I wanted to take a break from combat games and play a more relaxing turn-based role-playing title. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been making waves as a new masterpiece in RPGs. The previews looked incredible, and the game seemed to incorporate turn based mechanics with some timing-based attacks. It was difficult to find this game on physical disc, since its popularity has led it to sell out in several markets. I ordered my copy from Japan, and it cost just $10 over the retail price, including shipping. While the game is visually stunning and has an intriguing story, the combat mechanics are anything but relaxing. Expedition 33 manages to combine traditional turn-based combat with the most frustrating elements of precision parry brawlers. It makes for a game that’s very beautiful, creative and well written, yet also much more frustrating than it is challenging.

Combat

Let’s deal with this game’s biggest problem: the combat. You have to be actively engaged in all enemy actions, because each attack can be parried. This is not an optional mechanic like in Sea of Stars, where you can parry attacks but it’s not strictly necessary. In Expedition 33, you must parry a majority of attacks, or there’s no way to make it through most of your encounters.

There’s no consistent and explicit visual cue for when to parry, like in Eternights. Instead, there are usually audio cues, and sometimes animation cues. These cues vary between each enemy type, and all of them have to be learned individually. Sometimes the cues match a rhythm, but that rhythm also varies per enemy and attack type. The window for parries is very small. The window for dodging is slightly larger, but dodging won’t allow for the possibility of counter-attacks.

The android combat brawler Stellar Blade also had very tight parry windows, but upgrades allowed you to extend that window very early on. There are no such enhancements to the core battle mechanics in this game. Grinding early on to level up may extend your health window to survive come encounters without perfect evasion, but ultimately the evasion mechanic is a required skill to master in order to enjoy this game.

The choice to not include consistent visual cues for blocking is an interesting one. It means almost every enemy type requires multiple encounters in order to learn the specific evasion points. Even with the normal difficulty setting, it makes combat frustrating for a turn-based RPG.

Bugs and Quirks

Expedition 33 has a few bugs scattered throughout the game. None of them make the game unplayable, and none are anywhere near as bad as the glitches encountered in Cyberpunk 2077. Lip sinking for the dialog often doesn’t match up. It’s not too often, and it is noticeable, but the excellent English voice acting does make up for some of it. Sometimes hair elements like Gustave’s mustache almost seem like they’re floating and not attached to the model.

The settings menu doesn’t always correctly set or save options, which led to part of my gameplay being way more frustrating than necessary, as I found myself accidentally playing at the expert skill level on more than one occasion. I only noticed this because I frequently used the settings menu to turn down the music in order to hear the audio cues for parrying.

The user interface is pretty snappy and well-designed. However, the dialog text is a bit small even when set to the largest font. The subtitles in cut sequences are a more readable size, but they’re often glitchy and might duplicate or be out of sync.

Although there is a large and beautifully illustrated world map, there are no individual mini-maps for any of the specific areas. This can lead to a lot of confusion and backtracking, especially after fight sequences. There are some sections set up as mazes and others with high vantage points to get a more natural lay of the land. This design choice seems intentional. It’s an interesting quirk for world building, but one that left me occasionally feeling lost.

These issues are minor and might already be fixed in newer patches for the game, but they are fairly noticeable in the original release.

Art and Story

The artistic design of Clair Obscur is amazing. The story revolves around a world where people only live to a certain age due to a fracture caused by “The Paintress.” Some people from the city travel to the continent, often at the end of their lives, in expeditions that seek to end the shortened lifespans. For a considerable amount of the game, your party feels a bit like Charlies Angels—a male protagonist with a party made primarily of women.

The visual world of the main continent is vibrant and colorful. There is an obvious theme around art and color, with consumable items being called “taints” and item upgrades requiring “chroma.” The world map is rendered to resemble tilt-shift photography, and all the enemies, buildings and towns are incredibly well-designed. There’s a massive amount of unique enemy types and areas, each with their own themes. There’s a good amount of attention to detail, such as your party members getting bloody as they take damage, and looking better as they heal.

There’s a lot of mystery to the nature of the world, with a lot of details unknown even to your own expedition party. There’s very limited exposition, allowing for a pure world-building experience. The dialog is fairly well written and the voice acting is excellent. However, the overall pacing of the story is not great. There are moments that are far too slow for the rising action, and later stages of the game seem to really drag out far longer than necessary. Even the epilogue feels painfully overdone, as it continues the horrible combat mechanics that have worn themselves thin toward the end of the game.

The character development is excellent. This is a true RPG, with story, item and combat elements all enhanced by interactions with other members of your party. The character customization, in the form of outfits and hair, fits well within the overall theme of the world.

Conclusion

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the first game from the French studio Sandfall Interactive. It’s great to see more games coming out of France, as A Plague Tale is an excellent series. Still, I found myself underwhelmed considering the accolades this game has received. The artwork, characters and unique French style are certainly praiseworthy. Even as I struggled with the combat, I was still pulled in by the early story and characters.

The checkpoints are frequent, and many of the RPG elements are fairly traditional. I spent a lot of time enjoying world exploration and mini-games in the story’s second act. Yet, as I got further in, the story direction started to make less sense as it progressed. I finished the game in just over 30 hours, and the final parts felt sluggish. Certain parts of the game after the main action could have been shortened, and I really had no desire to continue exploring new areas of the world as they opened up towards the end.

I can understand why people praise this game so heavily. It has a lot of really creative elements, and it would likely appeal to those who enjoy the precise and challenging combat from a Soulslike game, but wrapped in the story of an RPG. Clair Obscur does have other difficulty levels for people who want more of a casual experience, but I feel even with the story, the game struggles. It started off as a strong mystery filled with interesting themes around color and art mixed with life and death. Although the foreshadowing is well constructed and the story does feel complete in its revelations, the allegory it presents does seem to struggle under further scrutiny.

Overall, Expedition 33 creates an amazing magical world, filled with gorgeous artwork, excellent music and interesting characters. There was a lot about this game I really liked. However, the combat elements were frustrating. Although the story has some amazing themes about creation, family and grief, a lot of the story seemed to drag. I stopped caring about the world and simply pushed through towards the end. Clair Obscur really has a lot going for it, and it might be the game for you if you enjoy precision combat and RPGs. However, I feel it really lacked a lot of polish and was sadly lackluster in its overall execution.