When I first saw the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 trailer at Gamescom, I immediately knew that I want to play this game. It was Final Fantasy’s grandeur and Nier’s existential dread on a turn based RPG. But here’s the twist—I had no idea this game was already hyped until I started writing. If you are still undecided this is an overview with some elements to make up your mind. I will go through :
- Introduction to the Story
- The Graphics
- Progress and exploration
- The Soundtrack
- Characters
- Combat
Introduction to the Story
Dystopian, Super dystopian! Without spoilers. You live in a city called Lumiere (light) and an entity named the “Paintress” runs the show from a distant island and yearly she eliminates everybody who reaches a certain age by a process called “gommage” in french,”to erase”.🧽
Paintress…erasing…very artistic ways to simply say that everybody is going to die…unless, a brave group of heroes, prepare an expedition to the island to stop the “gommage”. The group made of people that are supposed to be “gommaged” the next year. You are the Expedition 33. There has been …many before you. They didn’t make it.
As you can see, very interesting dark story. There is this complete sense of hopelessness and are they really going to pull themselves out of this or we are going to have a very bad surprise “a la Netflix”.
I love games where I feel completely lost. This game has pushed this feeling near the maximum. The story is pretty messed up so if you like dark and complex you are going to be very well served. Now let’s see how all this looks like, let’s talk graphics.
The Graphics : A Beautiful Nightmare.
The environment looks really nice. it alternates flashy decors, colors with pretty dark areas, in short a beautiful nightmare. Sometimes I just stop to look around. It is not the level of an Elden Ring in the details and a bit blurry at times but this is not a problem at all. I enjoyed games with graphics very far away from this such as Bro-force or Celeste, this is more than enough.
Progress & Exploration : fun and deadly
As we enjoy the graphics, we move around in third person view. It is quite linear but there is a good room for exploration. You will encounter friendly and unfriendly, some are fun and some are ugly. You can engage or be engaged by enemies. If you are fast enough you will get the first strike. If you die, go back to checkpoint, if you save all enemies respawn. You have to manage the health of your party between the checkpoints.
There is a top view “world map” to navigate between the locations. You can engage in combat while on route. Quite blurry.
Characters : very frenchy
When I saw the character names: Bastien, Gustave, Maelle, Lune, etc… it was clear that it will not be possible for me to continue the game in English. I switched to “Francais” for the voices. Original is always better if you understand. This clear culture statement is really great and I hope games in Africa will emerge in the same way in the near future.
Each characters, as in a well respected RPG, has his unique weapon and skills. You can acquired and upgrades character specific attributes, weapons and skills. Additional traits and upgrade can be acquired for all characters: they are called “Pictos” (Pictura – in latin is picture. one more reference to drawing).
The menu is very straight forward and focused on the essentials. It could be improved with more sorting options on the pictos because with the increasing number choosing becomes more difficult. Again for me personally it is fine. The re-assigning of skills is a bit confusing maybe better highlighting of the skill to change will help.
I have the tendency to stick to the same characters to build them to the max. Here, I realize that I must play with different characters because the skills are so unique that you have to learn how to use all the characters. Example Lune is the only character has Ice and earth magic. If the opponent has a weakness, to exploit it you must use the right character. Also each Character has his own combat mechanics associated with skills that you have to learn how and when to activate.
The Sound Track : Magnifique !
Ahhh La musique !! Nothing much to say a part from the fact that it is wonderful ! This is with Soul of Midnight the best musical environment I have listened this year. It reminds me of a Final Fantasy or a Nier. The music in the background is great and in combat mode it is even better as it varies from level to level and is really engaging. For me the music can easily make 50% of the game experience. Celeste is a very good example. This is really well done.
Combat – A combination of classic & innovation
This topic can take several articles, I will share as much as I can without being too long. First of all, it is amazing! they revisited the turn based and gave it a completely different shape. At the same it is familiar for RPG players and simultaneously it is different and you will have to read and learn and adapt to the innovative gameplay.
You engage in combat with 1-3 team members (screenshot down right).
Each turn (up left) you can select between one of the listed actions (around the character) :
- Item – use an item
- Attack – hit with weapon
- Skill – user specific attack or magic using AP
- Aim – use AP to shoot opponent
Items – very few items basically to recover health, skill points and revive. Very surprising when you know how many items we can have in regular RPGs.
Attack – most classic move. It has also the function to add AP.
Aim – Shooting your opponent, you will inflict damage and status effects based on your character build such as burn, mark, defenseless, etc…), you can hit a weak spot causing more damage or disable an enemy function.
Skill– a set of unique moves that includes magic. Each character has its own fighting system that you need to learn to get the best out it otherwise you won’t last long or get frustrated. Note that the number of skills you can in use in one battle is limited. Some strategic thinking will be required.
Each character has his own play system (on the right). In the screenshot Lune, has stains. each skill used fills a stain block that can be used to boost the skill with power or status ailments.
The Hidden Sekiro
The combat is turn based with a BUT and a big one (yes the but). You can,… actually you must avoid, jump or…parry!
Forget passive ‘Defend’ commands a la Final Fantasy—here, parrying is a Sekiro-style song and dance of death. Miss the timing? Prepare for pain. Master it? You’ll unleash counterattacks so satisfying, they’ll make you cheer. This is a short video on how powerful it is.
Combat summary :
- Prepare by building and choosing the right characters, skills and pictos according to the enemy.
- Engage your opponents by leveraging on your character skills. Search for weak points to shoot
- Learn perfect timing to avoid massive damage and make devastating counter attacks.
Conclusion
If you like RPG, flashy environment, a story full of mysteries and questions, great characters by design with their unique dark story that you can build to hit hard and impress your peers showing your combat skills with epic enemies and bosses that will drive you mad because you missed the timing of the parry. This is for you.
It does more with less, not so many items, not many menu options somehow it tackles the essential components of a game: an engaging story and a great gameplay. If you played the genre before it is a familiar type of game that challenged and elevated it to a new level. Looking forward to share your experience on it.
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