Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an odd duck. Developed by French developer Sandfall Interactive, it’s a turn-based RPG in the vein of Japanese-made classics like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, but like previously reviewed Edge of Eternity, it was developed by a non-Japanese studio. In this case, Sandfall is French, and that is very much felt throughout the game.
Set in an alternate version of Paris, which has been torn away from the rest of the world, the game starts as the new Gommage is set to begin. Every year, the clock ticks down and those whose age equals to the number eerily displayed far away at sea is whisked away by the mysterious Paintress, who has been doing what she does for over 60 years up to this point. Every Gommage, a new Expedition leaves the docks heading for the continent in hopes of putting an end to that grisly event, and it’s in its 67th iteration that inventor Gustave is set to begin his own adventure.
As part of a group of uniquely skilled warriors, our protagonist has a torn heart as he embarks on the journey, as the love of his life is among the latest to be taken away, and alongside the very Robert Pattinson-looking hero, goes his foster niece, also a capable fighter herself. The team is eventually set upon by a shady figure at the beach they land in, with Gustave being among the small group of survivors who must make do with what they have and try to take out the Paintress for good.
Clair Obscur plays like an action RPG when you’re out and about in the content. You run and jump around in third-person looking for items and can preemptively attack enemies in order to get a leg up in battle. When engaged in a fight, you’re given the choice of attacking, using items, or putting special skills to use, but the most useful of your commands is the ranged strike, which can incapacitate monsters if you manage to hit them at their weak spot.
There’s also a touch of action during the turn-based fights. In order to avoid getting hit, you have to either time a dodge, whose window is fairly larger than a parry’s, which can then be combined into a counter. Jumping also comes into play, too. It’s a fun way that Starfall found to keep players engaged, and surely, enemies do get tricky when it comes to timing your defense.
Your own attacks are all tied to not only one meter, but two. First, you have to have enough charges in order to build up your skills and can be acquired with your basic hit as well as a few powers. Then there’s action points, which can be recharged with items and are spent when you basically do anything in battle. It’s a see-saw that feels slightly annoying at first, since you can have more than enough of one to put a skill to use, only not be able to because you don’t have the other. But the more you level up and unlock more moves, the less it’ll matter at the end, since you’ll get numerous chances to charge both up.
Battles hinge on carefully minding the enemies’ elemental weaknesses, which thanks to some of your teammates’ skills can become quite intuitive and easy to do so. Speaking of your team, the variety in characters and their powers is one of the highlights of Expedition 33: they don’t just change up in terms of what kind of weapons they can use, but also a wide range of gameplay styles, like having stances to keep track off or balancing out dark and light attacks, biting a cue off of Final Fantasy XIV’s Red Mage, for instance.
Weapon-wise, you can collect new ones and change up your characters set as you want, and they can be upgraded spending currency while at camp, much like your usual RPG faire, with some materials being much rarer than the rest, making exploration and the defeat of major enemies a must if you want to max out a particular combat style for a character that you like. The aforementioned items that are used in fights replenish after each bout, and the number you can carry is fully upgradeable in camp as well.
I keep talking about it, but the camp bears further explanation. That’s because from area to area, you are required to navigate a map, where you can also get into encounters with monsters, but are given the option to stop, like a fire and take a break to talk to your friends. There, as Clair Obscur moves along, new activities pop up, and it’s a nice little distraction from the rest of the game, honestly. The best way to move the story, in fact, is to interact with your team while sitting by the fire.
Expedition 33’s main charm is its world design and aesthetics. The European influences when it comes to the way that the environments and characters look is undeniable, but so is the whole videogame-y style that Sandfall adopted for the enemy designs and the overall exploration of its map. It’d be unfair to say that the game is linear per se, but cutting out of the main path merely takes you to a nook with an item usually, or a stronger enemy to square off against, from where you’ll spin back around and keep going forward.
There’s not a whole lot of depth to be found running around, but thankfully the combat helps keep the pacing afloat thanks to the sheer number of possibilities that are available when it comes to your fighters’ deck. It’s nothing that will blow you away, mind you, but it’s dynamic enough to save Clair Obscur from feeling all too samey with everything outside of fighting. Granted, the story certainly has some neat hooks and decent development, but it’s not nearly enough to keep the game going on its own.
During the preview period, Sandfall promised to deliver a different affair with a taste for the familiar of the old school, and they surely kept that going in the end product. While I would’ve preferred having more to do in the beautiful world that they’ve crafted than merely poke around it in search of collectibles, what there is to fight against helped keep me engaged with the game in the end.
The cast is captivating enough in their own right and you’ll grow to care about their plight, but whether or not you’ll see through the odyssey of saving humanity will depend on how you like the combat and can be successful at avoiding incoming dangers. I for one see myself doing just that, even if the whole package is ultimately disjointed; I’m having fun experimenting around with character builds and team composition enough not to mind the straightforwardness of it all. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is indeed weird like that.
