Recent reviews by XtreeIvI

Let's just say you have to be weirdly creative and have slightly twisted philosophical mind and vision to create this game in both positive and negative ways.

It is even hard to put any subjective score to this game, for the better or worse.

I put thumb up just to support creativity, but I do not quite like overall game quality.

AND
Definitely recommend.


Took me nearly 18 hours co accomplish along with most gear upgrades.

Game allows players to be in the skin of climber person they most likely never will be and furthermore never wanted to be.

Game is beautiful, soundtrack is nice, game mechanics and climbing are satisfying for the most part, routes are breathtaking, many routes and optional exploration, nice health/inventory management mechanics, views are stunning, story is relatively simple and revolves around inner feelings of protagonist.
2 realistic endings.

* - would have been 8.5 if not for:

1. The ending, where you can survive presumably by completing most side quests and having resources to get up & down, and option to survive by acquiring let's say oxygen mask on the way up;
2. Optional (or required) ability climb down after reaching and surviving top at least to last populated camp
3. Option to upgrade robot (via side quests) so it can also survive summit
4. Alternatively to 3 option to survive even without climb-bot if player is bold enough, because you have to climb down without robot, relying only on available pitons and rope that would not be possible to take away once deployed.

8/10
PROS:
- Challenging and satisfying combat. Great build variety. Overall good boss battles. This game is on the weird brink: either you accept few solid pros with a lot of cons and overall enjoy it or you will drop it after a while.

CONS:
- Story - meh... Game does not even try to keep the intrigue who is the final boss. Elamein ark is teenagely naive and I hate it. I wish game does not have a story at all and Khazan never speaks. Pure speachless revenge would suit Khazan better.
- All too smooth-face, beautiful and naive characters - meh. If you expect dark fantasy about tragedy, rage and revenge, think again. Too childish narrative under the poorly served revenge.
- Annoying and cliche NPC and filler dialogs.
- Low quality side quests: all previous maps fragments reuse
- Very mediocre level design: uninspiring and forgettable.
- A bit weird gear rarity system tied directly to character level and NG+
- Some weird leveling and skill points restrictions
- I played dual wields, and closer to the the end of the game looks more of a slasher that methodic souslike, but still somewhat satisfying.
- Some enemies just has stupidly artificially high damage (like regular corrupted humans that bites most of your health at ease)
- As I played dual wield only for all NG++ I found that only viable build revolves around phantom dance skill, which is absolutely must.
- I will always treat multi phases boss battles with renewed boss HP bar as bad enemy design. There are few good exception, like Maluca: he has bigger but single HP bar and changes behavior during the fight. No rat tricks, like 2nd/3rd phases.
- I dislike all male characters are too androgynous and have long hairs. No short haircuts or beards altogether.

Beatiful game. This is the only good thing about it.
Everything else bad to mediocre.
Bad enemy design, lot of bugs.
Honestly I played this game hoping it is a good souls-like.
I've dropped game after crash, where I lost 2 hour progress (very difficult rift included)
Why devs could not implement proper saving: progress, map fog or war on the fly, which was invented decades ago? This way, if I would have exit game or it crashed, then my progress could have been saved at least, despite me being respawned at meditation point.

It was a last straw.

I would award this game in the following nominations for 2025:

best music

best innovative gameplay

!!! Whoever allowed the ridiculous Gestral's beach volleyball mini-game with its atrocious controls to get to the final game version should be questioned and proficiency at game design re-interviewed. As a punishment this person should start each day with 10 consecutive wins of this "volleyball".

8/10. I usually never play turn-based games. But the turn-based mix with dodge/parry grabbed my attention. I still believe I am a bad turn-based game player, but a good enough souls-like player. Overall good variety of enemies, some bosses force you to adapt which is great. Vast build variety, progression, pictos, luminas, weapons, consumables. Each character has unique mechanics and strong sides.

The only enemy I skipped after a few hours of trial is Simon: he simply leaves no room for a fair fight: steals shields, leaves you 1 HP, has decoupled timings with artificially complicated absence of visual or sound cues. From the first attacks it feels too difficult, but in a bad sense honestly. I've beaten Malenia, Blade of Miquella (Elden Ring) & Isshin, the Sword Saint (Sekiro) & 3-Phase Eigong (Nine Sols). Those are no less difficult, but much more fair fights.

Some game controls are weird and annoying. For example, you confirm some menu choices with "F", but on some menus you have to mouse click/hold.

Extra annoying and IMO really bad is the inability to pause and restart any fight at any moment. You can pause the game during the enemy's turn. And the game does not allow you to restart the fight right away. To do so, you have to die. And sometimes it is simply time-consuming to die in order to restart a fight.

Multi-phase bosses (ones that replenish health bars) (in any game for that matter) are IMO bad game design. Such bosses can try expedition №60's… nuts on their chins.

5–9/10. As for the story I have mixed feelings. For me it reaches the top at Act 2, where you understand (with a little help of Reddit explanation) wtf is going on. But closer toward the end it becomes more or less predictable. Depending on what person you are (practical, empathetic, etc.) and what questions you ask yourself about characters' motivations or decisions, you may find the story in a range of "ultimately, it does not make sense" to "it is a logical path, good story evolution, nice character development".

The name of the game (Clair Obscur — which is a visual art term for shadow/light contrast) I believe perfectly matches the story's narrative message. Initially, I thought that "Mirror" would be more suitable, but no. "Clair Obscur" suits perfectly. 10/10 for this.

9.5/10. Phenomenal. Additionally to all of the hyped and now well-known soundtracks, I also want to highlight Manor and Monoko (jazz) tracks.

10/10. A lot of side content and content overall. I would call this game a perfect example of an AA game.

7/10. Do not confuse this with game art direction which is top-notch. But some animations are jerky or absent altogether, some textures are too soapy (small texture fills huge objects), some game world objects are levitating above ground level or slightly mispositioned. I also do not like various scale inconsistencies for world objects and entities. Of course it is done to speed up development and despite all said it is still impressive, considering the relatively small team.

Overall great game and experience. Recommended.

I think the game will have its continuation in the same universe.
Let me predict the sequel of the story:
I think the sequel will revolve around Clea and her war with the Writers, who are to blame for Verso's death. So I believe there will be Painters and Writers involved in the next game.

One of the BEST ROGUE-LIKE ever...

Detective-Puzzle-Souslike 8/10.
Apart of some random crashes I can recommend this game for sure.
After few hours of exploration, few good deeds, quests you'll start to realize why game has name "Hell is us", which is not that metaphorical.
The story is very complex and quite difficult to comprehend completely. It required lot of reading and memorizing. But it is the strongest point of the game along with overall atmosphere, music, characters, humans actions and consequences.

6.5/10
Can recommend this game on sale.
Good explanation in IGN review (6/10). I agree with most of the points.
I has the feeling that game has potential to be 8.5/10.

Pros:
- no level cap (can create uber build at level 200-250)
- multiple NG+
- classes and build variery
- can be challenging on first playthrough
- awesome music
- overall good visual direction, nice character animated artwork
- intuitive and responsive character movement, most of animations are pleasant
- not much backtracking
- game engage you in many ways: merchants, allies leveling, crafting, map pieces, plants, garden, elixirs, food buffs, gems, weapon and gear enchanting, skills tree, class related upgradable skills, lantern with upgrades, new story related traversing/backtracking/movement skills, entropy dimension world with own mechanics. Some of these elements feels raw and redundant. But in general they create good gameplay loop.
- pure bliss to melt through NG+(and beyond) enemies that you previosuly struggle on first playthrough


Cons:
- no ultra-wide and super ultra-wide support
- some bosses design are weird, their attacks are badly telegraphed sometimes, weird hitboxes
- repetitive bosses became boring on 3rd+ encounter
- cannot interrupt attack animation with skill
- small and weird, but only head and chest gear pieces can be enchanted
- personally, I did not expect much from the story, so it don't bother me much. From first minutes it seems very cliche and predictable. Sometimes it seems the game laughs at itself ("...do dying man a favor and... f#ck your face with a rusty fork")

Cannot recommend this game due to issues with connection, too high price for its relative small amount of content, unrelated story chucnks...

Review Bombed due to the recent censorship and hiding realistic details.
Will change this review to positive if you include NO CENSORSHIP at least on PC version in game settings.