Explore a dark fantasy world where age isn’t just a number and it can literally determine whether you live or die. In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, people who are of a certain age or older are removed every year by an entity known as The Paintress during an event called the Gommage (“to erase” in French).
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an impressive debut by French independent game developer Sandfall Interactive. Developed on the Unreal 5 Engine, it plays like a JRPG (Japanese role-playing game) like games from the Final Fantasy or Persona series.
For those who come after
The story begins just prior to the Gommage of those aged 33 and above. As is the tradition every year, an Expedition team, this time numbered 33, was setting out to defeat the Paintress whose actions are inflicting misery to the people of Lumiere.
The below-33 Expedition team includes Gustave, who is grieving a loved one in the latest Gommage, foster child Maelle and low-EQ-high-IQ Lune. All are playable characters in the party.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 stands out with its strong narrative and masterful storytelling of an emotional tale peppered with philosophical musings about life, death, grief and loss, as well as carefully paced mystery and intrigue.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom — there are some moments of levity with naive and amusing beings encountered by the party, such as the humanoid paintbrushes known as Gestrals, which are friendly and benign beings although they love a good punch-up.
The game cleverly weaves in the theme of drawing and painting, like enemies bleeding ink, the humanoid paintbrushes and of course, the mysterious entity known as The Paintress.
There is a palpable air of defeatism and melancholy throughout the game, with characters often quipping “for those who come after”, and seeing the many twisted bodies of previous Expeditioners scattered across the Continent. They know the chance of success or survival is slim for the party.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 features a limited open world where you traverse a larger world map to get to various regions where you can explore in-depth – rather like Final Fantasy XVI.
Along the way, you will unlock a mode of transportation that can cross water bodies and rocky terrains which opens up more areas for exploration.
Although the individual regions are contained and not very large, there is still plenty to discover. The party can use grapples to traverse chasms as well as handholds and glowing ropes to ascend or descend vertically, which can reveal hidden areas, loot and bosses.
Loot comes in the form of chroma, which is used as a currency to trade with merchants, as well as chroma crystals to upgrade weapons. There are also collectibles to find, including journal entries of past expeditions as well as music records that can be played at the camp.
One minor complaint is that the jumping mechanic is quite poor, making jumping puzzles unnecessarily annoying. But the reward at the end of the puzzle tends to be pretty lucrative, so it is worth tearing your hair and going through with it.
Blank canvas
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is strong in the role-playing aspect with plenty of tweaks for the characters. For starters, every playable character has a unique skill tree as well as different specialties.
Lune is a mage-like character who can use Stains of different elements to deal additional damage for elemental attacks. Sciel is an astrologer character who collects Foretell and Moon skills to dish out Dark damage.
The characters can also equip weapons that suit their own unique traits like elemental or dark damage. They also have influence on character attributes like vitality, might, defense, agility and luck.
The biggest game changers are Pictos, which can be equipped by the characters, and can be purchased or found as loot, and can unlock passive abilities.
When a character has completed four battles with an equipped Pictos, the passive ability (Lumina) is unlocked and can be assigned to any character limited only by the character’s Lumina points.
With so many elements affecting combat stats, it can be rather overwhelming and confusing at the beginning. I was kicking myself for only starting to learn how to use Lumina points near the end of Act 1. They would have helped during tough boss battles early on.
In terms of gameplay, Pictos offer a creative dimension in granting extremely varied attributes and abilities to characters. Some come with negative effects or an element of chance, which force you to evaluate your risk appetite and party strategy.
For instance, the Roulette Pictos gives the holder a 50 per cent chance of doing either 50 per cent or 200 per cent damage per hit, while the Confident Pictos reduce damage taken but the character cannot be healed.
The creative use of Pictos and Luminas expands the skills and abilities of your party. In addition, the party can also use items to heal, revive and restore APs to members. One convenient feature is a single Heal Party potion that does away with the tedium of dealing with a multitude of potions, but this can only be used outside of combat.
Each character can have six skills, three equipped Pictos and one weapon, and as many Luminas as they have sufficient points for. With so many options to tweak, it means an almost endless number of unique combinations for each character. Plus, they can be customised to complement the other party members and to suit your playstyle.
For instance, I start battles with a character with high agility but a weakness to fire. This is followed by another member who can inflict a sustained burn, before finishing off the round with a a character with strong fire damage.
By combining the various elements and spreading out the abilities across the different characters in the team, you can get creative in dishing out hurt to the enemies while protecting your allies.
Only three characters can be in a party at any time, which adds to the complexity of outfitting the right combination of Pictos on the characters that you can swap out when needed.
Art of combat
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 features turn-based combat with a twist. It requires real-time action for special attacks, dodging, parrying and counterattacks, which means you cannot be snacking or distracted during combat, unlike some other turn-based combat games.
During each turn, you can choose the action for each member, and special moves like using skills or ranged attacks require Attack Points (AP) which are gained by successfully attacking, dodging or parrying.
By far, the hardest but most lucrative tactic to master is parrying. One has to study the various enemies’ attacks and timings to execute a successful parry and potentially unleash a powerful counter attack which deals hefty damage to your foes. Dodging is easier but that simply evades damage on your party, leaving the enemy unscathed.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s combat is challenging without being torturous and is extremely fun especially when you configure your party optimally and figure out the enemies’ weakness, attack styles and timing.
Some enemies are weak to certain elemental attacks, others have shields that need to be broken or weak points exposed before getting damaged, while flying enemies require ranged attacks. Combat requires a cool head and steady hands, as well as a good tactical strategy, which makes beating challenging bosses so satisfying.
Enemies in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 come in the form of monstrosities known as Nevrons. But there are also benign Nevrons who need your party’s help to perform side quests.
Unfortunately, the game offers no way to track side quests, so it is a challenge for completists to recall who needs how many of what, where to find them and how to find the original quest giver.
A work of art
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s art style is inspired by the belle époque (beautiful age) of France in the late 19th century where characters are dressed in elegant flowy, drapey clothes and smart uniforms.
The game is a treat for the eyes on many levels, with surreal and dream-like level designs, such as scenes of being under the sea, disembodied Parisian street lamps lighting up the path and floating islands with ruined cities.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s strong narrative driven by a generous dose of superb cutscenes with blockbuster quality cinematography, complemented with equally impressive acting and voice overs, although I can only speak for the English track. The game’s star-studded cast features A-list actors like Charlie Cox (Daredevil) and Andy Serkis (Gollum), which boost the game’s premium feel.
Adding to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s rich atmosphere is its impressive soundtrack featuring amazing vocals and soaring orchestral scores, as well as some suitably quirky pieces like a charming accordion piece for tough battles with mimes, which are frequently encountered as secret bosses.
TL;DR
If you enjoy JRPGs with a strong narrative and characters, exploring dream-like and surreal environments and endless tweaking for the best combat stats for your party, and enjoy a blend of turn-based combat and real-time action, I would strongly recommend Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for your next favourite game.
But if you like to be constantly challenged by combat and executing combos to beat enemies, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 might prove too slow-moving. Its lack of a quest-tracking system and poor jumping mechanics can also prove frustrating for “wanna do it all” or “wanna collect it all” completists.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available for PC on Steam for S$59.90, PlayStation 5 for S$69.17 and for Xbox Series X|S for S$72. It is free on Xbox Game Pass for subscribers — do yourself a favour and play it if you are already a subscriber.
