My games of the year awards have a history of being plagued with ninjas. Sekiro, Ninja Gaiden, Mark of the Ninja, and Blades of the Shogun have all been game of the year winners for me, so it’s especially funny to me that in the “year of the ninja” with three surprisingly good ninja video games practically all in a row (Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, Shinobi Art of Vengeance, and Ninja Gaiden 4) that I’m going with close to the exact opposite of a ninja game for game of the year: a turn-based French RPG. If you’ve paid attention to any game news over the past seven months you’ve probably heard of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as it has had near universal acclaim and has at time of writing the most ever nominations for the Video Game Awards. Rather than bucking trends I’m here to say that yes, Expedition 33 is that good and you absolutely should play it, and I’ve got a few thousand words to tell you why.
Expedition 33 got its hooks into me with just its premise and the premise is basically all I’m going to say about the story in this review because I don’t want to spoil anything. Sixty-seven years ago “the Fracture” split the world into pieces and the city of Lumière was one of if not the only human city to survive. Shortly after the devastation a tremendous monolith appeared in the distance guarded by a giant woman who painted the number “100” on its surface and everyone a hundred years old or older instantly died. Every year this “Paintress” would awake from her motionless state by the monolith and paint another number in sequence from 99 to 98, 97, 96 onward and every year everyone that age and older would die. Eventually the citizens of Lumière decided they had to strike back against the Paintress to save themselves from the inevitable extinction, and Expeditions were launched to explore the shattered continent across the newly formed sea to find a way to reach the Paintress and destroy her. These Expeditions are named after the number on the monolith so the titular Expedition 33 is not the thirty-third Expedition but somewhere around the 50th, and no Expeditions have ever returned…
I don’t know about you, but that premise just sets my imagination alight. How horribly grim, how ominous. What does a world look like where the last city on the planet is faced with the inevitability of their own demise painted on the side of a distant tower? How does a society function knowing that as Expedition 33 launches a child at the age of ten won’t make it to 25? What kind of characters live in that world? To the game’s credit it does an admirable job answering most of these questions, with little touches of how various characters handle things like children, material goods, duty, and legacy scattered throughout the early game before Expedition 33 sets out. The cast of characters is especially diverse as well, helped in part by this being an RPG with a social system that encourages getting to know your party members. Lesser games would have had most of the characters outside of one or two just be “wow I want to kill the Paintress because of my mom/dad/sister/old turtle” but the dark beauty of E33‘s world is that everyone has lost someone so that as motivation just isn’t enough. Sure, there’s revenge and the desire to protect the people in Lumière but there’s also the burden of responsibility left behind by parents who went on their own Expedition and never returned, hope for one last adventure before the year is over, and a drive to make any amount of progress so that the next Expedition will have even a slightly easier time.
You see this motivation throughout the game, not only in the mottos of Lumière’s society but in the remnants of previous Expeditions throughout the world. As I said, Expedition 33 can be a DARK game and a fair amount of that is the constant reminder as you move through the game that you’re progressing through the steps of those who came (and died) before you. One of the Expedition slogans that is repeated throughout the game is “for those who come after” and that really hits home as you see the progress markers of previous Expeditions (used as save points), discover their journals, and see the corpses of over fifty years of humanity who tried and failed to save the world. But like I said I don’t want to spoil anything more than that, as the story is a big part of Expedition 33 and it is well written, well acted, has incredible cinematography, and is overall one of the best video game stories I’ve experienced in some time.
On its surface the gameplay is set up as a traditional turn-based/JRPG experience where three of your party members stand in a line and face one to five enemy characters that are also in a line. If you’ve played any party-based JRPG before you’ll be familiar with the set up, but while E33 doesn’t break the mold it adds a lot of little details that add quality of life and just make the combat overall more engaging. A big one for me is its use of “Action Points” or AP as opposed to the traditional spell points or mana that you might see in other RPGs. Each character’s AP starts at a set level at the beginning of each battle and is used for their more powerful abilities, while basic attacks and other actions increase a character’s AP for future turns. This hits twofold at frustrations that I usually had with franchises like Persona, where for the most part default basic attacks aren’t worth the animations they’re printed on and using your super cool attacks cost far too much spell power for basic mobs. What the AP system does in E33 is not only let you use your strongest abilities as much as you want (since you always start fights with the same amount of AP) but it also creates combos and play patterns as well when in other RPGs the best you can get for character cohesion are team buffs. “How do I make it that I can use my most powerful moves the most often? Do I need to squeeze in a basic attack or can I get to the 8/9/10 AP without it?” These are the sorts of questions E33 leaves open for you to answer, if you want to, and there are plenty of ways to make it happen.
Another thing that I love about Expedition 33‘s gameplay is that each member of your party has a completely different “gimmick” that makes them stand out from your team. So many (particularly turn-based) RPGs have your party made up of six to eight characters that all play basically the same only one is the “fire one” and one is the “ice one” and one is the “punchy one.” E33‘s characters each have their own little mini-games within their character build, such as one who builds a charge in his arm for a super attack while another can mix and match elemental pips to empower one elemental attack with aspects of another. There’s even one who gains different powers for every enemy you kill with them in the party, which was actually a slight misstep for me because that meant I felt forced to have them in the party at all times. The point is this isn’t a game where you’ll be picking your party solely based on stats or “well I don’t have a lightning person on my team right now.” It is definitely a good idea to have a grasp of everyone though, as a few times during the game you’ll have fights where you’re forced to only use certain characters.
I’ve been avoiding the elephant in the room for a little bit now but it’s about time to talk about the defensive options in Expedition 33, or “how to make your turn-based RPG into Sekiro.” In most turn-based RPGs your dodge chance is left up to random number generators and the opponent’s turn is spent wondering how many healing items you’ll have to use before the fight is over, but in E33 (and the Mario & Luigi games, strangely enough) you can actively block and dodge attacks. What this turns into is a timing and visual/audio cue exercise, with the word “timing” in fifty-foot tall letters as the window for parries in E33 are TIGHT. Dodging is slightly easier but parries reward you with counter attacks that deal massive damage and generally bonus AP as well, so if you’re trying to be efficient with your play parries are the way to go. Especially when certain boss attacks are so fast that parrying is just “easier” than dodging them all.
That being said this can all lead to frustration due to what it takes to make a good parry system. Sekiro‘s really worked thanks to the lock-on camera which consistently gave you the same perspective on every enemy you fought so you could get the animations down. But with E33‘s camera you’re at the mercy of where the enemies are in relation to which of your team members they’re attacking. This can lead to one character perfectly blocking attacks whenever you try it and another character failing to block them at all, not because of any issues in character differences but because it’s harder to see when the enemy’s spear is moving forward from that angle. The game tries to make the best of it by adding sound cues as well and that can definitely help, but sometimes other sounds overlap with these cues so there is definitely a visual element involved. If that weren’t enough, during your turn after you execute an attack order there are quick-time event button presses during the animation intended to deal additional damage or apply extra status effects. These are not as hard as the dodges or parries but if you don’t like the karaoke in Yakuza or quick-time events in general it can get a little annoying.
I’ve been holding off on talking about this for this long because the feature can really be a deal breaker when people start playing the game, and while it sounds very intimidating on paper there are a few ways around it. The quick-time events during friendly attacks can be turned off in the settings, meaning it’s entirely optional just to make the gameplay more “visceral” or keep your reflexes engaged for when the enemy turn starts, and to a certain degree dodging and parrying is optional as well. I’m not going to lie and say that you don’t need to play a certain way to avoid the need for dodges and parries, but a quick search on YouTube will pull up numerous “no dodge or parry” runs where players just facetank all the damage of even the hardest bosses in the game. Now this requires you to level up your characters differently by investing more into health and healing abilities than the parry-happy players, but it can be done and the game can be experienced more like a classic turn-based RPG than the Persona meets Sekiro combat that the game sells itself as. For my part I was heavily in the “oh god parries are so frustrating and the timing windows are ridiculous what the hell” camp for a long time, and to be honest I still am against certain types of enemies. However it clicks so well against others that I’d encourage everyone to try playing the game “as intended” for at least the first half, and if you change your mind there’s plenty of items that reset character skills and attributes to try new builds. The whole parry system really does get rid of my biggest issue with turn-based RPGs, the inability to predictably dodge attacks or avoid damage, and thus player skill can help overcome challenges that you’d have to grind to complete in other games.
If being encouraged to play Sekiro in a turn-based RPG hasn’t scared you off yet it’s time to talk about problems, as for all E33‘s positive qualities one has to remember this is an indie title and as such makes indie mistakes. The biggest one for me is the lack of a weakness tracker, which will once again lead me into making Persona comparisons. Much like Persona, Expedition 33 has elemental damage on attacks, certain enemies are weak to certain types of elemental damage, and you get bonuses for using them against a given enemy. While many of these weaknesses are obvious (aquatic looking enemies are weak to electric, ice ones are weak to fire, etc) some are not and once you determine a weakness the game doesn’t save it anywhere for you to reference if you run into the same enemy type later. Compare this to Persona where once you hit an enemy with an attack the game records if it’s a weakness, resistance, etc. and it’s always there for future reference. It seems like an obvious inclusion but sadly isn’t here and you’ll feel it if you put the game down for a little while only to come back and have to re-learn every enemy vulnerability. Expedition 33‘s menus are also horrific, looking at times more like a disorganized spreadsheet come to life as you sort through pages of the game’s various abilities looking for the one you’re SURE you unlocked already to give someone additional AP.
One of the most controversial missing features is a game map, as while the overworld features a poorly detailed map your exploration inside locations is map-free. The developers excuse is that this was meant to encourage a feeling of “exploration” and being in dangerous/uncharted territory, and I do buy that to a certain extent. Cynical reviewers that made too many comparisons to Final Fantasy XIII said that it was entirely in service to hiding how linear the environments are once you’re inside them, going so far as to say that they must have cut the maps when they realized the maps just looked like flat hallways. And you know what? I can buy that too, though mostly in the early areas. No matter what the reasoning was I do know that the game’s environments occasionally have overlapping hidden areas and very samey looking paths and I would have very much liked a map to get through them. I also know that the areas aren’t nearly as linear as the cynics said, with lots of pretty things to look at and optional paths to explore, but yes they probably would look very ugly on a flat mini-map. Point to the developers for realizing their apparent weaknesses and sidestepping them, but they could have made it an optional feature. It’s not like we would have found the option to turn it on in the damn menus anyway.
It’s also sometimes hard to know where to go next when it comes to E33‘s side content. As you travel the overworld you’ll find numerous optional bosses to fight and regions to explore but there’s very little indication of what level you need to be to properly confront these challenges. The side areas are accessed through gateways that glow bright red and show the word “DANGER” when you’re under leveled, and while it is “helpful” to know you’re under leveled it also means you need to keep checking back on these areas throughout the game until it finally stops being red. As for the optional bosses it’s really just a question of vibes, as some look suitably intimidating while others just look like reskins of bosses you may have beaten before. So you start combat with one only to deal no damage and get one-shot in response, guess you’d better try again in thirty levels! All that being said this sort of “where do I go next” and wandering into fights you can’t handle isn’t a new thing in games or even necessarily a real problem. Dark Souls and Elden Ring famously had players wandering into areas they had no business being in, much to the amusement of all. The main issue is that because Expedition 33 advertises “you can’t handle this” it can sometimes feel like you’re running in circles trying to find the next optional area that you CAN handle and surely must exist. And yes, grinding for levels is an option especially with E33‘s generous AP combat system, but grinding isn’t fun and can put you beyond the level of the content that IS your current level but you can’t seem to find it.
This balancing act also comes into play during the final part of the game, as the final boss is balanced around the idea that you aren’t going finish everything else in the game before fighting it… which means that if you do everything else first you can essentially one-shot it. This isn’t anything new in RPGs but my main issue with it is how heavily story focused the optional content is in the later part of the game. Most RPG’s optional content is just minor stuff indirectly related to the main story: grinding procedurally generated floors in Persona, hunting monster quests in Witcher, chasing old ladies with stolen spaceships in Mass Effect, etc. All worthy tasks and full of fun moments to be sure, but not what I would call groundbreaking in relevance to the main story. E33 on the other hand has highly important character moments and lore about the world hidden in these late game side areas, and as great as all that character work and story beats are it also limits how much fun the final boss is because blowing them up in two turns isn’t really a fitting climax for the story. The developers tried to fix this with post-launch patches that added optional scaling enemy health but that doesn’t do those of us who finished the game already any good, and I don’t expect players on their first run to bother messing with that either. It just feels like something they could have addressed with background buffs to the boss or just making more of the late game content required so the boss is naturally more powerful, but again this is an indie game problem.
“Oh no the UI is clunky and it’s sometimes hard to tell where to go and if you beat optional content the bosses are easier!” I hope with all of these exceedingly minor negatives out of the way that it’s clear how much good there is left over in Expedition 33. The characters, the story, the gameplay improvements on mechanics from other titles, the voice acting, the music (I couldn’t find a place to gush about the music but it’s REALLY good), and the art style are all superb. There’s a lot of content but it doesn’t drag, it’s well written, it’s a blast to play and a blast to listen to, and I think I’m able to forgive a lack of a map and questionable UI to decisions to get all that in return. If I could I’d write another 2500 words about the story, but it’s absolutely something that you should experience for yourself. If you like RPGs, grim storytelling, and aren’t afraid of learning to dodge the occasional attack then Expedition 33 is absolutely for you and I hope I’ve convinced you to give it a look.
For those who come after.
