Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Review- The best of both worlds
Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG made by Sandfall Interactive, a relatively small team of 30-ish developers under the Sandfall umbrella and some (vital) outsourcing teams. It's fundamentally a game of unbelieveable quality, in equal measure from a design, combat and artstyle point of view.
I am not normally one to simply gush about a video game, as I am slightly overly-picky about some aspects of video game design, but I think it's fair to say most of this review will consist of praise.
World and Environments
I'll start off with the easiest section to cover, and the one with the most eye-candy. This game uses Unreal Engine 5 to bring its incredibly diverse world to life, and I believe this is the best Unreal's ever looked. The sheer variety of incredible vistas and landscapes on display is utterly fascinating.
It helps that the game does not have to conform to most standards of natural-looking landscapes and can go crazy in terms of mishmashing seemingly incompatible or unrealistic elements. From the get-go, the world has a well-pronounced surrealist quality to it, which ensures things don't seem out of place later in the game when things get wild. This also means you will be consistently in awe of the next biome you encounter, provided you suspend your disbelief right from the start.
As always, the best way to cover world and environment is via a visual medium, so here's some galleries for you.
Gameplay
Turn based combat, close 3rd person camera... Persona-like, right? You'd be excused to think that, as that was also my expectation. Reality couldn't be further from the truth though.
The closest term of comparison I could find to this is (I hope you're ready) Stationary Souls-Like. If you're a little confused by that, let me explain: the offensive side of this coin is exactly as you'd expect; you use various abilities and items to perform a single action during your turn, and then generally the enemy gets a shot as well. It's the enemy turn that gets this shiny new coat of paint: instead of taking the shot head-on like in Persona for example, you get to perform actions like dodging and parrying. This involves the same kind of pattern recognition skills that FromSoft games require, but with fewer degrees of freedom. I daresay this is a lot less punishing and a lot more satisfying (though you may disagree with me on that).
Every enemy move is pretty fairly telegraphed and though it still requires a good deal of concentration on the player's part, I never felt it was the same level of unfriendly as Bloodborne or Elden Ring. Sound design is also fantastic during the combat encounters, with audio cues also helping you time what sometimes becomes a rythm game not very dissimilar to HiFi Rush.
It is this progressively difficult combat that keeps you fully engaged throughout the roughly 40h playthrough. The game consistely introduces new mechanics, enemy designs and movesets successfully keep the game engaging and fresh.
Story
More often than not, games with this level of quality in their world and combat design have to sacrifice narrative ambition in order to balance the scales, both in order of cost, but also from a player engagement POV (a more straightforward and less risky story has a low chance of pushing people away due to narrative direction choices).
Sandfall has crafted an emotional story with a surprising amount of twists, turns and intrigue. The story overall is about loss, and I think it proposes a very interesting dillema that we may recognize ourselves within our lifetimes.
Another unique and inspired choice is that of placing the story hook very early in the game. Right from the start, the game proposes a harrowing situation: In the shadow of a monolith stands a delapidated city, populated entirely by morbid kids, teens and young adults. Upon the ashen obelisk a carving of the number 34 glows ominously. Every year, the number is decremented, taking with it the lives of everyone aged higher than the digits carved on the stone totem.
Each year, an expedition of volunteers embarks on a deadly trip to the monolith in a desperate attempt to stop the count until it's too late.
My only hope is that these words have done enough to spur your curiosity enough to give the game even 90 minutes of your time, as I am sure it'll grab your attention by that time. With this being said, it's time for a few words for those of you that have played the game (aka spoilers). Do yourself a favor and do not read this if you haven't.
Story SPOILERS- The full take
The impression left at the start was that the Paintress was the villain we were trying to stop, and for good reason (at least that's what the game heavily suggests). There were slight feelings of doubt in my head though, as watching the gargantuan figure at the bottom of the monolith inspired sadness and tragedy, emotions that are incompatible with a villain. These feelings received additional reinforcement by occasional hints from Renoir.
After all is said and done, and you reach the monolith and defeat the paintress, it turns out that she was indeed the protector of the realm. Here I was thinking I had finished the game, and it turned out the emotional distress was only starting.
To the point of the ending, my feelings are quite decisively in favor of Verso's arc. The points made by Maelle in favor of making her own decisions are valid, but I do firmly believe it is the parent's duty to guide a young child in periods where the younglings prove naive or shortsighted. Furthermore, the idea of living in a make-believe world because real life just hurts too much is a very relevant topic nowadays I feel, be it losing a loved one or numbing oneself through addiction.
In addition, I feel the trap of continuing to interact with a loved one that's passed away will become increasingly relevant in the rise of machine learning based chatbots. One could easily create a facsimile of someone by training an AI model with samples of their voice, and I find this thought very disturbing. I feel it's only a matter of time before some corporation decides this is a profitable business model and I believe it's best to understand why this is unreasoable before being put in a situation that may tempt embracing this mirage.
An engaging story is not possible without great characters and this game contains some of the most likeable characters I've encountered in my many years of exploring visual storytelling mediums. They are all complex, veridic and flawed. There's tragedy of all shapes, sizes and flavors for all to enjoy here
Conclusion
A masterpiece of a game on all fronts. The game design is masterful, the world is engaging and varied, the characters are fantastic and the story is one of tastefully-done tragedy. Special mention goes to the astounding soundtrack of this game, that amazes in both breadth and quality. It's one of those games that I wish I could forget so I could experience it again.