A modern work of art

The game is an action RPG set in a universe inspired by the French Belle Époque, exploring a very well-developed turn-based combat and stunning graphics, aiming to live the story of Expedition 33, with the goal of ending the cycle of deaths of the Artificer.

It is a single-player game that puts the player in the perspective of expeditioners, who following a tradition of the Artificer, are sent on an external expedition to the island they live on to explore.
 

Exploring the story and gameplay

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has a phenomenal story, brilliantly executed, being very dense and reflective, every year the Artificer awakens and paints a new number on the monolith of the island of Lumiere, always in descending order, causing people of that age to be killed and taken to the void, when this happens, a new expedition is made with the aim of killing the Artificer.

From this introduction, our story begins, encompassing various characters like Gustave, Lune, and Maelle, who are part of Expedition number 33.

The game is extremely linear and follows a programmed story, but has its secrets to explore, through dialogues and puzzles, being a good addition to break up the pace of the game a bit.

Despite its linearity, Clair Obscur is brilliant, the setting, combined with the soundtrack and photorealistic graphics, create an excellent sensory experience and together with a captivating story, charismatic characters, and good turn-based combat, it creates a complete experience that puts giant companies in a delicate position about the quality of recent games.



The combat style that revived a love for turn-based

Clair Obscure makes turn-based combat, in such a fast-paced era, absolutely fun to play, firstly by adding layers of defense during your enemies' turns, making the player pay constant attention to the battle and not become monotonous and often tiresome.

It is important to note that the game's difficulty is relative, there is a difficulty selector that can be changed at any time in the settings and the game makes sure to make it clear to the player, the game's exploration is free of combat, which is exclusively reserved for turn-based encounters, which still give you the advantage of attacking first, in case the player attacks the enemy from outside the battle to start it.

The game's improvement and build system follows a traditional recipe when it comes to distributing points in attributes, such as strength, agility, vitality, and the like, and brings an interesting mechanic of Pictos, items with specific attributes and effects that evolve as the player wins battles, these items spawn on the ground, can be looted from puzzle chests, and are even granted as rewards for defeating enemies, as well as weapons and cosmetics.

During battles, we control all members of our team, so we have to learn what each one does, which combos are most efficient, and how they can interact with each other to cause a greater harmful effect on enemies. Pictos are also important for building combos and builds, as their effects can easily buff the skills and attacks of the characters. 

A revitalizing release

Playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was one of the best experiences I've had in recent years with the entire gaming industry, a game from a small company (compared to industry giants), bringing a captivating work of art, mechanically sharp and with beautiful elements with a reduced budget and personnel is truly impressive and gives us hope to see more titles like this in the future.

The game, overall, is easy to play, especially in terms of mechanics, it has good tutorials that introduce you to the mechanics in a very intuitive way, the only part that requires a little training is mastering the mechanics of dodge, defense, and jump during battles, which are certainly the biggest factors of death.

The game is localized in several languages and has voice acting only in English and French, being completely subtitled in various languages, an excellent factor, especially for a supposedly small project.

The game's performance is good, it has good optimization, despite using the dreaded Unreal Engine, an exceptional job was done in optimizing the game and it is possible to make it very beautiful and still maintain good frame rates, what may bother some players is the fact that the game has a lot of sharpness (which can be easily corrected with a community mod) and that makes the experience more interesting, in my opinion, besides having support features to help increase the frame rate, such as upscaling technologies (XeSS and DLAA).

A project that deserves a lot of attention

My personal experience with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was excellent, it was even difficult to point out negative points, since during my gameplay, everything worked so well that I was quite surprised, but for sure the beauty and sensitivity of the game deserve an extra highlight, especially associated with the impeccable soundtrack that manages to convey the feeling of what is happening. 

The key mapping is very intuitive, easy to get the hang of and fulfills its function well, I highly recommend using a controller to play, as the experience with the keyboard and mouse seems a bit faster than it should be.

The game offers a good quality of life, with a complete interface, as well as good control customization and options for graphics and audio.



For this review, the game was experienced on PC, using the Steam platform.