The Best Game of 2025 so far!
Before I start evaluating the different Aspects of Clair Obscura: Expedition 33, I wanted to emphasize, that this Game caught me out of nowhere and I’m absolutely in Love with it.

Gameplay: 9/10
The Gameplay Loop is incredibly Fun. The Turn-Based Combat system is well designed and varies enough to not get boring, since every character in the Game plays differently. It only started to feel a little repetitive when I reached the End of the Game.

Graphics: 7/10
Probably the biggest asterisk of the Game is, that it uses a lot of Blur effects to mask the terrain. However, I think that it’s a very fitting design choice, especially when you reach the end of the Game. Otherwise, the Characters are well animated.

Sound: 10/10
The Soundtrack in its own is an absolute masterpiece. The Musical accompaniment is well done in a way that I haven’t seen before. It is absolutely astonishing.

Story: 10/10
The Game has a captivating and interesting Story. The World is Interesting and exploring it is encouraged by how much you want to understand it.

Conclusion:
To Me, the comparison to Final Fantasy X is well deserved and fitting. The Story is well written, as is the Soundtrack. Together they create an emotional rollercoaster of a journey. To add to that, the world is Build in a way, that let’s you pick up piece by piece of the Puzzle along the way to Understanding it. It is my Game of the Year so far and I’m confident it will stay that way.

A Word of Warning:
If you can’t handle Grief and any depiction of it, you should not play the Game, until you have the mental and emotional capacity to do so.

Solving Puzzles and whiping Fascists, do I have to say more?

Gameplay:
The puzzles are interestingand really fun, but do not really repeat themselves. The Levels aren't too big but, I had a lot of fun exploring every corner of them. I do recommend however to play the game on the hardest difficulty if you dont want to play the game in a stealthy way.

Graphics:
It is a very beautiful game and, atleast for me, it performed really well.

Sound:
The Soundtrack is absolutely fantastic.

Story:
The Story is captavating and interesting.

Overall I had a lot of fun playing the game so far. I even caught myself lisening extensively to NPC conversations. I would recommend this game to anyone who liked the Tomb Raider Games or Uncharted, it is less combat focust( atleast the way I played it) though.