish you were dead. Keep in mind combat is a large chunk of the game. People clearly love this game, however I can't push the button at the right time, so I don't.

Example: Shoot enemies weak point. Massive damage! Cool. Use magic enemy is weak to, also applies debuff, cool! Enemy one shots you because you didn't push the button on time.

I get it, but why mix the two systems? If you can push the button on time, I have no doubt you will enjoy this game, I wish I could progress and see more, but I'm an old man who can't be bothered to push the button on time just to see the story unfold.