4/5 ★ – xuirky's review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

TLDR: Expedition 33 is a great game with a fantastic soundtrack and a strong synergistic build system, but it suffers from missed opportunities and not knowing what it is trying to be sometimes. It will probably hurt the JRPG turn-based genre more than it'll help it as developers move away from traditional turn-based to this parry slop of a gameplay cycle. Combat: Expedition 33 is an amazing game that does an interesting new take on the "turn-based" formula if one can say that. IMO this game isn't really turn-based as you can essentially avoid all attacks from enemies. It is closer to a rhythm game since you are listening to sound cues and visual cues to time your parry. Since you can basically parry every attack, the dodge button is mostly useless and is never used. Unavoidable attacks or attacks that can only be dodged (allowing the Bourgeon’s Swallow to be dodged) would be great for this new genre of combat and it will help with the combat feeling less repetitive as you reach the end of Act 1. In Act 2, you unlock gradient parry, which is an attempt from the team to liven up the gameplay a bit, so instead of pressing parry, you now need to press a new button. Implementation is ass, ngl. You usually get faked out into buffering in a parry since the enemies love delaying their attack as if it's Elden Ring, only for the screen to go black and you to get hit with the attack and one-shot early on. Later, you'll mostly be able to tank said attacks and easily parry them once you remember the name of the attack/animation, as the parry timings are very forgiving. Once you understand at what point you should press said button, you should never get hit with any of these attacks ever again. I hope JRPG developers like Square don’t see this new combat system as the key to all future entries, as I really do think it'll be a detriment to the genre more than it would help push it forward (please don’t revive dead IPs with this shit, genuinely will hurt a lot of fanbases more than it would help). One thing I found great would be the OP build, where you can one-shot super bosses. Finding synergies in Lumina/Pictos is really satisfying. Another issue I had with the game was the diving areas (clear references to FF9 chocobo diving) being locked to that late in the game. In FF9, it is also locked near the end, but most of them were abundant resources and Zidane's ultimate weapon. But here in EX33, it is just 5 Lumina stones, which can easily be farmed and you should already have an abundance of them at this point in the game. The reward from said diving spots should be better mix it up a bit, add more Lumina stones, throw in weapons, some Chroma, Pictos, and some upgrade material. During combat with certain bosses, constant perspective changes were annoying and unneeded. Side Quests: Side quests, or lack of side quests, really ruined parts of the game for me. When you roam around the world, you can only really do 2 types of side quests: the White Nevrons and the boy that shows up. My main issue with the White Nevron side quest was that if you choose not to kill them and get the Lumina stone reward at the end, you are locked out of Auto Powerful and other Pictos. In a game that has a leveling-up system of which you find duplicate weapons/Pictos to level up said weapon/Picto, it felt like an odd decision to only have 1 Auto Powerful and it to be locked behind the conditions of failing the White Nevron side quest. Sure, there are other ways to get powerful effects at the start of a battle, but it’ll cost you more Lumina than just the 10 required from Auto Powerful. Other than the boy that shows up, there aren't any side quests of note that I remember. A lot of the areas in the world just being locations to collect music discs (I guess the camera of those areas being a callback to older Final Fantasy games), said areas being a waste where you go in once, grab the vinyl, then never going back again. No notable side quests in a game like this really hurts it for me. Almost all great JRPGs have amazing side quests or at the very least actual side quests to do, and not a straight line to the end. Mini Games: Let’s start off with the Gestral Beach "mini-games" where you beat them all first try, except the getting-over-it/streamer slop simulator ones. Whoever at the studio played one of those games and decided it was a good idea to add it should lose their job and be ousted from the industry as a whole. The movement of the game is way too floaty for platforming, but for some reason, they love shoehorning it in as much as they can. You only have 5 Gestral Beaches to get to, and the lack of other types of mini-games made me lower my score, ngl. When I entered the flying casino, only for it to be a costume instead of a card game (which I would argue is a staple in older Final Fantasy games), I was extremely disappointed. It made me realize that all these optional areas are for music discs and costumes for the characters instead of unique experiences, i.e., side quests and mini-games. Story: Great story with interesting twists at the end of each act. I like that at the end, you have a choice in the ending. Identity of the Game: Every now and then, you get a video on your feed saying something new: the team was 30 people; no, the team was actually 10 who worked on it for a year without pay until they got funding; or the director saying they shouldn't be marked as indie, etc. At this point, I don’t know whether it should be called indie or not or what the identity of the development team is. Usually, I'd be less harsh to indies, but the team doesn't know what they are, and neither does the fanbase. Fans claim this is better than all Final Fantasy games or on par with the best of the best. IMO, it’s a little under FF16, which is the least Final Fantasy-like Final Fantasy, but still a great game nonetheless. It’ll probably sweep the Game Awards, heralded as the first-ever indie to win Game of the Year (when other indies before it deserved it more) and the savior of the turn-based JRPG genre.