This game caught me by surprise. I can enjoy a good story, but jRPGs are famous for having 323921 hours of dialogue and 10 hours of gameplay (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy 10), so I was a bit hesitant about this one. But two buddies of mine kept raving on and on about Clair Obscur, so I thought it could be "the one". And I'm so glad that this was the case.

Initially, the parrying thing didn't click with me, but after a while it became more enjoyable as I got better at reacting and planning my turns. The story is beautiful, a true emotional rollercoaster. The OST is phenomenal, as you probably have already heard about it. Character development is meaningful, and I truly did care about each one of them, even the "bad guys". The cutscenes never ever get in the way of the fun and action, and holy Jesus Almighty, I wish every jRPG could do the same. They are short but pack quite a punch, they feel substantial despite only being usually 2~5 minutes long, and they're properly spaced out (so you're never constantly interrupted).

As 99% of the games, this one is best enjoyed with a few mods from NexusMods, pick the ones that you find interesting.

My only valid criticism about Clair Obscur is that it runs on Unreal Engine 5, although I fully understand why they had to make this choice (building an in-house engine is extremely expensive and not anyone can do it well). UE 5 means that it's not super optimized, but, again, there are .ini mods that bump up the performance quite a bit without losing visual fidelity (and you can use FSR or DLSS on top of that).

I never thought I'd give a jRPG a 9/10, but Clair Obscur deserves it. And look, I have very high standards for single player games, trust me. With that said, take your time to go through this game, and let it wash over you. 😉

LAST UPDATE BROKE THE GAME.

I have 500 hours in StS 1 (before braindead comments, I got up to A20H with 60% win rate). That is a great, fun game, with FUN and BALANCED mechanics. Luck in that game won't take you very far, you still have to make good decisions throughout the run.

StS 2 is nothing like it. Elite fights are too overtuned and provide next to no value. Act 1 and 2 fights have cheap gimmicks that are impossible to counter without lucky RNG. Act 3 Doormaker boss fight is completely retarded now if you're playing one of the hardest characters like I have, which is Regent in Ascension 9. YOU SIMPLY CANNOT DO ANYTHING IN THAT FIGHT. Any cards that you play brings you close to certain death. What is even the point then? Nobody, absolutely nobody asked for the gimmicks introduced in the new version of Doormaker boss. I bet 50$ that the Mega Crit devs haven't played against Doormaker in high Ascensions. WHO THE F*CK RELEASES SOMETHING THAT THEY DIDN'T TEST THEMSELVES? You morons. Great way to kill the game.

If anyone wants to know how it's like to have a proper Slay the Spire experience, I recommend going back to the first one. Good luck to the copium huffers willing to be lab rats.

Great art style, interesting world and lore (although very cryptic) and somewhat rewarding and fun combat. My biggest complain is regarding traversing in this game. It's dull, it takes too long, and you're not given the proper tools to go from point A to point B without falling asleep on your desk. If this is a Metroidvania, why in Fred Fuchs name can't you sprint, dash faster and have more teleport spots? If the devs think it's fun to walk back-and-forth for 20 minutes from one area to another, then they're probably not good in the head. There's absolutely no reason to not equip the player with the abilities necessary to move between different sections in 5 minutes. No, I don't wanna fight the same enemies all over again in an area that I have already completed previously. It's pointless, previous enemies are weaker and die in one hit anyways. Also, the parry mechanic is flawed because you only benefit from it during the first 30 minutes of gameplay. After that it becomes useless and you're better off dodging stuff and killing the enemy before they kill you. To sum it up Blasphemous 1 fails at being a decent Metroidvania and a Souls-like game, what a joke lol.

I read that they fixed the traveling issue in Blasphemous 2, but I feel deceived by the cult-like praise that this game has received. From now on I won't buy games based on the Positive reviews only, if anything I'll go through the Negative ones first to see what are the flaws.

I enjoy Souls-like games with the parry and dodge mechanics, I enjoy Metroidvanias and have finished several Castlevania games more than once. Sadly, players looking for a good combination of both will be disappointed. If that's the case for you, STAY AWAY FROM BLASPHEMOUS 1.

Great game to fall asleep, kinda like Final Fantasy X. I love a good jRPG with a good story, interesting cutscenes and plenty of action. This one doesn't have any of that. But if you have a bad case of nostalgia goggles, make sure you download QoL mods and set them up properly to have a better experience.

I'm going to copy-paste a comment that I stumbled upon on Reddit, because I basically felt the same and have the same complaints about this installment of the Amnesia series.

"The Bunker is by far the worst game Frictional has ever made and it's not even close. They try to make their game sound deeper than it actually is by saying "oh you need to experiment", but what that means in practice is actually "die, die, and die again until you've found exactly what the devs want you to do, in exactly what way, at exactly what time, with exactly what item".

So you try, and you try, and you try, and when you think you're finally making progress, the beast shows up out of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nowhere, corners you, and you die. It's so bad I've even thought of running back and forth to the safe room to save every time I literally make one ounce of progress, but there's places where you literally CAN'T do that because doing so would mean wasting some kind of ressource for every trip (like using meat to get rats out of your way, or tanking the hits and then using a bandage). So you'd just end up running out of ressources until you've softlocked yourself.

The generator is also a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke. It literally doesn't matter whether it's on or off, the beast will show up anyway, so what the ♥♥♥♥ is the point of it? To see better? Hah! More than half the map is still in total darkness even when the generator is on, so you're gonna have to make noise wrangling your flashlight regardless. So again, what the ♥♥♥♥ is the point of the generator?

6 hours must be the magical breaking point where someone with even a modicum of self-respect decides they have enough of this pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, because just like you, that's the point where I finally said "♥♥♥♥ this" and uninstalled this waste of storage. This game is a disgrace and I can't believe it's from the same people who made Amnesia the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dark descent and SOMA."

Now, lemme tell ya something: Amnesia TDD is a beautiful masterpiece, I've replayed it several times and have played lots of custom stories too. Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs was alright, interesting story but the gameplay was nothing to write home about. SOMA is transcendental, it's an experience that you can probably only live once in your life. It really doesn't feel like the same people who made them made The Bunker, because it was an experiment done by a different internal team of Frictional Games, which is bloody deceptive if you bought this expecting something on the same level of TDD. I'm under the impression that 90% of the people who thought this was a good game never played TDD, therefore they can't compare both games. Regardless, *EVEN* as a standalone game, Amnesia The Bunker doesn't offer anything interesting. Your whole gameplay is locked to progressing in the game the exact way the devs wanted to (so they lie when they say that you can improvise and try something different and that it'll probably work); a monster that teleports all over the place in a few seconds, leaving you stuck in the same damn room for up to 5 minutes because if you get out he instantly kills you; a damn generator that needs to be refueled way too frequently; and a safe room/storage mechanic that is located in the first section of the game. Jesus Christ, what the heck were they thinking? Have they ever played a real survival horror game like Resident Evil, Outlast, Alien Isolation??? And oh my God, let's not talk about the rats. They're the most stupid and annoying hindrance I've ever seen in any game: basically, either you spend your hard-earned and scarce resources to clear them in the Maintenance area, or you brute force through them, bleed tons, attract more rats and then you die do them. Wow, great idea. The game would already be mediocre without the rats due to horrendous design decisions, with the rats you're basically pouring salt on an open wound. The cherry on the top of the caca sundae is the lack of ambiance that I loved in TDD, in this game you're stuck in a bunker and every section looks the same as the other one lol. I cannot believe how dirty they did the Amnesia series with this one. And it has a 94% score on Steam?! What?! This can't be real.

Last, but not least, inb4 any braindead "git gut" comment: my brother, I've played several actually hard games (hard but fair), I've speedran Resident Evil games, I know my way around survival horror. The problem is that Amnesia The Bunker pummels you with unfair sh*t, coma-inducing gameplay and poor systems/mechanics.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk. 1/10, wouldn't recommend it to anybody who enjoyed Amnesia TDD.

Nearly 500 hours in, and I can say that this is a great game if you like frying your brain like myself and overanalyzing each bit of a game in order to truly understand/master it. StS will definitely scratch that itch, and if you're a neurodivergent person (which seems to be 90% of the playerbase) you'll have a lot of fun lol. Above Ascension 17 the game feels a little too hard to be truly enjoyable, but it felt good to prove to myself that I could have ten Ascension 20 Heart kill wins. Today I achieved that goal, and therefore I feel like I can finally quit the game. I'll probably play StS 2 if it's as mentally stimulating as this one.

If you're not that nerdy, you can also enjoy the game for what it is, as long as you play up until Ascension 15, which is still very forgiving (and therefore more fun while still being challenging).

Kudos to the devs. I've never played a deckbuilder before, and I had no idea what a roguelike was, but I'm glad I found this gem of a game.