Primed For Love
This won’t be an entirely unbiased review of Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, by any stretch of the imagination. I saw the trailers for this game early and loved its approach. I was interested to see a new approach to turn-based combat combined with the insane Unreal Engine 5 graphics on display. I appreciated the developer’s statements on the game’s low price, claiming that they wanted to offer it for less to benefit those who couldn’t afford full-priced games despite it having hours of content. I even liked that it was coming out on my birthday. All this meant that I ended up pre-ordering the game far before launch, because I wanted it to succeed. I was even afraid that things like its unwieldy title, exceedingly French style, and the incoming (heavily leaked) “shadow drop” release of Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered would push people away or suck the air out of the room, cutting this fresh new IP off at the knees. And now, like a lot of others, I’ve seen the resoundingly positive reviews, the 92 Metacritic score, the sales of over 2 million copies, the “Game of the Year contender” talk… this will not, as I said, be an unbiased review. But I’m happy to throw my hat in the ring and join the celebration of a small team’s triumph – that’s the best word I can think of for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Initial Overview
First, the basics. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based role-playing game – arguably a “JRPG” despite being made in France. People will fight over these definitions until the internet goes down (then take it to the streets), but COE 33 is very clearly inspired more by series such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Persona more than by “Western RPGs” like The Witcher 3, even if the more Western-y realistic visuals give you initial pause. It follows a traditional narrative format of a major story arc mixed with exploration and light side-questing, and offers both narrative and gameplay variety through a large cast of characters (playable and not), using a wide variety of different abilities, weaponry and equipment. I’ll go into detail on all the game’s features and factors down below.
Narrative of the Expedition – “When One Falls, We Continue”
COE 33’s narrative sets an entertaining yet melancholy tone from the beginning, which fits for the subject matter. This is a game about the duality of fighting against death with everything you have despite having already accepted it. For 67 years now, a being of reality-warping power known as the Paintress has, fittingly, painted one number each year in the form of a countdown, and each year, anyone whose age matches or exceeds the painted number dies. Not from a Death Note-style heart attack or anything so perfunctory, but rather transforming into red and white rose petals and blowing into the wind. This event – the Gommage – happens predictably, the same time each year, allowing the people to prepare for it and spend time with their loved ones, whose end comes closer by the day, then by the hour, then by the minute… it sounds comforting, but protagonist Gustave (voiced by the excellent Charlie Cox of Daredevil: Born Again) comments in an early scene with his comrade Maelle (Jennifer English, rising star of Baldur’s Gate 3 and the upcoming Tides of Annihilation) just how insidious it is, the comfort of the Gommage compared to sudden and brutal regular death driving people to be overly accepting of it. The game opens with the latest Gommage and the painting of the number 33, and so Expedition 33 – named for the new number, there have been far more than 33 Expeditions by this point – sets sail for the land where the Paintress makes her home, fully expecting to die along with all those who have failed before. To quote one of their central mottos – “For Those Who Come After”. But those past “failed” Expeditions have laid the trail for Gustave and his comrades, and so they plan to follow in their footsteps in every way.
I adore the story and world that’s presented here. Firstly, there’s a very strong focus on the team, which makes sense – these aren’t a band of mercenaries, they’re years-long friends who have been planning the Expedition for most of their lives, driven by both a desire to save their dying society and the simple fact that they have a great deal less to lose, with their Gommage closely approaching (not including 16-year-old fencer Maelle, whose reasons for risking another 9 years of life are dug into very deeply if you make the effort). But these Expeditioners, classic likeable but flawed heroes, are just one half of the setting. The realm of the Paintress is inhabited not only by monsters and villains (Andy Serkis’s character, who I will not name here, is a particular highlight), but also by intelligent and bizarre creatures that range from oddly alien to shockingly human. When you gain a non-human party member who’s over a century old and looks like a hairy wooden doll, you don’t expect to hear him say things like “I fucked up, I’m sorry, I was trying to show off”. That’s not even getting into characters like Esquie, a whimsical giant who can fly when he wants to, but just can’t manage swimming until you find his pet rock. There are also many sidequests having you have what are traditionally enemies, raising questions about the intelligence of the things you’re battling and killing. The overall vibe can feel very Nier Automata at times, fluctuating between goofy, dramatic and tragic sequences in a way that doesn’t feel incongruous. This land is beautiful and dangerous, and you will be reminded of that. And do not assume that looking at some trailers will tell you want COE 33 is truly about. This game goes places, places you won’t expect, bizarre in ways that feel like they’re calling back to the stranger Japanese RPGs of old – especially the divisive ones.
Exploring With The Expedition
The traversal of this game is mostly fairly simple – you can walk, run and jump in the main dungeon areas, with things being simplified down to just running once you reach the more zoomed-out world map area. You can also use a blast attack in both spaces, critical for engaging enemies in a way that won’t involve them getting the drop on you and potentially wiping you out in the first turn – random encounters are NOT the order of the day here, which I do appreciate. Sometimes things stretch to using magical ropes or even engaging in light platforming, optional rewards are strewn across the lands, and Dark Souls-esque rest points that let you restore yourself at the cost of respawning enemies are plentiful. Overall, the traversal mechanics of COE 33 are not groundbreaking but the flavour added by the narrative makes them more meaningful. As I noted in the above paragraph, there have been about 67 Expeditions before our main characters, and the hope, effort and eventual death of those expeditions are everywhere. Those rest points? Flags from prior Expeditions, laying a trail for their apprentices to follow. What optional rewards can you find? Frequently these are found on the (bizarrely preserved) corpses of fallen Expedition members, both as useful combat equipment and as recordings that build on the present-day story. The lore of these recordings ties directly into how those past Expeditioners have altered the world, and they often end with the moment of their creator’s death, whether that be a tragic or funny end, or both. It’s that kind of game. It’s this direct weaving of the exploration with the narrative that helps to enhance both and bring COE 33 up another tier as a work of art.
Clair Obscur’s Gameplay – Turn-Based and Real-Time?
Alright, let’s dig in. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s gameplay is very interesting to me as it feels rather like a parallel game to Final Fantasy VII Remake and its sequels. The FFVII Remake Project’s developers needed to modernise and update the pseudo-turn-based Active Time Battle concept for a modern game, and they chose to make one of my favourite combat systems of all time – they kept the command-based core of the game (a.k.a. the focus on abilities selected from a menu), but mixed that with real-time actions such as free movement and dodging, basic attacks (which sped up the time to the next command) and later, parrying. COE 33, on the other hand, sticks to true turn-based combat in the style of many older RPGs (as well as newer ones like Persona 5 Royal), but inserts real-time elements into that combat – you have to time dodges and parries, as well as execute timed button presses to improve the damage of your attacks. Parries are easily my favourite part – they’re more difficult to time correctly than the more forgiving dodges, but parrying an entire attack combo perfectly leads to counterattacks, turning battles into energetic rides of you dealing continuous damage. FFVIIR and COE 33 feel like siblings that take equally valid but opposite approaches – a real-time combat system with turn-based elements vs a turn-based combat system with real-time elements.
COE 33’s system is much more complicated than merely being turn-based, of course. There’s a great deal of detail and strategic opportunity to be found in here. Much of it comes simply from the different playable characters, who each have wildly varying skill kits and overall gameplans. Gustave focuses on building “Charges” through specific commands and skillful gameplay to power up his Overcharge skill, while Maelle (being a fencer) revolves around a unique Stance system – I’ve enjoyed having to keep track of each character’s combo opportunities, both within their own skill lists and when combined with each other. There’s a gun system right out of Persona 5, where shooting does little damage and is reserved for specific applications. There’s the classic attack elements you’ll know from Final Fantasy – Fire, Lightning, Darkness and such – and characters like Lune have a strong focus on exploiting elemental weaknesses. Status effects go a bit beyond the classic FF staples though – things like burning an enemy for repeated damage are here, but there’s also debilitating effects like Exhaust, and even character-exclusive effects, like Sciel’s applications of “Foretell” that her abilities revolve around. My favourite combat feature, however, is AP. COE 33 does away with the common RPG system of having physical attacks be free and magic be costly – instead, ALL skills outside of your most basic attack cost AP, but by engaging with the real-time dodging and parrying mechanics, you can actively build up AP. This results in parrying skill becoming critical not just for avoiding damage and dealing it back via counterattacks, but for dealing even more damage on top of that with your more costly skills, giving battles a sense of constant acceleration when you master your timings. The fact that AP resets each battle and so you never “run out” in the same way you can with mana or MP systems in other games can be addicting, as you always have the chance to claw back more. This entire system is spectacularly done, and I’m so glad COE 33 isn’t one of those RPGs I’d recommend “for the story” – it’s electrifying to play.
Visuals and Performance
CEO 33 is an Unreal Engine 5 game, using Lumen and Nanite features. Firstly, note that I played COE 33 on the PS5 Pro – I can’t directly compare to the other consoles myself, but Digital Foundry has analysed them already, showing the Pro to offer a resolution boost. In the performance mode I played (and recommend, since that relatively solid 60 frames per second is crucial for timing parries), it runs at 1080p instead of the 864p of the base consoles. This ain’t nothing – at these lower resolutions, any boost is more noticeable – but I do hope that given the game’s success, a Pro update could be patched in. Improvements could include switching to the superior PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaling, as well as taking more advantage of the Pro’s superior ray tracing acceleration hardware to improve the Lumen lighting which is currently toned down in the performance mode.
The underlying visuals, however, really do justify the somewhat low resolutions. Unreal Engine 5 and the asset libraries it offers are accessible enough that they can sometimes result in technically excellent but rather samey “realistic graphics”, but the developers of COE 33 very clearly had an artistic vision that they were laser-focused on. The game’s visuals are gorgeously realistic, with shockingly good lip-synching for a title with a smaller team and some stunning particle effects with all the magic (or Lumina, or chroma, etc.) being thrown around both in battle and in cutscenes, but it’s the art design that really enhances it beyond being yet another UE5 tech demo. The realm of the Paintress is a… let’s say “eclectic” place of wildly varying biomes, epic scale, devastated ruins, wonky physics, and spots of such surprising normalcy as a simple campfire for the team to gather around. This is all combined with a deft application of UE5’s technical features to create something that punches above its weight – I want that hypothetical Pro update so much precisely because doing these visuals justice is important.
The cinematography is also well worth hyping up. An early action scene that combines brutal violence and death with a terrifying fog-of-war approach as Gustave can barely stand from the shock. Many calm and intimate conversation sequences that centre the performances just right. A zoomed-out disaster sequence the emphasises the sheer scale of some of the realm’s most deadly creatures. Bold graphical effects are also applied in measured doses – chromatic aberration in games tends to receive a mixed reception at best, but its brief use at the beginnings and ending of battles combines well with the chaotic particle effects. And then there’s the most clear homage to the medium of film in the form of several bizarre nightmare sequences that go full silent film on us, complete with a claustrophobic, old-school 4:3 aspect ratio and black & white in place of the game’s normally vibrant colours. This is not a game seeking to copy others in the visual arena – while it’s clearly inspired by Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, etc. in various ways it thoroughly distinguishes itself – I for one expect future games to be inspired by it, if they dare to invite the comparison.
The Sound of Clair Obscur
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | Full Orchestral Session [Official Music Video]
The soundtrack to COE 33 makes itself known for much of the runtime, so it’s good that it’s so effective. While there’s plenty of effective, instrumental background music, the developers know well the power of some bombastic, operatic numbers. These are deployed especially heavily in battles – some of the boss fights can turn up the volume so hard that I didn’t realise my phone was ringing, despite the audio coming through the same headset I was using to play the game. Composer Lorian Testard and lead vocalist Alice Duport-Percier have teamed up to create a particularly special collection of work here that enhances the environments and wells up the emotions within you, with classical-style numbers like Alicia and Lumière, which can be heard in the orchestral session linked above. I became especially familiar with the battle theme’s “clair obscur” title drop lyric, played whenever you die.
Along with the music, there’s also the impeccable voice cast bringing the characters to life in English (I sadly can’t speak to the game’s original French voice work). The cast is a mix of surprising celebrity (Charlie Cox and Andy Serkis, bringing bravery and terrifying sincerity respectively to their characters), recent video game breakout stars (the previously mentioned Jennifer English Final Fantasy XVI’s Ben Starr, who anchor the game in ways I’ll avoid delving into, to preserve surprises), and actors I’d not previously known in Kirsty Rider, Shala Nyx and Rich Keeble, who I honestly can’t imagine the game without now, given the heart and character they bring to Lune, Sciel and Monoco. There are some speeches here that will remain with you, the mottos of the Expedition are already fundamental parts of the game’s loving community, and so much of that is down to the actors who brought those words to vivid life. The English voice work is fantastic here overall, though I can imagine the French fitting better due to the obvious visual and cultural inspirations of the game.
Conclusions
I think my conclusions are quite clear – you really need to buy Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. With an obvious implied exception for people who hate, say, fantasy or RPGs or what have you, this is one of the best and most beautiful gaming surprises in years. Sandfall Interactive has kicked down the door with everything I’ve listed above – I’m trying to think of an aspect of the game where they may have fallen a little short – something that would be perfectly understandable for a new studio delivering their debut game – and I really can’t think of a damn thing. Riveting and unique story and characters, a battle system that marries a classic style with modern innovations that fit like a glove and make it that much more irresistible, visuals and sound that figuratively and literally sing, and all with a huge helping of very French style that brings something really unique to the whole proceedings. Replayability is reasonable, with the combination of each character having far more available skills than their 6 slots can contain at once and a full New Game + mode offering plenty of ways to enjoy the combat system entirely differently. On top of this is a much more simple bullet point – as a friend of mine was shocked to see a few days ago, the game is cheap, going for only AU$69.95 on the PlayStation Store right now (the Xbox version is, oddly, $5 more) despite being gorgeous and extremely content-rich. This is apparently just the developers wanting to make their game more accessible to more people (and the result of a smaller team’s correspondingly smaller budget), and it’s the kind of initiative that I really do want to see supported in the industry. As long as you like the fundamentals of what make up COE 33, I promise you will adore the execution.
