Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a messy 9/10, which is more interesting than a clean 8 and hits harder than a lot of 10's
I can list a good number of real problems with Expedition 33 and I still think it's one of the most memorable RPGs I've played in years. Some games are 10/10 because they barely misstep. E33 isn't that. It's more like a 9/10 where the highs are so sincere and alive that the flaws just stop mattering as much they typically would.
The other title I wanted to use for this review was "Expedition 33 is the Final Fantasy that Squenix stopped making, yet still also the best Final Fantasy in years," which is reductive, yeah, but is another angle that I feel captures what's magical about E33. This has that PS1/PS2-era RPG energy: melodrama played straight, an overworld map, party trauma, big beautiful doomed places, emotions, boss fights, and an iconic sountrack. The game fully leans into the overly stylized, campy, theatrical bombast of it all. It's extremely French, but also extremely JRPG (or, "Je'RPG", if you will). I guess the best thing about the game for me is that it has a pulse. You can feel that people made choices in the making of this game. Not franchise-roadmap choices. Not “our research says players like this” choices. Actual authored choices.
The score is huge. Sometimes maybe too huge. Lorien Testard throws piano, orchestra, vocals, jazz, electronic bits, guitar, and full anime-opening emotional detonation into the same pot. Some people will find it tacky. Fair. There are moments where the music is trying to blow the roof off and I'm sitting there like, okay, I'm trying to play a game here? But the score is just so good you can't help but pause for a moment and actively listen.
The voice acting is excellent, but what matters more is that the writing gives the cast actual material. The best scenes aren't always the giant tragic moments. Sometimes it's just the optional interactions at camp where damaged adults are trying to comfort each other and not knowing how. The dialogue has more restraint than I expected from a game this melodramatic. People aren't constantly explaining their feelings into the camera. A lot is carried by tone, silence, and implication.
I guess while so much of the production values are so polished that it's hard to believe this isn't a AAA game, combat is where the game becomes divisive. This isn't a pure turn-based RPG. It's turn-based until the enemy moves, then suddenly you're playing a timing game. It's not that hard. The problem is that a lot of parrying feels predictive, not reactive. You aren't reading attacks, you're memorizing set patterns. It essentially shares more DNA with Hatsune Miku than it does with Sekiro.
Having said that, landing a long parry chain after getting cooked by it three times feels as incredible as beating a soulslike boss. But the criticism is fair: the parry system can swallow the rest of the combat. If you become a parry god in this game, the rest of it is basically trivialized. So like I said, it's a 9/10 but it's a messy 9/10.
The RPG layer underneath is better than I expected. Pictos and Lumina let you do some deeply stupid and fun build nonsense. You can spec around death triggers, AP loops, basic attack abuse, glass cannon setups, all kinds of “wait, the game actually lets me do this?” garbage. It's incredibly creative and I love that. Every party member also has their own gimmick, so they don't all melt into the same endgame character with different hair. If you're a theorycrafting geek, this game might surprise you with how much it can scratch that itch. Though I just wish the game forced more adaptation. Once you find something busted, you can ride it hard. Do enough side content and the endgame balance gets cooked. That's not just a difficulty issue. It flattens tension the story spent hours building. So again, something that can possibly trivialize the combat despite how fun it can be.
Exploration is probably the weakest major piece. The areas look incredible, but moving through them isn't always fun. No minimap would be fine if the spaces were easier to read, but they often aren't. You can miss whole paths, backtracking gets old, and rewards start feeling samey: upgrade item, currency, lumina point, maybe a picto. The world is beautiful, but it doesn't always reward curiosity.
Also, the platforming is bad. Just plain horrible. 0/10 platforming, no notes.
Story-wise, while some parts of it can be divisive, I feel like the studio lands it for the most part. Not the most perfect pacing. Some people will question some narrative decisions. A few will outright reject it as BS. But I feel like for most people, it landed, as it did for me.
There's probably a 10/10 version of E33 where some of the wrinkles I mentioned above are ironed out (except the platforming, which is a lost cause). This version is messier. But maybe that's why I keep thinking about it?
Expedition 33 is not flawless enough to be an easy masterpiece, and it's too alive to dismiss as hype. It's a messy 9/10. The kind where you can point to several or more real problems and still remember it more clearly than a dozen other cleaner games.