Clair Obscur : Expedition 33 : A Review

Damn, this gem really had to come out during the final few weeks of my thesis, huh? Imagine being me working to get four months of hard work wrapped up, and you have everyone around talking about how good this game is, and as a BIG RPG fan, I will not lie, the FOMO hit hard. But I powered through to get everything wrapped up and finished the game this week.

After about 60 hours, beating the main campaign, all the side content, endgame challenges and bosses, and collected all the journals so I could get the full picture, here is my review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

I've got to start by saying this is an amazing debut game from Sandfall Interactive. For a team of 30, the amount of passion and hard work that went into making this game in off the charts, and I really appreciate what they've created here. Genuinely feels like a game made by gamers, for gamers.

Starting with all the praise, the character, environment, animations and graphics are amazing, the amount of creativity and detail that went into everything is frankly mind-blowing. Having the context of how the development cycle of this game went and how it started out in its early days to now, it's come a long way, and genuinely one of the best looking games I've played from an artistic and technical sense. I do have some gripes with how this works with the game design elements, and I will get to it in a bit. Talking about the cinematography of all the cutscenes, each frame had a lot of thought and intention put behind it. The way certain 'moments' are mysteriously conveyed to the player is haunting and quite unique, as they adopted European Noir filmmaking styles for those, which is a nice contrast to the rather colorful nature of the game and really aids it in conveying dark and distressing moments to the player

The music is spectacular, it is no easy feat to compose more than 150 tracks, all of them sounding unique, fresh and add so much depth and value to the game. From the ambient tracks that keep you engaged through the levels, with good hooks, some fun here and there, to the impactful boss soundtracks that amazingly compliment the gravitas associated with each of these bosses, the music definitely has to go up there on the shelves along with the greatest game music made, not only because of how good it is, but also because of the amount of variety in styles of music that Lorien Testard has composed and incorporated so well into the experience.

Oh man, not enough credit is given to Jeniffer English for her role, but she absolutely killed it, along with Ben Starr giving it his all for this performance as well. The amount of emotion they convey with their voice, even with the lip-syncing being off, and even though the facial animation are janky, is one of the reasons the game keeps you engaged in the story for so long. Andy Serkis needs a special mention because doing a role like this, given the context that all the animations and acting were done well before the voices were recorded, he truly immersed himself into his character and brought out so much energy and power for it. Shoutout to Rich Keeble playing one of my favourite characters in a game, and providing such a wonderful voice for him as well, and all the other voice actors did a great job too, just that these stood out to me the most.

Now, coming to my issues with the game, let's start with the story. Don't get me wrong, the story is fantastic, a strong setup, a powerful hook in the beginning, genuinely heart-wrenching emotional moments, really well planned plot twists, and provides a real sense of urgency, but it did not, at least for me, work well with the pace of the gameplay. Due to the way the game is balanced, you either work through the story linearly, adhering to his tight paced story line, and experience it the way it was intended. Or if you are someone like me, who likes to take their time, explore all the content between story arcs, try to come with sick builds and min maxing, and really enjoying the heck out of everything an RPG has to offer, the game becomes easy, and some of the cool setup, such as enemy encounters and boss designs doesn't hit the same because it turns to be on the easier side, and the blame goes to the player for choosing to plunge himself into the world and its many offerings. Spoiler : the worst is after Act 2, when they urgently want you to stop Renoir, but also open up the world and give you the option to fly and see a lot more areas and locations you have seen before, so it feels like a contradiction as to what the game expects in terms of progress but while also giving player agency, which tends to bite the player back, because in my case, I went to a bunch of new places because the game allowed me to and the final boss was a pushover. Next is the level design, in the beginning its good, but in some later levels, the pathfinding becomes a bit confusing, with not enough done to visually communicate with the players different points of interest and overarching objectives, instead choosing to go for the old school search and discover route. I don't believe this game requires a minimap, but the game having some backtracking and revisiting, a map with a personal journal/marker style work could've helped. But it's not really bad, as the levels are usually short or not too long. I personally love deep lore and rich narratives outside the main story, and I would've appreciated a bestiary/lore book of some sort, and would've learning more about the outside world and its effects and impact within the paintings.

This is easily one of the best games made this year, in my opinion one of the easier and more accessible RPG's due to its QoL features, digestible story and acting (for the general audience), engaging characters and soundtracks. Considering my personal taste, and what I felt the game could've done better,

I give this game an 8.5 out of 10, an easy 9.5 if they added level scaling to the story and paced it better, it might be added in a later version of the game, but as of right now, that is how much I give it.

8.5/10 for me, easy GOTY contender and probably winner.

Endgame updates:

Went around and wrapped up all the side content, endgame areas and optional bosses, and I really enjoyed my time with the challenges provided here. Combat is build making is the strength of the game, so I'm really happy they doubled down on it to make challenging levels and push the players build knowledge and capabilities.

Screenshot of me killing the final and hardest endgame boss.