kisui is Reviewing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Approaching the Ides of March, let's review one of the most celebrated games in the modern era, Clair Obscure: Expedition 33. Or also known as E33.
This is a game where I really feel conflicted rating it. At one point I was really engrossed with the game, but at the same time, I stopped playing the game and had no desire to continue until several months later when I had nothing better to play.
I'd skip the basic premise of the game since it is best to go in blind. But I'm sure if you are a gamer, you know this game. That's how popular this game and from my personal point of view, it totally deserved it. The game was great, beautiful, and extremely well polished. A game that I would give really high score but at the same time I have no desire to 100% it.
Don't get me wrong, again the game was great and I personally love it but at the same time, there are part that I absolutely hate.
The game has engaging story, amazing worldbuilding, and beautiful graphic. Those are combined with a really strong direction, high production value, and great polish. In which this game deserves 10/10, a full mark, but I must take a full single point away due to reasons.
My main issue with the game is the gameplay. The gameplay is actually decent and I will detail in the spoiler below but it has things that grits me. Long short story, the game advertises itself as JRPG style turn based which I really adore. In actuality, it uses turn-based RPG element and twist it into something that I hate. The game is actually focus more on action sequence rather and have the turn base JRPG as 'condiments'. The game developer did say that they are inspired by the Dark Soul series and I believe it is the core gameplay rather than the turn based.
Unless you absolutely hate precision dodge gameplay like me, I definitely recommend the game. A game that deserved the awards that it has won, but if you hate precise timing gameplay and expecting turn based JRPG, you can consider to put it on lower priority.
Heavier Gameplay and Story Spoiler Below
Welcome back to the full review. As usual, let's start with the basic premise. Again it is better to go blind, so you can skip to next paragraph if you want to do so. If not, the base premise is a mysterious dying world. A group of "french people" are living in a place called Lumiere (which is inspired by Paris in the late 19th century or early 20th century). The game begins with a festival, as you progress you would get clues about some kind of parting. Until it was revealed that there was a giant monolith with a number 34. As the bell strikes, a gigantess called "Paintress" repaint the number to 33 and everyone who is 33 years old is "gommaged"(death by turning into petals) from living world. The number is decreasing each year, so life expediencies keep going down. Then the main story begin, a group of citizen that will die next year is holding an expedition toward monolith to defeat the Paintress and save the world, the expedition has been going for years without success but it is time for Expedition 33 to depart. As Expeditioners, you are equipped with martial are techniques and even magic like "tech". Just like JRPG, you have the speedster archetype, the support archetype, the mage archetype, the blue mage and the heavy hitter that you can use in the turn based combat. But let's save the gameplay review for later. As a story game, the game is divided into a prologue and 3 Acts. The game is really beautifully written, but I must say the prologue is the strongest with each act have decrease in... excitement. I wouldn't say it is bad or uncohesive. It is still a wonderful story and wrapped it up in a serene closure. You got strong worlbuilding that is complemented by the arts, lovable characters with strong voice acting and motion capture and great BGM that accompanies the story. The problem is... You have this beautiful world with vibrant character and the story eventually shifts into a specific character which feels a bit reductive and the mood changes to since after all it becomes something akin to family drama soap opera. All the beautiful motifs of the game are almost gone. The heroics are reduced to nothingness something forgotten. It is still beautifully delivered, but you would feel the characters that you have been with you all the time, the heroes that accompany you through tears and blood, is reduced to extras. The story became a story about a single girl (who is not my favorite) and her family who cannot move on (again feels very... reductive). The delivery of the story is very strong (it has weak parts but barely) which makes this game one of the best story game I have ever played. But as the game progress, you could feel annoyed by the direction the story is heading.
Another strong part of the game is the art. The world is really beautiful as one of the theme of the game is painting. It does feel like a masterpiece on a canvas. The physics doesn't make sense but it feels like beauty captured in freeze frame. Areas are fun which some have beautiful highlights like a tranquil gallery. But I must say, as the game progress there are lots of asset reuse. There are beautiful areas but later in the game, you could feel bored since a lot of them are just... Rocks, bigger rocks and rocks with decorations. That said, some areas are just amazingly gorgeous. It is not exactly HD since the game is badly optimized but the concept is beautiful at the very least.
Then the game also has one of the most beautiful soundtracks. A combination of classical orchestral, some opera music, and acoustic piano delivered perfectly on the world and the scenes. The soundtrack is just really beautiful you would remember it even after the ending (and having it on your playlist to accompany you in your daily life.)
The game also has great directing, each stages are beautifully arranged, at every transition you could see beautiful landscape on the horizon. Each combat are accompanied by epic music and each cut-scene is cinematic and cathartic. Combats are epic and the pacing is also great, you don't feel the game slow down or cut down by unnecessary extended combat. Though, I must say there is a pacing and overall gameplay issue in Act 3 combined with which decrease overall enjoyment late game.
To delve further why this game doesn't get full mark from me, I need to explain the gameplay. I am sure other people who likes the gameplay would give them a perfect score and I couldn't disagree with them, since this is mostly subjective (though I believe there is some objective part). The gameplay is advertised as Turn Based JRPG which in a way is correct. But when some say Turn Based RPG, you would imagine a set of party each with their own strength. A warrior great at dealing weapon damages, a Mage exploiting elemental weakness of the enemies, A Priest type healing and supporting character with buffs, and a speedster type who is great at dodging enemies and taking multiple turns. Then you get into combat executing different skills depending on enemies or fighting a boss on attrition battle trying to keep your parties alive. Or maybe you would find enjoyment in setting up buffs and executing ultimate moves to deal massive damage! Then collecting different items and equipments to push through the limits of your builds. Truthfully this game has all of those which in a way is delectable. Unfortunately the way the implemented them is a miss making those mechanics mostly useless due to another mechanic which I really dislike, Dodge and Parry. Due to Dark Soul-like influence the game has this Quick Time Event in combat where you must dodge or parry enemy attack or even hit with your own attack by pressing a button on a precise timing. There are already a lot of JRPG that implement this. For example like in FF8 where pressing buttons during some sequence increases your damage. But here, it is semi-mandatory. Even normal Enemies hits like a truck, a single attack can reduce you to 0 hitpoints making the dodge and parry mechanic needed. The game does offer you three difficulty settings. On easiest, this mechanic is not mandatory, enemy doesn't hit as hard but at the same time, enemies are too weak, you can clearly kill them without strategy. On normal difficulties, enemies hit hard as mentioned, but at the same time you also hit hard like a glass cannon. Is it a good thing? Maybe, but due to this, combat are usually done in 1-3 rounds even against bosses. You don't get the enjoyment from setting up, and even if you try to set up, press the wrong dodge button and your setup is reset to 0. And I don't even need to say in harder difficulties, the Real Time dodge and parry mechanic is even more mandatory. Just git gut you say? I play turn based on purpose because I know I have bad reflexes. Due to this I can say a lot of people will enjoy the game, but as a turn based fan, I dislike the implementation of the turn based. You don't get the classic enjoyment of turn based. You cannot setup to deal ultimate damage (actually there are combos that are just 2-3 turn/steps but again you don't get full chain climax) as enemies are either too easy or too hard. I would say there's very minimum strategizing in this game which is kinda disappointing for a game that advertised as turn-based strategy.
Another issue with the gameplay is the balance. The game really has weird balance. Playing it on normal difficulties, there are optional bosses that gives rewards, These bosses are extremely hard when you beat found them at first, but with mastery of parry and dodge you can beat them and make you Overleveled and overequipped to story bosses. And that's another problem, you can easily grind but if you do so, battles becomes extremely easy even on higher difficulty. You want to beat those bosses when you meet them firs time since backtracking in the game is a bit of a chore but if you do, you become overleveled. It becomes worse as you can 1 hit some of the story bosses, and the story bosses usually have extra story or narrative combat on each their hp threshold, if you do kill the boss in 1 hit, you skip all those juicy stories and dialogue which is not fun at all for me. Each story bosses also have unique and interesting mechanic which can be easily be skipped due to your overlevel status which is sad since the designer have designed these flavorful and amazing bosses. Another issue with the balancing is the skills/moves of the characters. Character have different moves which has description like "Hit low damage 5 times" or "Hit High damage 1 time." On paper, it looks interesting, but the implementation is very wonky. The 5 times low can deal like 1000 damage per hit, while high damage 1 time can hit like for 1 time for 2000. Even worse there are even some skill that says like "Hit medium damage 5 times" and another that says "Hit for Extreme damage 13 time" and the total damage of the medium 5 is higher than extreme 13. Making the tactical aspect very wonky. Taking it up to eleven, some skills require set up which can be totally ruined with a single failed dodge and another can completely miss due to a single miss-click during QTE. Because of this some skill are favored than others. Which would you choose? A complicated skill that deals a mediocre damage or a simple skill that can deal really high damage. Due to the balancing, some build or skills are just obselete and not fun, making the tactical gameplay quite linear of spamming the same skill over and over. This got worse when you get to Act 3 where there's a special snowflake skill that can deal damages in the millions (with barely any setup) while other can only do damage in the thousands (and with more set-up too). The game even gives you special "must charge the bar" skill in mid game but you can almost never get to use it because it takes too long to charge (you technically can use them but it requires, stalling or not winning the combat on purpose when you can just win).
Because of the balancing, there are barely sweet spots where the bosses/enemies are difficult but fun. Only frustrating hard (due to mandatory dodge) or easy breezy close yours eyes and win. Again for those who loves action game, you might enjoy the dodge and parry, but I definitely hated it. As a content warning, this game has some degree of platforming (easy enough) in the main content, but difficult platforming and action sequences in bonus content. As someone who play turned base game because I am really bad action game, those content just frustrate me greatly (and it is required for 100% achievement). There are additional gameplay like puzzles, but the puzzles is too easy or too hard to figure out by thinking but can just try random button until it opens. Even then the puzzle is not that many. Gameplay wise, I don't see any strong point. There are slightly good points, okay points, and weak points.
Storywise, also again in Act three, the pacing and balancing are not good. By the end of act two, you have this urgent call to finish the game or finish character quests then finish the game. There is also side content. The problem with this if you through the character quest first, the urgency feels off and even the character quests doesn't give you closure to the character story. What is worse, one of the ending (there are two ending, I haven't gotten the other ending) just focus on the main story. In the ending, the side characters and all of the character growth, backstory, and quests was literally deleted. Their story just ended abruptly. It makes sense in context and I can understand why they do this due to the theme but I think I don't like the choice and the story direction of the epilogue. Bittersweet ending is a thing but there's nothing sweet, just Bitter. Ending like this just feels bad after all your struggles for more than 40 hours with the party.
Moreover, by the time you finish character quests, you are way overleveled making the final boss very easy. As I said previously because of this Narratives in combats are skipped due to breaking the threshold too early. Generally, the gameplay could be good but due to the balancing, you never find the sweet spot where the gameplay is consistently fun. There might be some occasions but it was just some. You are either steamrolling or struggling badly, rarely in between.
So, would I recommend this? Yes, with some caveat! The game is really awesome outside its gameplay. Even with full price of IDR 500.000 (around USD35), I would recommend it to everyone. You could feel the love of the developer for their own game and the love toward the players. The game is a really beautiful peace of art with great storytelling and epic music. Unfortunately, it is also a game where I have no desire to pick it up back or finish the post game due to the gameplay, balancing and lackluster of the ending. If you think you cannot pass those, just watch the let's play on youtube.