“For those who come after.” ~ Gustave, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Prologue

After a stark trigger warning that spoiled some of the story, the opening hour of Clair Obsur: Expedition 33 was very slow as I learned about The Paintress’ numbers and gigantism through various scenes and guesswork. The game drops all sorts of vocabulary without any explanation, and I didn’t understand what characters did at first since they live in this strange world and I don’t! You learn how to grapple-warp at distant hookshot spots and practice dueling a friend once, and that is pretty much it for the hour-long Prologue. However, things get flashy and crazy once The Expedition arrives offshore in a combination of horror, science fiction, and fantasy.

The Combat

Imagine a DVD menu, plus skills with quick-time-event button presses (always on the A button, or as I call it the “Win Button”), add parry and dodge, and jump-counter on defense, within a Turn-based JRPG (French RPG?) type of game, and then you have your combat! You can rely on the visuals of the enemies to time your parry or counter, but I found the audio cues were often easier to predict than simply dodges, which have a bigger window than parries. Enemy types eventually repeat, so attack patterns become more familiar, making parries easier much later than in the beginning.

The magic systems for each character are unique but confusing to learn at first, and if you don’t get creative or respec your build, it can start feeling repetitive offensively. You don’t get to have a full skill tree and can barely equip a handful of skills or so. The Lady Characters as a party have good synergy, but my final party was Lune, Sciel, and Monoco, giving good balance of healing and damage. Monoco is a sort of Blue Mage so he works differently and I found him more fun. The craziest damage seems to be possible with Maelle, and there is a point you are solo as her so don’t neglect leaning her techniques.

Weapons, Items, Skill Tree, and Platforming

Weapons scale their damage off one or two specific stats. Those stats you assign manually by spending points at an expedition bonfire… I mean flag! Your flasks, I mean potions, refill at that flag that was put there by a previous Expedition. Weapons drop from enemies or can be discovered through side quests. My favorite side quest was when you handed a creature who is normally an enemy its floating sea mine. (You’re welcome little buddy, here’s your balloon!) Other than the HP/Vitality and Defense stats, most seemed negligible to put points into, including Might, though Luck in the late game helps by increasing Critical hit chance.

You eventually meet the Gestral Merchants who are like the trolls from the 1990’s but with brushy tall hair and wooden plank masks covering where you’d assume a face might be. You can trade the Chroma you find with them and get special items unlocked, but only if you beat them in a duel first to impress them. Gestrals are all sort of a meme, some literally referencing Internet memes, and are a fun cheesy break from the serious and melancholic tone of the story.

There are cosmetic haircuts and clothes, even though your Expedition only has a year to live, and if you want the mild fan service of swimsuits, you’ll have to clear minigames at the four Gestral Beaches. It seems like a dumb thing to critique in a turn-based RPG with tight combat, but the platforming is rather sloppy and extremely bad! It wasn’t that noticeable until required for challenges or when trying to reach items on pillars and cliffs in regular areas throughout the game, some appearing unreachable only because of questionable physics. Some endgame areas can only be reached by platforming where one fall respawns you at the beginning, which was a bummer. Keep your secrets, I guess?

The Visuals and Music

The main theme song for Clair Obscur got me improvising lyrics since I don’t speak French: Clair Obscur when I shoot this guy and I kill… this thing. Clair Obscur when I dodge your hit or I somehow parry.

It is hard to describe the art style besides “French-inspired”, including the architecture – but I don’t have a degree in such things, which seems like a prerequisite, beyond knowing they are Fantasy-bent real things. Creature designs are great, environments are all unique and beautiful or eerie, sometimes both at once, but it is subtle. I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out that the main objective paths often have floating streetlamps or other things above or around, with side paths with items less eye drawing, which helped a lot since there are no minimaps, likely to retain immersion.

Each environment has music to fit, which is phenomenal and often orchestral with a wide variety of instruments. The soundtrack is over 8 hours long if you purchase it, and very memorable, especially compared to many titles that have came out in the last handful of years. Lyrics are all in French so I can’t comment on the themes, but they range from strange mime fights and enemies having specific even upbeat songs, and generally lo-fi or yet again eerie when traveling which blends in nicely to prevent distraction from the artistic world around you.

Story

You slowly discover how the Paintress started off wanting to bring joy by creating, but after a while only brought pain or sadness instead. New and more mysterious white-haired people appear, even though everyone back home is age 33 or younger, with each year shortening the oldest age possible. I wanted to say more but I do not want to spoil the complexity of the overall story, which is unique and intriguing.

Once Act 2 begins, and the story is actually broken into traditional play-writing acts, you meet a friendly NPC, Esquie, that can take you places by “shwim shwim”. Esquie speaks in a simple way but has deep thoughts and a big heart, and is actually an important part of the story, even though not a fighting member. The designers chose an actual personality, instead of a mount or ship sort of transport.

You slowly find more Expedition journals that are often super depressing, all with full voice over. You can increase your relationship levels at camp with each character, starting with Sciel asking for a story that’s dark and melancholy… and personal. This commiseration and cameraderie helps flesh out the backstory of characters without massive lore dumps, and increasing relationships also can unlock new Gradient Attacks and even cosmetics, so you are rewarded for listening patiently. At first the more vulnerable conversations made the characters feel less human, almost shallow like dolls, instead of my imagined depth, but once you go deeper and eventually reach Maximum level, they feel real. Sciel’s final relationship cutscene was very moving and worth the effort, and very well written.

I found spelling and grammar errors in several places, particularly the journals, but the topics addressed have such a heavy tone it is almost forgivable. Psychological and philosophical ideas span such things as denial, acceptance, grief, family wounds, and more. Many of the topics in the game may be unsettling for those struggling with mental health, but may also be a good way to face past difficulties.

Final Word

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a master class of art, storytelling, and psychology. It has everything you’ve loved about turn-based combat, reactive defenses and timed criticals, in a JRPG-style game. Not only that, but the vocabulary is very high and won’t talk down to you, and how it addresses despair in particular truly touched me personally. Its platforming is very rough, a few cutscenes had glitches in them, and I played it prior to the game winning all those awards. I really liked it despite its flaws, and I am interested to see where its developer goes from here, as this beautiful and fun game was their debut!