Recent reviews by Atafhael

Sick game, but using AI slop to announce Year 2 Pass is a big no.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game I had high expectations for, and yet it still managed to exceed all of them.

It’s not hype, it’s not recency bias, it's literally years of playing some of the greatest RPGs and JRPGs in history, and saying that Expedition 33 is one of the best I’ve played in recent years still feels like an understatement.

That said, it also stands on the shoulders of giants.

Its systems are clearly inspired by the classics we loved when we were younger. It’s a fascinating mix, but it also adds a lot of its own essence and identity. This is a game made by people who love and respect the genre as much as we do, who set out to create something that does it justice and shakes us to the core in the same way those past titles once did.

And that’s something Expedition 33 achieves from its very first hour.

The prologue grabs you within minutes. It makes you understand the weight and importance of the journey its protagonists are about to undertake in a way that’s cruel, beautiful, and effective. The narrative, while maybe not 100% groundbreaking or something never before seen in the genre, it is strong enough to keep people debating its endings and characters to this day.

In a world where everything tries to be clearly good or evil, Clair Obscur offers exactly that play of light and shadow through its deeply human, flawed, broken characters. We feel empathy for them because of their circumstances and our own lived experiences,,yet we also feel hate and contempt for those same reasons. The number of times I’ve seen people projecting themselves onto these characters and their choices makes me smile and realize just how special this game is, how much it touches something deeply personal in all of us, even with its flaws.

And it’s not perfect.

Narratively, I think the third act sidelines a couple of key characters in favor of the overarching plot, it feels abrupt, maybe even wasteful.

The combat system, while incredibly satisfying and requiring real skill to dodge and parry (which will keep you on the edge of your seat and fighting strategically for the first two-thirds of the game), is fundamentally broken, broken like Final Fantasy VIII, like an Ultima Weapon, like a DLC demon from Megaten.

That broken.

But to say you can’t enjoy it despite those flaws would be wrong.

Because everything else that surrounds Clair Obscur is incredible.

The artistic direction behind its beautiful environments and the worldbuilding that ties it all together is nothing short of brilliant. Realizing why certain characters exist under certain circumstances makes me believe the mind behind this game crafted it all with such care and attention to detail, it reaches beyond the screen into what we hear as well.

And then there’s the soundtrack.

The soundtrack is utterly insane.

The way each piece adds so much emotional depth and feels so personal to each moment and setting, the level of production, the attention to detail, the lyrics, it’s all stunning.

It’s using an audiovisual medium to its fullest.

Everything resonates powerfully, coming together as a superior work of art, an artistic vision unsullied by corporate whims, unafraid to be what it is. A game this authentic, at this scale, is refreshing.

I’m genuinely happy about how much this game has impacted the mainstream. Even with its critics, even with its flaws, even with all the hate it might get...

The praise speaks louder, and I believe it’s opening the doors to new opportunities, making the industry and the community take another look at the genre.

One of the best Survival Horrors of the generation, amazing and insanely creative creature design and worldbuilding, solid gameplay, a fantastic sequel. Tango really carried the spooky vision of Mikami in both games and had a bright future in this genre and so many others.

Unfortunately some s**t for brains corpos at Microsoft decided that the japanese studio that Mikami nurtured for years gave them the best game of the last year (Hi-Fi Rush) was needed to be cut to prioritize microtransaction filled games and really really average GaaS to keep those shares up.

♥♥♥♥ Xbox, ♥♥♥♥ Microsoft, ♥♥♥♥ Phil Spencer, ♥♥♥♥ all of them.

70 hours playing Nagoriyuki, I still suck. 10/10

Quería un Soulslike 2D decente, no una obra maestra.

La historia es increíble, banda sonora tan épica como sus jefes, en cuanto a mecánicas es un hack n' slash bien logrado, personajes memorables y un mundo muy bello con un lore a la altura.

Vine de Overwaifu por curiosidad y me quedé aquí por gusto, tiene una gran variedad de personajes, los personajes son personalizables según tu estilo de juego lo que lo hace bastante interesante y le da una variedad bastante buena ya que eso permite que cada persona tenga su propio estilo de juego aún usando al mismo personaje, alguno que otro bug por ahí pero nada grave o que rompa el juego por lo menos en mi experiencia personal.
Tiene actualizaciones frecuentes (y al parecer va a tener soporte por un laaaaaaaaaargo tiempo), uno que otro evento y modo de juego nuevo de vez en cuando, hay bastante comunicación de parte de los desarrolladores y la comunidad no está tan mal, gente horrible hay en todos lados pero aquí he tenido, a grandes rasgos, una buena experiencia.
Corre muy bien en una PC con especificaciones modestas, si hasta en Switch corre a 60 FPS, en una PC decente no debería de darte problema, igual está el asunto del cross-play que puedes jugar con gente de otras plataformas, lo que hace el matchmaking más rápido.
No es Pay to Win porque los personajes se pueden desbloquear jugando y las micro transacciones son para conseguir skins, monturas o cosas así.