Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Honors Classic RPGs While Confidently Blazing Its Own Path

What makes it so much more action-oriented than most other takes on this idea is that instead of just minimizing incoming damage by timing a button press, here you can evade these strikes altogether. There’s a dodge, a parry, a jump used to clear ground slams, and another type of parry that counters particularly devastating blows. There’s plenty of reason to use each of these, and battles have an interesting risk-reward element where dodges have more lenient timing but give less benefit, while parries are tighter to perform but recharge your Action Points (these are used for special attacks) and let you unleash a highly damaging counterattack if you parry everything in a sequence.

All of these evasive moves are responsive, which is a good thing because enemies will frequently unleash long attack sequences with tricky timings, encouraging you to memorize patterns and pay attention to well-telegraphed animations (accompanied by a text prompt that gives you a hint about what’s coming next, like “X enemy unleashes a slow sequence of strikes”). The large but not overwhelming number of distinct enemies, combined with their multiple attack patterns, makes it a blast to master countering these moves, as fluid animations and well-considered camera placement convey an additional sense of impact.

While these twitchy reaction tests may sound somewhat unappealing to those who want a more old-school turn-based RPG experience, the default difficulty accomplishes a clever balancing act where it rewards you for slick defense without requiring total mastery. And on the flip side, if you want to test your skills further, there’s a sizable lineup of optional mini-bosses eager to end your expedition early, many of which require mastery. Contrary to many turn-based RPGs, the ability to completely mitigate incoming damage makes it so you can beat any foe regardless of your level (even if this isn’t a great idea because it will take hours), offering a challenge for those who want it without outright requiring it. And as you reach the final act, the world expands even further in a stunning way, offering more avenues of exploration and compelling battles that could have you delaying your standoff with the final boss until you’re well over 60 hours in (I hit this number without coming close to traversing every corner of the map). Overall, a good way to think about these enemy encounters is that just like how the Final Fantasy VII remakes ingeniously mix action games with a heavy turn-based flavor, Clair Obscur is equally outstanding at delivering the opposite combination, resulting in a turn-based game with incredibly satisfying action elements.

And all of those real-time defensive sequences are only one dimension of these turn-based fights because in between dodging laser blasts and pointy objects, you’re still making strategic choices and deciding how to outfit your team. On the surface, things are fairly standard: each turn, you control a specific team member and choose if you want to perform a skill that costs Action Points (AP), use items, do a base attack that doesn’t cost AP, or fire a projectile.

Admittedly, the decision-making feels a bit simple at first, running into a recurring turn-based RPG problem where you sort of just use your most powerful attacks over and over without considering what your foes are doing. Thankfully, things quickly get more complicated, and while there will be stretches where you’re ignoring what your enemy is doing while building towards a combo, the decision-making becomes much more involved over time. Specifically, as your party unlocks more of their distinct skill sets, it becomes clear they each have exceedingly unique mechanics that don’t cleanly correlate with typical classes like a “Healer” or a “Tank.”

For instance, Maelle is built around a stance mechanic: the Offensive Stance makes it so she gives and takes 50% more damage, the Defensive stance has her take 50% less damage and gain additional AP from timing parries and blocks, and the Virtuous Stance lets her deal 200% damage but can only be switched into in specific circumstances. With exceptions, you can’t stay in the same stance from turn to turn, and skills automatically transition you between different stances. Meanwhile, after Lune uses a skill, she gains an elemental charge that can amplify an ability of a different element. Essentially, many of these movesets are designed to make it so you don’t just perform your strongest move repeatedly, and they mostly succeed at doing so.

Each character has a web of skills that can be gradually unlocked through leveling up, and when you combine these with the many other means of customization, characters can each fit into multiple unique roles. A good example is how Lune, who is sort of a mage, can be geared more toward targeting elemental weaknesses, more based around building up Break damage (which lets you stun enemies), dedicated to dishing out negative status effects like burns, some combination of these, or other roles altogether.

And there are even more ways to fine-tune each party member: there’s standard stat point allocation after leveling up, but equipment is often even more important due to the game-changing weapons and equipable talismans called Pictos that grant passive abilities and stat buffs. If you use a particular Picto enough times, you can equip its passive ability without it taking up a talisman slot, which, when stacked with all these other means of buffing characters, gives a lot of room for creativity and ways to counter tough enemies.

That said, I do have a few complaints. For starters, it’s quite a pain to change loadouts, which is unfortunate because you’ll do this a lot to unlock new Picto abilities and when facing tough foes who require specific countermeasures. It would have been nice if there were saveable configurations that made switching easier. On top of this, I would have preferred if you could respec a character’s stats and skills at any time instead of needing to use a limited resource, as this would have made it much easier to try alternate playstyles. Lastly, it’s strange that you can’t manually save, and while I never ran into problems with losing progress, relying on an auto-save was a constant mild source of anxiety.

Thankfully, there’s some smart streamlining in other places that partially balances these problems out, like how instead of holding on to 100 potions you’re inevitably going to be stingy about for no real reason, there’s a Dark Souls-style system where you recharge utility items at save points. You’ll still probably be spending more time looking at UI than you want, especially considering you’re incentivized to constantly swap out Pictos to learn their abilities, but at least this tinkering proves worthwhile.

Because even with some drawbacks, these elements have enough depth to make for an RPG theory crafter’s dream, making it rewarding to plan out clever combinations of passives, skills, and team compositions. My favorite example was outfitting Lune and her teammates so she could consistently utilize a restrictive but appropriately dramatically named skill called Elemental Genesis, which unleashes an over-the-top barrage of death lasers that will make your favorite battle shonen anime protagonist’s finishing attack look tame by comparison.

On top of these battles being rewarding in terms of strategy and execution, as Lune’s previously described onslaught would suggest, Clair Obscur also does an excellent job building on the larger-than-life aesthetics shared by other RPGs about killing God. Earth-shattering animations sell your party’s abilities as their well-choreographed strikes are complemented by slow-mo that always kicks in at the best times. As for the creatures on the other end of your rapier thrusts, most of the Nevrons’ designs are abstract and interesting, and while there are a handful of duds in the bunch (mostly from a dramaturgical mask-themed island), the majority match a setting that melds beautiful fairytale backdrops and a grim sense of danger. The game delights in this contrast, juxtaposing the horror and wonder of this place where awesome scenery is as common as piles of corpses. Even the menus are sharp, popping off the screen in a way clearly inspired by Persona’s best-in-class sleekness.

And then there’s the score. While the art direction is excellent, Lorien Testard’s soundtrack somehow finds an extra gear, combining elegiac opera and electric guitar riffs in a way that perfectly embodies a game that includes both anime maximalism and gold-trimmed Art Noveau: it so perfectly captures the vibe that it almost feels like they started with the music and built a videogame from it instead of the other way around. As you explore scenic glades littered with bodies, Alice Duport-Percier’s voice glides in with an aching sadness that captures the pain of this broken place. And then you’ll be scrapping with a 10-foot-tall golem as a battle anthem has you ready to charge into no man’s land without a second thought. It can be unbearably sad, it can be intensely adrenaline-pumping, and it may just be the best RPG soundtrack since NieR: Automata.

The score helps build toward big emotions matched by storytelling that smoothly transitions between heartfelt moments, grisly sights, comedic jabs, shocking turns, and lots of questions. It’s a journey that never sags despite taking dozens of hours to finish, shaking things up whenever it risks getting a bit stale. Along the way, it ruminates on grief and sits with the gravity of working on a generational project that these characters may not personally see the fruits of. The flags of previous expeditions act as save points, and your party scales mountains using footholds built by those who came before, which, when combined with the admittedly on-the-nose endless piles of corpses (including one part where these bodies literally form a bridge), it’s impossible not to think about how your fighting for something bigger. And thankfully, later complexities ensure the story doesn’t fall into the trap of lauding these meat-thresher expeditions as beautifully heroic as if it were written by Paths of Glory’s evil General Mireau or something. Tying in nicely with this focus on endless loss is the emphasis on dealing with the world-destroying weight of grief, which becomes more of a focus as these characters accumulate baggage.

That said, if I have a grievance here (I’ll be cryptic to avoid spoilers), it’s that the narrative messily shifts its focus at the eleventh hour in a way that’s bold but a touch unsatisfying. The ending I received was haunting and raised fascinating questions without clear answers, but didn’t entirely match this journey’s previous trajectory. Put simply, it goes a little gonzo at the end in a way that partially works but isn’t quite as cohesive as it could be; maybe there’s some hidden ending beyond the two I saw that will perfectly tie its themes of grief and generational sacrifice together, but I wasn’t able to find it.

All things considered, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 more than lives up to the expectations set by its eye-catching reveal. It combines the nitty-gritty number crunching of in-depth RPGs with active battle elements so good they channel the gratification of a tight action game. The world is brilliantly designed, both visually and mechanically, and the soundtrack fits every emotional contour, smoothly transitioning between melancholy musings and battles where your guy spin flips 12 times before hitting a monster with a flaming sword. It all comes together in a bizarre pastiche that somehow works despite feeling equally reverential towards Cloud Strife and fine art (Clair Obscur is the French term for chiaroscuro, a lighting technique associated with artists like Caravaggio and Rembrandt). The climax comes in a little hot, but even here, the game feels true to itself: it may literally be about following in the footsteps of those who came before, but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ultimately charts its own path.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was developed by Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive. Our review is based on the PC version. It is also available for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Elijah Gonzalez writes about games. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon series. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.