Blair Loveday
With games like Final Fantasy radically shifting their gameplay from the turn based awesomeness it used to have I have been itching for something a bit more old school.
There are plenty of urned based JRPG’s, but the epicness that Final Fantasy consistently achieves with some of that gameplay isn’t something easy to replicate. Well, Kepler Interactive has decided to make their version of a classic JRPG with turned-based battles, a story worthy of the awesomeness of Final Fantasy, and some nice inspiration from Persona. And it’s excellent.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 kicks off on a dark day. The people on the island of Lumiere spend a day celebrating people of a certain age. That’s because for the last 67 years a strange being on an island in the distance shows a number go down one by one. When that happens, all the people of that age suddenly disappear into a bunch of flower petals. This year all of the people who are 33 die. That’s where the expedition comes in.
Our hero Gustav is 32, and he has to watch his ex die to this strange deity the Paintress. He joins the annual expedition where they send a bunch of people off to this mysterious island to try to stop the Paintress. People have rarely survived, but it’s worth a crack right? This expedition goes off to the island where they see a mysterious man walk out. Excitement at seeing what appears to be a survivor soon changes as they get massacred by a bunch of magical beings.
What is really surprising is just how good the story is.
The whole premise is dark as hell, but the journey is punctuated with a cast that can be as oddball as they are perfect for each other. Very Final Fantasy, but a bit darker than even that series got. I knew nothing about the game before jumping into it, and immediately felt that inspiration. So I wasn’t shocked when I found out the creators were shooting for it.
The gameplay has you running around and exploring areas, with heaps of collectables, and venturing from location to location to further the story. You see enemies out in the open, but when you touch them it cuts away to a classic JRPG battle screen.
Here you have abilities you can use, attacks, items, you know, classic JRPG. One nice kicker though is that when you attack, you have little QTE prompts at times to do more damage which makes it super engaging. Added to this is that when enemies attack you can dodge or counter their attacks if you get your timing wrong. You will quickly find yourself underpowered if you take the hits in the face, but if you get your counters right you can smash the guts out of enemies a lot more powerful than you. Dodging has a nicer hit window, and it takes a lot of practice to start getting counters down, but it is well worth trying to figure out enemy patterns so you can nail those.
There is plenty of depth, from the simple to the complicated. For instance flying enemies can be hit by less attacks, but there is a cool mechanic where you can use your ability points to shoot an enemy. This doesn’t use your turn, but it does burn through your AP. This can be essential to knocking off those flying enemies, but using your AP on other enemies can be much more beneficial. The more characters you unlock, the more battle styles that open up to you.
If you are getting smoked in battles, grinding is relatively easy. When you use a healing location, enemies regenerate. This means you can heal up, and go smash one of them over and over again. I also love that there is a difficulty setting you change throughout the game. The easier it is, the bigger dodge and counter window you have. This means early game you can start with it easier, and scale it up as you get better at the timing.
It isn’t all perfect though. One minor, okay, major annoyance, is a lack of quest markers and maps in each location. It is very early Final Fantasy in that way, but man I was getting sick of running around in circles looking for where I was meant to go. The game can also drop the frame rate and jitter a bit at times, even on a PS5 Pro. Super minor, but a thing nonetheless.
Another quirk that I both love and hate, is that the battle menus are super stylised. This results in it looking cool as hell as it pops up on the screen, but it’s difficult to read from a distance. This meant as I was playing on the couch, I regularly had to get up and read the screen closer, at least until I remembered which abilities were on the menu. It’s a little bit annoying, but it looks so gorgeous.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a fantastic game that is everything I didn’t know I wanted right now. With Final Fantasy on my mind at the moment for reasons outside of video games, it really hit at the exact right time for me to appreciate it as much as it deserves to be. This is a damn fine game that should appeal to classic JRPG fans and make for an interesting potential entry for new fans.
Released: April 2025
Rating: M
Platform reviewed: PlayStation 5
Genre: RPG
Developer: Sandfall Interactive, Sandfall S.A.S.
Publisher: Kepler Interactive