Obscure, No More

A review of "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33", the best turn-based combat in gaming, and the game to beat for my Game of The Year.

God, just look at this cover art.

“Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” is not just a special game– it’s an essential one. It’s already one of the greatest RPGs, if not games, I have ever played, I think.

Talking about the wonderful time I had with this game puts me at risk of going on at significant length about every detail of its inner workings. It’s hard to know how to keep it brief while still being in-depth enough to describe the underlying ‘stuff’ about this game, in particular.

I am still trying to figure out a balance of these sorts of things with my reviews on this site. I am discovering my voice as a critic and writer, as well as finding out what I want to talk about when I do this sort of coverage about a game.

Having said all of this, I can’t help but admit that I will be doing a fair amount of gushing when talking about this title.

Now, to just say it. I may be crazy for this, but who cares? I think “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” will be my game of the year, when it’s all said and done.

At the time of this writing, we are reaching the end of May, but I am so confident that this game will stay at the top of my Game of the Year personal “top 10” at the end, I am very comfortable making this claim, even as this year’s releases continue to come out.

This game is so good, it might even make it to the higher ranks of the ‘All-Time Favorite Games Ever’, list I keep current in a NotesApp column saved to my phone. I loved this game that much.

It’s in contention with Metaphor: Re Fantazio, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, VII Remake, and Fallout 3, for my favorite RPG ever. I think of this game that highly.

It’s truly an unforgettable masterpiece– and a landmark title in the genre for its innovative battle system, a truly audacious story with beautifully rendered, acted, and designed characters, wonderfully composed and played music, and finally, fantastic design and depth in it’s main and side content to rival all other titles in the genre for it’s sheer quality of content.

It’s truly a spectacle to behold what Sandfall Interactive has accomplished with this game (their first as a studio).

I am in awe.

“Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” starts with you playing as Gustave, a resident of the fractured Parisian metropolis, Lumiere: a decaying wreck of a city deep in the throes of a veritable world-altering apocalypse.

Gustave is the closest thing to being a mix between a scholar, scribe, and inventor all in one, for Lumiere. He is constantly creating and notating all of the particular implements, history, and inventions of and for society in the decrepit city-state.

You start your adventure with Gustave on the day of “The Gommage”: an event brought on annually by the somber deity of the world (known only as “The Paintress), who wipes away any living beings in Lumiere over a certain age. Each year, The Paintress writes a new number on a slab in the distance, corresponding to the new age limit imposed on all humans living in Lumiere.

After each time the Gommage happens, a group of Expeditioners tasked with killing The Paintress sets out across the sea to locate her and end the vicious cycle of death.

It’s one of the best opening acts for any game I have ever played.

The prologue of Expedition 33 is captivating, heart-wrenching, and anger-inducing, all in equal measure. You talk to many NPC’s each affected by the Gommage in the opening hour of the prologue.

Everyone in Lumiere is grappling with the Gommage.

Either they know someone who will gommage or they are someone who will be gommaged, and both are shouldering the generational trauma of this broken world in different ways.

It was eye-opening to see how different people in Lumiere react to the happenings of the day and how they do or don’t cope with the Gommage. Exploring Lumiere and talking to its citizens in the early goings of the game is fantastic. It is brilliant world-building that has no problem taking its time showing you the state of the world, and the people who are living in it.

It’s remarkable how quickly I gave myself over to the game after witnessing the Gommage in its entirety, and seeing the complicated social dynamic between Gustave and an ex-lover doomed to pass in the 34’s vanishing.

It’s a messy, lovely, and brilliant start to a video game. I can’t remember the beginning of a game capturing me so wholly and completely like this. I cannot extol the virtues of this prologue’s sequences enough. It’s an all-time moment in video game stories for me. The acting is immaculately voiced and performed, with the writing in particular here being especially sublime in its quality.

Once the Gommage happens, the Expedition mourns for a night, kisses their loved ones goodbye, and sets off the following day. All the participants in the newest squad each wear a golden sash, tied to their bicep, with the number of the current team’s oldest members: ‘33’, a number signifying the new limit of age imposed by the godlike being in the distance. There is now a ticking clock. A year left to kill The Paintress.

The entire first Act of Expedition 33 is in a class all its own for its execution of ideas and the brilliant writing used to flesh out the proceedings. As you play, you find different party members, all of whom have survived the initial landfall of reaching the Paintress's domain, with each having their role to play in the story.

You start with the shoeless mage and intellectual, Lune: the inquisitive primary magic-user of the party, who glides over the landscape with relative ease, aided by her significant arsenal of magic. She is the conscience and direction for the party throughout the story, and she is the greatest asset and sometimes, most constant opponent to the character of Gustave, in the early hours of 33’s main narrative.

The second is the spritely youth, Maelle: the youngest of the group, at only 16, who plays the largest part in the later hours of 33’s story-related events. She is the ‘glass cannon’ of the party, whose penchant for dealing high amounts of damage with her burning rapier is only tempered by her lower health pool in combat. Balancing the two is the key to succeeding early in the difficult fights you engage in with the enemies of Expedition 33.

Third, is Sciel: the buffing and damage-dealer of the party, armed with a deadly, double-ended scythe. Sciel is the most intriguing and complex of the initial group, only divulging her deepest secrets to her closest confidants. If you are loyal to her, she will become your fiercest ally, and she was my personal favorite of the party when it came to her gameplay. She has a sort of ‘sun and moon’ card stacking mechanic that layers cards on enemies to either deal high amounts of damage or heal multiple pips of lifebar, in more dangerous skirmishes.

As you continue, you meet two more party members, the buoyant ‘gestral’: Monoco, and the mysterious expeditioner: Verso, with the latter being one of the biggest players in the narrative of the game, by its end.

Each of these characters, with their distinct and novel movesets, personalities, and stories, makes up one of the most diverse, engaging, and well-rounded RPG casts in recent memory. The roster of unique people that make up the main cast of the game rivals that of Mass Effect 2’s assemblage of diverse galaxy inhabitants, Baldur’s Gate 3’s DnD flavored miscreants, Metaphor: Re Fantazio’s merry band of royal misfits, and even Final Fantasy VII’s group of timeless party members, for me.

Sandfall Interactive has created real, living characters with as much heart and intellectual pathos as any of the characters from the games I listed– and I will not be forgetting Expedition 33’s main cast any time soon. They are a special group of people, cultivated by a talented studio, with remarkable care and craft in their creation.

Story and characterization in Clair Obscur are two of the strongest features about it, but even better still is the turn-based action-oriented battle system. It takes the best mechanics, stylization, and implementations from turn-based JRPGs and smashes them together to create one of the best feeling combat loops I have ever played. It might very well be the best system of combat I have ever interacted with in a turn-based game, or games as a medium.

Sandfall liberally borrows from classic JRPG franchises like “Final Fantasy”, and “Persona”, to create this sort of mish-mash of different systems and real-time mechanics that when married, work beautifully in concert with one another.

It takes elements of the sort of: “I go, you go,” and “Press Turn” systems of those previously mentioned franchises and blends them together to create it’s own look, feel, and flow for combat.

In combat, you can have up to 3 initial main party members to choose from when you engage the enemy. Each party member has different combat styles, abilities, health pools, and damage outputs. In a novel spin on the availability of party members in longer, more drawn-out fights– when all 3 of your main crew goes down for one reason or another, the remaining 2 party members can optionally be called to the front lines, in a sort of ‘last stand’ for your expedition; which works both narratively and design-wise for the gameplay to afford the rest of your group a chance to take down a formidable foe or group of enemies. It’s an awesome addition to the mechanics of combat to allow you to keep going even when your crack team has bitten the dust. It also keeps each difficult engagement exciting to know you will have a great shot every time to get the task at hand done.

Your characters all matter, and outfitting them with their gear is vital to your success.

The character equipment is shockingly customizable here. Every weapon you receive can be upgraded, every skill can be learned by every party member, and different synergies and skills between characters and builds can stack and coordinate with other characters in a round, if done correctly.

It’s frankly quite an exploitable system if you know what build you want to craft. The exploits of the ‘build-crafting’ for characters seem intentional on behalf of the developers, and you get the feeling that they are encouraging experimentation in their game to reward inquisitive players.

Once you set your party, their builds, and put on a cool costume or two, you engage in turn-based combat.

These turns are a mix of the standard turn systems from “Final Fantasy”, where each side goes through their team’s rounds of combat in order (usually), and the “Persona”, advantage style system of combat: where higher-skilled players are afforded more opportunities to attack the enemy in a given round.

You have stats for each character that govern how quickly they attack, how much damage they deal, how lucky you are for critical attack chances, and how much damage they take, for instance. Raising or lowering these stats is a matter of allocating the proper points at a checkpoint, and can be redone at any time with the ‘recoat’ currency gathered throughout the adventure.

These stats differ for each character’s proficiencies and weapon scaling, and different weapons work better with different stats on characters.

Furthermore, you are afforded the use of ‘Pictos’ in the game, which affords buffs, debuffs, and unique combat expression when used. After successfully making it through 4 rounds of combat without dying, these ‘Pictos’ can be equipped on any character, so mixing and matching different abilities makes for even deeper ‘build-crafting’.

The amount of minute modifications and gritty detail hiding deep in the stats, equipment, and abilities menus of “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33”, makes for one of the most flexible and well-designed games, I can remember. It’s truly remarkable a first time studio accomplished this breadth of player expression, in their debut game. It’s astonishing.

When you attack in this game, it feels fluid and impactful. You have many options at your disposal when battles happen, and knowing which order to do each in is crucial to getting a fight over with just as quickly as it started.

First off, you have your basic attack. It’s a move that costs nothing to do, and if you are lacking in action points for higher damage moves, it’s a good default to do a bit of damage and build that currency up for larger attack strings. Each weapon additionally has an elemental affinity that can also be used to attack enemy weaknesses, once identified. The best way to find out what enemies are weak to is by experimenting with your tools. Using skills and weapons tied to specific elemental affinities can be used to identify their weaknesses of, displayed on screen above an enemy once they’ve been hit.

You also have a ‘free aim’ function, where you aim your gun, magic blast, or wooden staff at foes to exploit weak points on them, or to attack flying enemies in fights that will dodge normal physical attacks. It’s very akin to the “Persona” series, where you have a very similar mechanic, albeit not being able to freely aim your gun. This mechanic mostly brought to mind “Valkyria Chronicles”, for the aiming, where the difference in maneuverability is that you are rooted to the ground for fights in Clair Obscur, while “Valkyria Chronicles” has you running from cover to cover and freely shooting when in an attacking phase. It’s a system I haven’t seen in a traditional JRPG-style combat system, and it’s a very novel implementation of a familiar mechanic, I think.

Lastly, there are ‘Skills’ you can use when a certain amount of ‘action points’ (or AP) have been stored per character. As you level your characters and allocate stats, you can use leveling currency to unlock nodes on a skill tree at checkpoints, which grants the use of different skills in battle. You can slot up to 6 skills per party member, and unlocking and utilizing these skills well can be the difference in more intense rounds of combat.

Your banked AP can be cashed in for these skills, with each selected skill having an aforementioned elemental affinity that can be used on enemies’ weaknesses. This sort of investigating and identifying of weaknesses is again, inspired by “Persona”, and having this kind of range of options to choose from when you are fighting, makes for thrilling gameplay.

Selecting all these functions is stylish, and also brings to mind that distinct, ‘Atlus’ style flair for menus. Clair Obscur’s onyx and gold color palette for both its menu and default character aesthetic theming is gorgeous looking. It’s well designed and just looks fantastic while you’re interacting with it. HUD elements float mid-air, as if they are extensions of your characters’ psyche or spiritual potential, and hitting a function to enact an action looks and feels spectacular, here.

Between the attacking, free aiming, and skill usage you can do on offense, there is another dynamic of engagement that you are doing that may be the most important in Clair Obscur’s combat dance: countering.

When baddies attack, they hit hard. Even on the standard difficulty, I was routinely getting ‘worked’ by enemies when they were dealing damage, with some fights even ending with me getting ‘one-shot’ by a particularly wily attacker.

It can be brutal if you are unskilled and unprepared. It’s a matter of learning how and when to counter and dodge effectively. Mostly, it’s about learning how and when to parry attacks from enemies, what sound they make when they’re vulnerable to be countered, and when to dodge when you know you can’t parry effectively. It’s a matter of listening to the little indicators before an attack lands, but identifying and executing parries based on that is another matter entirely.

The countering system is quite simply the best part of the game on a purely gameplay level, for me. It was so engaging to learn enemies’ attack strings, complex combos, and various quirks to their style of offense. For skilled players who can properly identify what needs to be done, a good defense can become the best offense, even if you are down to one party member.

This calls to mind a time in combat, where I was down all the members in my party, except for Lune. I had been caught off guard by my opponents and had paid the price dearly for my unpreparedness. By the time she was left, I was down to a sliver of health with no AP to spend on healing myself or resurrecting my party.

My saving grace here, however, is that I had finally learned the combat strings my enemies had been doing up to now. As you counter attacks, you build up AP as a reward for doing so effectively. So, armed with the knowledge of their attacks, I focused on just parrying and counter-attacking my enemies, whilst banking AP to increase my action potential.

Locking in, I executed each counter perfectly.

Building up my AP just by parrying and counter-attacking, I was able to heal myself up completely with my AP, resurrect all my party members that had been downed, and destroy the remaining enemies with relative ease.

This was the moment the combat loop clicked for me.

Finally, I had gotten it. Learning the give and take of the mechanics was both exhilarating and exhausting, but it was winning that fight that taught me the correct way to win, even when I was down to my last party member. It was a rush to get through that fight, and that’s why I think it’s my favorite battle system in any RPG game.

Sandfall has done brilliant work here, and I cannot extol the virtues of this combat loop enough.

This type of ‘defensive offense’ differs wildly from the games that Clair Obscur borrows from so heavily, and its implementation feels like one of the freshest and newest mechanical additions to the genre in years. It’s not a new idea to be able to mitigate damage from enemies in an RPG, but it’s how you’re able to go about executing on said mechanic that remains the most interesting piece to the combat puzzle.

Countering and actively defending reminds me of “Paper Mario”, where you are incentivized to time button presses to mitigate incoming volleys of attacks from enemies. The same principles are here, with the main core difference being that if you counter each attack perfectly, you can unleash a cinematic counter-attack that does devastating damage to the enemy during their combat round.

It’s the most useful way to climb your way back into fights, and its inclusion is the key to going hitless in tougher battles, which awards higher bonuses to XP at the result tally screen.

Balancing all of your offensive and defensive capabilities is the name of the game in “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33”, and the mix of abilities at your fingertips makes the entire adventure a blast to play all the way through. By the time I reached the end, I was parrying full strings of attacks, dodging with ease, and countering with my full party’s force for ‘Expedition Counters’, a mechanic that happens once every attack string for every party member has been successfully deflected in a defensive round.

There are these single counters, party counters, and finally, flashy sepia-toned wave attacks called: Gradient Attacks and Gradient Counters, that are more powerful sets of previous types of moves. You build a sort of ‘super’ meter while you fight that adds to a 3-section bar over your skills overlay, that when filled, allows you to unleash a slew of unique, overpowered attacks onto your enemies before you, at no cost to your action points.

So, for a fluid turn, you can gradient attack super, shoot a weakness, and enact a skill all in one round with a character. If your build is right, and you choose your action carefully, you can one-turn fights, and wipe away the opposition in one go, if you’re skilled enough.

The same can be said for the enemy attackers, though, where you have to counter gradient attacks from their side with gradient counters, that when parried precisely, throws back the damage being dealt.

It’s these capabilities in the battle systems, mixed with the countering tools, that make this my favorite turn-based combat in gaming. I never once got tired of interacting with it, and I constantly learned new things while I played, all the way up to the end of the story.

Again, it’s unbelievable that this is Sandfall’s first release, because the confidence of this game jumps off the screen in almost every facet of the finished product. It is nothing short of incredible what the team has managed to do here with their first game.

By the end, I had more than enough side things to do in the overworld, and it’ll take me another 20 or 30-some odd hours I imagine to clean up all of the side quests, arena battles, various collectibles, and tougher ‘chromatic’ bosses that the world has to offer, after the end of the campaign. In all, it took me around 25 hours to reach the end of the main narrative in Clair Obscur, and by the end, I was left forever changed.

It’s an unparalleled triumph in its genre. It has the best combat I have ever played in a turn-based game, an unforgettable story about grief and persistence, with fantastically realized characters and an indelible world and setting, that I will simply never forget.

I have almost no issues with this game. It’s simply remarkable that a game developed at this scale can run as well as it can, while looking as magnificent as it does, sounds as fantastic as it does, whilst delivering on quality the way no game in its genre has, save for a select few. It left me gobsmacked for most of its duration, and that’s something I can rarely say about any other title in the medium.

It’s a game that is all killer with zero filler, and it is much better for it. There is not a moment you could trim, a side task you could cut, or an encounter you could remove that would make this game better. It’s the best version it could ever be right out of the box, on a content level.

This game is the new gold standard of quality in the RPG genre, full stop. JRPGs,and narrative based games have a new champion to look up to, and “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33”, is that new high watermark for the genre, and video games as a whole.

I adored everything about this video game.

It’s a rare thing that is the case for me. Even as positive a person as I am, I have some hang-ups about even the best of products.

I highly recommend this game and all the content within, wholeheartedly and without reservation. You will be doing yourself a disservice if you miss out on this game, I truly think.

It is one of the greatest games I have ever had the privilege of playing, and it is by far the game to beat for me this calendar year.

As the year shuffles on, “We continue.”

I leave this review now for you, and: “for those who come after…”

For those reading this, thank you! I appreciate your time, and as always– Keep Gaming!!