Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the most important games in the history of the artform. It’s one of those games which will be talked about and analysed for years to come. Its narrative, visuals, mechanics and music are expertly crafted, and it’s all melded together in such a remarkable way that it effortlessly stands out from the crowd, makes a powerful statement about “modern gaming”, and elevates the artform of games. This all sounds like hyperbole, and this review will attempt to justify what’s said, but there’s huge emotion bubbling behind the scenes around this game that evokes feelings that are hard to sufficiently describe. You quite simply must play it.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a French-made Japanese role-playing game. It’s very traditional in its JRPG mechanics and story-driven experience as well, featuring turned-based combat based on a speed attribute, skills and magic to learn and equip, a range of weapons to find specific to each character, multiple characters to choose for the main party, and an expansive set of attribute modifiers to tinker with. It’s not dissimilar to what can be found in the Final Fantasy series, especially PlayStation classics Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX. However, these JRPG components are highly refined and reforged here. In fact, despite the familiar mechanics, everything feels like it was designed from scratch solely for this game.
The weapons, for example, are the only equipment that is managed for each character, with each weapon offering different modifiers to fit different playstyles and character builds, with levels you can upgrade to increase their damage and unlock further modifiers. Upgrading weapons is done through a set of specific resources that can be found or purchased throughout the adventure and choosing what to upgrade with these limited resources, especially the final resource to unlock a weapon’s top level of 33, is an important factor when trying to sculpt the ideal party. It cleverly offers plenty of options whilst reigning in the complexity. This would be a confusing and off-putting challenge if armour, amulets, shields and trinkets were also involved, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 keeps the focus on the weapons.
Meanwhile, skills and magic are treated the same way. Each character has their own unique set of skills that range from what you would categorise as normal skills, such as multiple sword strikes, or more magical abilities, like summoning fire. As characters level up you can gradually unlock these skills and equip them to one of the six slots each character possesses. Much like the weapons, skills feed into character attributes and playstyle, as well as enemy status ailments and even other skills they can enhance, offering another clever and expansive set of character customisation options for you to explore whilst not letting the complexity explode into something unmanageable.
Then there’s the Pictos and Luminas. These modify character attributes and abilities in a variety of different ways and are the key to crafting awesomely powerful characters. Three Pictos can be equipped at one time to each party member, providing attribute enhancements such as increased maximum health or speed, etc, as well as modifying the character in some way, such as allowing them to take multiple sequential turns in combat, or even ones that seem crazy and detrimental, such as causing them to lose all health and die at the beginning of combat. However, there are uses for all of these modifiers, and when used together they can forge incredible character builds and afford remarkable combat prowess. Once a Pictos has been equipped for four winning combat encounters, their modifiers are unlocked and can be equipped to any character as Luminas, assuming you have enough Limina Points for that character to wield the modifier.
Lumina Points increase naturally for each character but many more can be found, purchased or received as quest rewards, and these can then be spent on the party. This is where you truly unlock the potential of the characters, building versions that utilise their unique weapon’s modifiers with the character’s skills, the Pictos and Luminas, and the character combat style, to create an unstoppable force. Everything works together harmoniously, and once tapped into, it feels like becoming one with the matrix.
This sense of harmony is rife in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Everything feeds into one another and enhances the overall experience. In fact, it’s this harmony that makes the game so exceptional. The story is unique and clever. It has a dreamlike quality to it that threatens to lose you in complexity at every tun, but manages to hang on to your attention and understanding by answering enough questions with each beat to feel like you’re making progress in understanding the bigger picture. Meanwhile, new questions are raised and you’re compelled to continue and figure it all out over the 40 or so hours it spans.
It’s also supremely beautiful. Its intriguing world and circumstance you find the characters in is all underlined by a surprisingly romantic and tragic story, punctuated by exciting and hugely emotional scenes. The overall plot and the stories of the individual characters are all wonderfully concocted, flow seamlessly together, entwined like the rest of the game, and hit the emotional heights and depths of the very best game stories, like Final Fantasy VII, Silent Hill 2, The Last of Us, and BioShock. It comfortably sits amongst the greats.
The harmony continues with the world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It is intrinsically linked to the story and characters, uniquely so. They all depend on each other; none of it exists in isolation. It’s hard to describe without treading into spoiler territory, but know that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is thematically linked to every aspect of the game. It’s why it so important that it all works harmoniously. If one element fell short the whole experience would suffer greatly – and this is extended to the music.
Lorien Testard has composed a masterpiece. It wonderfully captures the Belle Époque period of France, largely utilising classic orchestral arrangements with a hint of more modern jazzy and even rock elements. It’s an expert use of motif. Characters, locations and concepts each have a base piece with a collection of variations that share melodies and rhythms, all working together to feel cohesive, but with powerful standout pieces to punctuate the important combat encounters and story beats.
On top of this, the vocal performances are astonishing. Alice Duport-Percier’s vocals are hauntingly beautiful, almost operatic. In fact, many of the tracks are operatic in nature, not only for their vocal delivery but for their lyrical content. The story is told not only through your actions, exploration, and character dialogue, but it’s literally in the music. It is mostly in French but the vocal tracks massively contribute to the storytelling, describing additional intention and character motivations, and, of course, flooding the game with more emotion.
The epic, almost 11 minutes long, Une vie à t’aimer, played during a boss encounter, delivers such poignant context to the characters involved and why they are doing what they’re doing. The incredible vocals from Alice Duport-Percier and Victo Borba aren’t just powerful and beautiful, but are charged with emotion, with desperation. They aren’t singing a duet in this song, they are singing at each other, and it’s exquisite.
Exploring this world and immersing yourself in its sights and sounds is intoxicating. The surreal visuals of a world torn apart is awe inspiring. Familiar architecture, even landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, makes you feel like you know this world, but that quickly unravels as you learn about the use of Chroma for magic, and discover the peculiar Gestrals that share the world with you. These paintbrush-like beings are obsessed with combat but are intellectually challenged, giving them an intriguing juxtaposition of dangerous warriors with childlike personalities. Of course, too, there’s the yearly Gommage, a culling of people that’s been occurring for the last 67 years, where an entity known as the Paintress paints a decreasing number on a monument and everyone equal to that age are immediately rendered down to nothing but petals in the breeze.
Therefore, every year an expedition sets out to defeat the Paintress, and so far, no one has succeeded, and for years, no one has returned. The latest expedition, Expedition 33, includes the first few of your party: Gustave, Maelle, Lune, and Sciel. Along the way you’ll meet three more allies: the mysterious Verso, the Gestral Monoco, and the mythical creature Esquie. Each character is superbly written and voiced; there’s no cringe or wasted word to be found, and it all serves to build upon each character or drive the story and action forwards.
The cast is high calibre, too. Charlie Cox as Gustave, Andy Serkis as the mysterious and sinister older character Renoir, Ben Starr as Verso, Kirsty Rider as Lune, Rich Keeble as Monoco, Shala Nyx as Sciel, and Maxence Cazorla as Esquie. However, the standout has to be Jennifer English’s portrayal of Maelle, which is mesmerising. Throughout the story of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Maelle experiences all manner of tragedy, triumphs and revelations, and Jennifer manages to match the emotional delivery for all of it. It’s an award-winning performance.
Looking for a way to defeat the Paintress and uncovering the truth will take you across this miraculous world. The visuals are stunningly detailed, bright, colourful and energetic. The world feels and looks alive, and you’ll find yourself stopping and admiring the view countless times. You’ll run the gamut when it comes to environments, from lush green forests to dry sandy temples, and everything that can be imagined in between, as well as encounter plenty of things that can’t be imagined. Floating chunks of land perched in the air defying physics, underwater areas that are walkable and breathable, the ruins of civilisation, all haunted by strange creatures that mean to harm you. You’ll have to fight to survive.
Combat in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the classic turned-based kind. Speed and modifiers dictate your position in the turn queue, and when it’s one of the party’s turn, their action can be chosen. The basic attack generates action points that can be used to activate skills, providing a tactical consideration for how you want to spend these precious points to deal maximum damage and control the fight. Moreover, attacks and skills have an optional but important quick-time button press or two when using them, which inflicts greater damage.
Learning these button presses is crucial to dealing the most damage and a similar mechanic is used with defence to nullify incoming damage. Characters can dodge, jump, parry and Gradient Counter when defending to avoid damage. It’s not easy. Enemies feint in all manner of ways to throw you off when their real attack is coming, and identifying the feints and mastering the timing is challenging throughout the adventure, especially when attempting to parry. Fortunately, dodging is easier, giving a larger window of safety after performing it, but if you can successfully parry a barrage of attacks, you’ll often get to counterattack for devastating damage.
These techniques are gradually introduced, so it doesn’t get overwhelming learning them, and once Gradient Counters and Gradient Attacks are brought in, you should feel comfortable enough to add these new mechanics into the combat flow without much trouble. The Gradient Counter is another form of parrying but for special, high damage incoming attacks, and a successful timing of this automatically triggers a massively powerful counter. Meanwhile, the Gradient Attacks are akin to limit breaks or special attacks. A shared meter for the party slowly grows over time and affords up to three points to be used on Gradient Attacks, allowing for the use of low level 1- or 2-point attacks from multiple characters or a massive level 3 attack from a single character. It can turn the tide of a battle, and with each character possessing their own unique set of Gradient Attacks, there’s a nice variety to explore and experiment with.
This use of turn-based but with real-time attack and defence inputs makes the combat more engaging and active than the typical, more traditional turn-based combat. Players are encouraged to participate and pay attention, not just select options and sit back. None of it is easy to pull off initially, and there are plenty of fights where pulling off successful parries and dodges will feel utterly impossible, but it’s a hugely rewarding system that adds to the already vast list of tactical considerations, and it adds an element of real skill, providing the opportunity to fight and defeat far more powerful opponents if it can be mastered. However, there’s another layer to the combat that adds even more depth and plays a part in the characters chosen for the active party: each character has their own unique combat system.
As complex as it all sounds, it’s intuitive, and it takes only a handful of combat encounters for each party member’s quirks to become clear. Mastering combat is a more challenging prospect, but a hugely rewarding one. Employing a character’s system to its best provides a level of control over combat encounters that’s wonderfully satisfying. Monoco, for example, shifts between different states during combat, indicated by a wheel of cards, with each state enhancing or decreasing certain attacks and skills. Paying attention to his state provides opportunities to exploit it. This could lead to dealing more damage, healing party members more effectively, and certain elemental or physical attacks being more harmful. It’s a clever extra layer to consider.
Of course, the other characters have their own combat system, like Maelle’s stance affecting her attack and defence, Gustave’s charge modifying the strength of his skills, and Lune’s Stains (elemental magic) feeding into the casting of other skills to enhance them. The combat is designed to keep players engaged and active, and like every other aspect of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, it is all entwined with other systems and mechanics to contribute to something larger than the sum of its parts.
When combining the skills and modifiers with the weapons chosen for each character, their skill set, their unique combat system, their Pictos, their Luminas, the attribute points from levelling, and the makeup of the active team, myriad ways to build characters and a party are offered. It’s compelling stuff being able to craft the ideal combat group and designing strategies to overcome enemies. You can create a combat strategy that provides the opportunity for a character to inflict millions of points of damage in a single attack, and it’s glorious.
