PREVIEW | Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

It’s been ages since I’ve been this excited about a game, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hits all the right notes for me (other than a title I’m not the biggest fan of). This mixes in all the right elements from JRPG inspirations to create the perfect recipe for my hype.

I can’t wait to play more of this after my time with the 3 hour long demo and April 24th can’t get here fast enough. Let’s dive into this Final Frenchtasy and see why the game has captured my attention? On y vas, mes amis!

Things I liked!

• The Story | We’re playing in an alternative universe of our own world, with landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc De Triomphe appearing in the opening cinematic. But here is the catch, off in the distance a giant paintress is seen who draws a new number on a giant stone every year, and people of that age die that year. It’s a brilliant concept that invokes a lot of dread (especially in someone who’d be long dead in that universe, at age 37 at the time of writing)

• The Writing | Clair Obscur wastes no time in setting the mood either. People die of a certain age, but when our expedition of 33 (and younger) people sets foot on the far-off continent, most of them die instantly when facing a powerful enemy. Moments later we see our protagonist conjure up a gun and he’s getting ready to blow his brains out when another surviving crewmember ultimately stops him. She says to not give up, they are here with a mission. One that’s likely to fail, but whatever progress they make, may be vital to the expedition after them. It kind of reminded me of Dark Souls and leaving messages for other players, and that is exactly what the expeditions before you did, with lore to discover and ample opportunity to learn more about this world.

• The Gameplay | this is likely the most fun I’ve had PLAYING a turn-based RPG in years. The UI is so smooth with each skill attached to a button to make for easy navigation. Each special attack has its own Quick Time Event for extra damage or an extra chance at applying a negative status effect on the enemy. and that’s just the start, the real kicker is in how you can Parry, dodge or jump to evade and counter your opponents’ attacks. and when you succeed it feels glorious. The “feel” of everything in this game is just right and I was hooked from the start.

• Depth | There are so many ways to experiment with your characters. No, I don’t think it will make for a highly replayable title, but during your playthrough you can check which abilities suit you best, which stats to apply to your characters that scale with your stats, equip Pictos (I think they’re like temporary tattoos?) that give passive buffs but also apply unique effects like “25% chance with every free-range shot to inflect burn.” Add to this various weapons to equip and each character having a skilltree full of unique spells and attacks and I’m sure I will not tire of seeing all the visual splendour pop off the screen.

• The Visuals | Expedition 33 looks amazing. Each monster you face, each character animation, it’s extremely polished and almost up to the level of a mainline Final Fantasy. Maybe the only gripe I have is that the characters themselves aren’t very outrageous in their designs. which is fine, but they’re not as unique or colourful as their JRPG counterparts. Still this game looks like eye-candy in motion, especially in combat!

• A feast for the ears | The music is top-notch too, I spent at least 5 minutes in the title screen when I first booted up the demo and that’s saying a lot. This could be a soundtrack to remember.

Mixed & disliked!

• Lip sync | The writing is great, the voice acting is great, but I think the lip sync animation is made with the original french language in mind, because there was something that felt off in the English version. Add to this the fact that characters still curse in French (Putain de Merde!) and it just gives off a weird feeling like something isn’t quite right, which does break the immersion a bit. I still think I’ll play the full game in English over French though.

• Performance issues | I tested this on a 2022 gaming laptop, which, while not ideal, should be able to run games without issue. And while the game ran fine for the most part, there were hiccups and lag after 2 hours of playing and I needed to restart the game to get it running smooth again.

• Minor bugs | I encountered very few bugs, but I did switch party members on the field once and saw the other one spawn at the other end of a wall. or I jumped down once from a cliff into a region of the map where I couldn’t escape from. Luckily the save-file is very forgiving and a quick reboot brought me back to where I was in the clear. This was also a godsend with difficult boss battles, allowing me to quickly retry them without retracing my steps too far.

Conclusion: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be an RPG you can’t miss. This is already a contender for Game of the Year for me and we’re only March now. It does everything important so extremely well and I really can’t wait to play the Xbox version soon. this being an Xbox Game Pass Day One title, no one has any excuse to skip on it!

You can look forward to my full review in April!

Do you prefer to see the game in action? We’ve got you covered:

PART 2: