“Art can be a window and art can be a mirror. And Great art. Great Art is both.”
It’s a quote I came across when I played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It’s a from the game’s equivalent of an audiolog collectible. That snippet of a slightly longer quote, left a big impression on me, as I reflect and collect thoughts of this indie RPG by debutante Sandfall Interactive. It’s a quote that felt so profound to me and leaves this impression that these developers get it.
The fact that I am opening this review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 commenting on a piece of collectible, which would have been a simple mention later in the Content section of a Gamer Matters review, should tell you something.
These wonderful talents of 30+ people plus the extra hands that make up the outsourcing, voice actors, orchestra and choir assemble, as well as the publishing and distribution team from around the world to make this less-than-premium-priced video game into a reality, in a reality where games are getting more expensive, runs worse on supposedly more powerful (and expensive) hardware in an industry that is raking in billions yet shedding its workforce in the thousands the past few years, have created something special. Something profound.
It’s not that it’s a true trailblazer, no. The team are very open to what their inspirations, their favourite games from Persona 3 to Devil May Cry 5 and various other JRPGs/turn-based RPGs and action games. And they wear their inspirations on their sleeves, just how the Expeditioners proudly wear their number scarfs. But it’s that they took a familiar selection of games, and recreated it by adding a little, and pardon my French, je ne se quois.
And that’s a little bit of themselves. There’s earnestness that can be felt. There’s also the wonder of a culture that haven’t taken the center stage in video games for quite a while. And there’s also that feeling of seeing how these developers are able to punch above their weight, while still have the budget and network to bring in extraordinary visuals, audio and talent.
And its core, a freakin’ good turn-based RPG that’s demanding, punishing yet rewarding for those who dive deep into its systems.
Presentation
I feel like many of the 1 million players who have bought Expedition 33 simply for the visuals. And yes, the much-vaunted visuals do look pleasing, a nice take on realistic visuals as powered by Unreal Engine. And the fantasy Belle Epoque aesthetic they’re going for seems to have legs, at first glance at least.
But the more I keep playing the game the less I am enthused by the graphics. It still falls into the usual trappings where pop-ins from a distance still happens. The lighting strains my eyes as the game sometimes take its sweet time to readjust the bloom or glare. My eyes already have glare issues in real life, and seeing the game also replicates this too often bothers me. Sometimes the lighting is too bright or too dark. And when I want to adjust the brightness settings, there’s no guide to show me if the screen is too bright or too dark. I always felt annoyed by the initial setup screen in modern games having you adjust the brightness, but here in this game when I needed it it’s not there. So I just have to guess what settings make my eyes less straining. Mildly annoying.
And the environment does get samey over time. Some levels just have a weaker aesthetic concept so I keep seeing the same red forest biomes and felt bored out of it. And lost (more on that in a bit). I myself felt disappointed having said this, as the first few levels look astonishing and felt creative. Flying Waters has to be a highlight, such a wonderful take on an “underwater” area. And one of the penultimate areas makes great use of 3D audio projection that makes it so memorable.
At least the guys and gals that make up the Expedition, your party, look great in whatever costume or hairstyle you put them on. Even when there’s copious amount of blood and dirt they have all over their person. More so during cutscenes where they use the higher-res models. The blood and dirt appear more pronounced when the black horizontal bars (and the occasional vertical black bars, ooh) appear.
I have no notes for the audio department. I simply have four paragraphs full of praises for what a wonderful job they’ve done. The original soundtrack is simply astonishing, especially so when this the composer’s big break after only doing music posts on SoundCloud. The sombre melancholy that airs in most of the songs is a breath of fresh air among generic heroic, movie-like orchestra assembles.
But it’s not just sadboi hours music either. The soundtrack ranges from groovy jazz with saxophones blaring to full rock opera where electric guitar shreds harmoniously with the bowing of violins. And a little bit of that accordion, the instrument we stereotypically associated with French music (no House music though, but there is a little nod to the famous robot duo from France). The soundtrack can be silly and flamboyant, and in one instance, feel like you’re raving in a club underwater, but the soundtrack mostly has this poignant beauty to it. I don’t feel like any of the 8-hour-long soundtrack felt repetitive or tiring, as they have so much music. Great music.
Between Ixion and Endless Legend, add Expedition 33 into the growing list of games with banger soundtracks made by French composers. The works of Lorien Testard and the music team can stand tall amongst them.
The voice and performance in Expedition 33 is excellent. The English cast gave it their all, the emotions of these characters come across the screen proper, as you’d expect when everyone in the cast is either a Hollywood star, an experienced video game voice over stars (which includes one Ben Starr). All talented lot, being able to give characters to life through loud and, more importantly, subtle, performances. The performance capture is done by a separate team and they too deserves a shout. The cutscenes feel like proper cinema where not only you are treated with bombast and explosions, but gentle performances that speak loud into the hearts of the audience.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s presentation really is a big point of appeal to many. While I’m not a fan of the realistic visuals, too many folks have glazed it up too much, I am totally sold in how the rest of the presentation was brought together. The developers spent just the right amount of production and budget to get this to look appealing to more than just core fans of turn-based RPGs, and for that, it’s worth celebrating.
Gameplay
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG inspired by various JRPGs and games the developers are a big fan of, and it shows. In broad strokes, this is a journey of unlikely comrades banding together in a world-spanning road trip with a specific goal in mind: to save the world. Sounds like a typical premise for an RPG.
But the game paints a more vivid picture of what this French-tinted fantasy world is, and what’s at stake. The citizens of Lumiere is suffering from a curse due to the dreaded Paintress. Every year, the Paintress paints a new number counting down, and everyone whose age is that number or above will be erased. It’s been going for 67 years, to the point that it’s now a festival where the ever younger survivors say goodbye to their beloved elders. And every year, Lumiere sends out an Expedition to venture to the outside world with the goal of breaking the cycle by defeating the Paintress. None have yet to succeed.
Players take on the control of what’s left of Expedition 33: the brilliant inventor but reserved Gustave, the young yet capable teen Maelle, the stern, inquisitive barefooted lady Lune and the ever-flirtatious and ever-calming optimist Sciel, among a few others, who must continue the Expedition.
If you think of RPGs as bread, think JRPGs in this context as a melon pan. I know in some circles the term “JRPG” has a negative, borderline xenophobic connotation to it. But I refuse to have that read to be the leading one, as I believe in communities can be inspired by other communities’ culture and create something new out of it. In the context of bread, Japan has created the melon pan from the western world’s bread. Just like in the context of RPGs, it’s JRPGs (or a specific brand of turn-based RPGs with a linear story) inspired by Wizardry and other RPGs from the other side of the world.
If you love turn-based RPGs, especially JRPGs, there’s a good chance you’ll love what Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has going here. The combat menu has you press buttons instead of scrolling through lists like Persona 5. You can freely assign stats to every party member. There’s a unique skill tree and unique mechanic for every character. And there is a gear and weapons to find, buy and upgrade. A passive system straight out of Final Fantasy IX. And world map/overworld exploration where you can unlock traversal abilities later on.
A Parry-Or-Die Game In Disguise
But there are twists. This isn’t just a recreation of a melon pan, this is a melon pan recreated by the folks who make baguettes, after all. Expedition 33 bring something new to the turn-based RPG by incorporating a more “reactive” system. The Super Mario RPG series have pioneered adding more direct input on players by having them do quick-time events to land attacks. But Expedition 33 goes another step: what if we added dodges and parries?
You can dodge and parry every attack in Expedition 33. And they feel good. It has the satisfaction of any good game with a parry mechanic aspires to be. Every enemy attack has a rhythm, the timing window is tight, and when you nail the dodge or parry, you are lavishly rewarded for proving to be the ultimate gamer with bonuses and, if you parry every attack in the string, a stunning counterattack riposte. Literally, if the one counterattacking was Maelle, who fights with a fencing sword. Dodging, parrying and counters have that same satisfaction you’ll find in a character action game.
What Expedition 33 failed to disclose, however, is that you must dodge and parry. This is a parry-or-die game. Your reflexes and ability to find the rhythm of enemy attacks and press buttons on point will determine how fun or frustrating the combat will be. Because there’s no way around the system. You can’t adjust the parry and dodge window. There’s an accessibility setting to auto-complete quick-time events for attacks, but nothing for parries or dodges. And there’s no way to practice the timing of these attacks other than to simply face the enemies head on and try and try again until you don’t die this time. By trial and error. In the wise words of Justin Wong, you gotta learn. And in the words of some Gestral you meet at the beach: “Enjoy failing.”
And every enemy in Expedition 33 has a unique string of combos and attacks with different dodge/parry timings. Some even have freaking feints, slow-mos and mix-ups of really fast hits and really slow ones just to make you tilted from getting a good counter.
See, they get it. That’s how character action dodges and parries work. There’s no UI indicator telling you to press the button now, you just have to feel it out. Some attacks have audio cues, some you can spot visually (though because of the realistic aesthetic and the wide zoomed out camera angles during enemy attacks sometimes it’s hard to keep track of what you supposed to be looking at). And you also have to keep in mind that you simply can’t spam dodge/parry over and over. There’s a startup and cooldown to the animations, so to speak, so you have to time the buttons to be a bit before the hit rather than on the exact frame when it hits as well as make note of there’s a bit of a gap before you can dodge/parry again. If you miss the first attack, it’s likely you can’t dodge/parry in time for the next fast attack, sometimes that could mean you just have to eat all the damage from that enemy combo.
And throw in attacks that must be jumped over (which oddly has a visual indicator) and Radiant Counters (which are oddly easier to perform, will immediately be followed-up with a counter but also very punishing if you missed pressing another specific button) and you got here a proper challenge that would get character action fans giddy, but those who expected a more straightforward turn-based RPG mortified. This isn’t a light sprinkling of parries, the whole dish has parries as its star ingredient.
I like to think I’m a big fan of parries in video games. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty got me into soulslikes because I feel so powerful when I can get the rhythm of a combo down to a T and can just parry all the time. But I can only parry and dodge so much in a play session.
And in the long play sessions I did to get this review out, I keep having the whole party killed over and over. I feel like screaming “Murder!” at the top of my lungs with a heavy French accent every time. It’s obscene how frustrating the combat can be that I would want to shout obscenities! It’s not that I can’t parry for shit, but when you ask to parry multiple combo strings over and over sometimes you just started to get tired and the dopamine hit of a good counter loses its luster. You can be trapped into a game of attrition where you literally have no option but to parry everything, or die. And in the sessions where I wasn’t able to get locked in, I did die.
“So, git gud then,” you say, oh dearest reader. And you know what, yeah, I should’ve. There is an easier difficulty option which I refuse to bow down to. And there are solutions to this frustration I had. It’s just not the solutions that I thought would be the obvious. Sure, you can’t make the parries and dodges easier and there’s not much tanking options (would be nice if the there’s more abilities that can add Shield stacks or more skills where a party member can tank another’s damage), but you can, well, upgrade the weapons to deal bigger damage, and assign the right gear to bolster your stats.
Huh. It’s that simple?
I feel like I don’t actually know what the numbers mean, is the problem.
Unintuitive UI Hides A Deep, Robust Character Building System
And let’s talk about the UI for a second. The menu controls are odd and you will take some time learning where everywhere is and what button does what. I like how the menu looks, but the way every interactable thing is spread on a screen makes me pine for mouse cursor as I often lost track where the highlighted button is at. This menu style is a good use case for that, yet it doesn’t have one.
While it seems with the character screen being full of information, you get to see everything you need here, but you don’t. I tried planning a build and I keep stumbling into the problem of not seeing some information being surfaced. Like, how many AP (action points) does a character start by default? And how many do they start now that I activated some Luminas (FFIX-esque passives buffs)?
And there’s also a lack of communication in regards to how attribute points and Pictos (the gear that grants a passive buff and stat bonuses) add to the overall stats. It took me 20 hours deep to realise that investing in points on Defence attribute points alone isn’t enough to really mitigate damage, as I happened to have made the lowest Defence character to have the highest damage mitigation stat thanks to their equipped Pictos, while the one with the most points invested in the stat the least. No wonder they couldn’t take those hits.
As overwhelming and cumbersome the UI is, and how much missing information you have to scour yourself, the character building system here is extremely deep and rewarding. Each character has a specific mechanic and specific set of skills to be unlocked via a skill tree. And these moves are designed to synergise with each other. For Lune, every spell casted leaves stains, and having the enough stains, and in the right colour, can power up the next spell she casts. For Maelle, every move ends with her entering a different stance which confers different buffs. Sciel has moves that gives her Sun and Moon stacks, and the idea is that you used Sun moves to add a different stack on enemies, only to cash them out with Moon skills, and doing so will trigger a powered-up mode.
And with all the selection of moves available, you are hard-limited to only carry six skills per character. So you really have to commit to a build. Should they bring in support skills like healing and buffs, or should they better off being the damage dealer and bring more offensive skills instead? And does every move here synergise with each other? Do you bring moves with less AP which can be used more often or should you bring in high-AP skills that may not trigger as often unless you nail each parry?
And the way AP, this game’s MP/magic resource, works is that it always start with a predetermined amount at the start of each battle (which you can augment with Pictos/Lumina). Parries, base attacks and some select skills can give AP back, so again you’re encouraged to parry to build that AP meter so you can use more powerful skills.
Ideally, during combat, you have a flow of skills you would do for each character. In a specific order. Almost like a… combo. Yes, Expedition 33 may be have turn-based combat, but this is a manifestation of character action combat in a turn-based format. You can create a set of three skills that is your bread-and-butter combo useful in any situation. You can have an option select, where one move can be followed up by a few others depending on the state of battle. You can design it to be a whole six-moves-long combo string if you want to. And the AP meter management feels more like a modern fighting game.
With Final Fantasy XVI, Square Enix solves the question of how to add more action to RPGs by turning it into a full-on character action game with light RPG elements. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, on the other hand, approaches the same problem with a different solution: express character action gameplay via turn-based battles.
And yeah, there’s another party member whose whole gimmick is just the Devil May Cry style meter, and using a specific skill at a specific rank gives extra bonuses. And yes, you can only get to S-Rank if you keep your momentum going with consecutive hits without ever getting hit yourself, so you better dodge or parry everything.
See, they get it.
And if skills are a playground for combofiends, the Pictos and Luminas are the playground for programmers and crafty RPG build makers. These are a passives that vary in variety. From as simple as adding extra AP at the start of a battle to something as odd as automatically dying at the start of battle.
But don’t you laugh at the Auto-Death Picto/Lumina passive and thinking this is a joke item. With the right setup, you can essentially sacrifice a weak character (or a character so far in EXP that you want everyone else to catch up) by piling on Pictos and Luminas where you can give buffs, AP and even deal damage upon death.
And if you’re a proper combofiend who also likes making builds, there’s even passives that makes parries more powerful at the cost of more punishment for failing. If you want to double down, go ahead.
It’s just a shame that the UI could have done a better job at making the ability to create these builds more intuitive. My favourite party member of the bunch, Monoco, has this fun mechanic where every skill he pulls off, it spins this wheel of masks and every skill he can find (by collecting the feet of his enemies- he’s essentially the game’s resident Blue Mage) is associated with a mask type. Now, if only there’s a visual display of the wheel when you’re equipping the skill so you can see where the wheel moves next after each skill so you can better plan your combo skills, that would’ve been sweet. But alas.
And while Expedition 33 is no soulslike, and I don’t think it would want to be associated with that subgenre of RPGs, it does have some Soulsian elements. Not that you’ll be dying over and over again, that’s mere a coincidence. But the way weapon upgrades is handled (you need specific items to improve its base stats, with rarer items require for higher levels), the way stat attributes work (unlike most JRPGs, you’re free to put all the stats on each party member) and the way consumables are refilled at checkpoints (which also respawns all enemies) are clearly a big nod to the big action-RPGs of today.
The combat system is designed with intent, care, and more importantly, no compromise to the vision. Yes, I am annoyed that you can land into situations where you have to be skill-checked by doing copious amount of dodges and parries if I don’t properly build my party. And yes, I am annoyed how cumbersome the menu UI is that gets in the way of having me plan out said builds.
That “no compromise to the vision” meant some aspects of the systems may feel rough, less focused or even just outright ignored as they focused on delivering on what matters. It has this raw edge feel of not being sanded down to adhere to the tastes of the lowest common denominator. If you can brush off all the faults I’m calling out here, and I implore you to do so, you’ll experience a robust RPG combat and build mechanics that reward those that truly explore its depth.
Turned Up Upside Down Too Often
But what do you do outside of combat? You roam around and explore the world, of course. And there are clever ideas being expressed here. You freely move in the third person, with two of your active party members appearing in person following you. You can pick anyone to control, and sometimes conversation go a bit different depending on who initiates the conversation. And there’s some light smatterings of platforming and puzzle-solving.
But man, I keep getting lost.
There’s something about the levels are designed that makes it blend too much together and made me not have any sense of direction. I could be making a loop from a central location but I don’t feel like recognise that I just did a loop and this is the place I started at.
It’s totally okay to intentionally not make a map or navigation system, at least one level is intentionally designed to be labyrinthian in nature. But still, why am I having such a hard time getting my footing? There’s a compass you can pull up, but it doesn’t help.
I feel that it’s down to the limited assets the game has which makes the locales feel a bit samey and as such everything just blends together. There are landmarks, but they don’t stand out at every angle. But then there’s at least a few set-piece locales that looks uniquely their own and I still have trouble navigating around. I dread every time there’s a fork in the road as I have no idea which way is progression. Add that the way you move around is rather janky (you stop sprinting if you move the left analog stick to a non-cardinal angle so you can’t sprint while cornering, but you can if you tilt the right analog stick and keep the left stick straight) and the finicky jumps and platforming and this could have been an awful experience.
Yet these are bearable enough. You can always come back to the levels and explore without the pressure of progression later on. And movement and traversal is borderline bearable and on the critical path, it won’t test you if you are good at jumping.
While the level exploration of Expedition 33 is so-so, it’s splendidly executed in the world map. The game has overworld exploration, like the JRPGs of yore. This stylistic choice allows this French fantasy world to feel much larger than it appears to be. Look at how far you zoom out of the map! Of course, most of the stuff later in the game are simply spread further so the map is a little inflated in size, but it gives this excitement and wonder of what lies ahead, something a good RPG usually goes well. And so does Expedition 33.
If there’s a weak point in Expedition 33, of all the complaints and criticism I have made, I’d say the exploration is the weakest. But I get it, there’s literally one person credited on level design, and I can see they have good ideas and intentions behind the decisions being made and the limitations they are working with. But it can’t be helped, the rest of the package is punching above their weight while this aspect is noticeably less so.
The gameplay of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is clearly inspired by many great games, and it blends them in a way that’s fresh, innovative and with incredible depth of mechanics. The exploration aspects is a little less stellar by comparison, but overall it gameplay feel will linger in your mind after playing its take on turn-based combat and world map exploration.
Content
But what will really linger in your mind, I strongly believe, is its storytelling.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is divided into multiple acts, and each one will blow your mind with revelations and shocks that will leave you agape. Even the prologue. But it’s not mere shock value, the more you discover the world and its cast, the more questions you will have, the more mysterious it becomes. What seemed to be clear becomes quite obscure facts you thought to be true don’t truly align.
This game is great as a subject for a game club, like a book club, where people go experience the game and come back to talk about it. You can have serious, deep discussions of themes, character motivations, world lore and more at each end of an act. Even if the later acts reveal there’s more layers to this story, it does not simply make light of what was revealed before as invalid. You can still see the world and characters from the lense and knowledge before each Big Reveal, and find the world and story compelling.
What do you mean this is lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen’s debut game?
If it isn’t obvious yet, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 feels like reading a great book.
The character banter? Effortless, witty, dramatic and at times funny without even trying to be funny. The emotional moments? Absolutely gobsmacked by how everyone behaves. The swear words? Just enough is used, and that includes those of the French variety for flavour. The worldbuilding? Mesmerising, even if it feels like it intentionally checking all the boxes of a hypothetical “JRPG Tropes” checklist, there’s enough twists to the tropes and the twists are smart. And it treats its audience to be smart enough to figure out what the world is without having a lore dump. And the audio logs! The audio logs!
Similar to Metaphor: ReFantazio, another fantastic turn-based RPG (and Gamer Matters’ GOTY of 2024), Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also explores the themes of what a fantasy is, and what it can do to reality. While Metaphor’s story goes for the bigger picture, Expedition 33’s story explores an unexpectedly more intimate scale.
And that’s not to mention the more surface levels themes of grief, death, the tragedy of immortality (shout out to Lost Odyssey) and what do we leave behind for the next generation. And there’s more themes and talking points that opens up as you complete each Act.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has a profound story that will make you feel things, and that feeling will linger still long after you complete this long game. It can be completed in 30 hours or so. I finished my playthrough after 40 hours. There’s a bucketload of endgame content that you can sink more hours to, from mini-games to challenging superbosses, or just skip past them all to go fight the final boss. And if you’re in love with the combat system, there’s just more of that to sink hours into this surprisingly meaty game. It truly lives up to its inspirations, being a properly long world-spanning adventure of a lifetime.
Personal Enjoyment
The minute the game was revealed last year on Xbox’s summer showcase last year, I was locked in. This looks like something special. But not because it looks pretty with Unreal Engine graphics. Not because the combat menu looks like Persona. Not because it has dodges and parries.
Rather, it was because the first thing I looked up about Sandfall Interactive, I found their website with profiles of some the leads on the game. Creative Director Guillaume Broche loves Persona 3, Devil May Cry, Demon’s Souls, Journey and Final Fantasy VIII. Oh these folks are cultured. They get it.
I’ve played enough turn-based RPGs over the years to know that the scene is still thriving, but for the mass audience of mainstream gamers, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 seems to be the lightning rod that dispels all their stereotypic filters of not looking at another JRPG assuming they’re all star a bunch of teenagers saving the world and kill god at the end.
But make no mistake, this is a melon pan. This game is so deeply inspired by JRPGs. And I love it because it’s being so obvious about it. I’m no RPG nerd, but I know enough to spot the many Final Fantasy references that makes up Verso’s skill tree. This game will change your perspective of turn-based RPGs, and JRPGs. If you were dismissive of those subgenres, I implore you to give another look at those games once you’ve done experiencing this game.
While I know I would love the game at first sight, I’m also surprised by how much the game wants me to hate it. Combat is a struggle for me, even more painful as it made the thing I like (parries) to be my bane. I loved the setting of this fantasy world but I keep getting lost in it, literally and in the not-fun kind of way.
But everytime it pushed me away, it reels me back in with little morsels of lore, of character development.
And the commitment to the bit.
Look, I know people are fawning over how beautiful Lune is, but have you seen her feet?
I don’t know which comes first, making her barefooted or make her sprint by levitating and have the sole of one foot be visible on the screen. And then they doubled down. There’s at least two other conversations you can have with her where there’s a sole reference. To feet. Really.
See, they get it.
And with limited production budget and scope, they still managed to make a fun (and frustrating) set of mini-games by reusing assets in creative ways. But make still worth your time by having at least three jazz songs just for this, and the ultimate reward for cosmetics: swimsuits.
Expedition 33 can be unserious at times, and be entirely serious and dramatic at others, at a drop of a dime. Like a Like A Dragon game (which its mainline entries have made the transition to becoming a a turn-based RPG after Yakuza: Like A Dragon, Gamer Matters’ GOTY for 2020). They nail that intricate balance of tone, maybe not the same intensity of tonal whiplash as those LADs, but they know when to let their hair down, and when to tie them proper.
As a lover of JRPGs, I can sense that same love being poured into Expedition 33.
And that love, is something rare to experience in a video game. With the current state of the games industry, games are megaprojects worth hundreds of millions of dollars with teams of over hundreds having to make a video game successful enough to be sold more than just a million copies for executives to call it a dissapointment, and many talents suddenly lose jobs through no fault of their own. Games have become products, designed for the masses, and must cater to the lowest common denominator to maximise sales and profit, so the corporate mandate goes.
So when a relatively small team of independent developers make a game of their own and pour their all to it, you feel it.
There are aspects of Expedition 33 that are incredibly rough, yet some overly excessive in quality. And I resonate with those extremities. I have more things to say, nitpick and praise (which makes my job easier).
But more importantly, it leaves a long impression.
While my experience with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn’t fully positive, the memories I have from experiencing this game will linger until at least the end of this year, and hopefully longer. It’s a video game, it makes no claims of further ambition. But the more I play it, the more I see myself in a mirror, reflecting what games I actually do enjoy, and a window, as I let my imagination go trying to figure who are these 30+ people at Sandfall Interactive (and various outsourcing talents, voice actors, and other ancillary yet important personnel that contributed to this game).
That’s what that five instances of me saying”get it” meant. I see a part of themselves, being laid bare, mask off. And what do I see? Their sincere love and passion for JRPGs that inspire them. The love of France and its culture, which most of the team I assume grew up in. And their (well, maybe one person, or two, someone had to sign this off) obsession with a particular part of the body. It’s out there, for us the audience to see, understand, criticise and experience. They put a part of their soul into this art they’ve painted. As if this is some kind of… great art.
Verdict
Art isn’t like a product. A product is good when it satisfies the requirement of what is meant to do. If video games is a product, then it should provide the maximum fun and satisfaction effortlessly. But if video games are art, it has to be challenging. It has to have something to say. Whether it saying something about the artist(s), or leave it something for you, the audience, to say. Like the opening quote, great art is when it’s both a window and a mirror. And Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is created in the philosophy.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 embodies the spirit of the Expeditioners the game portrays. This is a bona-fide RPG inspired by others that come before it. Yet the game brings in new ideas, a clear vision of what turn-based RPGs can be, and offers many rooms for improvement. The parry-or-die nature of its combat system can be punishing, its UI obtuse, and exploring may not be the best aspect it has to offer.
Yet even with its faults, even when the combat system isn’t for everyone, the game feels like it has focused on the parts that matters to the development team, and they have done so with intent and a clear vision.
And let’s hope there is a bright future. Just like its inspirations, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has set up a road to success for those who come after.
The world can use a few more games like this, turn-based RPGs with more evocative themes made by different people around the world with lower production scope and budget than unsustainable industry standards. This game isn’t the first of its kind, but we must ensure it must not be the last.
Played on base PS5. Review copy provided by Bandai Namco, distributor for the game in Asia
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
This is a bona-fide RPG inspired by others that come before it. Yet the game brings in new ideas, a clear vision of what turn-based RPGs can be, and offers many rooms for improvement.
- Presentation 9
- Gameplay 9
- Content 9.5
- Personal Enjoyment 8.5