Recent reviews by Belladonna

Every so often, I come across a piece of entertainment that blends different types of media to make a single experience that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has done exactly that. And it is one of the absolute best experiences I've had in my many years of gaming.

The game mechanics are good. I'm not usually a fan of turn-based rpgs, but the addition of quicktime events and a wide variety of combat abilities keep it engaging and enjoyable. The art direction is outstanding; one of the prettiest and most thematic games I've played. The sound track comes in to set the tone perfectly, even if rather repetitive. The characters feel so real. And the plot is a prime example of how stories should be told. Each facet is good on its own. But instead of dominating, each part reinforces and plays off of the others to create an absolute symphony of an experience.

It isn't perfect though. There are some minor gripes to be had about lighting, level design, UI clarity, and convenience features. But the team perfectly focused on all the things that actually matter. The thing is, it doesn't need to be perfect; it still has everything it needs. Despite the hiccups, the game is a masterpiece that will go down as one of the games that push gaming as a whole forward.

Play it. It will punch you in the gut. And you will like it.

TLDR: it's a good game slightly held back by bugs.

Good:
The combat feels great, and the "doing chores to keep the minions happy" is rewarding. Choices actually affect the game, without any choice feeling bad. A full run took me about 24 hours. Sound and visual design is spot on.

Meh:
The story is simple, but enough to make a cohesive game; the story just isn't the focus.
Content warning: You will be sacrificing and killing some of your minions. If you get attached to them, this may not be the game for you.
The UI could use some fine tuning, at least on M/KB. Some menus close with E (interact), others with F (back). Some buildings interact with LMB, others with RMB. It all works, but it isn't consistent across the game.

Bad:
Bugs. At the moment, you will have to deal with bugs during a normal run. None of mine were game-breaking, but it never feels good when you have to quit to the menu. Across two runs, I got stuck on a building. I can't complete a quest because a randomized loot pool became a fixed one. Minions regularly get stuck. Again, nothing game breaking, just annoying.

If you like Engine Building and open-world games, you'll enjoy it. It's not a hard game; you go and collect resources, combine them to make other resources, combine those to make more resources, etc. But building your factory, accessing those resources, and dealing with enemies are all small satisfying challenges to overcome.
There are a number of visual glitches/stutters, not everything works perfectly intuitively, so it still needs some polishing, but it's a great game even with those "bugs". None of them have really affected how fun the game is, so the devs are focusing on the right things.

Previously I left a bad review. Child of Light doesn't really support different graphics options. I had no graphics card at the time, and no matter what game or computer settings I used, the game ran at about 1/4 speed. My experience was not unique; a lot of people had this problem. Even bringing it down to resolutions seen 10 years ago didn't fix it.
Update-I got a 750 Ti and now the game runs perfectly. I still feel as if I should have been able to run this using on-board graphics with reduced resolution. Now that I'm running at full speed, I can see how artful both the gameplay and story of this game is. Leveling comes easy and the story progresses smoothly. It's an absolute joy to play.
Also, once you deal with the original setup of Uplay, it runs fine. A minor annoyance, but it's not a deal-breaker