| Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | DLC & Pre-Order | Review |
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was one of the showstealers during Xbox Games Showcase 2024 and is a dynamic turn-based RPG! Read on to learn about our first impressions of the game, its story, and gameplay.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Gameplay
Created in a fantasy world inspired by Belle Époque France, the game is inspired by the cult classic turn-based JRPGs that came before it like Suikoden, Golden Sun, and Final Fantasy.
Combat
In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, combat is a fusion of turn-based strategy and real-time action. Players command a squad of Expeditioners, each with their own unique skills, combat styles, and battlefield roles. Battles are fought in turns, but the player must remain actively engaged even outside of choosing skills—timing dodges, parries, jumps, and counters to survive enemy assaults. Only those who actively participate in a fight earn experience, making party rotation and character management essential. The system demands both thoughtful planning and reactive execution, blending traditional RPG mechanics with real time action elements.
Action and Skills
Each character wields a set of unique abilities that can be customized and enhanced through two key systems: Pictos and Luminas. Pictos are collectibles that can be equipped to characters, granting anything from stat boosts to entirely new tactical options. Luminas, on the other hand, are passive abilities that become available during combat. These systems create a constant sense of growth and flexibility, rewarding creative builds and experimentation.
Dodge, Parry, Jump, and Counter
Rather than simply absorbing damage or letting defensive buffs handle incoming attacks, players must take direct control to defend themselves in real time. Dodging provides a fairly generous window to evade attacks completely, but for those seeking a higher risk-reward payoff, parrying is available. A successful parry not only negates damage but also triggers a counterattack, turning an enemy's offense into a lethal opening. Some attacks, particularly those sweeping across the ground, must be avoided by jumping instead of dodging horizontally.
Free Aim
A defining feature of Expedition 33’s combat is the Free Aim system. Players can manually aim and fire at enemy targets. Careful aiming allows the player to target specific weak points, inflicting critical damage or status effects that can dramatically alter the course of battle. Free Aim adds a shooter-like layer of skill to the otherwise turn-based framework.
Optional Bosses
Throughout Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the world is peppered with powerful optional bosses that players can seek out and challenge for valuable rewards. Each optional boss is uniquely designed, often much tougher than the main story fights, demanding mastery of the game's free-aim shooting, dodging, and counter mechanics.
Character Building
Upon leveling up, characters receive three attribute points and one skill point. Attribute points can be allocated to five primary stats—Might, Vitality, Defense, Agility, and Luck—each influencing aspects like health, attack power, defense, and critical hit chance. Skill points are used to unlock new abilities within each character's unique skill tree, allowing for specialization and strategic depth.
Camp
Between missions, players return to their base camp, a peaceful hub where they can rest, regroup, and prepare for future expeditions. At camp, players can interact with the Curator, a central figure who facilitates upgrading the Expedition’s weapons and managing both Pictos and Luminas. Camp also serves as a narrative space where Expeditioners can be spoken to individually, offering character-driven dialogue that gradually reveals their backstories, motivations, and relationships. Scattered across the world are Expedition Flags, functioning as fast-travel points, healing stations, and menu access spots. The camp and its associated systems provide necessary breathing room between the tense, demanding combat sequences of the journey.
Exploration and Upgrades
Exploration plays a massive role in the overall experience of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The world is layered, intricate, and filled with hidden secrets for the diligent player to uncover.
The Continent
The game features an overworld map that connects various regions, including unique locations like the Flying Waters. A unique character, Esquie, plays a pivotal role in exploration. As a mythical creature, Esquie assists the party in traversing challenging terrains, including swimming across bodies of water. Unlocking Esquie's abilities is crucial for accessing new regions and uncovering the game's many secrets.
The Manor
In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, The Manor is a mysterious, interconnected structure that players will gradually unlock as they explore the continent. Scattered throughout the world are ancient, ornate doors—some hidden, some in plain sight—that all lead back to different parts of the Manor. Each time the player finds and unlocks a new door, it reveals a previously inaccessible room within the Manor. The Manor serves as a nexus for both story progression and hidden discoveries.
Paint Cages
Scattered throughout are Paint Cages—special challenges that test the player's puzzle-solving and environmental interaction. Completing these cages rewards valuable loot, including rare Pictos and Luminas upgrades that can significantly boost the party's strength.
Tools
Traversal tools such as grapples and climbing hooks, often remnants from previous expeditions, enable access to hidden areas and vertical exploration. These tools are essential for uncovering secret bosses, rare items, and entire hidden levels, making meticulous exploration highly beneficial.
Friendship Level
Although Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 includes a friendship system, it is relatively light compared to many RPGs. Players can build bonds with their Expedition members through conversations and optional dialogue scenes, but these relationships mainly provide small narrative rewards rather than significant mechanical advantages. While deeper connections add flavor to the world and characters, the system remains optional and understated, focusing on enriching the game's emotional undertone rather than steering the plot or combat outcomes in major ways.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Story
The Gommage
The world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is bound by the ritual of the Gommage. Each year, the Paintress decrees an age, and anyone of that age is erased from existence. This ritual instills fear across the population, as the age limit continues to decrease, threatening everyone’s survival. The fate of the people is in constant flux, and the Gommage becomes the key motivator for the game's characters as they seek to end this vicious cycle.
Expedition 33
The story follows Gustave, an engineer who bids farewell to his former lover, Sophie, on the day of the 67th Gommage. Sophie, having turned 33, vanishes in accordance with the ritual, and Gustave, who only has a year left to live, joins Expedition 33 with the hope of slaying the Paintress and ending the Gommage. However, shortly after making landfall, the expedition is ambushed by a mysterious white-haired man. Most of the expedition members are slaughtered in the chaos, with the survivors scattered across the land.
Gustave, along with his companions—Lune, Maelle, and Sciel—struggles to survive and regroup. Maelle begins experiencing troubling visions of the white-haired man and a masked girl.
New Allies and Discoveries
Along their journey, Gustave and his companions are joined by Esquie, a local creature who aids them in crossing dangerous terrain. Along the way, they encounter Verso, a former member of a previous expedition who provides crucial insight into the mysteries surrounding their mission. As the party travels deeper into the world, they begin to learn more about the true nature of the Paintress, the Gommage, and the tragic history of the land they are trying to save.
The Heart of Lumière and the Path to the Paintress
As the group ventures into ancient locations, they encounter challenges and confront powerful enemies. Their ultimate goal is to reach the Paintress, who resides in a hidden place protected by an impenetrable barrier. Along the way, they must gather critical resources and craft powerful weapons in order to break through these defenses and confront the entity responsible for the Gommage.
Throughout their journey, the party must also grapple with their personal motivations and the ties that bind them to the fate of the world. The more they uncover, the more they realize that their mission is intertwined with a much larger cosmic struggle.
Confronting the Paintress
The story builds toward a final confrontation with the Paintress, where the true nature of the Gommage, as well as the dark history of those involved, will be revealed. However, as the group reaches the heart of the Paintress' domain, they must make difficult choices that could reshape their world forever.
In the end, the choices made by the player will determine not only the fate of the protagonists but also the world they inhabit, with diverging paths that lead to different endings.
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