Clair Obscur is an excellent, if somewhat flawed, game. It has fantastic visuals, a pretty good soundtrack, and some really entertaining characters. The combat is a lot of fun, with a traditional, turn-based mechanic being augmented with timed dodge and parry actions. Making it through the game means learning enemies' attack patterns and responding accordingly, but if you get good enough at it, you can get through any fight without taking damage (which then gets you an XP bonus). Enemy designs are pretty creative as well, and the bosses actually feel like bosses. Overall, it's one of the best games of the last few years. It does, however, have some issues. The UI can be a bit challenging visually (I had trouble, sometimes, figuring out what I had selected, because of the lack of contrast), and it's pretty clear that the last few bits of the game were somewhat rushed, both because of areas that felt strangely unfinished, as well as some of the writing falling off a bit. But, overall, it's well worth playing through, and it's an absolute breath of fresh air having a real, turn-based RPG in 2025 that doesn't depend on a boring, overly-large open world. There aren't many of those being made these days.
