4.5/5 ★ – Brendan88's review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Spoilers below. This review is mostly about the story and ending. - - - An incredible, phenomenal game. A masterclass, one could say. But, hey, why didn't the last third of this game give a shit about its premise at all? The game starts with a dwindling population grieving and making peace - or some of them, trying to - with a god-like power that has ultimate control over who lives and dies. A power that does not care that they are real people with thoughts, feelings, and lives. And a select few set out to change it, and to stop it. This is a very good set up for a turn based RPG (I would say its a JRPG but people are weird about this). The genre is all about a small group of diverse characters banding together to accomplish the impossible, to change fate and destiny. Clair Obscur changes it up a bit by having an older cast than the usual RPG. This is not about the special chosen teenagers with grand destinies, its about (ridiculously hot) 32 year olds doing their best. And the game does this really well... for a time. The problem is, in the last act of the game, the curtain is lifted. The game reveals the frame surrounding the painting. And after that, the game no longer cares to pretend about changing fate. It explains and tosses away the Gommage like a used tissue. The game itself no longer cares about the people in this world who have thoughts, feelings, and lives. As it turns out, they didn't, and the game doesn't care to pretend that they did or that it ever cared about them. The game is no longer about the group of ridiculously hot 32 year olds. Its now about the magical teenager with a destiny. Disappointing, but obviously many-an-RPG has this trope, and they foreshadow this from 1000 miles away. The real sin is that now the game is no longer about fighting the higher power that has no right to determine your destiny. Now the game is about BEING that higher power, and determining the destiny of others. Sorry Lune and Sciel, but nothing has changed. You're still at the mercy of a Paintress. Better stay on her good side. The final moments offer two "different" endings, but it's two wrappers around the same bitter taste. Side with this god or that. The inhabitants of this world, who are invested and have everything on the line, don't get a say. I mean, you shouldn't care about them either, right? The game certainly doesn't anymore. Lune and Sciel just stand around and make a face once in a while, seemingly content to let their betters decide if the world exists tomorrow. Monoco is lucky if he's in the frame. The endings are as bleak as the beginning. We may as well have never gotten on the boat. Its an incredibly disappointing ending to an incredibly, surprisingly good game. I'm fresh off the ending while writing so I'm still a bit sore that something I liked so much could fumble so badly for me at the end. In the rest of the game, there is very little to criticize. The story up until Act 3 is very good. The writing is so impressively economic and refreshing, getting all the necessary information out with characterization in a snappy fashion. There are some very mature and well-handled character moments, particularly with Sciel, who was one of my favorite characters simply due to how well she was written. The performances were fantastic. The music is out-of-this-world. Art design and direction are as good as a game about painting needed to be - better, even. The turn based combat is slick and fast. Every character has their own thing going on turn-by-turn, as well as in the long term build crafting. The same character could be a nuker, a debuffer, or a healer, giving the player a lot of freedom to make a party they want. One issue I have with the character "gimmicks," though, is that it can burn out my brain. It feels like I'm playing three different card games at once sometimes. It's no worse than when Sciel is in my party, because I feel like her mechanism has way too much going on. But I would say she's the only one that went a little too far in complexity. Augmenting the characters are Pictos/Luminas, a very FF9-inspired system but I'm here to take the very brave stance that there are actually too many Pictos. Perhaps this is my fault for exploring so much but I think its a tad ridiculous. Also, the Picto / Lumina menus are atrocious to navigate. A couple other stray complaints for this game that, again, I liked so, so much: - There needs to be a minimap on the overworld. -Chromatic enemies need to look more different from regular enemies than they do currently. -Why do all of Lune's stains look like different color fire? You couldn't make an ice crystal or a lightning bolt? -The "relationships" you can have with the two women in the party are laughably simplistic and weak. I know why they felt they need to include this feature (if this game shipped with a cast this hot that you couldn't romance, there would be riots), but if they are going to do it this badly, they really should not have bothered. -There are too many similar or near identical skills. This is particularly bad with Sciel. The gameplay, the aesthetics, and most of the story are great, as great as all the praise would have you believe. I'm just raw over an ending I fundamentally disagree with on a thematic level. I'm left imagining an ending that really landed for me. But I don't have that. I guess I'll just have to grieve over what could have been.