Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 wins GOTY at The Game Awards 2025

This is the most emotional experience I’ve ever had playing a video game. It’s insane how good it is—you feel it deep in your soul. So many ways to interpret it, to make sense of what happens. I could go on, but I won’t because of spoilers. Everyone needs to know it’s amazing. Deep. It’ll leave you pondering it long after.

And that’s just the story adventure. There’s also an incredible visual experience: amazing characters, writing, and acting. The score? My God, it’s unbelievable.

The gameplay is fun—more so than I expected. It’s a fresh take on turn-based combat with parries and dodges. It may not be for everyone; I didn’t think it’d be for me, but I ended up having a ton of fun. The combat reminds me of Super Mario RPG, but way more variation(huge understatement), with endless builds and combinations to try. It’s great. I hate turn-based games—haven’t played one since FFX—but I loved this.

It hooks you fast. Just 15-30 minutes in, there’s a cutscene that’ll grab you. First, you’ll feel the emotion, even without understanding what’s happening. Then you’ll desperately want to know why it happened.

Play it, people. If you haven’t.

It’s in my top 5

I’m running through the new content right now and it’s very very good and clever with how they fit it in and its themes. It aims to try to show more of the true verso not so much the cynical man we play in the game is the most I can play without spoilers.

There are new weapons pictos and outfits I’ve already found and the UI is better and cleaner allowing you to set up builds for each character and save them. It’s also all very challenging much more so than the lead up to Simon in Renoir drafts. So that’s nice

All for free this area is massive. I’m not going to say a bad word about them

You’re just a count about most things usually no matter what either way so it’s not shocking.

To say the game “falls off a cliff at act 3” is being so fricking dramatic like a small girl. Yes there are problems and it is rushed a bit, the flying manor and reacher should’ve been mandatory, and its direction isn’t the best but there’s still like 30 hours of content just to go out and do and find.

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One of the most overrated games in history.

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Curious….what are your top 5 games of all time?

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people act like it’s one of the greatest games ever made.

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top-5 easy

Chronotrigger
Witcher 3
Wing Commander 3
Civ2
Expedition 33

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Curious….what are your top 5 games of all time?

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I've never really thought about it, but off the top of my head (in no particular order):

Dark Souls
RE4 (original, I haven't played the remake yet)
Nioh 1 & 2
Death Stranding 1

Arkham Asylum, XCOM 2, Remnant 2, and other Souls/RE games are up there for me as well.

How about you?

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One of the most overrated games in history.

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You’re certainly entitled to your opinion. It’s top 3 for me, but I don’t think it is perfect and don’t want the community to rage anytime someone dosent like it. I’ll admit there were times I had no idea what the frick was going on in act 3 and had to google it . I just think it single handedly saved turn based RPGs for the people like me who grew up on them and have been yearning for a modern epic turn based experience that final fantasy hasn’t been able to give us since 10. Game play and story aside, I think it’s made big studios rethink their strategy in their development of RPGs going forward and showed that turn based can still be engaging to the new age gamers and for that I am forever thankful. Hopefully it is the beginning of something special and we’ll look back on it as a cultural milestone.

English has way more range as an actor, but Ben Starr does one extremely district voice and it’s one of the best on the planet but I’ve never heard him a pitch off of it in any game

I also think Maelle being perceived as the games main character probably helped her a bit, even though she really isn’t. The game is about verso. At best they’re deuteragonist or even villains depending on your morality.

The new content is imo the best they have in the game. Also the most challenging overall dungeon by a mile and the largest.

Have you done any of the new content yet?

I have been bitching for months about how I can nearly no hit this game at this point and they drop this on me! This dungeon does you dirty from start to end not like usual where the in between doesn’t put up a fuss. Also the new floors added to the endless tower involves bosses from the game in units of 2-3 but remade with new movesets completely. Some are just mirrors of the old to throw you off some have ALL new movesets. I got my wish

Photo mode is good ish I guess if that’s your thing? I don’t find it really easy to use in this game I thought stellar blades was so great because of how simple it was. You can do photo mode mid combat though