Clair Obscur Expedition 33 Review: Painful French Spins of JRPG Formula

The Japanese RPG genre respects its icons, like the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series. game In that tradition, it is replicated rather than innovation. It took studios around the world in France to create JRPGs that stand out from those Titan shadows.

clear clear nabure: expedition 33The debut game of French studio Sandfall Interactive achieves the ultimate bunch. From lighting to world building, combat and music, you can easily find the best aspects of each individual. But even more importantly, they weave together, cohesive, thematically powerful games, telling mature stories with confidence and style, and specific packaging (please forgive me) I don’t know what It immersed me in a world of passion and loss.

The story of Expedition 33 explores the land of fantasy with the mercy of sedatives, the super-powerful being who has culminated humanity once a year through generations. One day, the residents of Lumiere (devastated Paris, covered in tiled rubs and grape grapes), the seemingly only city, gather together to bid their loved ones adieu. They see them far away, and the painkillers glow, lowering the number of sloppy answers by one. Slowly, people of age disappear into the dust, and the age limit for humanity decreases again.

Lumière resists each year by sending an armed group of volunteers above the sea into the wilderness to defeat the pain. And while they have failed up until now, tradition lives on by the traditions of hopeless followers and older soldiers who choose to spend a little time with their destiny to challenge their destiny.

Gathering a collection of sturdy adventurers to take on God for the world is a textbook JRPG, but there is the tone of most games in the extreme extreme genre of naive optimism and cynical nihilism. Instead, the story of Sandfall Interactive is imagined by characters who are prosperous in despair, still taking action, and leading anxiety to a determined belief in progress. Throughout the game, the main characters repeat the city mantra. “For those who will come later,” and “Tomorrow will come.” Even a slowly contracting apocalypse acquires meaning.

Through its commitment to the tone of the game, the prism of beauty shines through. The plot alternates between the sublime wonders of a vibrant new land and the brutal calculations in a world without sympathy, and is full of surprises. The music is gentle and emotional, with unforgettable piano and violin arranged by composer Lorien Tester, and Alice Duporte Percier sings an unforgettable, beautiful song for the original soundtrack that took hours. Expedition 33 producer François Meurisse told me.

The wild and friendly characters you meet, an incredibly gorgeous environment, a truly amazing English voice cast immersed in light and shadows – this game is a symphony of well-executed elements, combined with something new.

Its novel alchemy leads to a rare sensation among JRPGs. Not to mention the whole game, often halfway through, I really didn’t know what to expect next. For gamers tired of the ratio and tradition, the game tackling death in unknown territory is like desert water.

All of these aren’t the riots that the game plays.

Fighting fate in turn-based battles like souls

Unlike more open-ended RPGs like this year avowed and Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remaster Or the great 2023 Gate 3 of Baldurthere’s no choice as to how the Expedition 33 storyline will go – at least as far as I’ve experienced it over 20 hours of the game. You get control in a battle system that offers some of the most interactive turn-based battles I’ve ever played.

This is primarily due to the reactive features built into the system. Players can dodge by pressing a button when the enemy attacks with a rather generous window. Those who are more confident can try to accept the attack, and if done across enemy combos, the character counters for serious damage. It took me about 12 hours to be confident in the timing that is sufficient to make the attack successful, but it can be reduced in difficulty or equip certain abilities to mitigate it. Later in the game there is even more enemy attack dynamics.

The defense system is Dark Souls and Elden Ringsome of the games inspired by Final Fantasy 10 and Persona 5, but producer Muris told me. The latter is obvious when switching submenas in combat. This will shift the camera view slightly. “Every time you click, it triggers the movement of the camera,” says Meurisse.

The cast of characters you collect isn’t that big, but each has its own unique skill and its own mechanic that acts like a turn-by-turn mini-game to increase the chances of damage. For the main character, Gustave, the attack increases the accusations to unleash in a massive lightning attack. Lune the Mage gets an elemental “stain” after casting a spell that can be spent to empower later spells. Fencer Maelle switches stances each time you use a skill.

Some other aspects are more conventional and have a series of status effects that can be applied to enemies that deal time damage or mark them slower or higher damage to the enemy. However, players can also shoot enemies and target weaknesses through guns and unspecified magic. Each shot costs AP, and resources are also used to power spells and skills, so you need to be restrained so you don’t fire with joy from a volley.

This is something to bear in mind already, but the Picto system escalates complexity. Pictos are essentially a bonus spasive ability that allows a character to equip up to three at a time. After a handful of battles, they can unlock the picto and add that ability to their characters. Juggling this budget is key to breaking the second half of the game and, by chance, the battles completely. Many of these picts offer bonus damage or effects, such as attacking enemies that already have a status effect if the conditions are met. These Pikcho scores have been picked up throughout the game, allowing players to create builds between characters to synergize and earn a total of dizzy damage.

Learning deeper combat and deeper Picto systems is a joy for RPG fans who make shorter and longer boss battles more appealing and interactive than most other JRPGs. It fills the crispy part of the brain that will please the overclocking of the system, which is willing to ripen for abuse from determined players. And it acts as both distraction and harmony from the theme of the game – the companions absorbed throughout their lifetimes are working in vain to stop it for the “someone who will come after it.”

Expedition 33’s Death and Meaning Dance

When I heard that French game studios were taking on the venerable JRPG genre, I jokingly wondered how many berets, baguettes and mimes would come in. And then they insist on a ridiculous but chic outfit for the hero, wearing sunglasses, a beret and long panties tied to his back like a sword.

Expedition 33 accepts this strangeness as a complement to its melancholy tone, and it’s all richer. There’s something beyond the stereotypical French organ music and Mime that Sandfall Interactive has brilliantly thrown in. Not just about another world, but how people are confused to reach a meaningful end anyway, through its serious and unfair limits. Without the JRPG ratios like the annoying, annoying protagonist carved from Joseph Campbell’s heroic checklist, Expedition 33 is a sad realist dedicated to each other, but expects losses, devotion to a future they believe they will not see.

Expedition 33 was partly inspired by a 2004 French novel (The Horde of Counterwind) called the 2004 French novel (The Horde of Counterwind). Similarly, the painkillers that carve humanity are a force unknown to the edge of the world, and fighting back against her seems futile.

Over the course of the game, I discovered journals from expeditions of past years. Each attempted a new way of success where others failed. However, I discovered that their bodies were trapped in the final pose and their bodies turned bronze in a strange process that gave birth to all the humans who venture beyond their cities.

The strange landscape beyond Lumiere was transformed forever by fractures. This is a calamity that occurred a century ago before patients began to tick the human clock. The island then floats in the sky, and Antillebian buildings blend into the soil and rocks. As the light droops through trees and aerial archipelagoes, I often stopped to stare at the landscapes just as beautiful and alien as the characters in the game. I’ve stacked over 100 screenshots, mainly from areas I’ve been so respected.

In chatting with Meurisse, I asked him what French is about the game, and he listed clothing and architecture inspired by the Belle Epoque era in France in the late 1800s and the Art Deco walls that appear on the golden gold and black walls of the buildings of destiny. However, it is a different perspective, which combines different perspectives, and is refreshing. Even when he’s swimming in death, the character still creates a world where he can immerse himself in wonder.

I did that too.

Expedition 33 is celebrated and deserves its many excellence. But, among other things, it tells an adult story about what remains for us when the future is slowly torn apart, and why it is worth fighting the inevitable anyway. You never know the wonder that at the end you are now able to see.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is currently available PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X and S.