Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is the game of the year. I could argue that it’s also the game of the decade – yes, above the excellent Baldur’s Gate 3. Still with me? Expedition 33 is nearly inarguably the greatest game the JRPG genre has ever seen.

I understand that in a time in which abused hyperbole has all but destroyed the semantic meaning of superlatives, what I’ve just said could be just as flippantly discarded and that’s fine but it doesn’t change the reality that Expedition 33 represents an extraordinary confluence of happenings and execution that has, and will continue to have lasting impact on not only those who play it through, but those in the industry making games as we speak. The sheer amount of pinkies up, flowery fucking glazing I just threw out to kick this off might sound like pretentious bullshit, but I promise it’s warranted.

This is a game that should really be enjoyed with as little to no spoilers as one can possibly manage, and so in that spirit, I’ll be avoiding all spoilers – even if it might make contextualizing just how incredible parts of this game are an impossible task. Outside of setting up the story synopsis for you, I’ll do my best to navigate those waters carefully.

You begin your adventure as Gustave – a well kept despite the scruff gentleman looking out over the city of Lumiere. The city is as disjointed and scrambled as Gustave’s thoughts appear to be, which he wears on his face just as obviously. It’s not long before his thoughts are interrupted by an approaching Maelle – a young girl who clearly knows Gustave well enough to chastise him and encourage him in his meeting with an ex-girlfriend in equal measure. Picking up a flower before heading out, you’re off on your way to join the rest of the city to celebrate the Gommage – and while as the player you’re not directly told what that means, it will become apparent quite quickly that it’s not celebrated equally by everyone and for good reason. After being introduced to some traversal mechanics, and a little combat tutorial with Maelle, it’s time to get to the waterfront.

You’ll come to learn that the Gommage represents a day of great loss for Lumiere. Across the sea, a monolith large enough to be seen clearly from the city has the number 34 displayed across it. Below the monolith rests what the citizens of Lumiere call The Paintress – a female entity who gets her name by way of what she does each year. During the Gommage, the otherwise dormant Paintress arises from her position to wipe clean the number on the monolith before she replaces it with the next number in some sort of eerie countdown and then takes her huddled position below the monolith once more.

That number is a death knell for anyone in Lumiere of that age or older. The Gommage, as you discover, is a day for family and friends to say their goodbyes to all those whose time has come. As you might imagine, that means that the oldest person in Lumiere is only 32 by the time you properly get under way. Given the brief amount of time you spend with any of the characters leading up to this discovery, Expedition 33 does a remarkable job of contextualizing this event in enough ways that nearly anyone will have a way to relate and be emotionally invested immediately. More than that, of course, your curiosity will likely have you absolutely chomping at the bit to figure out what the hell has been seemingly going on now for some 67 years and what – if anything – can be done about it. That’s where the Expeditioners come in.

Lumiere, as it turns out, hasn’t just been taking this whole Gommage thing lying down. Not long after what was named The Fracture (when the world was shattered to pieces as you would have noted walking around town), Lumiere started taking volunteers in their last year of life to become part of the Expeditions – a concerted effort to venture out toward The Paintress and stop her from continuing the Gommage before Lumiere became nothing but a handful of children unable to continue on. Expedition 33 represents one of the few remaining Expeditions Lumiere will feasibly be able to put together. Gustave is an eternal optimist in this regard, having been the brains behind the Lumina converter – a pivotal piece of equipment that will give this group an edge that no other group had before them. He’s going to need that optimism, because as you might imagine things don’t exactly go so smoothly once they set foot on the distant shores beyond Lumiere. That’s as detailed as I’m willing to get for the sake of not spoiling you too much, so hopefully that’s a good enough overview to at least get you on board.

I so wish I could be more elaborate when describing the writing of not only the story but the characters because one could (and I’m sure many have already) write entire essays on them. Expedition 33 simply has extraordinarily gripping writing – a page turner in video game form – and a cast of characters equally well written in a complementary way you rarely see in a game. It’s intricate, satisfyingly subversive, perfectly paced – and that’s just describing one character’s love of feet. Seriously, though, you will be enthralled by this story and its characters. It’s dark but it never ventures into the self-sabotaging brooding nonsense that edgy game writing tends to fall victim to. The levity is never inappropriately cheesy, and there’s a level of endearment you’ll have for many of these characters and the moments they bring that is only possible because the writing was handled so deftly.

Of course, if you’ve seen the cast of voice talent Expedition 33 managed to acquire, you’ll understand immediately how this amazing story its characters are perfectly brought to life through stellar performances across the board. Ben Starr who has quickly become a fan favourite, Jennifer English who can’t stop getting GOTY roles, and Andy freakin’ Serkis are on the short list of names most people would recognize, but every single voice talent absolutely crushed their roles and made an already incredible script that much more incredible. Really, they all nailed it – no notes. The emotional depth that comes through the screen is truly remarkable and if you manage to get through this game without fighting back some tears be it for sadness or laughter, I’d not just be shocked – I’d outright have a hard time believing you.

This isn’t a painfully linear, bare-bones JRPG experience on the gameplay front either – which you might expect with how I’ve described Expedition 33 so far. The team at Sandfall Interactive are gamers. The director, Guillaume Broche’s favourite games include many of the Final Fantasy titles with VIII being a stand out, Lost Odyssey, Persona 3, Journey, Demon’s Souls, Guild Wars 1, and the Devil May Cry series – Dante being his favourite character. This is a man of taste, and Expedition 33 is so obviously a game that distills much from his favourite experiences into a singular passion project that we now get to experience.

While the fingerprints of many of these games are all over Expedition 33, perhaps this is most readily noticeable in the combat. Turn based combat being outdated or unwanted has been debated for what feels like an eternity now, and we’ve watched the titans of the genre do their best to leave it behind. Not Sandfall, though. Sandfall looked at many games that came before it and realized that there were clearly ways to modernize turn based JRPG combat and that’s exactly what they did. A splash of Final Fantasy 8, a dash of Lost Odyssey, and a sprinkling of Demon’s Souls come together to cook up an engaging, strategic, accessible, and immensely satisfying combat system that seems like such an obvious progression of the genre that you’ll likely wonder why nobody thought to do it before – or at least why they simply ignored the thought entirely.

While on the offensive, you’ll be able to perform a standard attack, fire a few rounds of ammunition down range, use items, and of course weave in potent skills and abilities to bring your enemies down. You can’t just sit back entirely, though. Skills come with some quick time event windows that help boost the power of, or in some cases determine the success entirely of your attacks. More importantly, when on the defensive you’ll be able to dodge, parry, jump, and counter your attackers. The result is that you get all of the strategic elements you’d expect from a turn-based system, but enough active elements thrown at you to keep you engaged and a more active participant in your ultimate success or failure. Successfully parrying a long series of attacks and being rewarded with a hard-hitting counter to finish a close-call of a fight never gets old. In fact, for those industrious enough you could theoretically clear the game more or less at level 1 if you’re some sort of legend – and I don’t doubt that’s already been done by now.

Keeping things fresh is made even easier thanks to a deep and varied weapon and skill system. Each character has a wholly unique combat style, mechanics, and skills, a long list of weapons that enable wildly different builds, and a passive ability system in Pictos to enable even more builds you might conjure up. Pictos are equippable items that provide base stat boosts to characters using them. Remember that Lumina converter I briefly mentioned? Wearing Pictos on a character in four separate battles which you win, the lumina converter allows you to permanently access the passive abilities that Picto bears for any of your characters. While you don’t get the raw stat boosts the Picto has, the passives that you can use are really what drive your character builds and what makes for such great build variety through your time with the game.

Equipping those passives require your characters to have a certain amount of Lumina points which you’ll gain as you level and as you acquire items around the world. Each Lumina ability has a cost, and so depending on what you’re trying to accomplish you’ll have to make some decisions about what a character will and won’t have access to based on your current needs. You’ll likely find yourself experimenting quite a bit, perhaps finding a basic set you lean on and then crafting new builds for more unique challenges that present themselves as you play. I’ve seen some really whacky builds crop up, and I know I had a great time coming up with my own. You’ll have access to items that let you re-spec your character’s base stats as well as their skills at any time, and while you can’t re-distribute Lumina points you’ll have lots of ways to get more so it’s not a real hurdle. It’s a great distillation that those who played Lost Odyssey may recognize immediately and its near frictionless build system means that you’re not just able to experiment, you’re actively encouraged to.

You’ll not lack opportunities to really test your might, either, because for those who seek them out there are a number of optional quests and bosses that will keep you on your toes. Said bosses are found around the beautifully presented world map – something that seems to have become some sacred lost art in this genre. The tilt-shifted aspect is gorgeous and reminds me of world maps of old. Things are hidden around every corner, and you can absolutely get in over your head if you wish to do so. Parts of the world will open up to you as you progress, and while the main quest does more than well enough to give you the world building and character development you need, there is a fair amount of side content that fleshes this out even more – revealing aspects of the world and its characters that are meaningful and illuminating. You could be like me and simply find yourself exploring every nook and cranny unprompted out of simply wanting to see and know it all – in fact of all those I’ve known to have played Expedition 33, few of them haven’t nearly 100% it on their first run. It’s that kind of game.

Visually, Expedition 33 is as impressive as everything else it does. The art direction is fantastic. The character designs are beautiful, detailed, believable, and the level of expression they achieved in the faces – especially the eyes – sets a standard I thought Baldur’s Gate 3 would have held for far longer. The world is varied, eye catching, and littered with environmental storytelling. No two places feel the same, and yet you also don’t feel like you’re going through some theme park where you’re thinking “oh, here’s the desert area, and here’s the sewer area, and here’s the inexplicable spaghetti western area.” There are a handful of set piece locations and views here that top anything I’ve experienced in a game in a very long time. Someone knows their way around camera angles at Sandfall and it shows. Speaking of cameras, the absolute fucking cinema in this game is truly insane. I hate to use a meme, but it’s never been so accurately applied as it is with Expedition 33. It is not shocking that it was almost immediately picked up to be turned into a live action film – the damn cutscenes could just be stitched together into one and I’d watch it.

Listen, if there was one way in which I could pitch this game the hardest it’s that you can actually feel the passion every single person that laid hands on the game had for it. They wanted to make this game. They didn’t wake up and go to a job, they woke up and lived their best life for 18 hours a day and did so for six years. Expedition 33 represents what games used to feel like before the hobby became so corporate and purely money driven. It’s not that developers never wanted to make money – it just wasn’t the central focus the way it’s largely become. Sandfall Interactive managed to put together a small, mostly junior team dedicated singularly to the same end without hesitation, and perhaps more impressively found a publisher in Kepler Interactive who didn’t cock the whole thing up by forcing them to monetize it in destructive ways. They trusted Sandfall and thank God they did.

Arguably the way in which this love and passion comes through in the game more than any other is in the soundtrack. Lorien Testard will go from having been found posting SoundCloud links on a game forum to becoming one of the most storied and sought after video game composers of all time just on the back of this soundtrack. There is an astonishing eight plus hours of emotion-stirring, thematically perfect, memorable music that’s so good it claimed #1 on Billboard’s Classical Album Charts. Like everything else in this game, the ways in which the music engages with all other elements are second to none. We’re talking Nobuo Uematsu levels of work, here.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is going to enthrall you with its stories, endear you to its characters, wrap you in its music, and carry you on a singular experience the industry has not seen in a very long time. Square Enix, and anyone else interested in making JRPGs moving forward will be taking notes. This is a game of generational quality not even being sold for the now insane $80 “standard” we get to endure elsewhere for games of objectively worse quality in every way. Expedition 33 reignited my love for games while changing how I look at others moving forward. In fact, perhaps its only notable flaw is that I won’t be able to look at other games the same anymore. Buy this game. Support these developers. Enjoy the best this industry has put to canvas in an age.