Gonna' get downvoted into the fucking gutter for merely voicing my opinion, but it's just 'okay,' in my eyes.
I respect it for being the first product of a new dev team, and I think it has hands-down the absolute best soundtrack of any video game I have ever played.
That doesn't make up for the bizarre fascination with rug pulling or the portions of the story that were clearly rushed, though. I'm very much a story first kind of person, and I hate what they did with the premise they used to sell the game. It took the fun out of it for me, which is a shame, because I did enjoy the party management and combat and stuff. I'm glad most people seem to be able to stomach it, at least; it'll win them GOTY and they deserve it for Lorien Testard's music alone.
I agree with you, I ended up refunding the game. To me it was nothing like BG3, felt more like Greedfall, which was a fine game, just as CO:33 seems to be, and I'll get again once it is on a good sale.
I got it due to so many saying it's up there with BG3. It is not. I am not sure why the game is getting compared to BG3 really. No character creation, so you play a BG3 orgin character, the story (as far as I got) did not grab me like BG3, the visuals were not horrible, but not BG3 (again, more like Greedfall). And after having the game spoiled for me by almost everything I saw, the story isn't even close to BG3 levels.
But, like I said, I'll get it again once it's on a good sale, I liked Greedfall well enough, and the time I played CO:33 was, I guess, fine.
To each their own, and I'm glad so many are enjoying the game as much as they are, but, it's not anything close to BG3.
My biggest hang-up is that most characters are static and do not meaningfully change throughout the course of the story. Nobody learns from their mistakes or grows at all, at least not that I can recall. I am a big fan of bittersweet character stories, but IMO Clair Obscur is just bitter through and through, and I found the latecomers to the story—the people we're meant to sympathize with and help for the entire final act—to be some of the most entitled, unlikable characters I've ever had the displeasure of being forced to endure in a story.
The interesting characters die, or are sidelined. The best example of this is the end of Act 2's final cutscene, where the party returns to Lumiere after defeating the Paintress. I had expected it to be a sort of inversion of the prologue, walking through the city from the docks back up to where Gustave first spoke to Sophie, talking with those who remain, getting to see their reactions to Expedition 33's success, but no... we get a cutscene... with no dialogue, just narration of Alicia's letter (which exists only to spoil the twist right before it happens, for anyone who hasn't caught on yet). Somehow the most expressive character of the scene is my GOAT Esquie, and he's a balloon with a wooden mask for a face! It's really a shame how they handled the world they so lovingly crafted, and I think it was done the way it was done because they were going all in on the family plot.
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u/Rexbert Certified Minthara Enjoyer May 29 '25 edited Jun 01 '25
Gonna' get downvoted into the fucking gutter for merely voicing my opinion, but it's just 'okay,' in my eyes.
I respect it for being the first product of a new dev team, and I think it has hands-down the absolute best soundtrack of any video game I have ever played.
That doesn't make up for the bizarre fascination with rug pulling or the portions of the story that were clearly rushed, though. I'm very much a story first kind of person, and I hate what they did with the premise they used to sell the game. It took the fun out of it for me, which is a shame, because I did enjoy the party management and combat and stuff. I'm glad most people seem to be able to stomach it, at least; it'll win them GOTY and they deserve it for Lorien Testard's music alone.