I've been trying to start Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 because it's turn based and everyone's raving about it.

Now admittedly I'm full of flu and feeling pretty crappy, so that's probably not the best time, and I've only really played the opening hour, maybe a little more. But... I think I hate it???

The big issue for me is that it's sooo parry/dodge timing based. I was hopeful because people were talking about it as like a old school turn based JRPG but as someone with mild dyspraxia I really struggle with the kind of arhythmic, flourishy timing stuff in all these Soulslikes and modern action-adventure games, so the fact that it's such a big part of this turn-based game is a massive disappointment.

But there's also a lot about it that bothers me in ways I can't fully articulate. It all just feels a bit... uncanny. The acceleration of movements is way too high, animations feel odd and jittery, characters have uncanny proportions, and the graphics have an odd mix of diorama-like craftiness and almost AI-art like debris & detail smear. It's the same with the dialogue too. The writing feels melodramatic to cover how expositional it is, but the performances are weirdly flat. Tonally it seems to take itself incredibly seriously but then does kind of fourth-wall breaking winks about videogames to skip over things that wouldn't work gameplay-wise. I dunno, maybe this stuff is partly the result of being a bit feverish but I find the the sum total of it a bit disorientating and unpleasant.

I realise these are probably pretty specific complaints to me for the most part though. I'm not saying it's an objectively bad game or anything. I'm just pretty