Thought I’d revisit my personal Tumblr void to talk about how much I adore Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It went from “hey that looks pretty cool” to a Top 20 game. The characters are written incredibly well and feel like real, well-rounded people with layers that don’t become obvious immediately. All brought to life by an incredible voice cast with some heavy hitters across the industry. The game isn’t afraid to get dark but also has some of the funniest exchanges between characters I can remember. I don’t even need to talk about Esquie because cmon everyone loves that guy.
Supposedly the music director was some dude on SoundCloud that the game’s director approached!? The score indubitably elevates the already great story to even more emotional heights, like with any great JRPG. Mournful pianos, riveting battle ballads and jazz?? Like this shit has everything.
But at the end of the day, this is a game, so how’s the gameplay? It takes a tried and true JRPG formula and throws in a Sekiro-like parrying mechanic that rewards precision and accuracy. It helps that countering and parrying feel AMAZING to pull off and there’s enough variation that you constantly feel like you’re learning how to get better. The build-crafting is also insane. The picto/lumina system is really innovative and allows nearly endless build-variety with little-to-no farming required. I’m not really a min/maxer but this game made it easy to dive into that sort of play style. To take down the optional super-boss, I had to make the most of the game’s systems and I was able to do it with just Verso in my party.
Speaking of that optional boss, it’s insane how much story, lore and content is hidden behind the scenes, away from the main plot. For an “indie” game I was easily able to squeeze more playtime out of this than say, Spider-Man 2. And that boss is partially why I made this post because wow. I haven’t had such a fulfilling time taking a boss down since Messer in SoTE or Erlang in Wukong. Tough as nails but ultimately surmountable. It helped that he was essentially a Dark Souls reference made manifest lmao.
All that to say, Expedition 33 is a power house and for a freshman debut, Sandfall Interactive crushed it. I’m in love with the characters, score, gameplay, all of it. Every time I become disillusioned with the gaming industry or with creating art in general, something comes along that reinvigorates me. I hope to do the same one day. Tomorrow Comes. It always will.
origamiaround
izzy806
annaxmalina
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
